3 ms·

As I said before, the truly great will succeed no matter what and the truly bad will fail no matter what. I'm concerned about the "late bloomers." I want a sy

As I said before, the truly great will succeed no matter what and the truly bad will fail no matter what. I'm concerned about the "late bloomers." I want a system in place that will help them realize their potential. There are plenty of authors who are now considered iconic, who had very rough starts and only realized their potential because someone in the publishing industry spent a lot of time and money helping them develop. Frank Herbert is a prime example of this. Despite all of the mentoring he got from experienced editors, he certainly broke a lot of new ground, so I'm really not all that concerned that "unleashing experienced editors on new authors probably reduces variability in writing." Mentoring is all about helping other people develop, and part of being a good mentor is understanding that you're there to facilitate growth, not direct it. We might get a little bit more uniformity from having editors mentor new writers, but I think that's far better than losing great works because they are never written when new authors have no choice but to jump right in to the sink-or-swim world of self-publishing. Consider an author who has great potential, who will, given enough development, write bestselling novels. Unfortunately, he's still too inexperienced and his current work could be described at best as mediocre. If he tries to self-publish, his books will be (rightfully) criticized as being not worth reading. He will not make any money, and will likely be forced to give up writing and take up another profession. If he is especially persistent he might try again, but without a mentor his skills won't improve very quickly, and even if they did he still has to fight against his well-earned reputation as a second-rate hack. On the other hand, if he sends his work to a traditional publisher, there is a chance that someone will see the potential in his work, pay him for the book, and work with him to improve it to the point where people will want to read it. Then he'll get a crack at a second book, and the help he needs to make it better than his first. In this way, he has a chance to grow into a truly great author. As long as there are publishers who are able to successfully identify and develop such diamonds in the rough, and unless someone comes up with a different way to perform this task, the traditional publishers will not go away. Even if they lose all of the authors who are good enough to jump right into self-publishing, that still leaves them with a significant role in the market, growing great authors. I strongly suggest that you check out Baen's Universe: all of the issues are electronic and DRM free, and since publication has ceased, you can buy every issue ever for $30 (+ $6 for the very last issue). Every issue has at least one (usually more) article about the publishing industry, usually focused on copyright and DRM. The first issue includes an article explaining why the magazine was started, and it was to provide exactly the sort of development opportunities to new authors that I've been talking about here: http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/editorial_one http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/editorial_one The last issue includes an article explaining why publication was ended (in short, the magazine had served its purpose): http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/So_Long__and_Thanks_For_All_the_Fish http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/So_Long__and_Thanks_F...

pedrocr 15y ago
> I want a system in place that will help them realize their potential. There are plenty of authors who are now considered iconic, who had very rough starts and only realized their potential because someone in the publishing industry spent a lot of time and money helping them develop. I'm not arguing for what is the ideal system. I'm arguing the position that market dynamics are such that publishing houses will lose to self-publishing. The casualty of that may very well be authors that can't make it without a lot of mentoring. I'm not saying that publishing houses don't and can't have good impact on the creation of good writing. I'm saying that their contribution won't be enough to justify their cost and they will be put out of business. > so I'm really not all that concerned that "unleashing experienced editors on new authors probably reduces variability in writing. I'm not concerned about this. I think it's an argument for why losing the mentoring and distribution barriers will create more niche markets, fueling the success of self-publishing. > As long as there are publishers who are able to successfully identify and develop such diamonds in the rough, and unless someone comes up with a different way to perform this task, the traditional publishers will not go away. Even if they lose all of the authors who are good enough to jump right into self-publishing, that still leaves them with a significant role in the market, growing great authors. Finding "diamonds in the rough" may not be enough to sustain a publishing house. This may today be a valuable service but that doesn't mean that it will still be profitable in the future. When amazon launched the kindle, ebooks were mostly priced at 10$. These publishers fought to be able to raise the prices. When all the "truly great" become self-publishers they will lower the price of ebooks so now as a publisher you've lost your sure bets and have to instead spend considerable resources (paying all these mentors/editors) on riskier bets that when/if they succeed will have to be priced lower to compete with the self-publishers. I just don't see the economics favoring publishing houses. Being a freelance editor/mentor sourcing authors from first-time self-publishers may very well become a profitable venture though.
- lucasjung 15y ago
  >Finding "diamonds in the rough" may not be enough to sustain a publishing house. This may today be a valuable service but that doesn't mean that it will still be profitable in the future. When amazon launched the kindle, ebooks were mostly priced at 10$. These publishers fought to be able to raise the prices. When all the "truly great" become self-publishers they will lower the price of ebooks so now as a publisher you've lost your sure bets and have to instead spend considerable resources (paying all these mentors/editors) on riskier bets that when/if they succeed will have to be priced lower to compete with the self-publishers. I just don't see the economics favoring publishing houses. Being a freelance editor/mentor sourcing authors from first-time self-publishers may very well become a profitable venture though. You are making the mistake of conflating "the most successful authors" with "authors who achieve major success with their first books." The publishing companies will lose out on the latter, but they will still get plenty of the former. As I mentioned before, Frank Herbert was a very late bloomer. A more modern (but less extreme) example would be Dan Brown: his first book, Digital Fortress was just barely good enough to get him a second book deal; Angels and Demons made the best-seller list, barely; he didn't achieve superstar chart-topping success until his fourth book, Da Vinci Code. He's now one of the top-selling authors in the world. As long as publishing companies continue to grow authors like that, they will do just fine. They may see their margins shrink due to competition from self-publishers, but books are not commodities and people will pay more for better books. The only thing that will dislodge traditional publishers from this role is, as I have asserted repeatedly, a competitor which provides the same service, at the same or better level of quality, for less. I also firmly reject the notion that "truly great" authors will necessarily lower their prices of ebooks when they transition to self-publishing: they will charge whatever price the market will bear. I think that a far more likely change is that book prices will become much more a function of book quality, with the very best charging a premium for their books compared to other authors, as compared to the current system where dead-tree books are priced mostly as a function of form factor.

pedrocr 15y ago

> I want a system in place that will help them realize their potential. There are plenty of authors who are now considered iconic, who had very rough starts and only realized their potential because someone in the publishing industry spent a lot of time and money helping them develop. I'm not arguing for what is the ideal system. I'm arguing the position that market dynamics are such that publishing houses will lose to self-publishing. The casualty of that may very well be authors that can't make it without a lot of mentoring. I'm not saying that publishing houses don't and can't have good impact on the creation of good writing. I'm saying that their contribution won't be enough to justify their cost and they will be put out of business. > so I'm really not all that concerned that "unleashing experienced editors on new authors probably reduces variability in writing. I'm not concerned about this. I think it's an argument for why losing the mentoring and distribution barriers will create more niche markets, fueling the success of self-publishing. > As long as there are publishers who are able to successfully identify and develop such diamonds in the rough, and unless someone comes up with a different way to perform this task, the traditional publishers will not go away. Even if they lose all of the authors who are good enough to jump right into self-publishing, that still leaves them with a significant role in the market, growing great authors. Finding "diamonds in the rough" may not be enough to sustain a publishing house. This may today be a valuable service but that doesn't mean that it will still be profitable in the future. When amazon launched the kindle, ebooks were mostly priced at 10$. These publishers fought to be able to raise the prices. When all the "truly great" become self-publishers they will lower the price of ebooks so now as a publisher you've lost your sure bets and have to instead spend considerable resources (paying all these mentors/editors) on riskier bets that when/if they succeed will have to be priced lower to compete with the self-publishers. I just don't see the economics favoring publishing houses. Being a freelance editor/mentor sourcing authors from first-time self-publishers may very well become a profitable venture though.

lucasjung 15y ago
>Finding "diamonds in the rough" may not be enough to sustain a publishing house. This may today be a valuable service but that doesn't mean that it will still be profitable in the future. When amazon launched the kindle, ebooks were mostly priced at 10$. These publishers fought to be able to raise the prices. When all the "truly great" become self-publishers they will lower the price of ebooks so now as a publisher you've lost your sure bets and have to instead spend considerable resources (paying all these mentors/editors) on riskier bets that when/if they succeed will have to be priced lower to compete with the self-publishers. I just don't see the economics favoring publishing houses. Being a freelance editor/mentor sourcing authors from first-time self-publishers may very well become a profitable venture though. You are making the mistake of conflating "the most successful authors" with "authors who achieve major success with their first books." The publishing companies will lose out on the latter, but they will still get plenty of the former. As I mentioned before, Frank Herbert was a very late bloomer. A more modern (but less extreme) example would be Dan Brown: his first book, Digital Fortress was just barely good enough to get him a second book deal; Angels and Demons made the best-seller list, barely; he didn't achieve superstar chart-topping success until his fourth book, Da Vinci Code. He's now one of the top-selling authors in the world. As long as publishing companies continue to grow authors like that, they will do just fine. They may see their margins shrink due to competition from self-publishers, but books are not commodities and people will pay more for better books. The only thing that will dislodge traditional publishers from this role is, as I have asserted repeatedly, a competitor which provides the same service, at the same or better level of quality, for less. I also firmly reject the notion that "truly great" authors will necessarily lower their prices of ebooks when they transition to self-publishing: they will charge whatever price the market will bear. I think that a far more likely change is that book prices will become much more a function of book quality, with the very best charging a premium for their books compared to other authors, as compared to the current system where dead-tree books are priced mostly as a function of form factor.