The Future of Publishing
Part 4, Predicitons #7 and #8
The world of publishing is currently going through massive turmoil. Some people believe that the rise of e-books is going to be the biggest single change in publishing since Gutenberg's invention of movable type.
I'm not a prophet nor a seer nor clairvoyant. But I do have my eyes open, and in this column, I give you my best predictions for the coming years. They may be right. They may be wrong. Either way, one thing seems certain: Huge changes are coming.
I offer these predictions to suggest ways you might plan for your future. I'm using them to plan for mine.
Prediction #8: Publishers Will Become More Profitable
I believe publishers will be more profitable, but they'll publish fewer titles.
They'll be more profitable because they'll publish only those authors that have a strong track record in the e-market (or an exceptional track record in sales of past p-books). It's got to be more profitable when you only publish the winners. It's got to be more
profitable when you have more information about potential sales before you publish a book.
Publishers will publish fewer titles because not all books are winners. Some books just don't do well in the market. In the past, publishers had to guess the winners. In the future, publishers will read the winners off the e-book charts. They'll ignore the losers on those same charts. That has to mean fewer titles.
This does not mean the public will have less choice. The public will have much, much, much more choice in the e-market. It will have less choice in the p-market, but those choices will have higher average quality. That's a net win for the public.
While I think it very likely that publishers will have higher profit margins in the future, it's an open question whether they'll earn more in gross revenues. I make no prediction on that. Naively, it seems that they would gross less. However, they might conceivably gross
more, depending on complex factors that I can't foresee.
Prediction #9: Some Will Do Better; Some Will Do Worse
I believe that talented authors will do somewhat better in the e-future. I believe effective agents will do better and so will most publishers.
I foresee a burgeoning market for freelance editors (who can help writers polish their work before taking it to e-market). Likewise for freelance graphic artists (who can create great covers for e-books).
I foresee a larger, better array of choices for the reading public.
However, not everybody will do better. Some people will do worse. Let's make a list of them. We already discussed these people before, but let's list them here again:
* The person who typesets the edited manuscript
* The person who cuts the trees to make the paper
* The person who turns the trees into paper
* The person who puts ink on the paper
* The person who binds the paper into books
* The person who puts the books in a box
* The person who drives the box to the store
* The person who unpacks the box in the store
* The person who puts the book on a shelf
* The person who rings up the sale at the counter
* The person who puts the unsold copies back in a box
* The person who drives the box back to the publisher
* The person who unpacks and shreds the returns
None of these people contribute actual value to the story. They only contribute value to the medium -- the handling of paper and ink. As the demand for paper and ink shrinks, so will the demand for these folks. That may be cruel and Darwinian, but it seems to me inevitable.
In addition, I also think that brick-and-mortar bookstores will become smaller (as measured in square footage). It's hard to say for sure if they'll also become fewer in number, but it's a good bet that they will. That's been the trend for several years, and I suspect it'll continue. It's possible that they'll become a bit more profitable, since they'll be stocking
only p-books that are marketplace winners. But they may face increasing pressure from the online merchants for p-books, which can stock a much larger choice. I make no prediction on their profitability.
Those are my predictions for the future. I can't prove that any of them will come true. But I'm making my own plans based on this vision.
It's not the gloomy-doomy future that many writers see ahead of us. However, it's a future that will require serious adjustments from just about everybody in the publishing industry.
IIn five years, we'll know whether I'm right or wrong.
About the Author:
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 21,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.
|
