Thursday, February 9, 2012

Changes in Publishing by Christine Duncan

Some of the buzz this week appears to be about a decision by Barnes and Noble. They have decided not to stock books published by Amazon Those of us who have been e-published a while thought we could side step the war between giants. Ebooks, or so the theory went, would always be available, did not depend on big publishing houses, were not as subject to things like recession. The theory failed to take into account the sheer mind-boggling amount of stuff out there on the internet. Ebooks, are many times, lost in the huge vastness of the information age. I keep having this discussion with one of my sons, who is in a band. He sees all of this as the "artist" taking back his own. The music industry was fundamentally changed, he says, by the internet, the iPhone, the MP3. Bands can go around the big recording companies and get exposure. They can find an audience. The question is, in my mind, is it a good change? Do those bands finding an audience make any money at it? Can I as a writer in a ever changing industry do so? So does it matter that one big titan is battling another big titan in the book industry? Will it make any difference to those of us who are writing today? You tell me.

3 comments:

Steven J. Wangsness said...

I think this refers to print books published by Amazon, yes? It's certainly reasonable from B&N's point of view, since carrying them would strengthen one of its competitors. I don't think it really affects the ebooks business, since Kindle is its own format and Nook uses epub. That's why publishing your book as an ebook, as I did recently with my mystery TAINTED SOULS, can put you in formatting hell for a little while.

I think the publishing industry is changing so quickly that no one can really foresee its future. Despite furthering the digitalization of books by publishing an ebook, I desperately hope the printed book has a long future ahead of it.

Remingtonrite said...

I was traveling ouf the country and missed the BN.com announcement. Does it mean that books printed by Createspace will no long appear on BN.com? Where did you hear/read about the announcement?

Morgan Mandel said...

Depends on what your goal is. If it's to have your book read by many, you may succeed by joining the Kindle Select program at Amazon. Some are making money from it on their pay books. The one thing it does is increase your visibility. The jury is still out about how good it is for everyone who joins.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com