When the initial shock of DIY publishing hit the
industry, there was a slump in publishing new books. The industry experts were
assessing the categorical storm that was about to hit. The tide was sucking
agents and publishers out into uncharted waters, dragging the slush piles from
their desks with them. All these slush piles began to mutate into one magnanimous
tsunami of self-published books that would hit the internet sites such as
amazon.com, smashwords.com, and barnesandnoble.com.
This has resulted in issues that are stagnating
the industry of publishing - especially in books.
The Big Six are not taking on new unknown authors.
Of course they aren't. They face the same problems the independent authors
face. Even though their authors are known - famous even - they have to wade
through the floodwater left behind by the tsunami just like the indie authors.
The saving grace for their known authors is a reader can type in the author's
name on a retailer's search function and bring up all their books - old and new.
Unless a reader knows an independent author by name, or a book is recommended
by another reader, this likely isn't going to happen to an unknown. The slush
pile has been tossed ashore by the tsunami, leaving millions of books piled
high on the cyber-beach for miles in any direction. The likelihood of a Big Six
editor or an agent happening upon an unknown author's book in the tsunami's
aftermath is slim to none.
Marketing is unstable. Competition is fierce in
the publishing world. It always has been. In the aftermath of the tsunami, the
competition has become vicious. Unfortunately, readers are the ones who are
suffering the most. Indie authors are forming networks where the primary
purpose is to promote each other's books. Sounds legit. However, what happens
is readers are inundated with "Buy this Book," "Read this book,"
and other similar postings on all the social networking sites. I'm not going to
lie; I've done it myself, and sometimes still do, although I am not a member of
any indie author network. I rarely write reviews for other authors' books,
because I refuse to write reviews for books I haven't read. I also don't
request reviews for my books, even though I know it helps in the rankings on
the on-line retailer sites. If a book sells one copy, I'm satisfied. The words I
have put together have reached the world.
Pricing is also unstable. Readers are being gifted
with free, free, and more free e-books. For avid readers, it's like being a kid
in a candy store on free sample day. Sadly, many of those books sit at the
bottom of reading devices with the likelihood of never being read. The free
e-books have created a problem for not only the independent authors who do not
publish for free, but also the publishing houses. When non-free books are
published, they are buried in the rankings by all the free books and it's more
difficult to find the paid titles. Believe
it or not, many readers will not use the search and sort functions. The 99 cent
books are piled on top of the free books, pushing non-free books even further
down in the rankings. It's not Amazon or B&N's problem. Their primary
purpose in the e-book industry is to sell reading devices, and as long as there
is content to be downloaded it doesn't really matter whether it's free, 99
cents or a million dollars, as long as the e-readers are selling.
As with all categorical events in the world, we
will be wading through the floodwater of the DIY publishing tsunami for
several years into the foreseeable future.
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