All this is one more reason I’m reinventing both my writing and the form in which it is published. Today’s print publishers are in business, and they follow faithfully their traditional business model. When innovations challenge them, they make a show of transforming themselves to adapt and innovate, but they don’t succeed any better than Kodak did when digital imaging came of age. They have become unnecessary middlemen, in full denial.

If publishers were smart, and mercilessly adaptable, they would give up the entire logistical realm of getting wood turned into pulp and recycled worldwide, and instead embrace exclusively the development, promotion and marketing of writers and their products – using the electronic media. They would invest in authors, and scale back their own bloated operations. In the end such a publisher could turn a tidy profit – as a smaller, leaner outfit that actually serves the budding creators of value instead of burying their tiny advances under tons of returned paper.

I’m not waiting for them. Hell takes a long time to freeze.

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It is awfully patronizing of a company to say, in effect, “We’re going to deliberately ignore what our customers want.”
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I think that’s what bugs me the most.

Incidentally, I’ve bought books (in both E and print form) after receiving free e-versions a number of times. I very much believe in financially supporting an author whose work I enjoy.

I admit I don’t know what the full answer is to the question of how the publishing industry can survive and grow. But I know what it’s not: delaying ebooks and charging outlandish wholesale prices.

The publishing industry is on the ropes. Profits are falling, bookstores are closing and ebooks are proving pretty much impossible to monetize effectively. The readers want their books without DRM, free to share, in lots of formats and instantly accessible. At a cost of less than a buck, preferably free. No advertising either — that’s cheating! There’s no way to sustain a business delivering what the customer’s apparently demand, so priacy wins again.

I make my living writing books. . . but given the current landscape I’m planning on retiring because I don’t thing the digital landscape has room for a writer who expects to get paid for his work. I’ll still write for my own enjoyment, but there’s no incentive to publish anything.

It is awfully patronizing of a company to say, in effect, “We’re going to deliberately ignore what our customers want.”