6 ms·

Like the OP, I think the big publishers are going down in flames soon. They just don't provide enough value in the value chain. Unlike the OP, however, I think

by ivan_ah 12y ago

Like the OP, I think the big publishers are going down in flames soon. They just don't provide enough value in the value chain. Unlike the OP, however, I think the publishing industry is on the verge of a great renewal. The only people that matter are authors and readers, and eBooks and print-on-demand can make this connection happen, without the need to pay any middlemen. More on this here http://minireference.com/blog/techzing-interview/#opportunities http://minireference.com/blog/techzing-interview/#opportunit...

Mister_Snuggles 12y ago
The missing thing here is editors. A lot of books, regardless of format, would be a lot less enjoyable without a good editor to make sure the story is consistent, well-paced, etc. A number of authors thank their editors in the afterword. That said, there's still room to disrupt the industry a bit.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  Implicit in these threads is the assumption that Amazon would never provide editor services. If Amazon dealt directly with authors, without going through a traditional publisher, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't. After all, better books => more profits. And, of course, there's no particular reason why editors cannot contract out their services to authors. I know some authors, and they review/edit each others' books.
  - opendais 12y ago
    Amazon would have to charge and book editing isn't a process that scales. At which point, authors just go off and find their own editors/etc and become a minipub.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      Yes, and so does a publisher. Publishers don't provide free services; it gets paid for by the author in the form of reduced royalties. If there's increased money to be made in edited books, the market will find a way.
    - philiphodgen 12y ago
      Amazon has the beginnings of this in place with Createspace. My father just published a book through them and received rudimentary copy editing and page layout assistance from Createspace for this. For serious scholarly editing you must hire an outsider, however. My father used an outside editor and an independent person to create the index. The end result for my father's book is aesthetically acceptable (not amazing). The fact that this could happen is an indication that the publishing industry is ripe for (cue HN's favorite word, thrown around with wild and frankly immature abandon) disruption. The book is a biography of Frank Miller, who built the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. (Think of a hotel version of the Hearst Castle, built by someone who had less money than William Randolph Hearst.) The number of people who are interested in the book is limited -- Frank Miller is a a semi-obscure historical figure of the American West, interesting to a few scholars and a few people in the glorious Inland Empire of California. That said, I think my father has several hundred in hard copy sales already.
  - Mister_Snuggles 12y ago
    If Amazon saw that there was a need for editorial services, which I'm sure they would, they'd find a way to provide it and make it work. If nothing else, Amazon is an incredibly adaptable company. As you hint at, it could even be an opt-in service. If you have an editor that you like, you could use that service (which could be anyone) instead of Amazon's.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Well, and discoverability/signalling. The more books that are available, the harder it is to choose a book to read. And right now, the major imprints are a signal of quality -- such-and-such publisher decided this book was good enough to spend money on. Not to say that can't be addressed in this new world, but it's unclear how it's going to be addressed and what the tradeoffs are. Also, by democratizing books, you may end up drastically altering the compensation structure. Right now, you have a relative small number of people like Stross who are able to make their living writing novels, and a larger number of people who don't ever "make it." A more open book-publishing market may mean fewer Strosses can make a living as an author, and more and more people who are novelists do it in addition to their primary job, rather than as their primary job. So yeah, there's a very real chance that this new world of publishing does "destroy" something. And something else will get built. And there'll be tradeoffs, and some people will win, and others will lose. Right now it's really hard to say whether or not society as a whole will be better off. The thing about Stross's argument is that historically, there's very little precedent for being able to stave off social changes instigated by technological disruption. So even if he's "right," I don't know what's to be done about it in the long run.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    > Not to say that can't be addressed in this new world Before I buy a book, I read the online reviews of it, and check the reputation of the author. I don't look at who published it. I find these to be a good predictor of whether the book is good for me or not.
    - cwyers 12y ago
      Well, sure, but you're picking largely from a pool that these publishing imprints has created. There are going to be many more books to choose from (well, there already are, but as long as the publishing industry limps along we don't notice it as much as we will once it's done being "distrupted" by Amazon et al). We have a precedent for what happens when a glut of content without much intermediation gets dumped into a marketplace -- the video game crash of 1983. This is not to say that will or is likely to happen here. But it illustrates what CAN happen to the marketplace. And I don't think reading reviews in their current state is going to scale as the number of books grows.
- ivan_ah 12y ago
  You're totally right. Copy-editors make the book readable on the sentence level, editors make it readable on the chapter level... The work done by an editor of a publishing house in the process of producing a book, is much more than the work done by project managers in the web world, yet it seems this is increasingly the tasks asked of them in industry. What was previously the job of giving constructive feedback to the author has now become a project-management+coordination+marketing position and thus less time for constructive feedback is left... to the point where perhaps contracting a knowledgeable person to be your editor rather than hoping to get your 10-minutes of attention from a mainstream editor is the better strategy. Note: Friends are family are not the best editors: you share too much common baggage so they will understand and find logical certain parts in your writing that readers at large won't.
smacktoward 12y ago
> The only people that matter are authors and readers, and eBooks and print-on-demand can make this connection happen, without the need to pay any middlemen. Sure, if you don't mind a shocking drop in the quality of the finished product. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the average print-on-demand and e-book titles I've read have had noticeably higher rates of spelling and grammar errors, redundant statements, clunky sentences, etc. than their professionally edited counterparts. This makes them less pleasant to read and reflects badly on the author, since it makes them look like kind of a dolt.
nabla9 12y ago
Publishers play the role of venture capital. Writing good books is often teamwork with writer(s), editor and publishing company. Traditionally good publishers have picked up unknown writers and nurtured them years and provided them with editors. For the public they do the service of selecting promising writers and marketing them. Consumers can't recognize writing they like like they select music, listening just few minutes. Reading something is always an investment and publishers reduce the risk of that investment. Nobody reads first novels from first-time authors for fun. 99% of them will be bad and even if the writer is good the novel probably needs lots of editing to become good. EBooks and print-in-demand don't help to solve this issue. Nobody wants to read crap or likes the 99% odds of reading crap even if it's free. Somebody has to be paid to read trough the crap and discover the good bits. Amazon just sings up already known writers who sell. Maybe the only way left for aspiring author is: 1. write into literary magazines and journals. 2. get sponsorships from (wealthy) patrons of literature who read those magazines or do all the marketing and publishing work yourself (basically two full time jobs in addition to your day job that pays the bills)

by ivan_ah 12y ago

Mister_Snuggles 12y ago

The missing thing here is editors. A lot of books, regardless of format, would be a lot less enjoyable without a good editor to make sure the story is consistent, well-paced, etc. A number of authors thank their editors in the afterword. That said, there's still room to disrupt the industry a bit.

WalterBright 12y ago
Implicit in these threads is the assumption that Amazon would never provide editor services. If Amazon dealt directly with authors, without going through a traditional publisher, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't. After all, better books => more profits. And, of course, there's no particular reason why editors cannot contract out their services to authors. I know some authors, and they review/edit each others' books.
- opendais 12y ago
  Amazon would have to charge and book editing isn't a process that scales. At which point, authors just go off and find their own editors/etc and become a minipub.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    Yes, and so does a publisher. Publishers don't provide free services; it gets paid for by the author in the form of reduced royalties. If there's increased money to be made in edited books, the market will find a way.
  - philiphodgen 12y ago
    Amazon has the beginnings of this in place with Createspace. My father just published a book through them and received rudimentary copy editing and page layout assistance from Createspace for this. For serious scholarly editing you must hire an outsider, however. My father used an outside editor and an independent person to create the index. The end result for my father's book is aesthetically acceptable (not amazing). The fact that this could happen is an indication that the publishing industry is ripe for (cue HN's favorite word, thrown around with wild and frankly immature abandon) disruption. The book is a biography of Frank Miller, who built the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. (Think of a hotel version of the Hearst Castle, built by someone who had less money than William Randolph Hearst.) The number of people who are interested in the book is limited -- Frank Miller is a a semi-obscure historical figure of the American West, interesting to a few scholars and a few people in the glorious Inland Empire of California. That said, I think my father has several hundred in hard copy sales already.
- Mister_Snuggles 12y ago
  If Amazon saw that there was a need for editorial services, which I'm sure they would, they'd find a way to provide it and make it work. If nothing else, Amazon is an incredibly adaptable company. As you hint at, it could even be an opt-in service. If you have an editor that you like, you could use that service (which could be anyone) instead of Amazon's.
cwyers 12y ago
Well, and discoverability/signalling. The more books that are available, the harder it is to choose a book to read. And right now, the major imprints are a signal of quality -- such-and-such publisher decided this book was good enough to spend money on. Not to say that can't be addressed in this new world, but it's unclear how it's going to be addressed and what the tradeoffs are. Also, by democratizing books, you may end up drastically altering the compensation structure. Right now, you have a relative small number of people like Stross who are able to make their living writing novels, and a larger number of people who don't ever "make it." A more open book-publishing market may mean fewer Strosses can make a living as an author, and more and more people who are novelists do it in addition to their primary job, rather than as their primary job. So yeah, there's a very real chance that this new world of publishing does "destroy" something. And something else will get built. And there'll be tradeoffs, and some people will win, and others will lose. Right now it's really hard to say whether or not society as a whole will be better off. The thing about Stross's argument is that historically, there's very little precedent for being able to stave off social changes instigated by technological disruption. So even if he's "right," I don't know what's to be done about it in the long run.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  > Not to say that can't be addressed in this new world Before I buy a book, I read the online reviews of it, and check the reputation of the author. I don't look at who published it. I find these to be a good predictor of whether the book is good for me or not.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Well, sure, but you're picking largely from a pool that these publishing imprints has created. There are going to be many more books to choose from (well, there already are, but as long as the publishing industry limps along we don't notice it as much as we will once it's done being "distrupted" by Amazon et al). We have a precedent for what happens when a glut of content without much intermediation gets dumped into a marketplace -- the video game crash of 1983. This is not to say that will or is likely to happen here. But it illustrates what CAN happen to the marketplace. And I don't think reading reviews in their current state is going to scale as the number of books grows.
ivan_ah 12y ago
You're totally right. Copy-editors make the book readable on the sentence level, editors make it readable on the chapter level... The work done by an editor of a publishing house in the process of producing a book, is much more than the work done by project managers in the web world, yet it seems this is increasingly the tasks asked of them in industry. What was previously the job of giving constructive feedback to the author has now become a project-management+coordination+marketing position and thus less time for constructive feedback is left... to the point where perhaps contracting a knowledgeable person to be your editor rather than hoping to get your 10-minutes of attention from a mainstream editor is the better strategy. Note: Friends are family are not the best editors: you share too much common baggage so they will understand and find logical certain parts in your writing that readers at large won't.

smacktoward 12y ago

> The only people that matter are authors and readers, and eBooks and print-on-demand can make this connection happen, without the need to pay any middlemen. Sure, if you don't mind a shocking drop in the quality of the finished product. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the average print-on-demand and e-book titles I've read have had noticeably higher rates of spelling and grammar errors, redundant statements, clunky sentences, etc. than their professionally edited counterparts. This makes them less pleasant to read and reflects badly on the author, since it makes them look like kind of a dolt.

nabla9 12y ago

Publishers play the role of venture capital. Writing good books is often teamwork with writer(s), editor and publishing company. Traditionally good publishers have picked up unknown writers and nurtured them years and provided them with editors. For the public they do the service of selecting promising writers and marketing them. Consumers can't recognize writing they like like they select music, listening just few minutes. Reading something is always an investment and publishers reduce the risk of that investment. Nobody reads first novels from first-time authors for fun. 99% of them will be bad and even if the writer is good the novel probably needs lots of editing to become good. EBooks and print-in-demand don't help to solve this issue. Nobody wants to read crap or likes the 99% odds of reading crap even if it's free. Somebody has to be paid to read trough the crap and discover the good bits. Amazon just sings up already known writers who sell. Maybe the only way left for aspiring author is: 1. write into literary magazines and journals. 2. get sponsorships from (wealthy) patrons of literature who read those magazines or do all the marketing and publishing work yourself (basically two full time jobs in addition to your day job that pays the bills)