I couldn't agree less with what he is saying. What will die is not writers, but the big, unwieldy publishing companies. As Teresa has said here before, more and more writers are expected to proof and edit their own work, and take more and more time to do the PR for their work, but the publishing houses take the same cut as before. The huge corporations that are trying to profit, to pay their shareholders and their execs huge sums of money will struggle, and the era of the indie publisher will arrive. Trad publishers have to bet on what they *hope* will make it big, and they throw resources at these books in the hope they can *force* them to become big. Indy publishers will throw fewer resources at their projects, but that only means they will risk less, and yes, make smaller profits. But they won't have to support HR departments, marketing teams, shareholders and execs, so those profits are still proportional.
Paper books won't die - just like Vinyl hasn't "died" - it will instead become the preserve of the collector, the enthusiast. Writers will still write, and those that are successful will remain so (Amanda Hocking anyone?). What will happen is that without all hype and advertising authors will become popular because of the standard of their work (and their fanbase), rather than the size of their advertising budget. Yes, there will be thousands of writers that make very little money, but right now there are thousands of writers that make NO MONEY AT ALL! because they are shut out of the publishing loop. Often (but not always) this is nothing to do with the quality of their work, or their saleability, but because the trad publishers simply aren't looking for new writers.
The stuff he says about piracy is hogwash. There is very little proof that piracy harms sales, and a lot of proof that it can help. Neil Gaiman discovered he was being widely pirated, and upon giving out a copy of his book "American Gods" for free found his sales in Russia - a market he had never been able to break before - boomed. VHS didn't kill cinema with piracy, nor did DVD, and video did not kill the radio star (though it did kick her when she was down).
I firmly believe that in the digital era there will be fewer big publishers, and a multitude of smaller, indie publishers (even if that means authors setting up their own "publishing" companies, as I have). There will be more and more choice, and yes, some of those will fail to make a profit, but many more will profit, and some will even do so handsomely. It's the start of the competitive writing era, something that hasn't really existed yet, as publishing is such an expensive process that anyone other than the biggest players are shut out. With e-books the costs of publishing drop to virtually zero, so the opportunity for profits increases greatly. Authors will control their own rights, covers, edits (both things they can outsource cheaply), and no-one but the taxman (and Amazon) will take their cut. The one thing that DOES worry me is that when this happens (And I'm certain it WILL happen) there will be no-one left to take on the might of Amazon. Indie publishers need to start thinking about a union, a co-operative, in order to best protect their interests.
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