Once you have released yourself from any delusions about being published by a commercial publisher, and from the idiotic idea of making real money from your writing, and flown up on the freedom that realisation gives you, you may want to (sigh) self publish.
I am completely cool with the idea that no publisher in OZ will touch my book. Probably that's a result of my completely giving up on the idea of writing for a clientele of regular human-type book buyers. In this way me and the publishers of Australia have a pretty solid understanding. Of course that didn't stop me sending it to them. They are a powerful network and their endorsement is respected and they still largely control which novels get to stick their heads up above the ever-rolling media ocean and at least get heard about by the public. So you'd be mad not to give it a go. A series of polite rejection letters followed with glacial regularity.
So now I am considering getting a few copies done for friends and family. Last time I looked at this the costs were just completely ridiculous. This time I am pleasantly surprised. But let me be absolutely clear – this is not a commercial operation. This is the whoopsie-bang version of stapling a poetry chapbook together and trading it for smokes in the university bar. In this case the copies will be given away, though of course if anyone decides they want to give cash that proposition will not be rejected.
My specs were 400 pages with a two colour cover in standard novel format. I wanted quotes for 1, 10, 25 and 100.
Quotes from four PoDs in Australia:
Quote 1: AUD11.08 per book if you get a minimum 100 printed
Quote 2: AUD11.08 per book with a minimum 10 printed
Quote 3: AUD14.25 per book for 25 copies, or AUD12.96 per book for 30
Quote 4: AUD35.60 per book for 10, or AUD16.41 per book for 100
[I can't put the actual names of the companies here alongside the quote because their individual emails have those confidentiality phrases at the bottom, and the quotes may vary according to location or something I don't know about. But if you would like to know the names of the companies I approached send me a direct email jkspencer_200@yahoo.com ]
Now combine that realisation with an understanding of these companies:
www.completelynovel.com, will do PoD and delivery in UK/US for ridiculously low prices.
www.smashwords.com, will manage your listing in all e-book spaces.
These are just two examples, there are other similar outfits around, though I think completelynovel.com is the first to offer the whole lot.
One starts to wonder why bother with Publishers anyway? There is no reason to think that going with a traditional publisher is going to get your book wider distribution among your intended audience (particularly if your target audience is about 25 people), nor to think publishers are going to get you more money for the effort. If you accept you are never going to be able to give up your day job, why not seek to maximise control and ROI?
On the other hand, what if you are a really well known writer like say John Birmingham or Margaret Atwood, both of whom are active users of e-networks? (I chose these two to illustrate the variety of writers now engaging with the Interverse). Wouldn't these costs also present an opportunity to an established writer? Here's the rub. If you are not JB or Margaret Atwood, ie you're not going to sell thousands of books: why go with a publisher who's hardly going to support you anyway, and you get only like 10% of the cover price? Get your own 100 copies printed and take 50% of the cover price. In other words, for every 5 books a publisher sells you can make the same amount of money selling 1. This of course assumes you don't use booksellers or any other ticket-clippers as a distribution channel.
On the other hand, if you are JB or Margaret Atwood, why go with a publisher when you could so easily set up your own website and supply chain and sell directly through your own distribution channel to your already established readers? And again, you'd get like $10 per book instead of $2 per book from your publisher. Even if you only sell half as many books you're still two and a half times better off financially. And believe me, if JB or Margaret Atwood announced they were going to drop their publishers and sell only through their website that in itself would generate publicity and drive sales further.
This is the inevitable squeeze the Publishers have to deal with. In business terms it's nothing new, it's just the convergence of technology creating easier paths to vertical integration. This has been happening since the birth of capitalism. Some might even say it is one of the driving forces of capitalism. It's just that it is happening faster now, and as I have been in Corporate Land for a while I didn't notice the speed at which it is occurring in publishing.
The publishers used to control a valve through which production flowed. The tightness of that valve was the barrier to entry of being able to afford to publish a book with a printer who required a minimum print run of a few thousand. But that's gone daddy-o. The other valve was access to exclusive distribution channels to the public through bookstores. That one has also gone.
The point is emphatically not that now suddenly you will be able make money out of writing because these barriers have gone. If you're a weirdo like me there's probably only a market of a few dozen people who would buy your book anyway, regardless of the production methods and distribution channels used. But even if you are a writer who can command a large following, you also have no need to accept the losses incurred when you go through the old barriers / valves. And that is what is terrifyingly beautiful. Be as cynical or as wondrous as you want, but I truly believe this convergence is going to have as radical an impact as the Gutenberg Press. And the impact will not just be in the number of books printed and read, but in the exponential expansion of the ideas that get out into the world.
Because importantly, the Gutenberg Press not only increased the production of normally approved texts, it also provided the opportunity for texts that previously would never have been published to come out. Then, the removal of a layer of control (the Church) allowed texts that would not have been approved to get printed, so long as you had enough money. The publishers are / were essentially just groups of people with enough money and access to networks to engage printers at a price that made it economically reasonable for the printers to print. They controlled production and access, they were the entities who gave permission for something to get out into world or vanish. But they won't be for much longer. And THAT is what is going to change the world.
Of course this is not going to happen by next Wednesday. In the meantime those publishers that survive will evolve. Just as when this kind of convergence occurs in any other industry the survivors will be those who can specialise, capture new valves, or provide a new value proposition. My hunch is that specialist publishers of high quality lit will survive, more as marketing services providers and editorial selectors for their own readership. Publishers like Sleepers in Melbourne are probably on to a fairly good thing in that they have built a brand that has value in terms of their ability to select kick-ass books. If they publish something I want to read it because their opinion on what is worth my reading has been proven. I follow Sleepers per se, just as much as any of their writers. Whereas you take someone like HarperCollins, well, I don't really believe their spin, their publishing activity is so wide that they are too far removed from my own interest for me to believe them.
You can see there is a parallel here, in that what publishers like Sleepers are doing is getting closer to the consumer, in essence following the shrinking chain and building trust (which is 'brand') and thus creating a value proposition.
Alternatively publishers can do what completelynovel.com is seeking to do and position themselves as a convenient tool for writers/readers to communicate. This is not exactly the same as a valve as the barrier to entry is so low in this model that there needs to be some other kind of proposition to keep customers buying. We'll see.
Update: Here's a fantastic video about all this by Richard Nash.
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