Where Will Digital Book Publishing Take Us?
I recently read a wonderful book titled Lift – a woman’s memoir about coming to grips with her obsession with falcons, and the year she spent training a particularly difficult bird.
(click image to read reviews of Lift)
Like a lot of wonderful books, it’s supposedly about one thing (falconry) yet it’s really about another (learning to trust), and largely impossible to summarize in a sentence.
Unfortunately, given its willingness to mix graphic language about hunting with falcons with jaw-dropping personal disclosure, it’s equally difficult to pigeonhole, and while I thought it was brilliant, I wondered who was going to buy it.
Lift received deservedly great reviews, and the author wrote an eye-opening (and typically intelligent) blog post about the rocky path she traversed before getting Lift published.
She also revealed that – despite the swarms of positive buzz about the book – Lift has sold less than 500 copies.
I was stunned.
But then, I shouldn’t have been.
I couldn’t identify an industry category for the book; it seems clear her small publisher couldn’t either.
Would “Lift – The eBook” Succeed Any Better?
Which is why I’m plugging Lift here (karma, my friends), and wondering if the changes headed towards the publishing industry are coming nearly fast enough.
A lot of anguish populates the ongoing discussions the effects ebooks will have on publishers, authors and the book industry.
Most of those discussions assume the confines of the existing publishing world will remain largely intact, with seemingly little thought to how the industry might blow apart instead of simply evolve.
After all, a lot of copywriters assumed the rise of the Internet meant iron-clad job security for the existing writers. Somebody needed to write all that content, and a lot of us simply assumed it would be us.
Fast-forward a little more than a decade, and it turns out a lot of us were wrong. Work for hire rates have cratered in the bottom half of the copywriting world, and I’d guess there are five times as many people calling themselves “copywriters” – and half as many actually making a living at it.
I sometimes wonder if book publishing won’t experience a similar overhaul; a wholesale nichification of the industry (I didn’t know it was a word either), with all but a handful of authors discovering it’s more lucrative to fend for themselves rather than hand control over to a publisher (along with most of the revenue).
It’s Already Happening
I’ve heard several stories about writers – rejected by publisher after publisher – who are churning out genre ebooks, selling them for $5 a copy, and marketing themselves online.
A couple even suggest they’re clearing six figures.
Not bad for writers who couldn’t find publishers, and you have to wonder if talents like O’Connor – who show more aptitude for writing as opposed to coloring within the industry’s genre lines – won’t do a lot better once ebook publishing removes distribution issues from the publishing equation.
I tell new copywriters to seek out the clients and projects they want to write, and there’s no shortage of marketers selling “information products” to small-but-clearly defined markets.
Will deserving authors like O’Connor eventually (and as a matter of course) use the Internet to sell category-defying, high-quality ebooks too?
In truth, it’s already happening, and it seems clear the changes are just beginning, and that potentially radical change lies ahead for the publishing world (far beyond a simple switch to digital distribution).
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
p.s. – You can the reviews of Lift (on Goodreads.com) here. Read O’Connor’s deeply honest blog here. Or simply save yourself some time and buy Lift here.
No comments yet