Dan Wagstaff had an excellent post up over the weekend at CasualOptimist. Here’s the crux:
My point is not that we should not stop experimenting with new author contracts, transparency, formats, trade terms, or marketing — we need to try new things and be allowed to fail. But this should not come at the expense of consistently good, interesting (and inexpensive) books.
I encourage you to read the post. It’s a summary of things that have been and are being tried to in order to gain a toehold in the new publishing reality, but — as Dan points out — it’s also a reminder that the basic problem is not one of process but product. What is it that is the publishing industry should be selling?
In the comments to the post, I wrote this:
…if the industry needs to contract on the basis of content alone (ignoring other obvious reasons driving a coming contraction) — it seems to me that the internet is a useful mechanism by which that contraction can be managed, as opposed to happening at a more precipitous rate.
I think it’s clear that corporate publishing cannot continue in its present form. It’s top-heavy and badly listing, and sooner or later economic pressures are going to take their toll. Thinking about this over the weekend, it seems to me that even as the internet is the instigator of many of publishing’s woes, it’s also a relief valve of sorts in that it allows publishers to connect readers with content, while at the same time being more (appropriately) selective about which content is turned into physical books. (Note how completely this distinction seems to be lost in the current publishing dialogue at the corporate level, while it is at the heart of discussions at the authorial level.)
Following this line of thought, I think there’s something to be said for aggressively trying to develop the e-book market as a kind of minor leagues, whereby authors might demonstrate economic fitness for p-book publication by generating e-book sales. Given that many book publishers are still trying to perpetuate the p-book business model in denial of the new digital reality I’m sure organizational resistance to going down this road would be fierce, as would the blow-back from bookstore owners.
Still, I see this as an inevitable step. In fact, I cannot imagine a future in which a stable e-book market does not regularly transition a certain amount of product to the p-book realm. Blogs (and the internet) were originally dismissed by mainstream media, only to become central to the aims and pursuits of everything from local and national politics to cable news itself. By the same token, e-books will soon be part of a vertical book-publishing pipeline, and I think are benefits to be had by those companies that anticipate and integrate this pipeline into their organizations.
If all of this is inevitable, and if the main corporate players do not have the intestinal will to try this (at the admitted risk of utter failure), the question becomes one of timing and opportunity. Traditionally, the way in which this kind of industry-wide pressure is released is through mergers, where words like consolidation and synergy mask the obvious aim of slashing payroll costs and diminishing costs associated with competition. (Here you might consider the parallels between publishing and the airline industry, where mergers are both frequent and fruitless.)
If I was trying to position myself to launch what would essentially be a minor-league e-book imprint for a p-book publisher, I would be looking for any sign of an industry merger on the horizon. Between the inanity of the resulting Wall St. cheers and the relief of those who manage to avoid the axe, there might be an opportunity to propose such a forward-looking experiment.
Update: Yesterday Random House merged two large in-house imprints into one. I make no pretense of understanding what this might mean in terms of cost savings or jobs lost, but I do think this is a sign of things to come. If you can’t remake the market in your own image through marketing or innovation, you pretty much have to remake your own image. Given publishing’s deep institutional resistance to embracing the opportunities inherent in digital technology, I would think we’ll see a round of high-profile mergers before we see any serious corporate attempt to adapt to the new realities in the marketplace.
— Mark Barrett
That is a great post, thanks for the link.
I think relief valve status is a tad low valuation of the internet to authors. It has changed distribution and marketing ( an author’s largest business needs) significant;y enough that they are now a viable alternative to the traditional model. There are still issues with the new models yes, but incremental shifts in technology or application should solve those issues (for example getting some sort of regulation on the quality of self published works)/
How we as authors use this new found power remains to be seen. Do we use it as leverage for greater changes to the traditional industry or abandon the traditional industry all together? This i think is the crucial question.
Again, great post.
From the point of view of authorship I agree. The internet is not simply a relief valve, it’s an entirely new way of doing business and connecting with readers. It is fundamental change.
I completely agree with this assessment of the future relationship between e-books and physical books. We are in a unique moment where e-books — by the lights of traditional publishing — appear to be impoverished derivatives of physical books. It’s not difficult to imagine a near future, however, where the situation is reversed. E-books will be the baseline product and physical books will be the the premium product. Did I just suggest that “enhanced e-books” will, in the end, be physical books? Yes, I think I just did.
As for the value of this shift for authors, it will be a mixed bag. On the one hand, authors will have unprecedented access to readers. On the other, they will be expected to have taken advantage of this access BEFORE publishers (traditional or otherwise) will invest in them. I can imagine the following, perfectly sensible question coming from an agent or editor in the not-too-distant future:
“If your book is so good, why isn’t it already famous?” A fair question in an age when there’s nothing stopping you from building an audience on your own.
Jim,
As a quibble, I think there will always be value for a publisher in trying to find (or manufacture) a ‘slushpile find’ — if only for marketing purposes. Given competition in the industry, there will also be pressure to sign authors before they are snatched up by someone else, and that should also keep publishers from playing coy all the time.
In general, however, I don’t see a real problem with using the digital-content marketplace to both demonstrate success. (Blog authors are already doing this, and some are translating their blogs to publishing as a result.) Doing so only enhances the author’s standing in any publishing deal, while it provides a more sound footing on which the publisher can predict sales, print runs, etc.
I think it will be harder for literary writers to do this sort of platform building than genre or celebrity writers, but still — I think it’s at least as fair as the previous paradigm, where a few gatekeepers made decisions behind closed doors. And the fallback is not so bad: you can always put your stuff out there where readers can find it. In the old days, you had no options if you could not find someone willing to publish your work.
Again, I don’t disagree. But isn’t this already the case in practice? I read of book deal after book deal where the selling point is not the content but the author’s celebrity. In the situation you describe — which I am certain will come to pass — the author is at least given the opportunity to demonstrate success.
Too, a publisher’s tendency toward condescension may be tempered by the knowledge that an author might be willing to forgo the trials and complications of a publishing deal in preference of the relative simplicity of e-book and POD sales. (Joe Konrath is threatening this very thing.)
Where authors desperately needed publishers before, the question of who needs who is now an open one. That fact in itself is amazing, and a considerable leveling force.
I agree that this shift isn’t necessarily bad, and that it may even level the playing field. I’m happy to compete in a marketplace where publishers will wait to see what rises to the top in the digital world before laying their money down, but it is a significant shift — and one that places significant new burdens on authors. Publishers will (largely) get out of the R&D business — as record companies have — and wait for authors to develop on their own.