I hope The Martian becomes the template of a new publishing world. Andy Weir couldn't get any publisher's attention until he self published and achieved 35,000 sales in three months without their help. He succeeded by word of mouth and not publisher's marketing.
Almost all of the fiction I read comes by personal recommendations. Including from social media like Hacker News. I haven't stood in a bookstore browsing shelves and reading blurbs in many years but I read more than ever.
A publisher provides marketing, editing and distribution. Literary marketing is becoming better in the peer-to-peer form than the old business-to-consumer form. Distribution has become unbundled via self-publishing. Editing is no less important than ever, but it would be so much better if the value from such an individual art can be captured by those talented individuals rather than by corporate.
Long live literature, but may Big Publishing fade away into obsolescence.
This kind of reminds me of the book Get Shorty and the subsequent movie. About a mafia loan shark moving to hollywood and becoming a producer.
Elmore Leonard was very familiar with movie producers by that point in his career, and clearly saw a a funny similarly between what a mob does and how Hollywood operates.
At the same time, the book is almost a tender mark of appreciation towards the role a producer plays. It's one of the few stories that spotlights what a producer actually does and shows it's importance in greasing the wheels enough to actually make a movie.
That was worth the read. I did get a bit lost when the writer was talking about the different areas, prestige fiction, commercial fiction, nonprofit fiction.
Most books are loss leaders for publishing houses very few are profitable and even fewer are massively profitable. They keep publishing books that barely anybody reads because they have to have a diverse catalog.
It mirrors the venture capital business. Invest in 100 projects. Know that 90 of them will likely fail, 7 or 8 will break even, and just 2 or 3 will succeed. Hope that the successful ones are big enough to cover all the losses of the others plus some.
no - capital intensive business has very different patterns than popular media business. The visibility of the VCs and the visibility of publishing houses has some small overlap. Day-to-day and implementation details, timelines for success.. audience, partners.. so many things are starkly different IMHO
Almost all of the fiction I read comes by personal recommendations. Including from social media like Hacker News. I haven't stood in a bookstore browsing shelves and reading blurbs in many years but I read more than ever.
A publisher provides marketing, editing and distribution. Literary marketing is becoming better in the peer-to-peer form than the old business-to-consumer form. Distribution has become unbundled via self-publishing. Editing is no less important than ever, but it would be so much better if the value from such an individual art can be captured by those talented individuals rather than by corporate.
Long live literature, but may Big Publishing fade away into obsolescence.
Elmore Leonard was very familiar with movie producers by that point in his career, and clearly saw a a funny similarly between what a mob does and how Hollywood operates.
At the same time, the book is almost a tender mark of appreciation towards the role a producer plays. It's one of the few stories that spotlights what a producer actually does and shows it's importance in greasing the wheels enough to actually make a movie.
They have to have a diverse catalog because they don't know in advance which books will be the big sellers.
well, relatively huge by the article's own admission.
on edit: changed but to by