If you’re paying attention to the media at all, you know the book publishing industry is in a state of turmoil, and has been for several years now. Ebooks, Kindles, Nooks, bankruptcies, store closings and behind it all is the evil nemesis, the Dark Lord of publishing: Amazon. As publishing’s ship sinks or sails, whichever metaphor you prefer, there’s a lot of confusion out there as to cause and effect, a lot of name-calling, a lot of “man your battle stations” stuff going on. However, the turmoil is about two completely separate issues that are often confused, both by the publishers and by the media. This post will deal with the first Bad Thing: Cost Effective Self-Publishing. My next post will deal with the second Bad Thing: Ebooks.
First, we have self-publishing. An author has been able to publish his own work since there was dirt. All that was required was the capital to pay a printer and a bookbinder, and then the wherewithal (or money) to market and distribute your own work. A century or so ago, that was how it was done. Enter the new business model, based on the professional publisher, a one-stop shop for authors. We’ll edit your book, do the interior design, promote it, market it, distribute it, the whole package and we’ll even pay you a percentage of the proceeds. Just sign here… An author could still publish his own book, but it was difficult to market and became increasingly difficult to compete against the publishing industry club. Their tactics of labeling any independent publishing houses for hire as “vanity presses” was very successful in discouraging authors from bucking the trend. The Big Six publishers were the experts, the gatekeepers, the elite.
This business model persisted until well into the 1990’s. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose, except that anytime the production and distribution of goods or services is controlled by a select group of people or companies, a degree of arrogance develops. A belief that their way is the only way. An inability to believe a new method is any good, or to even admit there is any other method possible. I can think of a number of companies that fell to ruin because of that lack of vision: Polaroid, Blockbuster and most recently, Kodak, which finally filed for bankruptcy protection last month. Kodak, which developed and holds many patents for the very digital photography technology that destroyed it. Another example is, of course, the music industry, which was unable to adapt to rapidly changing technology.
Eventually, there arose a new way to self-publish: print-on-demand (POD). A normal book run at the so-called vanity press self-publishing services could be several thousand copies, which the author has to pay for, warehouse and distribute. But POD publishing allowed the small print lot, even it was only a single copy. Shipped direct to the buyer, with no warehousing. When the print-on-demand suppliers coupled with on-line distributors (like Amazon and Barnes & Noble), a completely new industry appeared and exploded in growth. No more finding a literary agent to sell your book to a publisher. An agent who takes ten percent of the proceeds. No more publisher, who takes the lion’s share of the proceeds, leaving the author with twenty or twenty-five percent royalties, paid months after sale of the copies.
Now the term “self-published” carries the same stigma as “vanity press author”. The Big Six and their whole industry (agents especially) look down their noses at those of us who have chosen to self-publish. This stigma attaches even to the bookstore level. Barnes and Noble and the defunct Borders have never allowed self-published books in their stores, unless you know an individual store manager very well and promise to buy back any copies that don’t sell. And an overlooked portion of their industry that disgusts me just as much is the reviewers out there in the media, who also make it a policy not to review self-published works. “We have to draw the line somewhere.”
I’ll admit, not everyone should self-publish. I’ve read some self-published books, and I’m of the strong opinion that most people don’t want to read the average person’s drivel. Most of us have no idea how to write a book. Most of us don’t understand grammar well enough, or character development, or even punctuation for that matter. (Like one book I read where University of Washington was italicized. Sorry, a university is not a ship, nor a book, so it belongs in plain font.) I haven’t mentioned knowing how to carry a story along through 100,000 or more words. However, for those who take the time and money to learn those skills and who are smart enough to hire a professional editor to review their work, self-publishing is a marvelous way to go. Those POD self-publishers charge nothing upfront. Zero. Zilch. In fact, they pay you, at a nice percentage, every time a book sells.
So the publishers try desperately to ignore self-published authors, hoping we’ll just go away. However, the second nightmare for the Big Six is an even bigger threat: ebooks. More on that in my next post.
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