Big time authors not happy either

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

So goes the buggy whip, so goes the dinosaur. The asteroid has struck, some will survive some will not.

Great line

[kennyc]

Almost as good as "Life is uncertain, eat bananas first."

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Almost as good as "Life is uncertain, eat bananas first."

LOL

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Once again, you have to be realistic about these things. Authors and publishers have been having disputes since the year dot. The difference today is the Internet.
Most authors are happy enough with their publishers, and resolve their few disputes "in house": but let an author disagree with her publisher and put out her screed on the Net and its broadcast and rebroadcast by Techdirt,Teleread, The Konrath, and various other forums with an axe to grind against the "BPHs".
Publishers are constrained by custom and the law from telling their side. They can't say, "The author's offering was a pile of crap that no amount of editorial polishing or marketing could make into a success". So their side gets untold.
Its best to have a sense of proportion about this. The poll ends with the question:

If you are writing in 5-10 years, will you still have a traditional publisher? .

48.4 % said yes, 13.8 % No

Sounds like a lot of writers are still OK with trad publishers (and agents).

There are some things that traditional publishers do well. They have the manufacturing and distribution channels. For most who are eschewing the traditional publisher, they're having to go completely digital, and not everyone wants to do that yet.

[tubemonkey]

I no longer have any need for printed books. They're dinosaurs; so die already!

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by kennyc

It is no longer true and unless they come around and change their business model, they will not be in business or will be only a shadow of what they were.

Maybe I am suffering from some kind of nostalgia neurosis, but this is my picture of the high-standards old business model:

A native New Yorker unfamiliar with Richter's writing, I was drawn to David Johnson's biography, Conrad Richter: A Writer's Life. As a budding story writer and teacher of the novel form, I discovered that I was learning from the challenges and disheartening rejections Richter faced as he honed his craft. The record of his correspondence with interested editors willing to help him with close critiques constitutes a treatise on how to write marketable narrative.

Also see pages 303-305 here, about a manuscript submitted after Richter was a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner.

And this is my picture of the new editing = proofreading business model:

. . . three to six books done or nearly done in any given year is not at all unreasonable . . .

As a reader looking not for more books, but for outstanding books, I don't see why I should see anything positive in a new business model.

P.S. The real problem is that publishers aren't sticking close enough to the old business model. I want them to go back to the old model of selling libraries all their products on the same terms they sell to the general public. However, it seems likely that most of their best books will find their way to Overdrive after a few years, so this doesn't bother me much.

[fjtorres]

Successful authors with contracts with the traditional publishers are going to have those contracts for a long time. Mostly because it isn't up to them when the traditional contract ends. The Traditional Publishing Houses will keep the contracts running as long as they can milk them and not one second less.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Maybe I am suffering from some kind of nostalgia neurosis, but this is my picture of the high-standards old business model:
....

P.S. The real problem is that publishers aren't sticking close enough to the old business model....

Yes you are and that model has changed, There are none, or certainly very few, editors like Maxwell Perkins. As I said (and you conveniently left out when you quoted me) today's TPH editors are really nothing more then project managers trying to keep their jobs and manage legal aspects of locking authors and works in, shuffle manuscripts through the process and improve their standing in the food chain and contribute to the corporate bottom line. Editing, design, production, distribution etc. are freelanced out. Nothing like the old days you desire.

[stonetools]

As a reader looking not for more books, but for outstanding books, I don't see why I should see anything positive in a new business model.

The new business model is really fitted for cheap genre fiction- that's what most self pubbers do.
Biographies, memoirs, serious fiction-the kind of books that require careful writing, serious research, and considerable resources expended by the author- can't be written under the "new model" . Under the "old model" the number one advantage of a publisher was that the publisher advanced money and resources that enabled writer of "serious fiction or non-fiction" to write books
You don't really write a "Godfather" , a "Sea Biscuit", a "Steve Jobs: A Biography' or a " The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" by pounding out copy in your basement and outsourcing to an editor, a proof reader, and a cover artist. Those kinds of books just won't get written under the new model. That's why those dinosaurs are not ready to shuffle off yet-they make possible the kind of books that are quite frankly a thousand times more important to the society than the latest self pubbed "paranormal romance".

[Rhialto]

Originally Posted by stonetools

You don't really write a "Godfather" , a "Sea Biscuit", a "Steve Jobs: A Biography' or a " The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" by pounding out copy in your basement and outsourcing to an editor, a proof reader, and a cover artist. Those kinds of books just won't get written under the new model.

Why not? Are you really saying that a future Mario Puzo couldn't write a great novel under this modern system? Author talent is nothing without a professional editor? I am sure the BPHs would love us to all believe this.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Rhialto

Why not? Are you really saying that a future Mario Puzo couldn't write a great novel under this modern system? Author talent is nothing without a professional editor? I am sure the BPHs would love us to all believe this.

I'm going to assume you agree with me as regards the nonfiction works. That makes my case right there, even if I concede " Godfather. "
As to the "Godfather", in the mid sixties,Mr Puzo submitted a 10 page outline to the second publisher he approached and they gave him a $5000 advance (worth much more today). He did a lot of research, then wrote the novel by 1969. "THe Godfather"is a traditional BPH effort all the way. Would MP have self-pubbed today? Unlikely-he said he needed the money.

[Rhialto]

I see your point.

However, you assume too much - as you seem to often do. You need to remember that not all serious books get written only because some BPH advanced the money so the author could do the research and master the subject matter. Some authors come to the book to bring their own experience acquired from a lifetime mastery of their field. Do you believe that Richard Dawkins needed a publisher's advance to write the Selfish Gene? That Rachael Carson needed one to write Silent Spring?

Lastly, not all "non-serious fiction" ends up being unimportant to society. Adams wrote a fairytale about talking rabbits travelling the English countryside to found a new warren. We know it now as 'Watership Down'. It arguably has more lasting worth to literature and society than Job's biography.

I submit that most books of worth will still get written without BPH advances.

[kennyc]

I agree completely. The old system kept the authors beholden to them and in poverty for the most part (other than the superstars) -- as has been the case in many other areas the internet/digital publication is the equalizer. It removes the tyrants and puts the people in the driver's seat.

[crossi]

A lot of the "serious" nonfiction is written by academics. They don't write expecting to make money from it because there isn't a large enough audience. The fine details of the lifecycle of fungi isn't going to get a lot of readers. I doubt they get advances unless you count a research grant. They write for status, for tenure, to promote their views among their peers. These books will still be written.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Rhialto

I see your point.

However, you assume too much - as you seem to often do. You need to remember that not all serious books get written only because some BPH advanced the money so the author could do the research and master the subject matter. Some authors come to the book to bring their own experience acquired from a lifetime mastery of their field. Do you believe that Richard Dawkins needed a publisher's advance to write the Selfish Gene? That Rachael Carson needed one to write Silent Spring?

Lastly, not all "non-serious fiction" ends up being unimportant to society. Adams wrote a fairytale about talking rabbits travelling the English countryside to found a new warren. We know it now as 'Watership Down'. It arguably has more lasting worth to literature and society than Job's biography.

I submit that most books of worth will still get written without BPH advances.

The Selfish Gene was published by Oxford University Press

Silent Spring was published by Houghton Mifflin .

Watership Down was published by Rex Collings Ltd, which seems to be an imprint of BPH Penguin.

These were all traditionally published, So I'm not sure that they are arguments against the need for a traditional publisher. Certainly, they are far different from the usual self-pub fare.

I might add that I am not against the self pubbers ( I recently bought the well regarded self published novel Wool. I am also not against reading genre fiction ( See previous sentence). However, its clear to me that many important books of certain genres simply would not get written without the help of the BPHs. They aren't the dinosaurs or ogres that they are caricatured to be on this forum and on the contrary, continue to do essential work in bringing important authors and books to market.