In the traditional model, authors had a literary agent, who took 10% for their advice and connections with publishers. With thousands of book proposals, they were the gatekeeper in the industry. Secondly, authors had traditional publishers, who gave them an advance sum of money and spent on advertising, for another 10%.
Yet another big name is skipping town, going directly to self-publishing, Amazon, etc. Seth Godin, Internet Marketing guru, author of 12 bestsellers. He writes:
"Readers have been separated from authors by many levels--stores, distributors, media outlets, printers, publishers--there were lots of layers for many generations, and the editor with a checkbook made the process palatable to the writer."
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/08/moving-on.html
That's if you are a big name. What is interesting is *what will unknowns do?* I thing old publishing is headed to dead. Will literary agents still be the gatekeeper? Oprah? Someone else?
Here's one voice, Tim Ferris, author of the "4-Hour Work Week," writing about Seth Godin's choice:
"...there is still real value in having the rare stamp of approval that a “traditional” publisher provides. I don’t think this will change much in the next 12 months, perhaps even 24 months. Now, a handful of first-time, self-published authors hit the New York Times list, that’s an entirely different story…"
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/08/23/seth-godin-and-print-publishing/
I used to work for a small self-publishing company. Although there were many very good books that were self-published, the ones that really took off always did so by getting picked up by a major bookstore/publisher. There was just no way a do-it-yourselfer could get the kind of presence in traditional brick and mortar stores in order to generate meaningful sales.
ReplyDeleteNow that the internet is much more of a factor in terms of reaching your target audience, I think we'll see more and more success stories... but I don't think we can count out the publishing houses just quite yet.