Dean Wesley Smith has a wonderful column today called The New World of Publishing: Traditional or Indie? What To Do Now?. In it he talks about the issues facing authors in getting books published over the next couple of years in this turbulent industry. Along the way he also offers some recommendations including:
Take everything you can take into your own control and hold on.
What does that mean exactly?
Write like crazy.
Then with what you have finished, spend the next two years indie publishing your own stuff, learning all the tricks of being an indie publisher, and getting your own trade paper books into bookstores.
Then when things settle down in traditional publishing, you will be ready and practiced and have some work to present to traditional publishers.
He then goes on to explain his reasoning behind all the above suggestions. Along the way he talks about agents (don’t need), dealing with publishing houses (put on hold for the next few years), and highly recommends every author get into indie or self-publishing while waiting for the entire industry to settle down.
His summary pretty much explains why authors should avoid new contracts:
Anyone who knows this business believes that traditional publishing is in for a few years of massive turmoil because of the increasing decline in standard book sales and the inability of most publishers to get out of huge labor contracts, trucking contracts, and warehouse contracts. After this third quarter, this will really start to show in corporate balance sheets next spring.
The only way out of many of these messes for a publishing company is through bankruptcy to break the leases and contracts, just as Borders tried and failed to come through. And writers’ books will be assets of the bankruptcy. Not a fun thing.
You don’t want your in-process book to be caught up in a publishers bankruptcy at all.
For myself, I’ve already chosen the indie path completely at this point. I don’t see how a publisher could possible help me reach my readers any better than Amazon, or iTunes, or Nook, of Smashwords can, or readers in the UK, Germany, or other countries.
What publishers had was a lock on distribution, getting books into the Borders, the Barnes & Nobles, the small book chains across the country. They also had a lock on the perception of authors that everything must go through them, otherwise the book is somehow substandard in quality, lacking in professionalism, just a vanity book of the author. If it was really good enough, why didn’t a real publisher pick it up? Knowing how many best-sellers (can you say Harry Potter) were passed over by these quality gatekeepers before someone took a chance on them removes that argument completely.
Well, the publishers distribution system is disappearing from underneath them. Borders is no more, B&N is ailing when it comes to displaying physical books, and independent chains are going away from lack of product to sell. This has forced the publishers to reduce the number of products they offer, raise their prices, and generally act like last decades music industry in dragging their feet in accepting the new reality of their business, digital distribution.
So, publishers are facing worse times ahead. Some will weather the storm, others may not. At this time, no one knows who that will be, so taking charge of your own career is the only way to prepare yourself for the new publishing future coming.
I’m looking forward to the challenge. Are you?
