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The Rapidly Changing Face of Publishing

an excerpt from
CHOOSE YOUR PUBLISHING OPTION
by D.Patrick Miller

The current publishing scene is an energetic mix of daunting challenges and unparalleled opportunities. While it is more difficult than ever before to land a publishing contract with a major house that will pay you a substantial monetary advance, it has never been easier to get your work into print or to market it to a worldwide audience. Via the Internet and other electronic media, you can make your work theoretically available to millions in almost no time. Whether that accessibility will deliver recognition, respect, and a living wage as an author is another matter.

With the proliferation of e-media and a variety of reading platforms and technologies, there have never been so many ways to make your writing known to potential readers. At the same time, the sales of printed books are declining, at least through the conventional distribution route of bookstores. Some recent surveys suggest that young adults are buying, on average, one printed book or less per year. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are reading less. But it does mean they are reading less in print, and more online. Since the Internet has a tradition of providing information without charge, it is becoming more challenging to get readers to pay for what you write. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make a living as a writer, but it does mean that you need to think about a variety of ways to market your work. As an author, you are in the business of creating and selling marketable ideas – not just books.

Three Major Trends of Change
The last few decades have seen three major developments that have changed the face of publishing:

The consolidation of scores of New York-based publishing houses into a handful of major media monoliths. With so many of the small to medium-sized, previously independent imprints being absorbed into about six big companies, both the originality and creativity spurred by marketplace competition have decreased substantially. With the exception of first-time novelists, the major New York houses are much less likely to take on unknown authors and invest in their reputation over time. Particularly in nonfiction, the major houses would prefer that you come to them with a substantial “platform” — meaning, in the simplest terms, that you are already famous. The majors are driven by a “best-seller” mentality that favors the celebrity-driven blockbuster kind of book over the quiet literary accomplishment.

The massive growth of the independent press and the new legitimacy of self-publishing. A few decades ago, there were roughly 5000 small, independent publishers outside the realm of New York establishment publishing; by the turn of this century there were well over 50,000. Some estimates suggest that there may be as many as 100,000. If you count everyone who is making their own writing available to the world via websites and blogs, the number of independent publishers is countless. In the old days, publishing your own book was generally called “vanity publishing” and was regarded as the indulgence of amateur writers who couldn’t get into print any other way. Although there are certainly more amateurs than ever who publish themselves, there are also many professional and accomplished authors who prefer taking the business of distributing their work into their own hands.

The rapid and ever-changing proliferation of new publishing technologies. The first major change in publishing technology was the advent of “print-on-demand” (POD) publishing, which enables publishers to create and distribute printed books without maintaining an expensive inventory of each title. The next major change, technically available for some years now but just beginning to take off in popularity, is the electronic book, or e-book, which can be made available in a variety of ways. In Japan, several best-selling novels of the last few years were launched on cell phones; in America, hand-held electronic readers such as Amazon’s Kindle are gradually gaining acceptance. Google is also heading into the e-book business in a big way, which will undoubtedly magnify that market.

Given all these changes and challenges, what is the best way for an up-and-coming writer to get published? You’ll have to devise the answer to that question yourself – and in fact the answer may change as your writing career develops. The rest of this report will give you a clear picture of the current major options and how to pursue each one.

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