The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 58: Can Traditional Publishers Do Anything Better Than Self-Publishers?
Time for another episode of the podcast!
In this week’s episode, we discuss whether or not traditional publishers have any advantages over self-publishers in the modern marketplace.
If you’ve been reading and listening for a while, you can probably guess my answer. 🙂 But I try to be fair in my opinion.
-JM
Before watching the episode I’d say that the backlist is one advantage. As time goes on and older materials come out of copyright this advantage is slipping away. Also as time goes by indies grow a backlist. So like all advantages it’s time sensitive. Nothing the big publishers have done over the last couple of years gives me faith that they realise that they are a dying business model. Anyone running a pool on how long until they ask for a taxpayer bale in?
I can think of only one company – Open Road Media – that is really doing a good job with backlist, but they’re really more of a new company that is licensing the rights to old books from the authors and the author estates and putting them out.
Once upon a time, Baen books added value and helped their authors. Jim Baen was an excellent editor with an eye for talent. He advanced beginning authors by pairing them with more established writers, getting them paid and learning at the same time. I didn’t realize how much he did until after he passed away.
David Weber is an established writer, who had been on my ‘must buy’ list, but his first book that Jim Baen didn’t edit was a goat-gagging turgid tome with twice the verbiage for the same amount of action as his previous stories. Weber’s gotten better since then, but War of Honor dropped him from my ‘must buy’ list. I personally believe that David Weber learned to self-edit to an extent, as no one that I’m aware of is doing so at Baen any more.
Speaking of backlist books, this is where current publishers are managing to stay afloat – by not paying royalties (or at least not true royalties) on older stories still in print. It’s not just Disney, it’s common practice to pay very little or nothing at all to authors that are still selling their older works. Many mid-list authors get frozen out this way. Lawsuits cost a lot, forensic accountants add to that, and the return simply isn’t worth the time and expense. Yes, I’ve spent some time on different forums, and read what these folks are saying. It becomes obvious when the author has switched to indie mid-series, and the trad books are ‘selling’ at 0-10% of what the first indie book is getting.
Yes indeed. There are many reasons I am very negative on publishers!