This
has been a popular interview question for the past few decades. It is
one of those goto questions interviewers use to pad the time/space. In
theory it allows a writer to spout off about what is wrong with the
industry, but a traditionally published author who isn’t looking to be
out in the cold any time soon can rarely afford such a venting. While
it may be filler on for the interview, it has been a question which has
created heated debate within the ever shrinking walls of traditional
publishers. One needs a frame of reference to understand any answer
though.
Long
before my great grandfather was even a gleam in the eye traditional
publishers used to invest in a new author. An author was nurtured and
promoted. The publisher built a franchise around the author. These
people were few and they were cherished. A publisher endeavored to
produce a product high enough in quality for it to still sell many
years/decades after the author was no longer. Basically they wanted
that product to still be in demand up until the day the last copyright
extension ran out.
Our
current industry has basically Walmartized publishing. Gone are the
days of mega advances and mass marketing campaigns. Your own personal
press agent isn’t going to happen unless you either outsell Stephen King
or hire them yourself. There was a great article in the Writer magazine
talking about public relations people. One traditionally published
author found out the publicist assigned to their work promoted 40
different titles each week. Given a standard work week of 40 hours you
can guess just how much publicity each title got. That advance? Well,
if you get one don’t expect to quit your day job and write full time.
In fact, you will need your day job to help fund your own marketing
efforts so bank that vacation time if your company will let you cash it
out instead of forcing you to take it.
Now
we are at a tipping point. The pervasiveness of businesses allowing
writers to upload work and make it available in numerous electronic
markets has pulled writers with resources out of the slush piles
publishers receive daily. It has also changed the stigma. When I first
started writing computer books it was considered a mortal sin to
self-publish. The industry rule is that no publisher would touch you if
they found you put out even one title without using a dignified
publishing house. Not any more. There are various tracking services
tracking actual reported sales numbers, not free downloads but the ones
which actually sold and the retail price range. Now we have numerous
stories of publishing houses pursuing indie authors who sell above X
units over a given time frame. Some jump, but more and more do not. In
fact, a growing number of authors who “made it” working for a
traditional house are jumping ship to self-publish and get a larger
share of the money.
This
tipping point is quite fragile. A butterfly flapping its wings on a
continent far away will determine which way the industry goes and that
determination isn’t far off. The pervasiveness of the downloadable book
services is also the problem with them. I have yet to find one which
has any requirement a work have had professional editing, let alone
multiple rounds of professional editing. I am seeing a growing number
of people who purchased reading devices post rants about how they are
not going to download anything (free or otherwise) which doesn’t come
from a known publishing house because they are sick and tired of wasting
their time on titles rampant with spelling/grammar/plot
line/insert-error-type-here errors.
So. If one
or more of these pervasive services wakes up and smells the iced tea
brewing (coffee is nasty!) they will wipe the slush from their servers
and institute professional editing requirements. Paying for
professional editing will remove most of the free and 99 cent titles
from their stores. One simply cannot spend thousands of dollars on
professional editing and give the work away. Once a vendor takes their
cut of the 99 cent fee an author has to have a run away hit to break
even. Simple economics ensure there won’t be much on the virtual
shelves which suffers from poor editing.
Then
we will see if people come to the realization an industry cannot
survive giving it all away for free. If they do, traditional publishing
houses will cease to exist or will be down to just a handful who now
specialize in taking wildly successful electronic titles to print
markets.
What
is more likely is that people will be too addicted to “free” stuff to
pay a fair price. They will continue to suck down low quality free
stuff until they overdose on it and leave the reading world forever.
When that happens we will see a dramatic shrinking in the size of the
eBook market. The physical print market will then either stabilize or
begin growing in size because that will be the last place people can
toss a stone and hit a quality product.
“John
Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars” is one big interview.
It is a transcript of a dialogue between “John Smith” (who, as the
title of the book implies is the last known survivor of the Microsoft
wars) and the interviewer for a prominent news organization.
Genre – Dystopian Fiction
Rating – PG
More details about the author
Website http://johnsmith-book.com/
