E-Publishing and the Future of Books (Part 4)

Author Melissa Foster opts for a provocative title for a recent article on The Huffington Post: Are Self-Publishing Authors Killing the Publishing Industry? Her answer? Yes. “Self-published authors have created a devaluing of the written word,” she writes, “and, some of them are scrambling to see how low they can go to get noticed.”

She supports her statement by citing dirt cheap book prices, Amazon’s KDP Select program, and a seeming desire to put a book up for profit and nothing else, editors be damned.  It’s a bold accusation, but one that I’m hearing more and more. Indie authors, we read, are contributing not to the evolution of the publishing industry, but to a corruption of books and literature.

Today, anyone can write a book, publish it online for free, and with a small investment, even pretty it up with some professional editing and cover art. It’s easy, it’s cheap, and if you’re lucky, the profit margin could be big. (Could be, not will be.) In today’s publishing world, everyone gets a shot. It’s quite the paradigm shift, and it’s not making everyone happy.

Image via CrunchBase

Count Foster in this group. Does all of this mean that indie authors are killing the publishing industry? “Yes,” Foster writes, “in a sense it does.” But she says little more than to point to the low pricing and the often poor quality of indie titles. Nothing is said about whether or not the publishing industry as it now stands should be killed. (Well, killed is a bit strong. How about changed?)

The truth is, the primary reason for the explosion in independent ebook publishing is because traditional publishers and literary agents have for years acted as gatekeepers for most of the book-reading public. What they accepted was published. And still, we ended up with trashy romances, Dan Brown retreads, YA vampire romances clogging the shelves at Target and Walmart, and books written by the cast of The Jersey Shore. Is this valuing the written word? No, it’s a search for profit, and that’s not a bad thing.

I see Foster’s point that the deluge of $.99 books may harm publishing, both traditional and electronic, because it can lead to price value over quality. But it’s a huge stretch to state that we have, through more traditional print publishers, valued the written word in the past. Again, Snooki had her autobiography published by Simon & Schuster. Let that sink in.

Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi attending a party in Chicago (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yet somehow, when indie authors desperate for a reading audience (because the traditional publishers won’t give them a second look) market their ebooks for $.99 or promote book giveaways, this is a devaluing of books, a sign of the end times. In reality, it’s a sign of an ossified industry unable to compete well with a broadening market. Readers want good stories for good value; let them decide what’s good and what isn’t. And if it hurts the traditional publishing industry, then why is that our concern?

Foster continues: “The lesson may be that if indie authors don’t value their work, chances are no one else will either. Readers want, and deserve, quality books, and they’re used to paying for them.”

The assumption is that indie authors see dollar signs in their work and little else. Yes, readers do want quality work, and yes, they’ll pay for it. But is that what they’re always getting for $11.99 at Barnes & Noble, and does a $.99 ebook not give them that?

Now, with all that said, it is important to manage one’s expectations, and on this point Foster is correct. Just because one’s book is cheap, and just because a few authors here and there hit it big with low-priced titles, doesn’t mean that one should divine in this a pattern. Even with a great deal of hard work done marketing an ebook, luck always plays a part, and most indie authors won’t get all the luck.

Her last point, too, is a good one. Indie authors should be concerned about their reputations. Seeking the “get-sales-quick gimmicks” certainly can hurt their reputations, and low prices alone aren’t enough to take on the big publishing companies. Quality matters. Still, we can’t jump to the conclusion that low cost automatically implies inferior product, or that low cost implies money-grubbing authors.

Read the whole thing. Foster does have some good points, though she overstretches much of her argument. (For the record, I’m a fan of Melissa Foster, and an avid re-tweeter of hers on Twitter.) What do you all think? Does she have a point? Or is she going too far?

C.T.

P.S. After checking the comments, Melissa said that the title wasn’t her idea. So perhaps I should have given her a little slack on that!

Update: I forgot to add links to the previous three posts in this series. So, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Enjoy!