eBooks and Indie Publishing: Not Just Respectable -- The Way Forward For Literature

Here's an excellent piece from the New York Daily News on the demise of Borders, and why it could signal that traditional publishing is on life support.

Times change, and the publishing industry has not changed with them. There may yet be time for the trend to turn around, but whether the will exists for that turnaround is going to be the deciding question.

In the meanwhile, independent writers like me are striking while the iron is hot.

While I keep saying that the publishing system we know was a short historical fluke, and will be gone in our lifetimes and replaced as the mainstream model long before that, right now Borders is probably closing because of Amazon putting them out of business while still selling traditionally published and printed books, only over the internet.

This. Publishers have been bullying chain bookstores into overbuying hardcovers since before the author of this piece was born. Unlike paperbacks - which can be stripped and pulped and the covers returned to the wholesaler for a refund - there isn't much to do with a mountain of unsold hardcovers except to let a reseller like the Strand buy them from you for 10 cents on the dollar, if that, but even the Strand can't and shouldn't buy up everything.

Hardcover books last longer in libraries and look good on the shelves of people who don't necessarily read them, but they've always been overpriced, and they lend themselves to the myth that writers are as overpaid as pro athletes.

As for Borders, you'd think they'd have learned from their own history, first buying up the foundering Brentano's, then buying out Waldenbooks without figuring out why bookstores in malls are a losing proposition, but apparently not. So they do have to accept at least a tiny bit of the blame.

Yes, supermarket-sized multistory brick-and-mortar stores will eventually downsize to automated kiosks where you can order a book and have it printed while you wait (some B&N stores are already experimenting with this), but the evolution to only online purchases and/or only ebooks is not yet here, nor should it be. Some people still enjoy browsing in a bookstore. Alternative media can be a supplement; they don't need to be a substitute.

What sucks is that 6,000 Borders employees will be out of a job.

*Looks forlornly at the tanning parlor that used to be my local video store*
Yeah...ask me how that all turned out.

Better than browsing from far bigger selections online?

Oh, sure, every movie known to man is a button push away...but I can't physically pick each one up, read the back, and spout trivia and insults to impress friends.
What's the point?

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...ok-machines-through-kodak-and-readerlink.html

I'd actually seen one of these in a Borders, not B&N, near me. The Borders, of course, has since been replaced by an Apple store.

Which is why "46th & Mercury", for example, is going onto CreateSpace and Smashwords -- to get it onto as many phones and tablets as possible. Those are the new books.

Which is not to say that mainstream publishing is dead, only that it's transitioning, and DTC publishing is part of that transition.

Mainstream publishing needs to change its business model or it will be dead, and probably within two decades at the outside.

Here's what a mainstream publisher looks like with an updated business model.

Yeah, well, I said that a decade ago, and it's still hanging on. It was never a business model designed for profit, and decades of indolence haven't helped, but so much of it is owned by media conglomerates that if an individual house goes under or gets bought out it barely makes a ripple.

Ex-fuckin'-zactly.

I love the idea of a major publisher like Amazon publishing a novel I've written. Remember when it took years of effort only to be rejected hundreds of times for bullshit reasons, or no reason at all? Well, the internet came along, but people still want to be published. I know I want to have a novel published and hold it in my hands. It represents something real, something substantial that has meaning. Thing is, it wouldn't feel right done by vanity publisher (at least not to me, YMMV). Amazon got the hold on books, and expanded from there. It's good to see that they still hold true to their original calling as a volume bookseller. Now they can help burgeoning authors get off the ground.

I'm sure there are caveats and provisos, but it seems Amazon may be the best option out there.

Between CreateSpace (print-on-demand paperbacks + Amazon Kindle) and Smashwords (for every other digital platform out there) you can get your short story/novella/novellette/novel out there to every single reader you can drum up.

But bear that in mind. One of the major, major pieces of the puzzle you'll be taking upon your own shoulders will be marketing. It will be on you to come up with the genius hype storm that gets your work flying off shelves. Or not. It's all on you. If you get one of those Twitter followers offering you 5,000 twitter followers for twenty bucks? You just might want to think twice about blocking that skeezy fucker out of hand. Because you just might want exactly that kind of skeezy fucker in your pocket.

The marketing piece is the reason that publishers still have a chance at relevance.

Exactly. And there are definite problems with that. In particular, a publisher that does too good a job marketing a first book won't be needed to market the sequel and may not be needed to market any subsequent books by the same author. Think Chamber of Secrets and how useless the publisher would have been these days. And it doesn't take a hit of the degree of the first Harry Potter book to severely reduce the need for the specialized marketing a publisher provides. Whether that means publishers preferring to hold back on marketing to avoid hits that are too big or publishers trying to tie any promising authors into one-sided long term deals I can't say, but either way it's potentially a problem.

John Castle's right about marketing when you self-publish.

Unfortunately, it's becoming the trend with mainstream publishers as well. I mentioned "indolence" upthread. They have no problem marketing their Sure Things, but they're less than enthused about their midlist stuff, because if they lose money on a certain percentage of it, that works to their advantage tax-wise.

I also mentioned upthread that, historically, book publishing in the U.S. was not seen as a profit-making enterprise. Movie tie-ins, and particularly being bought out by media companies gave them (A) a taste for making a profit and (B) an obligation to the parent company to show a better bottom line.

I keep harping on the Thor Power Tool decision, but it was the single factor within my time of doing this that had the most profound effect on mainstream publishing. Prior to TPT, publishers would maintain back inventories. The need to move those back inventories meant they'd promote the hell out of all their books. Print ads in every major market, authors' signings at major bookstores. TPT changed their business model to: Produce it, dump it at a reseller, write off the loss.

Prior to Amazon, they were subtle about it. Took authors a while to catch on. They'd buy your book, produce it, and then...silence. You'd make the rounds of the major booksellers in Manhattan where, a few years earlier, you'd see a representative sample of your books on the New Releases shelf. Now, nada. Query your editor and, oh, hai, if you'd like to buy copies at the author discount and host your own signing, well, they'd be glad to help.

More recently, some of them have become more blatant. Included with the outline and sample chapters that form a standard submission, you're asked to "create your own marketing platform."

IOW, you tell us who you think would buy your book. Yanno, the stuff our marketing people used to do. Yeah, that. That's your job now.

That leaves the author with three questions. One, what the hell do the marketing people do nowadays besides swan around at the ABA after-parties taking selfies with the Big Names? Two, if I have to market this myself, what makes you any better than a vanity press? And three, if I'm doing your job for you, why exactly do I need you?

It's another nail in their coffin, but before it takes them down it's thwarting a lot of writers who don't have the resources to become full-time marketers.


On a lighter note, if you're targeting the Twitterati, this might be a good place to showcase samples of your work:

www.wattpad.com

Yes, you upload your stuff for free, but it draws a readership. Entice them with a few chapters and, if they want more, link 'em to your ebook on Amazon or wherever. Worth a shot.

I'm finding more and more that a chapter or two is available for free on an electronic platform, with the option to pay to download the rest. Most of these I discard after the sample, but once in a while it leads to buying a book I might otherwise have overlooked.

Mmhm. If I've got to do all the work myself, either way, why cut a publisher in on the proceeds? With ebooks and print-on-demand, there's no longer much overhead to contend with. So who needs 'em, and for what? The bragging rights?

^Arguably you need them for the advance money, but standard advances were never enough to live on, and they've been shrinking steadily for years. The general impression is "Oh, Stephen King just got X-million for his latest book, so writers make a lot of money." Curiously, most people seem to understand that "Tom Cruise gets X-million per film" doesn't mean "all actors are millionaires." Go figure.

Still, some upfront money, and the possibility - how ever remote - that your novel may be the Next Big Thing are factors to be considered, as long as you realize not everybody gets to squeeze through the funnel. At least when you self-publish, your work is out there and you have something to leverage.

I think there is room for good independent book stores which offer something you can't easily get online. Yes, the sales at the coffee shop with its pastries probably will be the bigger earner but if a book store has a knowledgeable staff who can recommend something different to you, if it has events like authors speaking and doing book signings, and/or stuff for the community then they'll survive.

I just wish they had something like Powell's Books where I live.

The reason remains what it always was -- better exposure through the publisher's marketing muscle. You cut them in on a slice of the significantly larger pie. While it's true that self-publishing is much easier today, it's not true that it wasn't possible in the past. Is an author who publishes electronically without the middleman today any different from an author using a vanity press 30 years ago?

That used to be the case. As garamet pointed out, not so much anymore.

Absolutely. On the writer's end, print-on-demand and electronic publishing are paid for in a percentage of sales revenue generated by purchases, rather than an up front payment. And because, as mentioned, writers are having to do more of the marketing themselves anyway, let me ask this: is the traditional publishing model much different today than using a vanity press 30 years ago or POD today?

The short answer? The Internet.

The longer answer? The fact that mainstream publishers are no longer dismissing e-books, for example, as just a passing fad.

It's ridiculously easy to self-publish these days, which means you get an awful lot of self-published crap.

In addition to marketing muscle, publishers act as a base level filter, making at least minimal level of quality a seemingly, and perhaps actually, more likely proposition. Having a publisher for your book is, to a certain extent, like having a college degree. It says nothing specific about your skill-set, but it marks you as a better risk than someone lacking that qualification.

I think it's pretty clear that at 38 pages, that book is deliberate satire of the erotica/romance genres.

Question: are editors still around or are new authors doing self editing?

Many independent writers I know will hire editors, but some go it alone.