The Future of Publishing
Here is a really smart analysis of both the business history of modern publishing, and the possible future of the industry with print-on-demand technology. The onset of print-on-demand is something I've been eagerly awaiting since talk first started getting serious about the matter in the mid-1990s. Not only would this mean that no book would ever go out of print again, but it would also bring efficiency to an industry whose business model is in dire need of revision.
Check it out.
3 Comments:
it sounds good, but the article skirts over the usefulness of bookstores and libraries. i mean, the idea would work for known authors, but how well would it work for the less known authors who people only buy because they pick the book up in the store. and then with that said, if it is a process that only works for the huge sellers what will happen to those small fish writers who scramble to get a sales rep to get their book in barnes and noble? do they join every list serve in the world and start blogging about their book in hopes of someone reading it?
more to the point, where are the disappearing jobs in this? where is the break down of some ill affects of the switch? books in demand seem now, most suited for people who can't write to well and are better off not having to pay a printer to print up so many copies that won't sell.
maybe the publishers just stop flooding the market with books hoping they sell. should i believe that they don't decide how many books they will print with the idea that so many will get returned in mind? i mean isn't that why press runs for some books are eleven copies?
i should really be studying though. and he did make a few interesting points.
another brief side note:
mat you can't agree with this publish on demand. it seems completely opposite of the passion for writing that led you to join an mfa program or even post these blogs. because isn't the end of this a cutting out of the publishers completely? which would seem nice but then don't the editors go too? and then where will the advances come from? and and and and and
Hey Dwayne,
Good points, there will be many changes as print runs become smaller, some of them surely negative.
It should be noted though that print-on-demand is merely a printing process, not a complete change in the publishing world. This would not do away with publishing houses, editors, or bookstores, it would just mean that smaller runs could be printed.
Self-publishing is already totally accessable. If you want to print one copy of your book, you can already do that at home on your personal computer. The print runs at the online vanity presses are already extremely small, so this won't really have much of an impact there.
Where print-on-demand will have an impact is with out-of-print books. Unless a book is a big hit, after a book's initial print run the book is no longer published. It goes out-of-print. This has happened to many great books we know of. Just look at the Harlem Ren. books that were out-of-print until just the last two decades: Their Eyes Are Watching God, Infants of the Spring, Black No More. Many more great books are still lost out there, forgotten. This process would make it so that no book, no matter how old or how small its audience, will ever go out of print again.
This process would also allow the large publishing houses to waste less money, and have a smaller environmental impact, by allowing them to print the actual amount of books they need, as opposed to twice that. This would also allow smaller presses to become more economically viable, and thus increase the diversity of the publishing world in this age of corporate monopolies.
This would not destroy bookstores: Amazon has been a success but it doesn't take the place of the shopping, lounging experience. And trust me, large bookstores already underserve unknown authors. All of those books you see in the front of the big chain stores are hand selected by the bookstores for maximum sales, and the publishers rent the table and shelf space to make the books available. If you're an unknown author from a small press—IF your book is even in the store—your work is placed in the back, hidden on the shelves with thousands of others. So sadly, your dystopian vision of the desperate self promoting author banished from the bookstores has already happened.
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