ugh! i'm APP-alled

[Adrian]

Jonathan wrote: ". . . wylie is almost universally despised in the industry-- his nickname is "the jackal" . . . he regularly poaches clients from other agents . . ."

The jackal ate my baby.

Or was it a dingo?

One of those goddamn things ate my baby!

[Elizabeth, bubbles]

First, thanks again for the insights here.

I had to google "Wylie," and I am disgusted to hear that the author makes 7% of the cost of a kindle book. Thanks, Jonathan. We readers who aren't writers need to know these things.

Are people really going to forgo books for e-readers?

We all understand that there is a finger lickin' trifecta here for corporations like Amazon. E-readers provide a new path to market, officially instant customer fulfillment and drastically decreased overhead. They will try as hard as they can to act as if the change has already happened and hope market demands follow suit.

However, this path also presents many benefits that could lead to increased author control, faster distribution and increased profit from their own works.

The devices are going to be commoditized and standardized in no time. Kind of like Moore's Law... power will double and double and cost will be halved and halved. Once there is a universal format, maybe groups of authors could get together and sell their e-books at margins all for themselves.

E-reading may or may not go away, but I'm sure corporations couldn't care less. Any corporate investment is worth the reward if they invent a new path to market and dominate it. In this case, they don't have that much to lose.

I saw the NYT ARTICLE about Wylie's plans to hijack his clients rights from the publishers and align with Amazon. I would not really want the guy in this picture near my baby.

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun here. Kindest regards to all of you. E.

EDIT: Please excuse my brazenly inexperienced and undereducated speculations... just commented for fun. :)

[Christopher, Swanny]

So as someone definitely on the outside of the publishing business who is trying to peek in...do we need the publishing companies? Really need them? The smaller houses have all been bought by the half dozen or so big houses, so there seems to be a move toward homogeneity...

On the other hand, I have this fantasy that one day I will have an agent AND and editor, both of whom will talk with me about my work, offer support and criticism, and help me get my fiction in the hands of readers. If there are no publishing houses, then does all this get reduced to a bunch of e-mails with an Amazon Publishing call center? And I love my hard copy, printed, bound books.

Guess I'd like to know what the folks who have access to the publishing kingdom think about this whole shakeup in the publishing industry.

[Matt, e-monk]

a few quick hits

1)as long as books are sold as physical objects in actual stores you probably will continue to need publishers - a publisher's primary function is to put books on shelves - if this reality changes then publishing houses will have to change function or go away

2)the consolidation of publishing houses has pretty much lead to a focus on big win block busters and this isnt working too hot as it leads to more money going to fewer authors trying to meet expectations that are too high

sort of in response to this what we are seeing in the last couple of years is the return of small independantly minded (and owned) publishers who focus on just a handful of books and work on smaller more manageable scales utilizing both the new technology and social networking options AND the older traditional independant bookstore word of mouth approach - these publishers give more attention to their smaller lists, have lower more manageable expectations of performance and are therefore more supportive of and patient with their select stable of authors

[Christopher, Swanny]

Okay, the "Jerry Maguire" model: fewer clients, less money. I like that. Now if only I could find a Jerry Maguire.

[Shel, ad astra per aspera]

My college roommate works for a big NY firm and she handles all of the manga. They have private labels, etc. etc. and one of the "titles" she manages is Pokemon.

The way she described it to me, the people who actually work on Pokemon number at under 100 -- and what they gain from the deal with her is the physical infrastructure of printing, storage, distribution and supply chain management.

But that, too, is changing. I like e-monk's articulation here. I think JE is a good example of how that model can succeed.

Almost like grass-roots fan base. Which is amazing in the world we live in.