Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
Most authors are much better writers than distributors, and the time they would spend being a second or third-rate distributor would come from their writing time. Also, the greatest enemy of most authors is obscurity, and that's where going to direct distribution would land them.
Right now, the industry is still driven by bookstores. Direct distribution means effectively zero bookstore placement. That would even hurt ebook sales, as many people browse bookstores for ebooks to buy.
Authors won't go for it because it would hurt them.
|
Exactly. Distribution is huge, and the expenses involved in putting out a book can get really high.
The writing site AbsoluteWrite.com has a board on self-publishing and POD (
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=47) with lots of advice for authors who want to try that. It's
hard. As an example, one author had to sell her book through CreateSpace for six months to pay for her block of ISBNs. (They suggest that self-published authors buy them by the block rather than individually.) And don't forget the expense of cover art, proofreaders, editors, etc. Those are very expensive -- but much more important than people realize.
Even a small publisher can't always get those books distributed properly. It seems lots of people think they can start their own small press and sell books, and they often shut it down when they realize how hard it is. They end up hurting the authors they thought they would help. I can't count the number of horror stories I've read on AW's Bewares and Background Check board (
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22).
I've read lots of stories about authors who went through clueless small publishers who claimed to provide "distribution." Those publishers often either claimed to have bookstore distribution (even when they did not) or claimed that "bookstore sales don't matter" (of course they do). All too often, authors work their butts off to promote their book, only to sell fewer than 100 copies. They made less than they spent on printing bookmarks, buying copies of their own book, etc. There are legit small presses, of course. But even publishing through a small but respectable publisher can mean lower distribution and fewer sales. Also, in this economy, quite a few of those small presses are shutting down.
Sure, there are success stories of self-pubbed (and small press) authors who do well, but they're rare and often specialized cases (such as authors who are already well known or who have a built-in market through seminars).