Quote:
Originally Posted by TLF799R
In my experience the author has very little say beyond "suggestions"
initially. The life of an author is a pretty poor one unless you hit a
bestseller. Usually your advance covers the potential royalties for the print run
the publisher has printed. No one generally makes any money until you reprint
and these days that is pretty rare unless you are JK Rowling.
Philippa
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In the hope that there are budding authors on this forum, I repeat what I have written about before: the world of publishing is changing before our eyes, and the cards held by the middleman (the industry that sits between the writer - author, and the reader - customer) are getting weaker by the moment.
The book industry is about the big release and the fast sale. Print on Demand is changing this, and now there is a new industry known as 'the long tail'. What this means is a book, CD or video may have a burst of buying at the beginning, but then will continue to sell a few units a month... for years. The traditional industry has no interest in the long tail because the units physically occupy warehouse space, and the value of the shelf exceeds the profits of the item.
With POD, the item occupies a few megabytes of disk at a time when disk in volume is becoming absurdly cheap. With POD the actual copy is printed, or in the case of a CD/DVD - burned, only after someone has ordered a copy. Books are printed on a huge machine that does 800 pages a minute, print, bind, package and ship out the door.
Suddenly, the author no longer needs a publisher. Between the writer and the reader lies low-cost technology rather than complicated manual publicity and distribution system. Instead, the author needs marketing which in today's internet & media world may mean Twitter, Facebook, a mention on Oprah rather than making the NY Times book review.
In the case of marketing a new book on Bristols, I wager 90% of the market can be reached using the forums, the clubs and the few companies that specialise in Bristols. The reason to use Haynes is vanishing by the day.
For the author who follows this route, profits come to his or her bank account, and they promise to be larger provided the author prices the book right, and the author writes a book people want to buy.
This is a new industry, and it is changing every day. This year Espresso was released... go into a coffeeshop, select a book from a screen, and it is printed there and then. Amazon is pushing Kindle, an electronic book.
Publishing companies are aware of the changes, and many will go out of business as their expertise is rendered obsolete.
If it all goes well, authors can expect their earnings to begin to reflect the value of their works... although one can also expect there will be a whole lot more authors in the world, where the new products will be those that find the gems among the rubbish.
Claude