If you ask around, you’ll get a bunch of different opinions on why the book publishing industry is having trouble.  Often you’ll hear that piracy is the problem.  Amazon is another usual suspect.  The internet in general, encompassing piracy, Amazon, and this horrible new generation that thinks everything should be free . . .

But to place blame on any of the above is to really miss the point.  The publishing industry is struggling because it is losing control of the process at both ends.  The distribution channels, led by Amazon, perhaps to be joined by Apple, are taking bits of the process.  They have said, “you need us as much as we need you, and it’s time to start negotiating with that in mind”.  And on the other side, the quality and availability of tools to self-publish have risen dramatically, and are continuing to rise.  That’s not to say that an author with a blog and an account at Lulu is on equal footing with a best-selling author with the backing of an entire publishing company.  But the gap has closed enough that the author, too, has a bargaining chip.

At the end of the day, the price paid by readers and distributors is dropping and the price paid to authors is rising.  This makes it easy to think that price is the root of the problem rather than merely the most visible effect.

Publishers need to step back and think about what they can provide that has real value.  They have editors on staff, and authors need editors.  They have marketers on staff, and authors need marketers.  What authors no longer need is someone dictating the terms of everything.

This does mean that publishers will make less money.  But this is a reflection of the natural economic process rather than something that must be stopped with new laws and regulations.  It is easier now to produce a book and get it into the hands of readers.  There are cheaper substitutes for the services provided by publishers (again, not necessarily of the same quality, but increasingly good enough).

In a free market, this means that profits for publishers will fall.  This is progress.  It is only tragic for those unwilling or unable to adapt.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Control, Everyone is Wrong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.