One of the theories I’ve seen espoused about recessions is that they are really about a massive reordering of the economy. Lingering inefficiencies suddenly become glaring and are trimmed, weak companies fail, the work force reorders itself, and the strong companies either extend their dominance or retrench. The economy reemerges more efficient and ready for more growth.
The publishing industry has had to weather this storm along with the rest of the economy, and while the industry endured its share of tumult and layoffs, contrary to popular belief it is actually holding up reasonably well, especially when compared to the retail sector as a whole. Sales were off 2.5% for the year as of July, compared to a 9.5% drop in broader retail.
But even along with all of the economic pressures, the industry right now is facing a looming restructuring as e-books become more and more a part of the landscape. And as e-books become more and more common publishers will increasingly see their raison d’etre challenged by digital and self-publishing.
For the last hundred years the publishing industry has been built around one key advantage that no one else could match: distribution. Sure, publishers designed the cover and edited the pages and marketed the books. But the real secret to the dominance of the mainstream publishers, as anyone who self-published knows, was utilizing both their brand and their nuts and bolts distribution to get the books into the stores. Without traditional publishers: good luck. Publishers were the sole gatekeepers.
That’s all beginning to change with the Internet and online booksellers, and will change even more if/when e-books become the primary source of book revenue for an author.
Right now, with e-books hovering somewhere around 5% of sales, authors still need publishers. Even the self-publishing success stories almost always involve self-published authors finding their way to traditional publishers. Why? Someone’s got to get the books into the stores, and publishers are the best at it.
But what about in the future if e-books become 50% or more of an author’s sales?
You don’t need infrastructure to distribute e-books: you just need an Internet connection. An unknown, unpublished Author of the Future could do deals with the Amazons and B&Ns and Sonys of the world (or possible a single e-book distributor) and simply upload their book from Wasilla and voila, the book will be instantaneously available just as readily as the new book by Dan Brown of the Future. No warehouses, no catalogs, no print runs. Online vendors, as we’ve seen, will sell anything.
So, in this scenario, does the Author of the Future, especially one with a built-in audience, really need a publisher?
Well… yes. Maybe.
That’s because there are a whole lot of tasks that Author of the Future may not care to deal with, such as editing and copyediting, designing the cover, dealing with all of the zillions of different e-book vendors and their preferred file types, and, of course, marketing. Surely there will also be Co-op of the Future to reckon with – front page placement on an e-book store, for instance.
But most importantly, for the first time basically ever, Author of the Future is going to have a choice: work with a publisher, who takes care of a lot of the dirty work, or tackle the dirty work themselves, possibly with the help of ahem an agent who can help negotiate the e-distribution deals and work on selling the author’s subrights and help the author find freelancers to handle aspects they can’t tackle on their own.
If e-books-as-majority come to pass, the road to publication will be open like never before, and there will be a very crowded highway bypassing the publishers.
I really don’t think publishers are going to disappear entirely. The package of services and expertise they offer are unmatched (when things are running as they should), and it would be extremely difficult for Authors of the Future to navigate all of the complexities of making a bestselling book of the future by themselves. There’s a lot more to making a successful book than typing it out, hitting upload, and e-mailing your friends that your book’s on Amazon.
But publishers would have to be extremely author-friendly — they would be providing a service, not relying on their traditional role as gatekeepers and distributors. They’ll have to win over authors facing a choice between going with a publisher vs. handling matters on their own. Publishers won’t be able to rely, as they have traditionally, on the fact that authors need them in order to reach their audience, just as authors won’t be able to rely on publishers losing money on most of the books they publish.
This is why I think the relationship between author and publisher is going to increasingly be more of partnership.
I think it’s telling that some of the New Experimenters in the publishing industry, Twelve, HarperStudio and Vanguard, all treat the publishing experience as a partnership. Twelve cultivates the relationship between author and publisher and is able to do so by only publishing a book a month, HarperStudio limits advances but shares back-end revenue, and Vanguard asks the author to forego an advance in favor of transparency in marketing and higher royalties.
If e-books ever take over, the old system of authors and publishers squeezing every possible percentage point out of each other will give way for a system of shared responsibility and transparency. If the author doesn’t like the deal they’re getting they won’t be S.O.L. They can find another one. Or they can do it themselves.
But then there’s one more big looming question about publisher-as-service-provider: is there any profit in this?
I think so. My guess is that there will be a spectrum of choices available to authors, everything from no advance/handle everything themselves situation, where the author makes more profits on the backend, to the advance/traditional publisher scenario, where the author receives less on the backend.
But there are looming challenges with e-books, and lots of people are nervous about the $9.99 price point, and rightly so. Amazon is currently taking a loss on many of their sales in order to boost Kindle sales and market share. But some of these price point pressures, I think, will be sorted out by volume as e-book sales rise. Kassia Krozser blogged yesterday about how difficult it is right now for an e-publisher to turn any profit without significant scale.
My guess is that we’ll continue to see the mainstream publishing industry focus on the bestselling titles, and there will be a new crop of e-publishing services available for the rest. Some titles will rise up from the morass of author-published works and receive attention from the mainstream publishers, and some big authors will choose to take on the responsibilities of publishing themselves and bypass the publishers.
All of this assumes that e-books become dominant, and to be sure, that’s a big “if.” But things will definitely be changing.
Joel Q says
That t-shirt comes in all kinds of sizes. Sweet.
Moriah Jovan says
Author services abound; you don't need a publisher to purchase quality freelance services for every stage of book production.
What you do need is entre to the shelf, and I see agents filling that role in the future. For a cut, of course.
If the B&M bookstore survives in enough quantity, that is.
Dan Holloway says
Nathan, it's great to see an agent getting involved in this debate. A lot of us authors have been arguing for a while that as the industry gets flatter, with more direct outsourcing, we'll reach a situation where publishers will need to pitch authors rather than vice versa, and the key question will be one of what they can do OVER AND ABOVE the sum of the outsourcable services.
And of course distribution has been "IT".
I think you need to look at more than e-book distribution (because if you focus too much on that, publishers will get complacent and come back with a retrenchment arguing that paper books will still need distribution networks). The fact is that bokostores will increasingly be showrooms and the bto buy copies will be run off via the next generations of espresso machine – better POD tech will render physical logistics irrelevant.
The key with on-demand availability is that distribution will be driven by demand. And that will come through bottom-up portals of trusted readers. They're nascent if in existence at all at the moment – but they'll get there (I always use the planetary accretion metaphor). And, because that's the way things go – tech will follow demand. The future landscape will be driven by the reader-writer dialogue. Distributory mediums will need to make a pretty loud shout if they want a reason to butt in.
Marilyn Peake says
Nathan, I think everything you’ve said here is true. There are lots of ways for authors to publish today. It’s possible to self-publish a best-seller; it’s been done. And it’s especially easy to publish books in eBook format. However, it’s rare that a self-published book becomes a best-seller because most self-publishing doesn’t include access to widespread distribution and enough money to cover the cost of major advertising. That could change, however, if new distribution and advertising channels open up.
Dan Holloway says
@Moriah – yes, agents will fill that roll – but they will be more like the PR in the music industry than agents as we know them today
Voter says
But can it core a apple, oh Author of the Future?
Steven Till says
Authors will have a need for publishers in the future. The percentage of authors self-publishing via e-books may continue to rise, but I wouldn't think publishers would entirely disappear. I agree with you. It may become more of a partnership than previously.
There will still be authors who seek the knowledge of industry experts (publishers) instead of doing it on their own. Publishers will still offer a lot in terms of experience and time/cost savings, which most writers will need in order to be successful.
An example might be in accounting. Sure, there is plenty of new software out there that allows people to do their taxes on their own, but accountants are still in demand and are still being used. You can choose to do your taxes yourself, but how do you know you're doing everything correctly and are computing the right amounts? Professionals still offer experience that is invaluable, regardless of all the new technologies and mediums available to writers.
Marilyn Peake says
Article in the Boston Globe about a school getting rid of all its library books in order to go completely digital. Includes a rather shocking photograph of the gutted library: here.
Moriah Jovan says
@Dan Holloway
@Moriah – yes, agents will fill that roll – but they will be more like the PR in the music industry than agents as we know them today
Yes, I agree. I hadn't thought beyond your "showroom" concept (which I sketched up here one Sunday morning when I was bored.
Abi King says
Very interesting post. But perhaps the question is this: will readers of the future need publishers?
The internet has opened up opportunities for writers, but for readers, it can take a long, long time to sift through material that isn't up to standard in order to find something good ( a point I'm sure you appreciate, being an agent and all 😉 )
So, I believe that readers do want gatekeepers. And Authors of the Future will probably not be that great at de-selecting themselves.
So, who should be the gatekeepers? Traditional publishers? Amazon? Google?
Agents? (Cue mwah-ha-ha sinister laugh as possibility to take over the world appears…)
Very interesting. I shall watch this space…
Sean Craven says
Honestly, between e-books and on-demand publishing I have dreamed about doing the whole thing myself. (As an artist who's done some graphic design it seems like a natural, and as an old school punk DIY sounds like home to me.)
But publishers don't just put books into stores. The most important thing they do is deliver the message that the writer in question is a professional. There are a lot of terrible self published books, and there's no good reason for anyone to assume a given self-published book is worth reading.
There needs to be some kind of gatekeeper, someone who can put an imprint on a book that lets the public know that it's not amateur night. I can see agents taking on this role…
It might not be a bad thing for publishers to go back to their original style, and start regarding themselves as cultural institutions rather than farmers milking the bestselling cash cows. I suspect that if they start nurturing writers early in their careers, provide more editing than they currently do, etc, etc. they'd be in a better position in the long run.
Seriously, it's not just publishing. Look at what's going on in the music industry. They've been ripping off both the public and the artists for so long that now they're facing what amounts to open revolt, and as a result they've taken to indiscriminately suing their customer base.
This isn't sustainable. For any branch of the entertainment industry to thrive they need to provide benefits for both the creator and the public.
It looks as if similar crises are in store for books and films. As a wannabe writer, I'm both scared and hopeful. All I can do is develop the quality of my work and hope for the best…
… and wonder what would happen if Stephan King, Danielle Steele, or Dan Brown were to decide to put their next book up on Lulu.
Judith D. Schwartz says
It's not an e-book, but I'm exploring this myself and documenting it on my blog: https://litadventuresinpod.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the discussion. So much is in transition…
Charlie says
Why is "if" in quotation marks?
🙂
Novice Writer Anonymous says
I hope that traditional publishers don't go the way of the dodo. I certainly know I won't be able to traverse the murky world of publishing without an agent and editor to guide me along. If only to be able to have another couple sets of eyes to look at my work and make sure it's the best it can be.
Fran Ontanaya says
In nature, new species rarely extinct older ones. They only push them into more specialized niches.
I think it could be agreed that publishing as a business did spread a lot in the last decades. It was like Pando: acres and acres covered with the same tree and nothing else. But that wasn't a realistic situation. Most of it was opportunistic rather than a symbiotic relation with the niches.
I expect most of the activity to shift to literary studios. We are used to think that the selection process has to be vertical, with the publishing houses as ladders. But what all that means is just that the more eyes, the better. A studio team can do that aswell.
Travener says
How am I going to browse for books in the future if they're all digital? I can see e-books being important to the future of the few books that become bestsellers, but people who read books, I'll bet, are like me: they like to wander around in a bookstore looking for something interesting, usually not knowing in advance what they're going to purchase.
Or maybe I've just become an old curmudgeon. It had to happen sooner or later.
http://www.thebiglitowski.blogspot.com
Anonymous says
Charlie,
I just learned that means it isn't really an if. I think.
PatriciaW says
Kind of like what's happening in the music industry with CDs vs. online downloads.
Publishers will still provide a service. The definition of "bestselling", as murky as it already is, will change. Consumers will demand quality from e-books and self-publishing authors. Big name authors may elect to self-publish as quality book packaging firms sprout up.
Booksellers will have to figure out where they fit into the new equation, if at all, when publishers could simply begin selling in multiple formats directly to consumers. That one may be unlikely but then booksellers had better figure out how to offer multiple formats and what that means to the size and offerings of their brick-and-mortar stores.
It's all very interesting.
Margaret Yang says
re: gatekeepers. I'm thinking about youtube. We function as gatekeepers for each other. I don't randomly surf youtube, but if a friend points me to a funny/interesting/good video, I will watch it.
Lydia Sharp says
The thought of doing all that work on my own, without the expertise of a publisher, is overwhelming. And I'm pretty sure I'd not only make zero profit off a piece of writing that might otherwise do well, but I'd also look like an amateur jack-a$$ without the opinion/feedback from an agent willing to put their reputation on the line to represent me, and the help of a professional editor before the thing is published for the world to see (and even in that sentence I'm questioning my comma usage). We have publishers, editors, agents, and writers for a reason: they each have a specific job to do with regard to the project as a whole, so they can present a quality product to the consumer. If everything is left to the writer (the most biased member of the group), it's the readers who are going to suffer. And when the readers suffer, the rest of us are in deep $#@!.
Nathan Bransford says
Quotes around the "if" signal unusual usage, not emphasis or irony. That sentence wouldn't make sense there weren't quotes around the "if."
See Wiki Paragraph 1.3
Mercy Loomis says
What I'm interested in seeing is what role small press will play in the future. So far the debate has mostly been publishing vs self-publishing, as if all publishers were equal. But there has long been a stigma against small press in this industry, and I for one am eager to see if this changes.
If a small press can make more partnership-type relationships and still offer access to distribution, they may be well-placed to start picking up authors. Especially since the majority of authors have to do their own publicity these days anyway. As the major publishing houses seem to gravitate more and more to the "sure thing," I can see the possibility of more and more smaller publishers being the ones to find the new talent.
Of course, it's whether the new talent will stick with the small press or will flee to the big houses that's also in question.
Nathan Bransford says
mercy-
I think the role of the small press will be as one form of gatekeeping. You'll probably see more McSweeney's style collectives spring up around a certain small press brand.
The challenge is making small presses profitable, and Krozser's article is really instructive here. Without a great deal of sales volume it's really, really tough to make e-books profitable because of slim margins and low price points. And would a small press be able to provide enough of a value add when the author is going to be doing a lot on their own anyway?
Some will probably be able to perform this balancing act, but it will be tricky.
Whirlochre says
As a writer, the further away I can get from the dirty work (or "dirty work", if you prefer), the better.
And as a potential consumer, the last thing I need is a glut of unfiltered choice.
So — I'm happy to court intermediaries in both instances, simply to make things do-able.
I don't see things changing much in this regard (ebooks, recession or no), but maybe publishers will need to become more intermediariable.
scott g.f.bailey says
I think publishers of the future will offer the most important things they offer now: professional editing and design, access to distribution channels and marketing. As Nathan says, even in an exclusively ebook world, there will be co-op for front-page real estate on Amazon and whoever else comes along to compete.
Agents will, I'm sure, continue to have a role with contracts and contact with publishers. Who's going to sell my foreign-language, audio and film rights? Me? Not likely.
I shudder at the thought of a world where it's all self-published ebooks. How will I find books I actually want to read?
Paul Äertker says
Does the t-shirt come in red?
Dan says
Nathan,
You're operating under the assumption that books will still exist in the future.
YouTube video clips, 140-character tweets, and other 'snippets' of information already dominate the e-channels. And e-books will become e-pamphlets as our attention span continues to dwindle.
But unless you're already a well-known public figure, who will care about what you have to say?
So I believe there will also be gatekeepers, and that includes within publishing.
Randolph says
As of this month I've been making a living as an independent author and over ninety eight percent of my sales are in eBook format.
What really surprises me about all that is that I do it in fiction. I don't give workshops, I don't have a lifestyle solution, and I'm not going to melt those extra pounds off your bod with my breakthrough diet technique.
I have a great big pile of science fiction and it's an awful lot of fun.
From what I see on Kindle boards, I don't think I'll be a rare breed for long!
Today I'm celebrating having two books in the top ten on Amazon's Mobipocket eBook distribution site again. I love my full time job. https://www.mobipocket.com/en/HomePage/default.asp?Language=EN
scott g.f.bailey says
I also think that publishers will begin trying harder to brand imprints, and will market the imprints as styles of books, the way clothing is branded. Some smaller presses have already been successful at this for decades.
Bane of Anubis says
Price points will come down when there's a greater market share, particularly once advertising is injected into the e-reader market.
Publishers will definitely have to streamline themselves further and will trend even more toward marketing vs. actual publishing.
Anonymous says
Nathan,
This is really very exciting news the way you see this!
Especially at a time when I think authors are giving up on their writing, I can't tell you how much hope your model offers.
Emilie says
I think Author of the Future will find they need a combination – An Agen-sher or a Publis-ent. Strange mutant.
After what I learned last weekend at Dragon Con, between the New Electronic Frontiers track and the Writer's Track, Y'all's days are numbered unless you adapt.
Steven King's grumpy old man rant in this week's EW proves the point about the future of e-books, but I don't buy his argument about lacking quality. When people make good stuff, others will find it. There will be E-book experts out there who will lead the literary community in the future, and good works will be in the hands of readers. The question for you, Nathan, is where will YOU be?
Robert McGuire says
I've been wondering why agents don't make a move toward something you hinted at — cutting the publisher out of the process. If the publisher has already pushed the selection and the editing processes back onto the agent, and if they are now trying to push the marketing and promotion responsibilities back onto the agent and the author, it wouldn't surprise me if agents started to wonder, "What else is the publisher good for except controlling access to the bricks and mortar market?" If agents can figure out a way to access that market themselves, it seems they would effectively have become publishers. (There are a million other details I know including ISBNs and book design, but it's all expertise that you can purchase or subcontract.) If I were the head of Curtis Brown, I would wondering, "Why do we have X agents knocking themselves out to sell our clients to Y different publishers. We should brand all our authors CB and build our brand and theirs collectively by putting our energy in promoting them directly to the readers instead of to publishers who don't seem to want what we're selling anyway." In that case, your job becomes finding writers who you can partner with who you think you can do a good job promoting to readers and booksellers.
Jil says
I'm so glad of the "ifs" you put in there. (Note the quotation marks I suddenly seem to be using! You put the idea into my head and, like an annoying song, I can't get rid of it!)
But what of the future? In Planet of the Apes ( I think) they walk into a long crumbled building and are overjoyed to find books. What would our ancestors find if all we have are e-books and the like? And what if there's no electricity? And the satellites are kaput?
E-books are great but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Mick Rooney says
What is most relevant here is the term of Traditional Publisher and what it means. Yes it will always be synonymous with quality editing, product and distribution, and I fear this is all that commercial publishers will actually hold on to in the future.
Much of your article, Nathan, discusses how publishers are seen, certainly by general readers, rather than how they are seen within the industry, by authors, who dictate the content and availability of it.
Readers don't understand the gatekeeper mentality in publishing – actually they don't care – but the danger in publishers taking the safe high ground in a vastly changing and more accessible publishing industry (to self-publishing authors)is that they may find themselves run aground and only have the moral ground as a future.
What this means is that authors may more often cut out the gatekeeper and go straight to a service rather than a publisher. There is good and bad in all of this, but ultimately, it is the reader who will decide the destiny of publishing and the format they require their reading on.
The challenge is for publishers to understand this and adapt their business model to reflect this change. If they do, traditional publishers will represent what maybe a 30/70% split in favor of independent authors in the future.
When change comes – you can fight it from the outside or you can decide to become a part of it. There is the challenge.
Christ! You don't know how often I wanted to use unnecessary "quotes" in this post!
I've learned a lesson today, Nathan.
Jen C says
I don't know. I'm getting kinda sick of hearing about how publishing is going to die and everyone will self publish. I think that's stupid. In what other industry has the so-called e-revolution broken down the corporate side of things? Changed, yes, but not destroyed completely.
I feel like we've had this conversation a million trillion gazillion times.
Nathan Bransford says
jen c-
Yeah, I'm sick of hearing that too, which is why I said something different than that.
scott g.f.bailey says
@Mick Rooney: "it is the reader who will decide the destiny of publishing and the format they require their reading on."
I don't know if that's true. I never wanted e-books and e-readers. Amazon's successful marketing of Kindle isn't necessarily vox populi, and I don't see that it's doing the publishing world a favor.
Terry says
Illuminating post. Thank you.
As far as this future goes with all its options, my one, and maybe odd fear, is that so many terribly written books will be published that it will turn off buyers.
Consumer confidence is so important to our economy and to any industry's success.
Paul Neuhardt says
It seems to me that the lines between publisher, publicist and agent will blur, at least to some degree.
For instance, why can't a successful agent convince Amazon to put her bestselling client front and center on the Kindle bookstore as well as someone at the publishing house could? I suspect Nathan – glib devil that he is – could make as convincing an argument for that placement as could someone from, say, Random House.
Would an agent be willing to assume more financial risk by paying for editing, proofreading, illustration, etc. up front if they got a bigger slice of the earnings from the electronically distributed book? Maybe, and if they do what distinguishes them from a publisher?
Would authors give the agent a bigger slice of the pie to eliminate the publisher and still have a reasonable expectation of success? I suspect they would.
Who pays the production costs in this brave, new world of e-publishing?
The author? I know that in my current situation I can't afford to do so, and without a publisher to assume that risk I would probably never publish a quality product (assuming I ever do even with publishers).
The publisher pays that now, but will it be worth it to them with e-publishing? Only if they can find a way to capitalize on the market, and to date the economics of e-publishing don't seem to support that.
Agents? Um, I bet not, at least until they get 40+% of the take for books they place with e-vendors.
Jen P says
The T-shirt is one thing, but heck, what is "this!"
Mick Rooney says
@Scott G.F. Bailey
I don't know if that's true. I never wanted e-books and e-readers. Amazon's successful marketing of Kindle isn't necessarily vox populi, and I don't see that it's doing the publishing world a favor.
So the most important person in the future of publishing and where it needs to go, doesn't actually matter?
Scott,
You should try getting a job with a publisher at the moment. You'd fit in perfect with the current business model!
Mick Rooney says
@Paul Neuhardt
"It seems to me that the lines between publisher, publicist and agent will blur, at least to some degree."
Now, here's a guy who has it sussed.
scott g.f.bailey says
@Mick Rooney: "So the most important person in the future of publishing and where it needs to go, doesn't actually matter?"
I don't know what you mean here. If you're saying that the "most important person" is the reader, then I'm saying that no, we readers aren't the prime movers in what happens to the publishing industry. Customers driving business practices is a nice myth, though.
"You should try getting a job with a publisher at the moment. You'd fit in perfect with the current business model!"
Hubba-wha?
AndrewDugas says
Writers don't want to be publishers. They're forced into it because the chances of getting past the umpteen gatekeepers between the agent and the printed book are statistically against them, often for reasons that have little to do with the merits of the book itself and more with the guesswork of individuals who haven't even read the thing.
But writers DO want and need the rigors that the publication process bring to the writing. The editing, the review process, the constant refining.
Hopefully, between the economic shake-out and technological paradigm shift, we'll end up with a model that lets writers write and publishers publish.
Mariana says
This is a very interesting sociological analysis, coming to think of it: what comes out of an economic crisis and what are the recent social changes influencing the publishing business?
The major players will have to change their positioning towards the authors and their distributors, review their finances in order to adjust to the e-books pricing (as it seems this new paradigm is unlikely to change soon), review their business administration etc.; in other terms, modernize as a whole.
In this process, the publisher’s expertise will have to expand, for instance to determine better on line selling strategies, and even whether a certain book will be published exclusively on line or will have a paper version (as it’s happening with hard covers vs. trade paperback). Thinking of it, will be a bad thing for the future author to be published exclusively on line? (Besides our natural linking for paper books, that is, but will the author of the future share this liking?)
Following this reasoning we could also ask: how will the reader of the future be? Will he/she care about printed books at all? Will environmental concerns influence their choice of purchase?
Now, and finally, will printed books die? If we expand our imagination to the possibilities of future technology, consider neural links, new means of information access on the internet such as direct interaction with the cloud and so many other scenarios that, today, belong to the science fiction realm, but will have to be dealt with in the (near?) future.
Brilliant post Nathan, thanks for the reflection!
Mick Rooney says
@scott g.f.bailey
You don't understand that the customer demands and needs are the very core requirements of a business should provide?
I'll leave that little conundrum for to you to contemplate. Again, think, where modern publishing is now!
scott g.f.bailey says
@Mick Rooney: It seems to me that the core requirement of a business is to make a profit. "Should" is an interesting word that, as used here, likely has little place in a discussion of business. You should think about the marketplace and the difference between alternatives and choice. Sales not generated by need but by desire, etc.
AndrewDugas says
I wonder if book publishing will soon follow the footsteps of the Hollywood studios.
Back in the day, everything was inhouse, just like publishing now. But with the collapse of the "studio system" we actually wound up with better movies and I think the industry makes a lot more money as well.
So maybe the "agent" will play more the role of the independent producer. He'll find a "property" and pitch it to the publishing house, which will play more the role of the studio. They'll put up the money and lend their publishing and marketing muscle.
Of course, there will be independents, just as there have always been independents in Hollywood. (More so in recent decades as the cost of entry has dropped thanks to digital technology.)
All the peripheral players like editors and publicists and designers will be brought in on a per-project basis, as opposed to being inhouse.
Mick Rooney says
@AndrewDugas
"I wonder if book publishing will soon follow the footsteps of the Hollywood studios."
Thats a really interesting point, Andrew. There are already some literary agents who are courting authors directly. Very tricky ground Nathan will attest to.
In this discussion we are talking about, the future relationships, or dissolution of them, which moves authors closer to the end product/representation of their work, is what places authors at the forefront of publishing itself.