Saturday, December 7, 2013

New Trends In Publishing


By Bob Mayer

Everything old is new again.  What I mean is that while digital and ‘self’-publishing has changed a lot of things and upset the publishing paradigm, the reality is some basic truisms
Bob Mayer
about writing remain the same.

One is: The best promotion is a good story; better promotion is more good stories.

I write that as my 56th story comes out on Tuesday, the 26th of November: The Kennedy Endeavor.

I had 42 books published traditionally. I survived for 20 years by staying one spec manuscript ahead of my contracts.  I never thought I had it made. These days, I see too many people thinking a gimmick will make them successful. I think the key is more and better content will make a writer successful. Most people aren’t willing to get out the bum glue and apply it.

Second: The writer produces the content, which is story (not book). The reader consumes the story. Everyone else is in between and must add value to that connection or else they are an obstruction.  The distance between author and reader is the internet. At Cool Gus we call ourselves a publishing partnership, not a publisher because we consider the author the key, not the publisher. While many people focus on money as a key factor (and its certainly important), I believe in the next year we will see some big authors go indie, not for money, but for more personal reasons, such as:

-Creative control. They can write what they want. They can have final say over pub date, price, cover, cover copy, marketing, etc. etc.

-Controlling their rights, means they control their legacy. Most big name authors have ZERO rights under their control. They’ve all been signed away. As long as they are front list, they will sell. When the day comes that they aren’t front list any more, they will be shocked how quickly their sales will dry up.

Bottom line:  While numerous articles and industry ‘experts’ are saying traditional publishing has ‘weathered’ the digital surge and things have settled out, I submit we’ve hit a brief plateau and even greater changes will rock the industry in 2014.
 

5 comments:

Madelle Morgan said...

Thanks, Bob. Immediately after reading your post, I purchased two of your Kindle books targeted to writers, and visited your blog.

I sure would like to know what "even greater changes will rock the industry in 2014." Any hints?

Linda Lovely said...

Thanks for visiting, Bob. It appears that the "free" and 99-cent intro pricing strategies are less and less effective due to market saturation. In addition to publishing more books, do you have any "discoverability" recommendations?

Judith Ashley said...

Thanks for joining us today, Bob. The difference between "story" and "book" is an interesting concept to me. Readers do come back for "story" but first isn't it our book that entices them to read us in the first place?

Diana McCollum said...

Great post! I always enjoy reading your blog "write it forward". What sort of changes are you predicting for 2014?

B. A. Binns said...

I had an instructor talk to me about the difference between story and book long ago. While some people use them interchangeably, the book is just the delivery medium. The story is the emotional content on the pages or ereader or audiofile. People read for that emotional connection, he said.

I suspect that future will bring more and more of the end consumer (the reader) and the producer. I'm looking at the idea of different covers for different readers, additional, specialized content for readers who want it, and other ways of interacting with them.