Publishing Isn’t for Sissies is one of my most popular blog threads. Two weeks away in NY, both at RWA Nationals and Thrillerfest, and everywhere I turned writers asked me to post more. So, first day back, what am I prattling about–What is New York publishing looking like/for?
Interestingly enough, I’m not sure anyone at either conference had a definitive answer.
There was lots of talk about new digital offerings, for example from Harlequin (Carina Press) and Harper Collins/Avon (Impulse). The major houses are very aware that the digital future of publishing is now, even though they’re still not ready to pay authors an advance for dipping their toes into “traditional” experiments into the medium.
At the Avon spotlight,the editors were talking about quick turn around and prolific authors and getting excited about how quickly they could get your content up on their websites. Lots of assurances that you’d get great editing and covers and face time on a publisher site they say has heavy traffic, plus the books will be out there on Amazon, etc. But with so many titles going out the door, and the covers they were raving about honestly looked like something my teen could photoshop on his laptop, and talk of fast writing and editorial and revisions that sounds pretty close to flash fiction at times, you have to wonder how anything but their lead authors’ books will get enough attention to sell well.
They do have a great plan for using the digital publishing of novellas and such to promo mass market paperback releases of the star authors. Those ebooks should get promoted out the ying yang, and it should help both the digital and print sales of the corresponding mass market releases. But the rest of the books, it seems, will pretty much be on their own.
Let me do the math for you, if this is the case. No advance. No heavy online promotion. No digital sales to speak of. No money. (more…)
