Writers Discuss the Future of Publishing – Round 5
Publishing is in the throes of a revolution, and all the old rules are being put to the test. As CEOs, senior editors, agents and booksellers all scramble to guess at how they’ll participate in the future market, Lauri Shaw asks a panel of writers where they see this business going – and how they each expect to contribute to the wave of change that is, for the time being, the only certainty in sight.
LS: With POD and other technologies becoming so easily accessible, will writers ever be direct competition for publishers? Why or why not?
Paul Fenton: I don’t think so. Self-publishing with POD will always carry a stigma, because the reader has no guarantee that a decent quality assessment or edit has been carried out. I think POD will only challenge traditional publishing where it is used by small independent publishers to get their books to market.
Max Dunbar: No. People talk about blogging and DIY technology but only two per cent of bloggers make a living from blogging, just as only a percentage of writers make their living from writing. Salon was talking about introducing a PayPal ‘tip system’ for its bloggers but I don’t think anything will come from that.
Print on demand is mainly used by vanity/self publishers and has no future. At the end of the day the writer’s job is to write and we need publishers to produce and market books.
Lexi Revellian: Canny publishers, like Harper Collins, will jump on the bandwagon. Others will fail, but then so many have failed already.
Erik Hare: The short answer is that authors have to do nearly all the work promoting a book these days. The essential services that remain strictly in the hands of publishers is editing and packaging the book, and even these are being added by POD publishers. Writers may very well be totally on their own, and I can only hope that we can overcome the competition and petty jealousy that marks our trade long enough to form co-ops should it come to that.
Debbie Bennett: Unlikely. The publishers have the money. But I think that the small presses and independents will definitely become bigger and more respectable.
Elizabeth Jasper: Although easily accessible POD might be both convenient and profitable for some writers who are not looking for mass-market sales, I don’t think these writers will be in direct competition with major publishers who will maintain their pre-eminence in both editorial and marketing spheres.
Carl Thomas: I think POD could rival publishers, just as farmers markets could rival supermarkets, if done properly.
Alexander McNabb: Nope. We haven’t got the scale.
Simon Forward: No, they can’t possibly compete.
As much as the publishing industry complains of hard times, they have more money than we do for marketing, advertising, distribution. For renting the prime spots in bookstores. For everything.
Unless whole bunches of authors banded together to create some sort of collectives – to produce quality, original and commercial fiction – and could demonstrate an ability to compete. Then they might actually begin to draw people away from the generic output that forms the bulk of mainstream publishing. A trend that would surely set the media buzzing, and garner some very useful publicity. I don’t know if it’s do-able, but moves like that might create a splash and set some needed changes in motion.
My feeling is that it would have to be quite a large scale thing, not dribs and drabs of writers here and there, trying to compete on their own terms.
Stay tuned for the next round, when panel members describe the kind of publishing industry they’d like to see evolve in the future.
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January 16th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I believe that it is possible for a bunch of authors to get together and create something. Co-operatives work… they’ve been working for centuries. It’s a question of inspired cunning as much as the skills each person brings to the table. Early adoption may be the art of the large publishing house with the big budget, but it is possible to be small and nimble and get in there for a slice of pie too.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Of course writers can take on the publishing houses. The big, adaptive houses won’t go out of business, but there’s a slot in the market for writers working together. If history teaches us anything, it’s that the key to success is positioning yourself correctly in the land grab – and 2009 is POD’s land grab year.
The problem with writers is when they’re not writing they’re a reactionary bunch who like to think firmly inside the box. There’s also a huge reluctance to see their manuscripts as the assets on a balance sheet – but if we’re writing for publication as well as pleasure that’s what they are. We must be passionate about our writing, but we can’t get so attached that we miss an opportunity because we won’t let go our darling. I figure if I’m going to make a living as a writer I need to produce a book a year, so what have I really got to lose by “sacrificing” a book to the POD experiment? Downside: I wait till 2010 to hawk a ‘script the traditional way. Upside: be a part of industry history – it’s the easiest kind of no-brainer.
What writers’ cooperatives have, like Mocky says, is leanness – by focusing on very specific imprints with a known market, they can reach their readers with little or no collateral waste. Obviously this suits some genres more than others. I write about contemporary culture – music, art, online chatrooms are all in my books – which is very amenable to this kind of approach. Then again, when I started my last book I CHOSE that genre because it’s got that potential.
We writers have got to start thinking about ourselves as businesses, and we’ve got to stop thinking we’re in competition with each other. Do that and of course we can succeed. It’s about positioning rather than marketing – that’s the other real mistake writers make. POD is not about “getting to print” then working out how to get readers. It’s about a philosophy, about providing a market that already exists with a service they can’t get anywhere else (thinking like business people again). We’re creative – surely we can manage to do that!
Come and join the discussion on the Facebook Group The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes
January 19th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
As supermarkets squeeze profit margins and begin to dictate the commissioning practices of the larger publishers, small presses and writers coops will step into the gap, and provide innovative, edgy, contemporary fiction. Literature is following music and film – the exciting stuff will be provided by indie labels.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:32 am
I think, as music and video have pretty much been completely exploited by new technology, we are at the cusp of a mass market for specialised literature. Think about it. Waterstones and Amazon can only get you the book you want if there is a big enough group of you demanding it. Otherwise, it is taking up expensive shelf space.
The moment has indeed arrived where anybody connected to the web is capable of downloading large files. MP3 files must be at least 1000 times bigger than even the most cumbersome MS Word document, even PDF! I can download a five minute song in what is approaching real time and it only costs me $99c or a paypal tick.
So how about people browsing all the books available online and real time downloading so they can print it up at home? Is that beyond our ken?
Absolutely not! Dickens & Co.uk will be built this year. Think of it as iTunes for publishing. Anybody who wants to discuss this further with me at
garaltcanton@gmail.com
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
PS Lauri, Thanks for kicking this off.