I don't want to hijack this thread, so if a mod thinks this discussion is better served elsewhere, please turf it. Also, how the heck to do you multi quote more than one post? I had to do this in word.
The thing to ask yourself is whether these "emerging models" are effective and in the author's best interest. Will these models get books on the store shelves, or will the author be the unpaid sales force for the publisher/printer?
I will say that I completely agree that most books are sold via book stores. As such, publishers that have bookstore placement trump those that don't. Your criticism, though, is one that I hear over and over: either your book is on shelves, or it's not worth it. As if the only way to sell a book, written by a new author, is to have it on the shelf so that potential buyers might pick it up while browsing. That's just not so anymore. I used to think that, too, and perhaps even 3 years ago that would have been the case.
But lately I've been buying books via Amazon, and I scroll through the "people who bought this book also bought" list, and find myself adding a couple titles (browsing). I've taken notice of the publishers listed there, and several are POD and some are even self-published. I'm not sure what percentage of the population purchase as I do, but I suspect it's a growing one.
I could be wrong about the percentage, but don't 30% of book sales come from online sales? Wasn't that figure something like 10% just 2 years ago? Sure some of those come from people searching for specific titles, but I used to go into book stores all the time, and now I never do.
These ideas sound terrific until you get into the nuts and bolts of trying to sell books. These types of publishers are normally underfunded, have no distribution, no sales teams representing their catalog, and they end up blowing through their cash reserves in a few short years.
That's why the vanity option is so seductive to a young undereducated press. It's a great way to get an instant infusion of cash, and who cares that it's a tremendous conflict of interest? so what if their "traditional" side is set for failure because they have no distribution and don't appear to have the first clue on how hard it is to sell books? All they have to do is take a quick look at their bottom line and say, "oops! Getting a bit low here, so we need more vanity books." Bada bing, bada boom.
Okay, the question is, what do they do with the money they generate from the vanity side? Do they use it to promote the titles in their list? Or do they use it to go to Cabo? If it’s the former, I promise you, readers won't know the difference. I agree that there is a problem with this model, but that problem is the fact that agents don't look too favorably on vanity published authors, so "guilty by association" is something an authors needs to be aware of. Telling would-be authors this fact, would be entirely valid.
It's serfdom. They are subsidizing the publisher - nothing more, nothing less. You want to see authors succeed. We all do. But I guarantee that this "emerging model" will not make that happen.
And when they go out of business in a few years, the authors are victimized once again.
All I can say is that what looks really cool at first blush is little more than a model that will keep the publisher's door open on the author's back. That is not success.
You may very well be right about this particular model. But there is not only one way to sell books and the vanity/traditional model is not the only one that deviates from the norm.
Also, a press going out of business has not, by virtue of going out of business, victimized an author. If dorchester doesn't pull through their trouble soon, and go under, will their authors have been victimized? I think not.
A lot of it depends on what a 'traditionally published' author is getting from the company, e.g. if their books are going to be in stores, what kind of marketing and promotion support they get etc?
The big problem though is that commercial publishers running vanity/self-publishing arms are not viewed favorably in the industry. You only have to see what happened to Harlequin when it tried a self-publishing venture to see the harm that it can do.
There's also the fact that if a company is known for offering a vanity arm, what's to stop people assuming that 'traditionally' published authors through that company are not actually vanity published themselves?
True. The “Guilty by Association” fact is hard to ignore. I was initially responding to the “Huge red flags” comment from up thread. I thought it was not justified given this company’s openness about their model.
The problem that publishing companies using this model face is exactly the same one that commercial publishers face - getting books out there into stores, getting the marketing right and hoping that they take off. The difference is that many publishers that use a vanity operation find that the commercial risks of publishing a book lead them to rely more on charging authors in order to make the accounts work, with the result that many stop commercial publishing altogether.
Authors in turn find themselves out of pocket, having to do a lot of the marketing and promotion themselves and find that their publisher is only interested in their shelling out for more services that, in all likelihood, will not see them recoup the costs.
Valid point. However, there are some presses that succeed because they fight to build their list, despite an absence of books in stores. Drollerie press, for example, is a POD/E press that has gone after authors they wanted as part of their list, they’ve won awards, and the publishers have played to two of their strengths: Library sales (having come from a background in libraries), and graphic design.
You've been participating in threads in this Forum for over a year, so surely you know by now that the purpose of raising concerns and pointing out potential flaws is to help authors avoid making a potentially bad choice?
Yes, I have. And yes, pointing out pitfalls, and flaws, is what AW BR&BC is all about. But I’ve seen the “pointing of flaws” quickly decelerate into outright attacks. Hell, I’ve been caught up in it myself.
We're not worried about whether the agents know that. It's the new authors who don't and that's important because it's used to snare those new authors. Besides, the vanity pubs have used the term "traditional" because they know the term "vanity" has a bad reputation. Should they be permitted to wipe the slate clean when they're still vanity pubs?
The real problem here is that many of those people aren't qualified to be publishers and it's not up to authors to subsidize them in Publisher, the RPG.
“Vanity” in any context has bad connotations. I can understand why they’d want to avoid it. I’m sure “Vanity” was not coined by “subsidy” publishers. Regardless, I think the point worth looking at is your assertion that many people aren’t qualified to be publishers.
What do you think qualifies a person to start a publishing business? Must they have experience in the publishing industry? If so dozens of well regarded publishers who do excellent work would not have qualified. To think of a few examples: Snowbooks, one of the leading UK indie publishers with international distribution and award winning authors, was started by book sellers (see their site). They knew what it took to get books into stores, and they did it. Wasn’t Elora’s cave started by a woman with no experience at all? Perhaps that’s a misconception, too. I’m not sure. There are others that I could name, that didn’t follow the “traditional” approach and still found success.
There are some pod publishers who get awesome sales, and there are some publishers who are distributed who get piss-poor sales. Sales and product design (since I think the two are somewhat connected) are the main things an author should be looking at. I mean, what's the point if you don't get any sales?
Final thought for this post:
I keep my eye open for new publishing models, I think with the advent of all these social networking sites, book review sites, a proliferation of internet technologies and new ways of distributing books outside of bookstores, new, exciting models will emerge. No doubt they'll be adopted by the big guys, too, which is why I would tell anyone to start at the top and work your way down. But look at sales when considering signing a contract.
I am against authors going the vanity route on the basis that they shouldn't pay to play. But there are some models that aren't entirely dissimilar. Eg - epubs that set a benchmark of e-sales before they go to print. They want their money out before they increase the investment. I think that's entirely warranted even though it might lead to authors buying their own books to push it to print (which I think some epubs know will happen).
I need to go lay down now.