Many
years ago, at the ripe old age of eight, I decided to write my first book. Two
things didn't happen, it didn't get published and the story I wrote never quite
got beyond a few hundred words. Fifty years later I've had four books
published, but I had to go it alone and self-publish on the Kindle. Once upon a
time, this was called 'Vanity Publishing' but these days that term seems to
have been forgotten. It now seems we are self-publishing or better still, and
much sexier, we self-publishers are classed as Indie Authors.
So what is the future of the traditional publisher? Take a look at how many Kindle books there are on Amazon and you would probably say that the traditional publisher is fast approaching extinction. I beg to disagree. Although the publisher is not as all powerful as he once was, he still is the pinnacle that most authors want to attain.
The problem with indie publishing is that most of us not only write our content, we also edit it and there we have one of the banes of the indie. It's hard enough writing the stuff, but to edit it as well takes an expert and most of us get it wrong in one way or another. Another major hurdle we indies have to get over is selling our work. Never mind designing the front cover, writing your taglines and generally getting the work ready to publish, that's pretty straightforward. The real hard part is selling it. Even if you have written the best book ever, it may never sell in enough numbers to make you want to go through the whole process again. Some indies sell hundreds and some sell a handful, very few sell a life changing amount. Why? Because it's pretty hard, that's why.
The publisher, the real publisher, has a dedicated team of experts who not only know how to edit your work, but also how to polish it, hone it, smooth the rough edges and then finally how to package it and best of all, they know how to sell it.
The traditional publisher is far from dead. He sits and watches and bides his time. He will still be around when we indie authors have long since called it a day and stopped trying to sell our works, mainly because of the brick wall we can't seem to surmount, the one the real publishers built years ago to keep the riff-raff out.
