Thursday, May 31, 2012

INDIE AUTHORS RISING

As another Publishing House crumbles with the filing for bankruptcy by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. of Boston, when the publisher filed for bankruptcy in court in Manhattan taking more than twenty affiliates down with them as they go.  Slowly but surely the gates of the old Empire are falling.


In the wake of this terrible news in the world of traditional publishing the Indie Authors are rising.  In the numbers of authors getting their books published, to the number of books the authors are publishing, to the dollars they are squeezing out of the coffers which were once held so tightly by the established traditional publishing companies.
The report I read about the newest collapse in Traditional Publishing blames the global financial crisis over the past several years.  It couldn’t be that the sales of paperbacks and hard cover books are falling so dramatically from the increase in e-books sales since its emergence around 2008.  It couldn’t be because the old system of business that existed and worked for well over a hundred years is broken down and doesn’t work any longer.  It couldn’t be because publishing companies don’t know how to compete in the new digital age which moves as fast as lightening.
The authors are still writing but they aren’t barred from the play ground any longer!  People are reading more today than ever before.  This day in age is a reader’s heaven as new authors dying to be discovered are giving their books away just so somebody will try them.  The new slush pile is scattered across the web and the Agents which determine which books will make it and which will not is the reading public.  There is a plethora of stuff to read only a click away!
The difference is you will not see the true winners or losers for some time until the dust settles as Indie Authors slowly build their digital bookshelves with the books they have written.  The sales slowly climb as they are discovered and the word is spread from reader to reader about the best of the books that are out there to be explored.  The Independent Authors are increasing in sales and exposure and plodding along.
I love traditional books and hope they are a continued part of my future and that of my children’s but if the Traditional Publishers don’t step into the arena with the Hulk that is known as Amazon they will only be in more trouble.  As much as I love books, and have since become an author of my own books, I had to self publish in order to BE Published!  I know there are tons of people who haven’t hoped on the band wagon of self-publishing, whether through self-doubt or high hopes of the mystical query letter sparking a fire to some agents pants so that they in turn can sell it to a publisher.  The old system is broken!  It doesn’t work any longer.  When everybody who has a book to sell figures this out, it’s over!
I may have to dig up the post I did last year where I explained a viable option for publishers to jump into the deep end and get into publishing in really big digital way.  Even if I did it would only be read by those who visit my blog and fall on the deaf ears and blind eyes of those who still work for big publishing companies.  Because what do I know?  I am just a budding Indie Author with two little books, and almost ready to release my third.  I know my sales are through the roof compared to a 2002 study of traditional books published that year and the numbers of books actually sold in comparison to those published.
It reminds me of that story of a child who faced a Giant with three little stones and a sling shot.  What was that story again?  It was part of a really big Book I read once.  It was a number one best seller also.  Oh yeah, The Bible!
If you work for a large publishing house and are just a wee bit curious as to my ideas to save Big Publishing, e-mail me at StorytellerTDW@yahoo.com.  Put Curious in the subject box.

 
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