Re: future of publishing

 [Thanks Chris Smith for pointing me to normalcy with my emails 
on this list ;-)]

From: "Chris Huff"
> Disclaimer: All comments are my own and should not be
> taken to imply that Ooligan Press supports, endorses,
> or affirms these opinions.
>>
>>   From: Jon Noring

>>   > Do you think that the untrained will be able to
>> publish (as in
>>   > secure editing, copyediting, cover images, and
>> text design/
>>   > composition) as well as those with years of
>> experience and
>>   > education behind them?
>>
>>   Yes. <smile/>
>
> I have to disagree. I am not a "seasoned" professional
> with many years in the business, but just form the few
> years I do have under my belt I can spot atrocious
> design (cover and interior) and bad copyediting. I
> attended the EPIC event in Portland a few weeks back
> and there were a few horribly designed and edited
> books. There were some great ones too.

<snip>
> I am absolutely in love with ebooks and the potential
> they offer to widen the variety of authors that
> readers can be exposed to. However, I am also
> concerned that the overall quality will suffer. Not as
> a result of the writing per se, but because of the
> ability of anyone really to call themselves a
> publisher and set books loose upon the world. In the
> past, as mentioned by others here, the investment of
> capital required to print a book meant the publishers
> would necessarily have to be extremely picky about the
> books they chose to publish. With ebooks, at times,
> depending on the distributor, you might not even need
> an ISBN. You can literally post anything with no
> assurances or quality control.
>
> As a slush pile reader, I know that the number of bad
> submissions far outweighs the mediocre. And the
> mediocre far outweigh the good. .............simply were not 
> fit to print,
> and the vast majority of those appeared to have been
> first drafts, judging from the simple mistakes. Again,
> the "their", "they're", and "there" issue, and many
> worse ones.
>
> In my vision of a perfect world, the editorial
> standards of the big print publishers will transfer
> over to the ebook publishers, but the absolute need to
> "publish only blockbusters to cover the cost of
> printing" mentality will vanish. .......... But the economics
> involved that allow so many more good/great books to
> reach the general public also allow an even greater
> proportion of mediocre/bad books through.
>
> I know that a quick dismissal of quality claims is
> easy, but without taking a long, hard look at the
> state of the ebook industry, there is no way to fix
> the problems that exist and move forward.
>
> If I have offended, please forgive. But please also
> remember that this is the opinion of one man. (See the
> disclaimer at the head of this post.)
>

Chris,

I think you have made a number of excellent points.    I still 
think Jon is right in the general forecast that we will be awash 
with books that would never have risen from the slush pile, those 
which would never have been sent there and those that various 
writing schools and vanity publishers encourage to become a 
reality.

One thing that is rarely understood outside publishing is that 
often any chosen work still has to have extensive editing and 
checking before it is fit to be a decent offering.   Even through 
the traditional filters there must be hundreds of thousands of 
new works published every year round the world;  hard enough to 
keep track of.

But your figures of what is selected from the sluch pile does 
fill one with foreboding about how many new works we might see as 
the options for self-publishing become easier and cheaper.

Which means that forms of filtering will become more important 
than ever.   Indeed post-publication filtering has always gone on 
too, with bookshops and other outlets conducting that part.

One option which may become major is the niche approach.   I 
think Baen is a good example of how that might go.   So people go 
to Baen repeatedly because they know that the selection is 
filtered to a content that appeals to them.    There are 
countless niches where this may occur.

There must be, as there always are, disadvatages which will not 
appear at first.   One is the difficulty of getting a book that 
crosses genres to be accepted by any of these new filters, let 
alone all of them.    Another is the increased splintering of 
society as the general and cross-niche work and general social 
networks become rare.

Which makes one wonder how there might actually be a system of 
offerings and filtering  that brings people together.

Joseph Harris 


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