

Why the Lack of a Jeff Bezos Dooms Mainstream Publishing - anuraggoel
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/08/why-the-lack-of-a-jeff-bezos-dooms-mainstream-publishing/

======
CalmQuiet
The title misleads: a Bezos is "not applicable" to mainstream publishing
processes. As much as I like how well Amz meets my needs for a major discount
off cover prices of books, it does scare me. I don't want to see publishing
dominated by one company the way PC operating systems have been dominated by
MSFT (or AV media begins to be dominated by Apple).

I don't know about solutions to any of these things, but the www, that great
leveler of digital communications, seems to be getting carved up into a few
huge chunks by the likes of GOOG, AMZ, Face, Twit, etc.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this "likes me not."

------
electromagnetic
I fail to see the point or message behind this piece, it's all pure
speculation and fantasy. Disgustingly so.

> Mainstream publishing is focused more on creating the market through one hit
> wonders. Mainstream publishing spends millions on trying to find the next
> Brown, Rowling, Meyer, or Roberts...

Erm, no it actually doesn't. It doesn't spend a penny on trying to find
anyone, because you can't. It's not like music where you can scour a few
'battle of the bands' and maybe find some kids with talent.

Writers arrive at random and unpredictably when an agent takes on their
manuscript. Mayer had a dream, wrote a book about it, got an agent (who
realized it was good) and someone at Little, Brown and Company recognized that
the 4 book series was worth an advance of $750,000 dollars so she wouldn't go
elsewhere with it.

I'm sorry, but suggesting a single anything will kill mainstream publishing is
preposterous. There's three things that could do it: #1 lack of new talent
(doubtful, if anything there's more talent now than ever before), #2 lack of
readers (again currently doubtful due to the fact that global book sales is
increasing, even in the UK which currently authors more new titles per year
than the US, despite having 1/5 the population) and #3 they fail to adapt to
new technology (again doubtful, many publishers seem to be well involved with
eBooks, which seems to be led credence by the fact that virtually every agent
on planet Earth is walking around with a Kindle, Sony Reader or equivalent).
The only thing currently affecting book publishers is the economic recession,
which just like any industry is putting poor performers out of business and in
a couple of months will reward good performers richly.

The suggestion that self-publishing is ever going to do anything is stupid,
which tells me a lot about the blog. Anyone who knows anything about
publishing, is that you should avoid self-publishing like cancer, because
that's what it is. When a company will offer $750,000 to a new author with a
great story, why would anyone want to _pay thousands_ to a company that just
hands you a giant pile of unedited books?

This blog article honestly disgusts me, as does the blog. Their knowledge is
sub par, their criticism and judgment is equally so.

For Amazon to get anywhere in publishing it would be by offering bigger
advances, bigger percentages and offering more money to the authors. Amazon
can't do a thing without authors, and Amazon isn't going to get anywhere
without being able to draw masses of talented authors, which they cannot
possibly do without offering crazy percentages and advances to authors...
which will only make the amazons 'publishing' _more_ likely to fail. Bluh,
it's just stupid faulty logic and it hurts my brain.

