The Fight Against The Future

Traditional publishing is at a crossroads as falling demand and new technology that allows authors to bypass their screens completely to bring their books to market. Make no mistake the cumulative sales of all of the POD books is not escaping their attention as they add subsidy publishing divisions. My question is would you pay to have a book printed by a company that would not accept your manuscript for traditional publication. Would the thought of maybe your book would be pulled over to the traditional side is it sold enough be a lure?

I would have a hard time going with a traditional publisher's subsidy division after being turned down. I think it is just a way for the big houses to try to step on the other subsidy companies and control the growing self-publishing business. This is an article on a traditional publisher adding subsidy.

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/10/major-publisher-opens-subsidy.html

dtpollard wrote:

Would the thought of maybe your book would be pulled over to the traditional side is it sold enough be a lure?

A lure? More like a scam. My dad fell for that. He went with Xlibris a long time ago, lured in by a sales speech about how Random House browses the books there for stuff to pick up. Yeah, right. What happened is he spent a lot of money, it went nowhere, and he even got ripped off for another $300 by an employee who offered to freelance- format the book the way Xlibris required it (he is not computer literate). She then quit and left with the money.

Even Harpercollins has link Authonomy with CreateSpace, it does seem like the way this are heading. Of course if we could look in the crystal ball and see how it will turn out we may be surprised. After all Ebooks could change everything as the article pionted out.

I do not agree that the publishing industry will go in the direction the music industry went...I do not know what direction the publishing industry will take...I do know music people, are not the same as reading people.
If the whole mess goes to ebook reading, I'm sure the standard publisher will offer the reader the best writers in ebook format...I don't see the big publishers going away...readers still want good work from good writers.

My personal thinking on the matter; If you're good, give your book ten years to be published. I read something Dick posted on Absolute Write earily in the year. He said he went with Publish America just to get a FEW books for friends. I agree with his thinking on how and why. All means of being published is good...if it fits your needs. It does not mean one is not a good writer.
I want to be published by a New York Publisher. Will I make it? The odds are 100,000,000,000,000 to 1...but what the heck, I'm game.
Why do I want to be published by a New York Publisher?...because I missed the gold rush of 1849.

Domenic

I missed the gold rush too, Domenic!