 If anyone can publish
their own blog, their own CD,their own art portfolio, and their own
film, why can't everyone
publish their own book?
Yes, I know there are so-called 'vanity' publishers who will print
small runs of your book for an outrageous price. What I'm talking about
is the analogue of the independent online music seller -- a company
that will catalogue and promote your book, and will print and send it
out to buyers on demand, just-in-time, with no up front money from you,
and with
author royalties rising with volume sold, as economies of scale begin
to kick in.
This process would then allow professional editors and volume
publishers to browse independently produced books to find works that
they could add value to, produce in significant volume profitably, and
distribute through national book chains and major online distributors.
The manuscript would be available free in soft copy online. That poses
no threat to author revenues. No one in their right mind would read a
complete book online, or print one out on a laser printer. The reason
why people need their books professionally printed and bound is simply
for readibility. I've been sent complete book manuscripts by e-mail,
and in every case if I'm inclined to read the whole thing after
browsing the first few pages, I'll buy the book rather than read my
'free' copy online.
The next stage in evolution would be the emergence of specialty
publishers. There are some specialty publishers for writers of
progressive non-fiction -- Canada's New Society Publishers,
for example. But take a look at the most successful recent progressive
works and you'll find they all have different publishers: Conason's
book was published by Thomas Dunne, Tom Tomorrow's by St. Martin's,
Alterman's by Basic Books, Franken's by EP Dutton, Krugman's by Norton
and Moore's by Regan. Why isn't there a single progressive book
publisher that writers of such works would automatically turn to first?
Then progressive organizations -- like Salon.com -- would have a
preferred book publisher for their writers, and readers of such books
would be able to preview that publisher's works. This kind of
specialization has touched every other business, so why not book
publishing?
And this kind of innovation has transformed the independent,
non-mass-circulation sector of every other entertainment and media
industry except book publishing? Why? How has the agonizing (for both
writers and publishers) cattle call book idea submission process stayed
unchanged when the economics that required it no longer apply?
It's not as if books still need to be typeset by hand -- today small
runs and even copy-by-copy customization are almost as cheap as mass
production.
And today books, like music and other artistic creations, can be
virally marketed and
promoted by word of mouth (including blogs), using the Internet's
ubiquitous communication, reproduction and filtering tools. Rather than
the publisher having to 'create' a market for a book, they can simply
recognize, from the grassroots popularity a book receives by word of
mouth, when a book is a sure-fire blockbuster, and simply buy the
rights for mass production at that time.
Of course, I have a vested interest in development of such innovation,
since I'm writing a book. But there are millions of bloggers out there,
and we're all writers, including many damn fine writers, not a few of
whom have aspirations to make a living writing, or to produce major
works that don't lend themselves to online reading.
If you are, or know, an independent book publisher or retailer, tell me
what you think of this idea. Instead of having to read hundreds of
unsolicited, mostly bad, manuscripts, wouldn't you rather have access
to an online market that would take the drudgery out of filtering good
writing from bad, and take the guesswork out of picking popular books
from those destined for eternal obscurity?
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