The New York Times reports that print-0n-demand publishers are flourishing…even if their customers are not.
As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs.
[…]“It used to be an elite few,” said Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, a print-on-demand company whose revenue has grown to $30 million, from $1 million, in just two years and which published more than 300,000 titles last year. Many of those were personal books bought only by the author. “Now anyone can make a book, and it looks just like a book that you buy at the bookstore.”
[…]Author Solutions estimates that the average number of copies sold of titles published through one of its brands is just 150.
Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said.
Is Free, “Ravenously Referential” Fiction the Future of Publishing?
A lot of folks have sent me a link to Lev Grossman’s essay in Time Magazine that proclaims that:Saying you were a self-published author used to be like saying you were a self-taught brain surgeon. But over the past couple…
Lee, you really must explain to me (and those of us just tuning in) your years-long vendetta against vanity publishing. Why would a talented guy like you even give a damn? And who even sees what these idiots write, anyway? (besides their wives and their mothers)
The truth is, not one of these pathetic, self-published Hemingways represents the SLIGHTEST threat to you or any other working writer earning genuine money for his words.
Am I wrong?
People are just lazy, and they hear about a lottery winner like THE SHACK, and suddenly think they can do the same. They don’t realize (or want to think about) that for every “Shack” there’s what, maybe 100,000 or more self-pub’d books that die with basically no sales.
Lee, Do you think with all of this self-publishing hype going on that when things do turn around for the publishing industry, it’ll affect becoming a writer? I guess what I am really asking is if the self-publishing route will hurt traditional publishing in the end and make it harder to make a turn around, will in essence take away the value of becoming published by Random House, or Simon & Schuster?
Thanks.
Let’s keep in mind that Prind on Demand (POD) is not always the same as self-publishing. There are an increasing number of publishers who use POD technology as a cost-effective means to get good (and often neglected) authors published. They are simply following the business model of zero inventory, like Dell does with the manufacture of computers. When the orders come in, the product is created. PointBlank Press is a good example of this. They don’t publish just anyone. They don’t charge you to be published. They simply leverage new technology to sell books. The downside is, when a publisher has no skin in the game, that is, no pile of books they have paid to print sitting on a shelf in a warehouse, they have less incentive to get them into bookstores, and booksellers are reluctant to order inventory as the return policy is more stringent. These more legit POD publishers are ideal for internet sales, which is a large and continually growning segment of overall sales. But I digress… the point is, this is not the same thing as paying to have one’s own work published.
David wrote: “Lee, you really must explain to me (and those of us just tuning in) your years-long vendetta against vanity publishing.”
A vanity press huckster killed me wife and family…this is payback.
I’m joking, of course. There was no McKee/Truby defining moment or motivating incident…
I just don’t like scam artists who take advantage of aspiring writers. Though over the years I’ve become less sympathetic to the writers who are taken in by these swindles….it’s almost as if they *want* to be taken.
David wrote: “The truth is, not one of these pathetic, self-published Hemingways represents the SLIGHTEST threat to you or any other working writer earning genuine money for his words.Am I wrong?”
I don’t see self-published authors as a threat to me (though, in most cases, what they are doing is actually self-destructive to their pocket books and an obstacle to achieving their dreams). My problem is with the con men who swindle aspiring writers out of their money by selling them a pack of lies.
Lee
“I guess what I am really asking is if the self-publishing route will hurt traditional publishing in the end and make it harder to make a turn around, will in essence take away the value of becoming published by Random House, or Simon & Schuster?”
No, I don’t think it will. Because the majority of readers not only aren’t buying self-published books, they aren’t even aware that they exist. The self-publishing industry makes its money selling books to authors, not to readers. That said, I think POD technology and ebooks formats will become a bigger part of the legitimate publishing business.
Lee
While I read thi Times article this morning I thought about how you’d react. It’s really taken hold, this stuff. I got a call from an an old old acquaintance who knew this missionary who wanted to publish her memoir. I knew this was a veiled request for me to read it. I read about a fourth of it and gave up. I was gentle as I could be with the missionary but she was really pissed that I didn’t see any possible chance for it to be published by traditional means. So she published it herself and sent me a copy with a snarky note about not having to rely on “snobs” (i.e. me) to get her book published. The article this morning is deranged.
I believe self-publishing is actually strengthening traditional houses. Readers who buy a “book” from, say, iUniverse or Lulu, and are burned, swiftly realize that old brand names, such as Harper or Viking or Simon and Schuster are usually guarantors of quality.
The goal of any self-publishing effort, generally, is getting a traditional commercial contract without the painful commercial route.
Damn few do, but the goal of writers isn’t to be self-published. It’s to be published in the way everyone recognizes and have the stamp of approval of the familiar big names as Mr. Wheeler said. 99.99 percent never will going the self-publishing vanity route.
Brent Sampson, the CEO of Outskirts Press, wrote an article in response to this NY Times, and it’s here: http://tinyurl.com/am8qu4
Leah