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Originally Posted by Colt
I've never been able to figure out this seemingly recent movement for small publishers and authors who can't "break in" to the traditional publishing business... Printing up small batches up books for sell by the author themselves or online.
Why not just publish ebooks? I didn't even know that much about the whole ebook industry until fairly recently but I knew they existed. If you want to gain recognition and popularity as a new author, the internet would be a great way to do so. Not printing up 100 (I'm sure expensive) special editions to sell yourself to people who you probably know or are acquaintances. - Colt
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Why not just publish ebooks?
I can think of a few reasons.
First, print on demand makes all sorts of interesting things possible. I know a chap in California who takes public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, typsets them, adds cover art, and sells them as physical books. He is doing *very* well at it. Folks could just get the ebooks from PG for free, but his market wants actual physical books, and is willing to pay for them.
Second, if you are trying to get published by a major publisher, or get noticed in the market, having real books to use as samples can be useful.
For instance, Bantam Books is the world's largest mass market paperback house. There are a few hardcovers of Bantam books I'd love to have, but the prices are in the stratosphere. Why? Because Bantam only printed a few. The primary edition was the mass market paperback. The *very* limited edition hardcover was done to have hardcover copies to send to reviewers, many of whom would not review paperbacks. Crazy? Sure. But no one ever said publishing was sane.
On that line, how many reviewers can you think of who review ebooks? I can't think of any. If I issue a book as an ebook, and want it reviewed in the newpapers, I better have physical books to send to reviewers if I expect it to be even looked at.
And with print on demand technology, you can target much smaller niche markets. Maybe there's a total audience of 500 for a specialized tome. If you can reach that 500 to let them know the title exists, you can actually publish and sell the book and even make a bit of money. A standard publisher could not, as they would need sales of ten to twenty times that, and would have to print far more to feed the distribution channel.
And some of what you see is simply the very old practice of "vanity publishing".
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Dennis