Is publishing broken?

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Lauri B

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In a couple of threads it has been asserted that the publishing system is broken. Why do you think this? What would you do to change it (and please don't say, "publish my book")?
 

MacAllister

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I don't really think it's broken. The more opportunity I have to listen to people who work in publishing, the more the system seems a bit, ummm, eccentric--but it works.

This is an interesting take on the topic of non-fiction publishing. And I've recently returned from Viable Paradise, where one afternoon we had a really interesting discussion about the changes in paperback distribution in the eighties, with the rise of national chains that drastically changed how mass-market paperbacks are distributed--thus sharply reducing the number of titles that appear in newstands, grocery stores, and drugstores.

What do you think, though, Nomad?
 

Fahim

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Personally, I don't think that publishing is broken. The thing is, I think we get a little bit of tunnel vision as writers (especially aspiring writers) and begin to think that there is some conspiracy or that they don't accept good material if you aren't famous/published before/have an uncle who ran with the bulls/(insert other preferences here). I don't think this necessarily means that publishing is broken - just that people perceive it as being so because each of us gets so involved in our own hopes and dreams and so get disheartened when we can't get published ourselves.

Whenever I get a rejection, I remind myself something that I read somewhere - that Nicholas Evans, author of "The Horse Whisperer", cried himself to sleep every night before he finally sold his novel. If that happened to Nicholas Evans, (and remember that he did get published eventually and went on to become a bestseller), why should I think I'm special and somehow I should get published as soon as I submit? Of course, that's just my take on things :)
 

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Publishing is tough. Breaking through in any small, highly competitive industry is tough. I think that publishing as we know it will always be highly selective and so cause a degree of resentment from people who don't realise that bars select their clientele, ladies their husbands and publishers their authors. It really doesn't matter if you think they made the wrong choice--it was their choice to make.

I think the existence of small and self-publishing opportunities allows a second approach with its own risks and rewards. Acceptance is more likely but sales are much more likely to be low. I am concerned that people who cannot get publisher are entering publishing at this level, it seems more likely they failed to understand the market than that they identified the deep pools of genius the "big boys" refused to swim in. But small presses do in fact open up niche and underexploited markets -- erotic romance being a most promonant example.

If people understand the market, their book and their priorities there are a lot of opportunities out there. Unfortunately this is a not a subject where it is easy to be objective about the nature of one's work.
 

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From a midlister's perspective, one of the biggest problems right now is the emphasis on profit--a result of the conglomeration of the past couple of decades, and also of the fact that too many publishers are owned by media corporations that insist on wringing corporate-style profits from an industry that traditionally was tolerant of smaller profit margins. The net result has been that writers must prove themselves with sales above anything else, and the things that used to be a substantial part of what sustained a writing career--good reviews and reader loyalty and perceived literary merit (which I admit is a problematic concept)--are seriously devalued.

A corollary of all this is the relentless pressure to self-promote. This was something that almost no one did in the 1980's, when I was submitting my first novel; it was even considered rather tacky. Now you all but have to do it, partly because publishers expect it, partly because you feel driven to do everything you can to try and boost your sales. Although I'm still not convinced that authors' self-promotion efforts make much difference in most cases.

But I don't think that publishing is "broken"--it's just different. It was always a tough business with a high failure rate, in which it was difficult to make a living. I'm a member of the Authors Guild, and their quarterly Bulletins often include a sample of "publishing is going wrong" journalism from decades ago. It's amazing how similar those laments sound to those you hear now.

- Victoria
 

Sheryl Nantus

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I don't think it's broken - but the public perception might be.

I put the blame totally at the feet of that stupid Xerox commercial where the professor tells the students that you have little chance to be published, blah blah blah... and the upstart kid stands up and announces that no, now YOU can be self-pubbed thanks to the new technology.

Suddenly everyone became an "author" if they could put two words together, and many who couldn't. And the industry vomited up vanity presses and scam presses who took advantage of these people who thought/think that writing is as simple as breathing. And if you can't sell it to a legitimate publisher, it's part of the "conspiracy" to hold new authors down.

If I could go back in time I'd burn every copy of that commercial and smack the ad agency hard for putting out that misconception. It's encouraged an entire generation to have no respect for the skill of writing and instead put out the idea that everyone's a writer and everyone's story is worthy of publication.

bah.
 

JennaGlatzer

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Very much agree with Sheryl. I don't think the system of acceptance/rejection is broken.

I do worry about the promotion trends, though. I worry about the consignment system and how that puts publishers at significant risk, I worry about how publishers are expected to buy co-op space in bookstores to create Instant Bestsellers, rather than allowing bookstore staff to actually choose which books to put out front and on endcaps based on merit and popularity, I worry about writers turning into carnival barkers ("Buy my book! Hurry, hurry, step right up and buy the best book in town!").

I don't have any solutions, mind you, but those are my concerns.
 

RG570

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Everything is broken.

Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to say publishing is, but things could be a lot better. They're trying too much to hang on to old ways of doing things. It's time to move on.

You'd think SF authors would be the first to champion this moving-on, but they are oftentimes the worst for sticking up for "the system" as it is now.

But, so long as the goal of publishing books is to create "growth" for shareholders, I doubt little will change. Except maybe that as technology progresses, small presses will be able to afford to do more, and compete with the lumbering, boring giants.
 

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Well, there are more books being published per year than ever before, both in the number of titles and the overall quantity. If your argument is that the industry is broken solely because you find it hard to understand, then I doubt there's an argument to change your mind. "Broken" is a useless term anyway. I mean, the system obviously works, and gets books out there.

Unfortunately, it is business, and business is tough and does not change easily. If anything, there is an evil corporate greed taking over all aspects of business, and careers will be tossed aside and ruined if it'll make an extra penny for shareholders. Meanwhile our civil liberties are being crushed, and censorship is on the rise ... but instead of "everything is broken," try looking at the situation and seeing what's going on.

What is it that you think small presses are going to do differently? What is the great solution? Printing every book every author can churn out, regardless of the quality? Printing is easy. But Publishing involves printing, support and distribution. Distribution has become monopolized and independent products are shut out -- there's something we can focus on.

The internet is not exactly the solution, either. It's the ultimate network of free stuff. All that power. But it's frightfully hard to get hits and sales these days, except for stupid stunts. Again, the distribution is choked off for most people. Any whizbang technology is going to get swamped by media companies trying to control it. Got a solution? We'd love to hear it.
 

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It's a business and as such it will grow and change, as everything and everyone does.

There was no "golden time" never has been for anything. We all look back with rose-rinted glasses at even parts of our own past, denying the unpleasant events that happened.

Maybe, in my opinon, the publishing industry relies a bit more on the subjective taste of those involved in it, far more than facts and figures, but it is a business. You are tendering to supply parts (manuscripts) for this business to make money for you, for their employees and share holders. And to be honest it is no harder to sell to than some of the companies I have helped prepare tenders for services/supplies for in the past. Least all that is at risk in submitting a manuscript is my ego, not a few hundred jobs.
 
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JennaGlatzer

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RG570 said:
They're trying too much to hang on to old ways of doing things. It's time to move on.

RG, I'm curious what you're talking about here. The "old way" in what sense-- technology? The selection process? Distribution? Promotion? Wanna expand on what you mean?
 

aruna

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JennaGlatzer said:
I do worry about the promotion trends, though. I worry about the consignment system and how that puts publishers at significant risk, I worry about how publishers are expected to buy co-op space in bookstores to create Instant Bestsellers, rather than allowing bookstore staff to actually choose which books to put out front and on endcaps based on merit and popularity, I worry about writers turning into carnival barkers ("Buy my book! Hurry, hurry, step right up and buy the best book in town!").

I don't have any solutions, mind you, but those are my concerns.

I echo what Jenna says here. To that I'll add - and I'm biased here, this being my own experience - that I'm concerned that the concept of author loyalty seems to have all but disappeared. Back in the days, I understand, a publisher was content to grow an author through several books, till he or she had reached his/her peak. Not so these days. Now young authors (young in the sense of new) have to scramble to make the bean counters happy, and if they can't do so in two books they're out the door.
Creativity and sales were never the most compatible of bedfellows and that is the case here. I feel I could write my best if I had an editor committed to getting the best out of me from book to book. These days, they are more eger to find the next best big thing to take a gamble on.
As an author, it really is sink, or swim for your life.
 

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I am distressed to see the amount of decision-making and power that once was held by editors, nearly wrested away from them by marketing teams, who think they have the answers to profitibility in such an artistic/subjective business. I harken back to the old days, a few decades ago.

I'm abhored that so many real small and mid-sized publishers have disapeared or have merged, or been bought out by the big fish. The available markets to submit to nowadays, even for agents, is severely limited and finite.

I feel that I've served an apprenticeship after 28-years in this business, and admittedly I'm a bit put off by every writer who thinks they're a writer, (and have recently discovered the internet), clogging up the email channels, making my potential editors pull their hair out. I end up belonging to the collective blame and the horrendous glut of manuscripts.

I do believe the industry is cracked, but we've been trying to glue it back together for years. What's the answer? Here's a trend I see coming and gaining momentum: No Advances. It's the only guarantee that the large publishers won't tank on celebrity books and it's just Possible that the entire industry will adopt this method in the future. The print-on-demand pubs are there right now. I hope it doesn't happen. But...

Why is it so hard to obtain distribution and book shelving for the little publishers? Some have made it. The majority haven't. Will POD kill us, or is it the wave of the future?

I don't think it is broken, as much as it has changed sooo much. I wish I had a solution. I would love to see huge standup printing machines that could (via menu selection and pdf) select a title, format it, print, cut, trim and bind (in a few minutes), and deliver it out of a slot, like fast food. I'd like to see these automoton publishers sitting at all major traffic areas, mall outlets, grocery and drug stores, and even at fast food establishments. Visibility, visibility, visibility--location, location, location.

Would love to see reward systems for readers who buy a certain amount of titles per month or year, get special treatment and discounts for promoting literacy. I would like to see seniors and childeren get 5-10% discounts on any titles they buy.

Would love to see tiny book stores according to genre only (owned by the same franchise). The Horror Show. Alpha Adventures (SF). FantasyWord. LoveWords. The Game's Afoot (mystery). Billy's Thrillers. Sammy's Suspense.

Anything! Anything that would get more books in the potential reader's face. We have the book channel, but it's all about non-fiction and celebrity politians pushing their tomes. Where's the book channel for fiction? Why can't we have one?

Oh, if I owned the world...

Tri
 

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There are certainly elements of publishing that are broken.

I believe that the general bookreading public would read good, quality literary fiction, rather than juicy memoirs or Da Vinci Code clones if it was promoted to them and marketed with the fervor with which the juicy memoirs and Da Vinci Code clones are currently marketed. For whatever reason, this isn't happening.

From my experience, agents seem to be a bottleneck. While I don't expect a personal, handwritten response from any agent who is declining to represent me, I do wish that I had some faith in the process agents go through when deciding whether or not to represent a piece of writing. In places where the process has been made transparent, such as agent blogs, I sense a condescending lack of respect for writers. I've become so used to rudeness from agents, in fact, that when I receive a professional looking or sounding communication from an agency, I begin to wonder if it's a scam.

Scams are another thing--media like POD and poetry.com style anthologies could have been embraced by the publishing industry to bring more quality work to the market and let people decide what they would like to read. Instead, such media only seem to have been embraced by the scam artists. Technology in general seems to have passed much of the publishing industry by. Many (most?) agencies still require queries via postal mail and many of those who accept email simply never respond to the queries.

New, innovative methods of publishing, such as MacMillan New Writing are, like poetry.com and its ilk, accused of being scams and 'abusing authors,' though I look at those who are pointing their fingers and tend to see those who have already made it, or who have a vested interest in keeping the current system going.

I also believe there is a disconnect between what aspiring writers who choose to pursue their craft at the graduate and postgraduate level are being taught and what agents are willing to accept or even consider. I'm not sure whether this is an industry problem or a problem with postgraduate institutions, but the disconnect bothers me.
 

aadams73

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Miss said:
From my experience, agents seem to be a bottleneck. While I don't expect a personal, handwritten response from any agent who is declining to represent me, I do wish that I had some faith in the process agents go through when deciding whether or not to represent a piece of writing. In places where the process has been made transparent, such as agent blogs, I sense a condescending lack of respect for writers. I've become so used to rudeness from agents, in fact, that when I receive a professional looking or sounding communication from an agency, I begin to wonder if it's a scam.

I've never had an agent be rude to me. Ever. I've been thoroughly professional and received professionalism in return.

And when an agent says no, there's usually a pretty good reason for it. Either the writing is poor, the story isn't fresh, or you've targeted the wrong agent.

My concern with the publishing industry lies in promotion. I don't want to have to spend so much time promoting myself that I don't have enough time to write. I'm an introvert, dammit! :)
 

aruna

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I'm wondering if the "no advances" thing coul dbe turnedto our advantage; What is instead of taking a large advance,m you ask that the money be put towards promotion?
I would gladly do that if it kept me in the business. I've had a large advance which didn't earn out, and a small advance coupled with large promotion budget, that was a huge success. The latter is far preferable.
I think the 6 figure davances are part of the problem. I just read by accident that the author of one of the worst books I;ve read in the past 2 years (I don't want to mention names here, but her father was somebody famous) had been paid a MILLION DOLLARS for that book (it was her first) even before she'd finished it. Sometimes I really need to set my hair on fire.
 

icerose

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I actually like the no advance idea. It may spur publishers to take more chances on the fringe books and I think you would see more quality rise. Especially if all books were treated as equal until the public set a book above the others and I think that would lead to better bestsellers. Also your career wouldn't be ruined if you didn't earn much because the publisher didn't have that much to lose and I would hope that it would slow down the rebound of the books where they currently have a few weeks to make or break it.

Also I think they should penalize bookstores for ripping off the covers and be more lenient when they return them whole. That way the books could be sent to programs to improve literacy and to schools on wholesale rather than just chucked.

The problem with the no advance is how do you differ between the scam presses who are just out for money and the real publishers who are out for books?

And in response to Miss. Believe me, scams are scams and the complaints are from genuine authors who were taken by them. And those within the industry are kind enough to add in their knowledge of how the industry really works and to do research on the companies in question.

See Publish America.
 

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I see no good reason for the industry to "embrace" poetry.con et al. Publishers begin to get respect when they have a readership outside of their contributors and a product other than every single thing submitted to them (the two being related).

It would be nice to see more of a spotlight given to small presses who put out a quality product that reaches some kind of readership, even if their distribution is limited. There are many fine small presses in areas such as horror, romance and erotica but they tend to get lost in the "noise" of scams and incompetants.
 

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I don't think that the writing industry should embrace the scam that is known as poetry.com. However, I think it's sad that the most prominent poetry contest and publishing site out there is this huge scam.

I think that a poetry community where anthologies are compiled is a good idea, and it's a shame that it isn't conventionally embraced because there is probably a small market for it.

And when an agent says no, there's usually a pretty good reason for it. Either the writing is poor, the story isn't fresh, or you've targeted the wrong agent.

Well, the rejections I've gotten usually say that things are fine, but there just wasn't sufficient interest or they don't feel enthusiastic about it. Of course, those are form letters, so who knows the real reasoning behind sending comments like that.

I am unconvinced that agents are rejecting on the basis of lack of quality. I have seen too much quality writing that no agent will represent.
 

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icerose said:
Also I think they should penalize bookstores for ripping off the covers and be more lenient when they return them whole. That way the books could be sent to programs to improve literacy and to schools on wholesale rather than just chucked.

Aren't the ripped covers something the publisher prefers? I thought they had to pay the shipping on the returns, so they prefer the ripped covers for shipping cost reasons. I could be wrong, however.
 

icerose

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DeadlyAccurate said:
Aren't the ripped covers something the publisher prefers? I thought they had to pay the shipping on the returns, so they prefer the ripped covers for shipping cost reasons. I could be wrong, however.

I thought the bookstores ripped off the cover so they didn't have to pay a restocking fee, they could return it for the full as damaged goods which is why it is done. I have heard quite a few publishers dismayed at the ripped covers, but I could be wrong as well because that was a book they paid to have printed and now it's good for nothing but a landfill.
 

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No I think it is just because unsold stock need to be accounted for to show the retailer is not defrauding the publisher. Returning the cover is cheaper as proof the book was not sold (and so no moneys are due). It is the same for both books and magazines and I used to have the job of doing the ripping and mailing on magazines every month.
 

icerose

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veinglory said:
No I think it is just because unsold stock need to be accounted for to show the retailer is not defrauding the publisher. Returning the cover is cheaper as proof the book was not sold (and so no moneys are due). It is the same for both books and magazines and I used to have the job of doing the ripping and mailing on magazines every month.

That makes sense but it still sucks, all those books destroyed. :(
 

Christine N.

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It IS rather wasteful, to pulp all those books, but they aren't on the best paper usually. The only books that return covers are mass-market paperbacks - not trade, which is a better quality.

I agree though, something should be done with them, even if it's to donate them to the local library for their book sales.
 

veinglory

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I prefer it when they just clip the corner and have some kind of program--like donation to school libraries or to children without books in their home.
 
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