"(Bezos) picked publishing because it was obviously the most dysfunctional. " , from what I remember from a biography he picked books because they could be bought by users without checking them out first, they are easy to store and mail and you didn't have to pay for them until you sold them.
From Wikipedia: "After reading a report about the future of the Internet which projected annual Web commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products which could be marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising products which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, due to the large world-wide demand for literature, the low price points for books, along with the huge number of titles available in print"
Unfortunately a new balance is not easily achieved. Take "editing" as an example:
Most of us read "well edited" books, therefore we take "editing" for granted.
I am an amateur book reviewer & blogger. And I regularly come across badly edited or not-at-all edited books/stories. IMHO, editing can be (at least for me) the difference between greatly enjoying a story and parking a book on the side after a few dozen pages.
Then publishers also come with some sort of brand loyalty. I have my favorite publishers (and editors for that matter). For example, when I hear about the book rights acquisitions of a new author from my favorite publishers or imprints I get really excited. Because I know they've been publishing the type of content I enjoy.
So, all in all, it's shortsighted to see publishers as just "middle-man". This ecosystem has evolved to be more complicated than that.
1. Editing can and will still happen outside of the traditional publishing relationship. Authors should hire editors directly before releasing their books. Many authors already trade editing with other authors.
2. You're an incredible outlier for even being cognizant of the publisher of your favorite books, let alone having any kind of loyalty. Readers who are not industry-insiders never hear about book rights acquisitions.
> You're an incredible outlier for even being cognizant of the publisher of your favorite books,
I don't know what kind of books grandparent had in mind (fiction or non-fiction?). For me, I have a general awareness of technical book publishers and their strengths. Some examples... In general an Addison-Wesley or Morgan-Kaufmann book is better edited than an Apress book. Also, some publishers tend to gravitate towards certain strengths such as MK's line of books on big data & data mining. O'Reilly and Manning publishers tend to respond very quickly to the latest technologies (some might say "fads") with a topical book whereas Addison-Wesley is much more conservative.
Of course, there are exceptions to all of the above but the general tendencies of tech publishers can be used to signal the potential quality of a book (especially for unknown authors.)
I don't think the HN crowd would be outliers by having a sense of where the various tech book publishers fit in the marketplace.
If you set aside technology books, I think you'll find the situation quite different. Can you tell me the publisher of the last fiction book you read? How about the publisher of A Game of Thrones? Or the publisher of Piketty's book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" or any of the NYTimes Bestsellers?
As to point 1). In the publishing industry "editing" is not the same thing as "copy editing". Good editors are typically (at least with their established authors) involved very early on in the process and are usually pretty close collaborators with the author with regards to the shape/narrative structure/pacing etc. Waiting to get that sort of editor until directory before releasing a book is akin to getting an analyst involved right before shipping a software product.
The economy that allows for this time/skill intensive work is the blockbuster phenomenon. J. K. Rowling's later books didn't just repay her publishers for the investments in her early ones, they subsidized a large percentage of all the other books published while she was popular.
Lots of industries work this way, movies, music and VC are all predicated on a similar model. Does that mean it can't be disrupted? No of course not, but it isn't as simple as "authors can hire their own editors", because quite frankly none could afford it.
> Lots of industries work this way, movies, music and VC are all predicated on a similar model. Does that mean it can't be disrupted? No of course not, but it isn't as simple as "authors can hire their own editors", because quite frankly none could afford it.
Well, some could, but only ones that are already succesful (either as authors in the existing system, or from some other field.)
1. Is that based on revenue share? How many new authors can afford good editors? How many writers are good editors themselves? It's relatively easy to proofread but to edit a book is/should be different. And obviously this is just one of the many aspects that comes to my mind. Cover art, PR, marketing? All this could be done without a publishing house but there's value in each one of those. Value = money and/or time (something that a (new) writer may not have in abundance).
2. Fair enough. But arguably the "value" is still there (having an artistic vision, etc.) for the aspiring authors.
I feel like I'm being the devil's advocate sometimes when discussing about publishers. There are many things that are suboptimal or wrong about their business practices but I think it doesn't necessarily mean we have to underestimate their contribution to the whole ecosystem. I, for one, am very curious about where the new equilibrium will settle and how many other disrupting forces we're going to witness.
You should really put the URL in your HN profile and comment.
And I regularly come across badly edited or not-at-all edited books/stories
I also write a blog about books and ideas, and I see the same things. That being said, it is possible to hire editors. I hired one for my own novel, ASKING ANNA (for the curious: http://www.amazon.com/Asking-Anna-Novel-Jake-Seliger/dp/1495...). I doubt it's perfectly edited but so far I've only gotten one typo report.
I have my favorite publishers (and editors for that matter).
I doubt it's perfectly edited but so far I've only gotten one typo report.
Copyediting != editing. Copyediting is editing for correct spelling and correct grammar. Editing a book implies looking at its overall content, focus, structure and giving very high-level feedback. Editing is product-design, if you will, and copy-editing is more like quality assurance.
Like the OP, I think the big publishers are going down in flames soon. They just don't provide enough value in the value chain.
Unlike the OP, however, I think the publishing industry is on the verge of a great renewal. The only people that matter are authors and readers, and eBooks and print-on-demand can make this connection happen, without the need to pay any middlemen. More on this here http://minireference.com/blog/techzing-interview/#opportunit...
A lot of books, regardless of format, would be a lot less enjoyable without a good editor to make sure the story is consistent, well-paced, etc. A number of authors thank their editors in the afterword.
That said, there's still room to disrupt the industry a bit.
Well, and discoverability/signalling. The more books that are available, the harder it is to choose a book to read. And right now, the major imprints are a signal of quality -- such-and-such publisher decided this book was good enough to spend money on. Not to say that can't be addressed in this new world, but it's unclear how it's going to be addressed and what the tradeoffs are.
Also, by democratizing books, you may end up drastically altering the compensation structure. Right now, you have a relative small number of people like Stross who are able to make their living writing novels, and a larger number of people who don't ever "make it." A more open book-publishing market may mean fewer Strosses can make a living as an author, and more and more people who are novelists do it in addition to their primary job, rather than as their primary job.
So yeah, there's a very real chance that this new world of publishing does "destroy" something. And something else will get built. And there'll be tradeoffs, and some people will win, and others will lose. Right now it's really hard to say whether or not society as a whole will be better off. The thing about Stross's argument is that historically, there's very little precedent for being able to stave off social changes instigated by technological disruption. So even if he's "right," I don't know what's to be done about it in the long run.
> Well, and discoverability/signalling. The more books that are available, the harder it is to choose a book to read.
That's a problem, yes. I'm not sure how this will work out for novels, but for non-fiction I think this will be solved by authors going after very specific niches---the long tail.
This is unchartered publishing territory because previously publishers would never take on a niche subject because it wouldn't make economic sales to pass it through their pipeline.
> fewer Strosses can make a living as an author
Your point about the dilution of attention and book revenue is valid, but let me partially offset it / counter it with an argument on margins. By self-publishing, authors retain 60% of the list price (say $15) as compared to 5-10% of profits (=3-5% of list price) regular publishers offer. It wouldn't be too wrong to say authors make as little as $3 per copy sold, so if you do the math, it's actually good for everyone:
Superstar author, monthly:
Previously: 10000*3 = $30k royalties
In new world: 3333*15 = $50k royalties (assume 2/3 readership loss)
Less known author, over the same period of time:
Previously: 0
In new world: 300*15 = $4500 which is a make-me-wanna-write salary
It's not zero sum if there are gains to be had from efficiency.
"I think this will be solved by authors going after very specific niches---the long tail... This is unchartered [sic] publishing territory because previously publishers would never take on a niche subject because it wouldn't make economic sales to pass it through their pipeline."
Publishers have been doing this for a very long time. A lot of sales to publishers are built on the idea of having a built-in niche--even if it's not a smash hit, 'people who like x won't be able to pass this up because it's all about x.' Might sound crazy to the HN crowd, but this is still how the industry functions--baseball books might be a good example, though I'm not sure it's niche enough for you, they represent almost a guaranteed amount of copies sold to certain (acquiring) editors.
Well, sure, but you're picking largely from a pool that these publishing imprints has created. There are going to be many more books to choose from (well, there already are, but as long as the publishing industry limps along we don't notice it as much as we will once it's done being "distrupted" by Amazon et al).
We have a precedent for what happens when a glut of content without much intermediation gets dumped into a marketplace -- the video game crash of 1983. This is not to say that will or is likely to happen here. But it illustrates what CAN happen to the marketplace. And I don't think reading reviews in their current state is going to scale as the number of books grows.
I don't agree at all the doom and gloom about the book industry. I suspect we're actually entering a golden age of publishing. Before Amazon, I was stuck with pretty much whatever the local bookstore happened to stock, or whatever randomly appeared in a used bookstore. There were no rankings, no reviews to read. I'd read a book even if it was crummy, because there wasn't much else.
Now I can check Amazon, Goodreads, examine lists by my favorite authors, look for titles in sub-genres like post-apocalyptic fiction, look at curated lists by people I trust, etc. I'm not stuck with reading bad books anymore. Getting an out-of-print book is no longer any problem.
The barriers for any person wanting to publish their own book have pretty much all gone away. Sure, that implies mountains of dreck will be published, just like there are millions of crappy web sites. But the good ones still float to the top.
"The barriers for any person wanting to publish their own book have pretty much all gone away. Sure, that implies mountains of dreck will be published, just like there are millions of crappy web sites. But the good ones still float to the top."
This implies that all books require the same amount of capital to produce. This is clearly not true. Post apocalyptic, vampires from space novelette written in spare time is now easier to publish, but long-research, expensive production value works need to be funded some how. If they aren't subsidized by the publishers, who will they be subsidized by?
> Before Amazon, I was stuck with pretty much whatever the local bookstore happened to stock, or whatever randomly appeared in a used bookstore. There were no rankings, no reviews to read.
There were, in fact, rankings and reviews of books before Amazon. It was also quite possible to discover books -- and order them -- when your local bookstore didn't stock them.
Or, more realistically, you could:
1) Be part of a network of people who shared their own reviews, or
2) Consume one of the many wide-circulation publications that carried curated reviews from known reviewers.
For the average person, that was only a realistic scenario for bestsellers (Joy of Cooking, The Shining, etc). For all the less common long tail[1] books, there was nothing comparable to the internet + amazon.com.
Maybe some discussion of book readings/reviews on dialup USENET forums before amazon.com but again, that's a channel that only computer enthusiasts bothered with. All the C/C++ books I read were simply the ones that happened to be on the shelf at WaldenBooks, Bookstop, Borders, B&N. Even the hardcore magazines of C/C++ Users Journal or C++Report would review maybe 1 book an issue.
amazon.com has expanded my exposure to long tail books more than ten-fold. There was no comparable dissemination of worthy book reading ideas before it.
Implicit in these threads is the assumption that Amazon would never provide editor services. If Amazon dealt directly with authors, without going through a traditional publisher, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't.
After all, better books => more profits.
And, of course, there's no particular reason why editors cannot contract out their services to authors. I know some authors, and they review/edit each others' books.
Amazon would have to charge and book editing isn't a process that scales. At which point, authors just go off and find their own editors/etc and become a minipub.
Amazon has the beginnings of this in place with Createspace.
My father just published a book through them and received rudimentary copy editing and page layout assistance from Createspace for this.
For serious scholarly editing you must hire an outsider, however. My father used an outside editor and an independent person to create the index.
The end result for my father's book is aesthetically acceptable (not amazing).
The fact that this could happen is an indication that the publishing industry is ripe for (cue HN's favorite word, thrown around with wild and frankly immature abandon) disruption.
The book is a biography of Frank Miller, who built the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. (Think of a hotel version of the Hearst Castle, built by someone who had less money than William Randolph Hearst.)
The number of people who are interested in the book is limited -- Frank Miller is a a semi-obscure historical figure of the American West, interesting to a few scholars and a few people in the glorious Inland Empire of California. That said, I think my father has several hundred in hard copy sales already.
If Amazon saw that there was a need for editorial services, which I'm sure they would, they'd find a way to provide it and make it work. If nothing else, Amazon is an incredibly adaptable company.
As you hint at, it could even be an opt-in service. If you have an editor that you like, you could use that service (which could be anyone) instead of Amazon's.
You're totally right. Copy-editors make the book readable on the sentence level, editors make it readable on the chapter level...
The work done by an editor of a publishing house in the process of producing a book, is much more than the work done by project managers in the web world, yet it seems this is increasingly the tasks asked of them in industry.
What was previously the job of giving constructive feedback to the author has now become a project-management+coordination+marketing position and thus less time for constructive feedback is left... to the point where perhaps contracting a knowledgeable person to be your editor rather than hoping to get your 10-minutes of attention from a mainstream editor is the better strategy.
Note: Friends are family are not the best editors: you share too much common baggage so they will understand and find logical certain parts in your writing that readers at large won't.
> The only people that matter are authors and readers, and eBooks and print-on-demand can make this connection happen, without the need to pay any middlemen.
Sure, if you don't mind a shocking drop in the quality of the finished product. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the average print-on-demand and e-book titles I've read have had noticeably higher rates of spelling and grammar errors, redundant statements, clunky sentences, etc. than their professionally edited counterparts. This makes them less pleasant to read and reflects badly on the author, since it makes them look like kind of a dolt.
Writing good books is often teamwork with writer(s), editor and publishing company. Traditionally good publishers have picked up unknown writers and nurtured them years and provided them with editors. For the public they do the service of selecting promising writers and marketing them.
Consumers can't recognize writing they like like they select music, listening just few minutes. Reading something is always an investment and publishers reduce the risk of that investment. Nobody reads first novels from first-time authors for fun. 99% of them will be bad and even if the writer is good the novel probably needs lots of editing to become good.
EBooks and print-in-demand don't help to solve this issue. Nobody wants to read crap or likes the 99% odds of reading crap even if it's free. Somebody has to be paid to read trough the crap and discover the good bits. Amazon just sings up already known writers who sell.
Maybe the only way left for aspiring author is:
1. write into literary magazines and journals.
2. get sponsorships from (wealthy) patrons of literature who read those magazines or do all the marketing and publishing work yourself (basically two full time jobs in addition to your day job that pays the bills)
I don't know why the idea that there might be a "better way" to produce fiction would even occur. It's a work of art, not a product. Are we worrying about the inefficiencies of cottage industries in, say, the production of music, painting, sculpture, or other literary forms such as poetry and the various forms of theatrical writing? It seems an odd lament for a writer, though I don't know that he actually meant it that way.
I don't agree with the blog's author (Charlie Stross) but I will attempt to interpret what he's trying to say. He's not advocating for a more efficient fiction production method. The examples he cites are slow-growth authors that don't catch fire immediately and the failure of Agile XP "pair-programming" for consistently producing fiction any faster (the 75% contributed by both writers chestnut).
If you take these premises as unchangeable, he's saying that authors require a stable industry that "nurtures" their career and a ruthless capitalist Darwinism would destroy that environment.
I guess an analogy would be trashing the tenured status of mathematics professors and let other measurements such as crowdsourced student voting and dollar amounts of incoming grants dictate whether those math professors would have jobs. Under that dog-eat-dog scenario, a Charlie Stross type of prediction says that mathematician Andrew Wiles wouldn't have had the luxury to think for years on proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
Good work by good creators (authors, mathematicians, etc) takes years to produce and unlike a tomato that can be grown from seed to fruit in 75 days, their slow intellectual output needs a commercial environment that doesn't punish them while 2 corporations negotiate their financial differences.
Maybe I haven't read enough, but I got more of an impression that the industry in which a successfully writer of fiction is embedded views the writer's output as product.
And it is a product to the industry around it - works of fiction are advertised, printed, stocked, sold, shipped and consumed. Of course it's not just a product, but still that is the industry's main view of it. Much like how the music industry regards songs as "content" not "works of art". "How many copies can we sell?" is a more relevant question than "what is the piece's artistic merit?"
While the story itself might be art, the book, ebook, audiobook or DVD is a product. Publishers aren't producing art, they are in the business of distributing. (Most don't even sell to the customer but need either the bookstore or Amazon to do so.)
Writers, including critically acclaimed ones, can't produce their art without a legit publishing house making sure that their books are readable.
There is a long chain of people in publishing working to ensure you maintain that perception, so I guess that's on them, but everyone knows they're awful distributors and most of the value they create comes from elsewhere in the 'creative' process.
Right, but the comment I was referring to wasn't about distribution. It was about the limitations of the method of production, which, obviously are real and inherent (imho). What caught my eye was the offhand comment about not having found a "better" way to produce content (even going so far as to note that collaborations don't necessarily lead to greater efficiencies).
Has capitalism succeeded so wildly that it's now basically invisible? So something created and meant to be sold, but having some other quality ("art", in this case), can't be considered a "product"?
Markets for artistic works are unique in that the creators are often (usually) not primarily motivated by money. Everyone else in the business is, more or less (meaning many authors write as an avocation, while very few people would consider doing extend work of a tedious nature like editing for no money).
With the rise of ebooks they are also subject to the wildly counter intuitive aspects of markets for digital goods. High fixed costs with near zero marginal cost, leading to a fat head, long tail market structure.
Authors such as Stross who are commercially successful are in a highly elite group, so I tend to discount their concerns as being generalizable as a societal concern. Not to say that I don't empathize. Or envy:)
It's unclear to me how the disruption of the publishing industry would affect the quality of published work. The services publishers provide, funding, editing, marketing, legal, are essential to the creation of good work.
If there is no mechanics to pair such services with gifted authors, then it seems a certainty that the quality of published work will go down in the aggregate.
But as far as I can tell, the profound change in publishing due to the changes in media itself has yet to shake out into a new stable structure.
From Wikipedia: "After reading a report about the future of the Internet which projected annual Web commerce growth at 2,300%, Bezos created a list of 20 products which could be marketed online. He narrowed the list to what he felt were the five most promising products which included: compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, due to the large world-wide demand for literature, the low price points for books, along with the huge number of titles available in print"