Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Who Needs Publishers & Bookstores? Writers, Readers & Everyone Else

 Attorney and Bookseller - 8/18/2012
An idea has taken root in certain quarters that publishers aren't necessary any more. And for that matter, who needs bookstores? According to this facile argument, publishers and bookstores are both relics of the pre-internet days and just get in the way of writers and readers.
Why not just write your book, post it on an on-line book service, and let readers download what they want to read? Surely, everyone can make more money if you can cut out the middle-man. Why let publishers and booksellers stand in the way of progress?
It's a seductive argument. Amazon.com has propagated the idea, suggesting to authors that they should just hand over the text-file to one of its many subsidiaries and leave the rest to them. Since Amazon is now selling everyone's needs from baby diapers to funeral urns, why not just let them handle the book business from beginning to end? The Department of Justice seems to have bought into this argument, referring to publishers in its latest legal action as simply "intermediaries" between writers and readers.
It's an idea, however, that ignores the fundamental realities of the book business.

A Sense of Need among Writers
A superficial argument like this would have no chance of catching on if it did not reflect a real sense of frustration on the part of many authors. Unfortunately, mainstream publishers often turn down worthy authors. And even the ones who are published sometimes don't get the promotion and the readership they feel they deserve. Moreover, there is a sense that publishers are not willing to take the kind of chances they used to take on new ideas and unknown authors.
All of this has given rise to the growth of print-on-demand publishing, local publishing, e-book-only publishing and other inventive means by which authors try to get their work in front of readers. What these alternative methods have in common is that they are all a form of self-publishing. In each of these scenarios authors take upon themselves the tasks of editing, designing, distributing and promoting their own books.
For some authors and some books, this makes sense. Alternative publishing is an important part of the business, and it is an essential corrective for authors who feel shut out of mainstream publishing. It should also be a wake-up call to publishers to think a little more creatively about what they are doing and expand the types of books they are publishing.

The Role of Publishers & Booksellers
But none of this is an alternative to traditional publishing. Those who claim that the new, alternate forms of publishing make traditional publishing obsolete haven't really considered what publishers and booksellers do. The book business is an intricate, economic mechanism that differs substantially from most other segments of the economy. The print book market affects the e-book market, and the e-book market affects the print book market in ways that may not be obvious to the casual observer.

Books are fundamentally different than most other products. They're not like pools of oil that you can eventually find and dig up, if you look hard enough. Unless the economic conditions are right, there are many books that will never come into existence at all. Authors have to have a reasonable, predictable chance of reaching their potential readers, or else they may never go through the long, arduous task of writing a book. If you eliminate the publishing and bookselling businesses without having something stable to replace them, you run the risk of discouraging authors and leaving many future books unwritten.
Authors depend on certain functions being performed by publishers and booksellers if they are going to reach their potential readers. Moreover, these services are crucial to book buyers -- all book buyers -- whether they buy print books or they buy e-books. Without the services of publishers and bookstores, the books that readers want to read are not likely to be available to them in any reasonable fashion.

Read William Petrocelli's full piece at HuffPost

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