Wanted -- New Publishing Paradigms

Publishers have always offered the following key services to writers:  Financing (advances against sales to keep the writer fed while they write the book); Editorial support (to clean up all those bogus plot points, long-winded passages, typos and syntactical errors); Marketing (to promote the book and build readership); and Distribution/Fulfillment (to get the book to the reader with a way that they can pay you).

But, unless you're Stephen King or Nora Roberts, these 4 key offerings aren't the value-added services they used to be.  With the advent of the Net and our current economic climate, new paradigms must be established if book publishing (and authors) are to survive.

For most authors, advances are relatively small...and getting smaller every day. The notion that you can sustain yourself on an advance while completing a novel or non-fiction title is dubious at best. That's why most authors don't rely on their advances to survive; they teach or have other jobs to help them pay the bills.

Editorial support is equally sketchy.  Gone are the days when editors like Max Perkins nurtured F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway to greatness.  To be fair, with too many authors under their wings, plus the constant pressure from management (too often a conglomerate) to turn a quick profit, most editors just don't have the time to fine-tune the work of young or unpolished authors...which means most of us.  [I have to say that my own editors have been the exception to this rule.]  That's why we continue to see so many books with gross editorial errors, let alone the fact-checking required to ensure Oprah Winfrey isn't caught promoting yet another fraud.

Marketing is equally problematic.  Part of this is due to the fact that publishers are notoriously unsophisticated marketers -- especially in today's world where word-of-mouth via the blogosphere plays such an important role in a book's success or failure.  They've always relied on a few newspaper ads to sell books and, with newspapers cutting back on book reviews and undergoing their own painful metamorphoses (see The Tribune Goes Down with Blajogevich -- HomePage to FrontPage), a quarter page ad in USA Today just doesn't cut it anymore.  Indeed, the only authors who seem to get any marketing support (including book tours) today are those who -- frankly -- need it the least.

And then there's Distribution/Fulfillment.  While this used to be essential in generating sales, it is becoming increasingly less relevant.  Yes, it's true that a lot of books are bought simply because they're on a bookstore's or supermarket's shelf.  But with the birth of Amazon and dozens of other online venues, direct-to-consumer distribution is often taking the place of traditional bookstore sales. Plus the presence of just-in-time publishing solutions like Lulu.com and BookSurge.com, means many writers (including yours truly) is experimenting with self-publishing.  After all, why keep a dollar per hard-back sold via a traditional publisher when you can keep ten or more?

This is not to say that traditional publishing is no longer viable.  It's just that what publishers offer is significantly less valuable.  If you're a writer who's going to write anyway -- with or without an advance; if you have some ability to self-promote -- a skill which practically every author needs today given the increasingly small marketing budgets assigned to non-major writers; if you have spell- and grammar/syntax-check software on your PC and a literate friend or two to help you clean up sour prose; then where's the value-add of traditional publishing?

Indeed, even if you do require some sort of funding solution before you start your tome, product placements and embedded advertising may present a solution. I predict that -- especially with digital distribution and built-in electronic tracking and ad delivery systems (such as Google AdSense) -- alternate "advance" solutions may be imminent.

I'd love to see traditional publishers come up with a host of new paradigms to ensure they don't go the way of the dodo.  But, unfortunately, I'm not encouraged by what I see.  The Victorian business practices of most publishers means fewer will be around in the next decade or so.  Which is a shame.  As a novelist, I'm already concerned by the dwindling number of readers.  It's so much easier to watch TV, or rent a DVD/Blu-Ray or video stream through Netflix.  And when even movies are increasingly losing mindshare to Web surfing, do books stand a chance?  I'd like to think so.  There's something particularly exquisite about inhabiting the mind of a book's protagonist that even role-playing online games and MUDs can't deliver.  But, unless publishers begin to experiment with new models, I'm not particularly sanguine about their future.

I have more to say about this issue but, frankly, it's time to get back to my new novel.  It isn't sold yet but I'm not worried.  It's my ninth book and given my loyal fan base, I may not even bother looking for a traditional publishing solution.