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| Hearsay: |
Let’s admit it: things are in the shitter. So, how do we get the publishing world moving? Well, when you’re in the shitter the options are usually to pull something out or push it through, right? Someone’s got to clean up, and this guy is taking a stab at laying out a future for publishing that involves e-publishing and works toward some level of sustainability outside the mega-publisher. What do you think?
There are many people and blogs doing an obsessively thorough job thinking about and writing about the effects of e-books on publishing, so I’m not going to try to recreate their work. But my recent posts on the Google Book Search controversy and the Amazon Kindle have gotten me thinking about what the book publishing world might look like in the not-too-distant future. More specifically, I’ve been wondering if and how writers will get published and make money under whatever new model takes hold.
I suppose I’ll be making some predictions here, but this is more of attempt to envision a viable future of book publishing that is better, although not perfect:
Print Is Dead Shrinking: Some people think that true readers will always prefer a bound paper copy to hold, smell, fondle (the descriptive terms tend to get kind of gross). These people are wrong. Some others think that print books are dead, that they’re just going to go away. These people are also wrong, I believe.
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December 8th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
When we talk about publishing here on Bookninja we’re usually talking about fiction, but for most of these mega-publishes, fiction is a tiny part of what they do.
The Houghton-Miflin Harcourt merger for example, was really two huge textbook companies taken over by an educational software company (full disclosure, Harcourt is my US publisher and the adult fiction department was less than an afterthought in this deal).
So maybe breaking fiction away from these publishers that really have little interest in it isn’t such a bad idea.
And I’m not sure how much digital music came to dominate because of benefit to the end users and how much was because of what was offered by music companies. It may be the same with e-readers, if publishers phase out mass market paperbacks and e-books are the only version offered for less then ten bucks, a lot of people will start reading that way.
December 9th, 2008 at 7:11 am
My prediction is, no big publisher, in future, will publish literature: lit novels, short-stories, poems etc. They may occasionally take on some potential best-sellers, mostly non-fiction, and some shitty memoir of some shittier actress or politician. But literature will not be extinct. You have to read it on the net. It means no money for writers, may be it will be good for literature’s health. E-publishing will take a long time to catch on.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:46 am
as a writer of literature, I fail to see how no money for writers can be good for literature. Would you say this of your doctor? This is an odd forum to insult writers in.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Very odd choice, agreed.
I also fail to see the logic of “no payment for any work of literature = the best interests of literature as both artform and industry”.
Mind you, the initial idea of neither weblit nor printlit e’er fading away completely in favour of the other? That one works for me.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Yeah, I don’t understand why the web as a delivery system means no money changes hands – I’m pretty sure all those porn sites aren’t in it for the good of society.
December 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I think it would be great if all or most lit publishing left the big publishers for smaller independents (I realize now that I neglected to make distinctions among various types of books in my post). But those smaller publishers will still be necessary for editing, marketing, publicity, etc. And they will still expect to turn a reasonable profit for their efforts. I feel fairly confident that they will find a way to do so and that their financial success will be shared with the writers to whom, after all, they owe everything.
December 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Glad you’re optimistic, but I don’t favour big publishers abandoning lit, the same way I don’t favour newspapers abandoning book reviews. Larger businesses do things differently, and there are benefits as well as drawbacks to this.
Also, just because publishers owe everything to writers is no reason for them to be magnanimous. At least, it doesn’t appear so in the real world. (It’s kind of like assuming WalMart is going to treat employees well. You’d think it’s a no-brainer, but you’re not a corporate exec.)