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This is, by far, one of the most pertinent points I’ve heard made on this whole issue of self-publishing. YES these publishers have always been so far up their own proverbials that it was a God-send the digital publishing revolution came along. I don’t imagine there is one struggling author who isn’t heartened by the stories of all those household known authors (J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, George Orwell and the like) being rejected by haughty publishers who believed it was THEY who could and should set reading trends. That industry had a lot of this coming for a long time. How DARE they tell authors how they should approach them in a letter submission. These are authors and therefore do not need such an edification. So when it came to pass that writers could GURANTEE their work gets published (albeit at a cost) and in new, varied ways and fora, it was always going to be a good thing. The established industry didn’t get their affairs in order and allowed the plethora of self-help publishing cos. and marketplaces (like Amazon) to effect. This is all regardless of Amazon’s integrity (or lack of it as the case may be – I don’t know). I went to the International London Book Fair this year and it was full of publishers and wholesalers cherry picking who they could sell books to. They had no time for aspiring authors and they were awful in their attitudes

Amen.

The publishing paradigm was a pyramid, where a tiny fraction of authors at the top made enough to live off their books, and the rest languished. But those at the top made reasonable money as they were able to negotiate better contracts due to having performed, and supported an entire industry, including all the laggards, middlemen, bureaucrats. It’s like the old record company model, where you signed 100 acts, they all got one record, one video, and you waited to see which two or three hit, while the rest fizzled. You didn’t know which would hit, but you needed your compensation model to make you enough from those that did to cover all the duds. Which meant that the artists got terrible contracts, because otherwise all the infrastructure people who didn’t actually create the music couldn’t get paid well for being middlemen. That sort of describes traditional publishing.

I personally have no problem with that model. It’s essentially unfair, but I accept it as such, because the world’s never been fair, and I understand that. I also had no interest in participating in that game. Which is why I didn’t publish until Amazon turned publishing on its ear. But I bear no ill will towards the business – I got to decide whether I wanted to play or not. I chose not to. Now, I’ve built a brand that’s accelerating, and my dealings with those in the trad biz have been nothing but cordial. They’re mostly smart people, some of whom recognize the need to change. They don’t despise or hate me, nor I them. I am not the problem. Neither are they. They are an industry with an antiquated model that will have to adapt if it is going to survive – turning to indies who have proven their chops and built a market to reduce their risk and increase their hit rate. But they’ll have to pay more to get those indies, which is fine, because with lowered risk, comes lowered reward. The biz won’t like that, but it will eventually adapt, and will still be here a decade from now, only perhaps in a different form. Those that don’t adapt will remain in tar pits, pining for the good old days.

Amazon is not the problem. It’s not B&N’s problem – B&N is B&N’s problem. Apple is Apple’s problem. Amazon saw an inefficient business model and figured out a way to streamline it, creating value for customers and authors. That’s what good businesses do. Bad ones cling to arcane models because they think it represents the easiest way to make the most money. There’s a word for those entities in business. They’re called, “lunch.”

Amazon is eating Trad Pub’s lunch. So Trad Pub now needs to work smarter and better, to evolve, and yes, compensate its artists who can deliver at a higher rate than in a pretend universe where it needs to make massive profits from each artist to offset all the duds and support all the unnecessary infrastructure. Here’s a hint: increase your hit rate, and streamline your operations. Poof. You’re suddenly more competitive. Sure, you have to pay more to get the better indies, because they won’t sign a crap deal, but instead of putting out 3000 books to sell a ton of maybe 10 of them, you can still sell a ton of 10, and a really good number of another 500 to 1000. That’s the opportunity I see for Trad publishers. I think the smart ones will figure that out. They’ll watch, they’ll cherry pick the indie pile, they’ll do decent contracts because otherwise they’ll get told to pound sand by authors who are earning serious bank doing it themselves, and who might want to work within the trad pub world, but are simply unwilling to give away massive amounts of money to potentially increase their unit sales to a point where their trad pub compensation equals their self-pubbed compensation.

This is an exciting time. The trad pub business can innovate. It can develop a new, more viable model. Readers can win. Authors can win. Publishers can win. But like tycoons in the deep south, trad pub can’t bemoan the good old days when labor was free. They have to adapt and build better mousetraps.

Ten years from now, those that do, win. Those that don’t will be distant memories. Which is as it should be. In all businesses, there should be evolution.

I dearly hope someone competes with Amazon successfully, too. That day will inevitably come. It will be welcomed. It will keep them honest.

I don’t mind others competing with me. It keeps me sharp and focused. It makes me produce my best work. It requires that I make better decisions. It’s healthy. It’s how organisms stay vital.

I see a future where trad pub can prosper, while authors can also prosper. The key is in increasing the hit rate, and lowering overhead. Readers have shown that they’re willing to pay $10 for a quality trad pubbed ebook. Not as many as three years ago, but still, many. Maybe $7 is the new normal. Fine. Whatever. Increase your hit rate, and lower your overhead. Make people work smarter and better. Just like I’m forced to to compete.

The problem is that the industry was so accustomed to not really having to innovate or compete, it became moribund. So now everyone’s got to either learn new tricks, or fade to black. I say, bring it on. Exciting times. Get with it, or turn out the lights on the way out.

As it should be.