Great questions and thoughts, Ed. This is a big one:
I’d like to make a living — in the age of free, what are people actually willing to pay for?
I once did make a living writing news, paid for by advertisers of other products. I would like to earn money for the fiction I write. I don’t expect to make a million, but I also don’t want to work for free.

Until those smaller vertical players emerge or something else happens to replace the current marketing machine, we as authors aren’t any better off than we were before we learned to spell Kindle.

As things stand now, e-pubbing is just a faster, less expensive form of “subsidy publishing” unless you’re blessed with the imprimatur of a major imprint. Just as a few lucky (or hellishly driven) souls managed to make money with their self-published paper books, a tiny number of people have managed to make a lot of money and noise with their self-published ebooks. That doesn’t mean anything to the rest of us yet.

If, as you say, the revolution has already begun, then right now it’s between two small elites in a far-distant province called New York. It won’t be until the structures exist to get our stories noticed in an organized and accessible way that the fruits of that revolution will finally come to the rest of us.

Perhaps, LC, or perhaps your top down model of thinking about infastructure, of pushing product out to people who need guidance, is the very paradigm in question.

What if readers, with an interest in what you have to say, find you in a splintered vertical market system? Yes NYT Best Sellers might become a thing of the past as would the POP style end cap purchase by a Barnes and Noble fiction browser. But in a “Flat” world the whole game changes.

Perhaps the shift has already begun and is what is placing today’s demand on authors to become master marketers. Will authors have to remain master marketers to tell and sell story? Perhaps. But I think, at some point, smaller vertical players (conglomeration platforms of sorts) will come to the rescue. I suspect by genre or topic.

But, I disagree that the revolution won’t begin without infastructure. It has begun. It’s just not being televised. 😉

Bullseye!

I couldn’t agree more. Thanks for saving me the time of posting it myself. 🙂

I feel pretty safe in saying that most authors are not master marketers. The marketing and authorial skill sets have very little overlap. The entire publicity system is built around the presence of a few big players. How does the typical author get the digital equivalent of a Kirkus review? How does he/she score the digital equivalent to an endcap display on Amazon or BN.com? Can an author get that NPR interview on his/her own? Really? Without this kind of publicity, how will readers know a story exists to be read among the millions of others?

The revolution won’t have begun until this infrastructure exists to support authors and not just publishing houses. Note that Facebook and blogging and tweeting are not an infrastructure; they are tools, and like any other specialized tools, require specialized expertise to use effectively. Customers may not be waiting for a big corporation to spoon-feed them, but they still need to know where else to go to get what they want, or even to know what they want.

It may be because I still have a day job which is in the technology industry but the people I interact with in and out of work crave new technology. The faster; the better! And the majority of them are willing to pay for it even in these economically difficult times. We want it so badly that look at all the options companies provide for us to pre-order before the product is even officially available to purchase.

As an aspiring writer, am I willing to submit my work for review to a publishing house and/or an agent knowing that it will likely take months before hearing back from them? Then, if accepted you have months of waiting for the actual published work to be complete, a book created, and a release date set. I am not saying this is not the way to go. I am only saying that right now, I don’t know.

As for gatekeeping to help ensure only the best work goes out to the community, don’t consumers have the right to make the decision for themselves? I believe an Indie writer does have that responsibility to their readers. Beyond that ethical code, why not let the consumers decide. Amazon makes the first 10% of any digital book available so if you are not eager to hit that “buy” button second you wrap up that 10% whether because of a weak storyline or typos, move on and you’ve lost nothing.

How many books have I purchased over the year that were published by a reputable company and I never read past the first few chapters? It’s Valentine’s Day so I would rather not go down that path of wasted funds

I’d like to add, not just with relation to books that many consumers WANT to be loyal to a brand, but more often these days, the company behind the brand leaves the consumer with little reason to be loyal.