Transfer of Power

For a long time, power in the publishing industry has rested with the publishers. They decide who gets published. Authors could write the best book in the world, but if a publisher doesn’t bother to read the sample that is sent in because they are in a bad mood or just don’t like your query letter, the book would never see the light of day. Power transferred a little bit to agents not long ago, as they were able to use some insider influence to get editors to actually read a book, instead of passing it over after a quick glance. But the author’s fate was still at the hands of the agent deigning to read the book.

Now, with the growth of self publishing and the rise of small presses, if a big agent or publisher ignores an author, they have alternatives to get their book published. I played the Query Publisher game, and after a dozen or so submissions and only form (or no) responses back. Part of that is understandable, the big companies get THOUSANDS of submissions. there are only so many hours in the day. Stuff sent in might be gold…if it got edited.  Most of its not.

This transfer of some power back to the author has come with consequences though. Since anyone can self publish their ebook, there’s ton of crap out there. How does a no-name author rise above the pile to reach an audience? It’s the same problem we had when facing publishing, it’s just moved.

In many ways this is better. Instead of a few editors deciding your fate, it’s crowd sourced to the internet. Good stuff will usually eventually be filtered to the top. But it might take years or never.

One way to help those odds is through book review sites. If a blogger gives a positive mention to a book, some of their readers might check it out. Even if its 10 people, that’s 10 more that have heard of your book that didn’t before.

Once again, however, we face the same problem of volume. There are more book review sites than major publishers, but many of them do it as a hobby, not a business. They can only review so many books. If they accept submissions, once they gain any kind of audience, they will get diluged with submissions. And once again, the author is left to the hands of fate.

So my novel experience has taken an interesting circular journey. From querying big publishers and mostly getting ignored (form letters) to now having a book out, but being ignored by review websites. Though, I can’t really feel any animosity towards them . If a few hundred people emailed me asking me to read and review their book, I couldn’t respond to them all, much less read them all and pick the best.

The rise of self and small press publication has seen power transferred from big publishers, to be spread out to authors, smaller press, agents and review websites. But it has also seen the growth in volume of the number of people attempting to publish books. On the one hands, thats not bad. More books is good. But the volume has grown with the people who have a hand in which books become popular.

In the end, the situation isn’t much different. It’s still kind of a crapshoot which books hit wide spread audiences and actually become profitable. Though, authors certainly have more control now, since they have an easier time getting an actual book to exist beyond a Word file on their hard drive.  So I’d call that a positive step forward.