Short post this week where the publishers strike back!
That is, against the growing sense of irrelevancy that they’re being painted with by the new self-epublishers and the likes of Amazon who are moving directly into ‘publishing’ (read: sourcing and distributing) for themselves.
Well, publishers, authors, and publishing commentators. Truth is, there damn well should be some response from them, and they have to get with the programme and sell what they do, to authors and (especially) to readers! After all, not all ‘publishers’ are the same—just ask around about PublishAmerica…
FutureBook talks about the ‘hidden (added) value’ of traditional publishers—which as I’ve harped on before, isn’t actually good enough… the value must be attention grabbing!
And The Millions takes a more chilled look at just why self-epubbing isn’t right for (them) just yet.
Significantly, we then have a ‘leaked’ Hachette document (leaked to Digital Book World, and one has to wonder just how much that was the plan? If you’re going to be ‘sneaky’ about defending yourself, try not to write a PR ‘memo’!) Their argument is mainly that publishers are there to discover, develop and brand great authors. Booyah! Right?
Of course, J.A. Konrath (noted self-epubber) responds to the Hachette document with his own advice to (traditional) publishers.
And it’s funny, because what Konrath says is actually perfectly aligned with what the publishers and their authors are saying is why pubs are still important and necessary! He just adds an eyebrow-quirked “step back up” to it (well, that’s being nice of me, he shows one hell of a nasty bias… Even if you agree with him—but ultimately tells us that the pubs are vacuously Saying they’re doing the right things, but refuting them.)
Ultimately, the deal is still that to self-epublish, you’ve got to be a true Renaissance person, which publishers argue is why they’re there—so the authors can keep on authoring instead (and in fact, so that readers can keep on reading! And not ’searching’.) But are they actually doing that at this moment?..
