Thursday, January 3, 2013

On the State of Publishing's Future

Happy New Year.

Yeah, that's just how I feel. I am happy for the first time in my life. Everything is falling into place and I like that. The thing about being a writer is that you spend much of your time alone, in a chair, tapping on the keys of a laptop, computer, typewriter, trying to make your voice heard. That's the thing, you have to be a solitary man to do this (or woman), and you have to give up a lot of life to this art if you want to be taken seriously.

I know, all the successful writers out there have the opposite to say, some never had a difficult time in making it to the top, but they are the exceptions to the rule. That's the funny thing about life. There's always another recourse to follow. But I can only give you mine. Writing takes time, and it takes a devotion to the craft. You may never get noticed, you might be noticed right away. But whatever the case, things are moving fast, and the fastest are benefiting from it. And the slow...well they are just slow and don't deserve the worm.

I work every day on my craft. I work hard and diligently. I want to be taken seriously. I don't want people to hear that I'm a writer and say to me, oh that's just a hobby. It's not a hobby and I work hard to prove that. That's just the way that it is. I think that hobbies are fine, and some people have turned their hobbies into writing riches, and some have been plugging at this all their lives and are still not published. The beauty of it all is Legacy Publishing is on its way out. Every day they bleed until they are bled white. Sad to say, that's the case and it's a passing that is, in my book, long deserved.

Many writers claim that there will always be the Legacy Publishers. They will co exist side by side with the new wave of indie publishers, just like the music industry is still strong even though indie musical artists are proliferating. My question is why do they use this business model to compare to the publishing model? They are not the same. The music industry still holds sway over the key ingredient to the masses. Radio. As long as Djs don't go out there and play indie music, the average person will never know of them. The music marketing machine has a lock on radio and magazines. Local indie bands don't stand a chance of being heard over all this background noise. The music industry's dwindling profits come from the digitization and proliferation of their music without having a hand in it. They are losing in sales, not in marketing.

Unfortunately, for Legacy Publishing, they haven't been real marketers of books by even their own lesser known authors. When it comes to marketing anything but their top ten bestsellers, they could care less. What little they could do for them is all that they do for them. They want their new authors to go it on their own, and they do...they have to, because they have to sell scads of books to see any kind of profit, since the publishing company is taking the lion's share of the profit.

Social media is the new word for authors now. Also Search Engine Optimization and Virtual Book Tours and personal reviewers are spouting up like weeds in a forest and the big publishing companies are still using television, radio and poster/billboard campaigns to spread the word. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is far to stupid to realize where all the food has gone. It didn't follow the migration, but instead is loitering around at the same ponds, rivers and high weeds where it's prey used to feed. It missed the boat so to speak.

Yes, I'm saying it now, as the Legacy Publishers numbers shrink the proper business model to compare the current upheaval in the publishing business is that of the business model of the dinosaur....

Extinction.

Gregory

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