Publishers still valuable in the age of ebooks and Internet access?

Originally Posted by Seli

There is so much more that can make a book horrible/bad than just writing/spelling quality, not all of those can be picked out that easily. On the other hand terrible spelling can be a goal of the writer (think Flowers for Algernon or Feersum Endjinn). I hope and expect that gate-keepers/'seals of quality' will stay around in one form or the other.

Yes, that is the main problem I see with a direct to the Internet market approach. If nothing else I would see some sort of respected web site hosting ebooks in which the web site provides more than just a place to host downloads and take care of payment and accounting (e.g. Amazon self publishing), but also provides a winnowing for quality.

Originally Posted by Phogg

Because I read prefaces. Pull out your favorite books and see how many would not have made it to market if someone's kid or grandkid hadn't submitted an old rejected manuscript found in a drawer one more time.

Yes that can happen. Has happened. Confederacy of Dunces comes to mind.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I believe there *is* a niche--a profitable one, even--for curating books, for telling people "this is worth reading, that is not." But it's going to need to be a lot more customized than the big publishing companies have been in the past, and it's going to have to be based on something other than "this book will make me, the curator, money from sales."


Of course, that's not *publishing.* That's the curation part that was always folded into publishing, with the "not worth our time" choices not getting *any* audience. Now, those books all have the chance to find an audience.

Wait, those haven't happened. Hmm. Apparently, curation isn't the *only* thing that keeps a media production company in business.

Yes something like that would be excellent. If it can make enough profit. Though it would be nice if an experienced editor could still offer advice, especially to novices.

Originally Posted by Frida Fantastic

Of course, which is what reviews are for. Reading the sample weeds out books with terrible prose or are really bad, and a good review is a seal of approval for "this was a story told well, and it's worth enjoying."

I think there could be money made with a curation service, but having personalized recommendations is just as easy as going to a message board regularly or asking a book blogger. I haven't had a lot of blog readers that directly asked me what they should read next, but the few who had appreciated it and even posted their own review of the book.

I see it as a crowdsourced/ecosystem sort of model, just like how we read news on the internet today. Before blogs and the internet, we all read one or two newspapers. Now, we read articles from big news companies, big blogs, and even small personal blogs. The media we consume is more fragmented, and the channels are more fragmented, but the ones of most interest to us will find us somehow, or we'll tweak our discovery methods (e.g. subscribing to a new blog) to get it personalized for us.

Though one of the consequences of this segmentation has been the loss of critical thinking and openness to alternate ideas.

[wyndslash]

for me it's not publishers so much as the professional editing services that are offered by big houses (well, most of the time anyway).

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Though one of the consequences of this segmentation has been the loss of critical thinking and openness to alternate ideas.

I can understand that for news, but not for books. For fiction, I read a lot of what other people recommend me, but I also look for interesting reads that are innovative than banal. For non-fiction, I read authoritative books on the topic, regardless of whether I agree with the viewpoints or not.