Publishing, Self-Promotion, and Amazon v. Macmillan

It's been a fabulously interesting weekend in the publishing world. The Cliff's Notes version: Amazon pulled all print and digital editions of Macmillan's books from sale when the two reached a negotiating impasse regarding the pricing of Kindle editions of Macmillan titles. Macmillan is one of the six big publishing houses, so this was a big deal; basically Amazon removed about a sixth of their stock. If you're interested in the comprehensive details, check out these analyses written by John Scalzi, Scott Westerfeld, and Charlie Stross.

A fun time was had by all. Or actually, now that I think about it, by nobody.

There is, however, a tangential issue I would like to address. I've seen a common refrain bubble up over this hullabaloo: "Soon, the entire publishing chain will collapse, and an author will be able to sell to readers directly!" Or a variant: "When the iBookstore comes, authors will be able to publish their own work and set their own book prices!"

Oh god, I think. What a nightmarish future that would be, indeed, in which every author is reduced to self-publishing. Why would anybody think such a thing is desirable, much less inevitable? Even aside from the stigma of self-publishing, let me explain just why this is a dystopian endgame.

First, as a reader, I look to the publisher as providing a sort of affidavit of quality. If I weren't interested in quality, I could buy books indiscriminately on Lulu or iUniverse. I do not do this. And if you look at the numbers... nobody else does, either. This teaches us two important lessons: First, promoting a self-published book is really hard. Second: Nobody is going out on a limb to try out cheap but potentially lousy ebooks. There's a reason people get paid to read slush, and not the other way around.

It's also no big secret that I'm trying to claw my way up the ladder into the treehouse of traditional publishing. Hopefully it won't fall out of the tree first (or at all). As a writer, if the traditional publishing model ceased to exist, if your only choice as an author were to put your work out there and promote the hell out of it your own self, you know what I'd do? I'd probably stop writing novels. 

I have a trait that is not rare among writers: I loathe promoting myself and my own work. 

In the golden world that exists only in my head, I make stuff, and then somebody else hands me cash for it. I at no point need to hustle for clients, network, chase payments, or any other pesky administrative task. In reality, these are necessary evils to keep my freelance business running. But I only need to successfully market myself to a handful of people in order to be successful as an ARG writer. Those are the creative directors, project managers, team leads, etc. at the agencies I look to work with. 

After that, the marketing muscle and know-how of wiser heads than mine combined with the quality of the experience I am designing work together to build an active and engaged audience. The people hiring me have the dollars to put up commercials, billboards and posters; the designers to make them interesting; and the savvy to know where they should go. They attract attention. My job is to keep it and build on it.

If I were completely on the hook to build that audience all by my lonesome, I'm sure I'd do a pretty miserable job. I know this because I have done a miserable job many a time before! The participation and readership numbers I get for my personal projects - this here blog, My Super First Day, what have you -- they aren't in the same ballpark as my big games, not by multiple orders of magnitude. I frankly don't think I could build an audience of several thousand or more for a book without any marketing support. And it's not because I think my work isn't pretty great. It's because self-promoting is hard, it's expensive, it takes time away from creating, and just plain isn't the talent I've spent my life honing. 

I'm curious to know where other people see the future of publishing heading, though. Think I'm wrong-headed, misguided, pessimistic? Go ahead and comment. I'd love to hear what you think.

Comments

[Kim]

No, I think you're spot on with this article. I'm amazed at Amazon as well. Clearly their agenda is to get the individual writer to do more work and not pay the major publishing houses their dues.

Short sighted if you ask me.

[Jim Gramze]

Firstly I agree with you that the publishing house is a great filter from which to expect a quality book. Secondly I disagree with the premise that just because a book is published by a major publisher that it is necessarily a good book. Many is the time I roll my eyes at what is published purely because it is what the lowest of all denominators is likely to snatch up without the slightest necessity of literary value.

I also believe that there are many great novels that never see the light of day because publishers weren't interested in a particular genre despite of the quality of the prose and there was no other recourse for the author. Many a great author in the past has faced countless rejections. What if they did not try that one last time and their friend published it himself because he believed in it. Does that make a great work of art garbage simply because it was self published?

Like I said, your premise is sound, but in my not so humble opinion it is so only because so much absolute crap is self published, not because publishers are so very prone to only represent the best work. They are interested in what will sell to the public and that is frequently a poor gauge of quality.

I cannot say where the actual publishing industry is headed. I want to say it is going electronic with things like the Kindle and perhaps iPad but that is simply my preferential bias.

What I would like to see is everyone self publishing and thus taking the publisher and distributorship largely out of the profit equation in favor of the author. You would still have your "quality" filter in that others will read it and rate it and spread the word ahead of you. You the reader need only sort by genre and sales numbers to get at the meat of what the publishing industry really has to offer.

And needless to say, you already know who your favorite authors are and should they suddenly decide to self publish for whatever reason, their craft will not suddenly decay because they decided to bypass the publisher.

[Sakuralovestea]

I am so glad Chaoseed passed your article along to me on twitter.

Ideally, I would like to see publishing go digital because it's cost-effective and we have the technology now to make full color eBooks that are of a relatively small file size. However, because there are still people--like me--who enjoy physical books, we need to consider the advantages of a POD (print on demand) option.

POD editions would cost more, naturally, but us collectors are willing to pay a little more.

Publishers can continue their role of promotion and distribution, but I think agents are going to play an increasingly larger role in slush-sorting and the editorial process.

So agents become editors, publishers become publicists, and authors get a much larger chunk of the profit from the content they create.

[Andrea]

Jim: Publication is a mark of a certain degree of quality, but no indication that a book will be to your taste. Taste varies. One man's trash is another man's treasure, etc. I can't go along with you in saying that the publishers print crap they believe will be popular. I get quite offended by the idea that the reading public who make things popular are idiots to be pandered to. If you don't care for something, consider first that you are not the target market, rather than that it is objectively garbage.

Everyone self-publishing isn't a viable solution, particularly for new authors. You may know who your favorite authors are NOW, but who are your favorites fifteen and twenty years into all-self-publishing? How do they attract your attention in the first place, when everybody is clamoring for eyeballs? Who the heck is that 'everybody else' reading and spreading the word? (You know it's hard to get people to read your unpublished work, right?)

Down that path you get rewarded for being great at self-promotion and not great at writing. That's the problem.

Sakuralovestea: Thanks. ^_^ I don't think publishing will go away, not as long as some people like to read and other people see a chance to make a buck off another guy's talent. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I'm happily planning on handing over my 15% to somebody who turns me from a dreamer into a going business venture.

I do see publishers as becoming more like curators and publicists in the future. Agents take on a huge chunk of slush already; hard to say where editing will land at the end of this. Hopefully we will not lose it entirely!