Traditional bookselling as we have known it is on its way out, but the underlying distribution and fee structure is unlikely to change at the same pace, as these ‘status quo’ businesses try to keep their old habits from dying out and new entrants such as digital adopt them! These ‘habits’ are their grip on business methods that keep their revenue options in place, whilst the world about them changes. And you can’t blame them but you can blame yourself if you fail to embrace publishing methods that do have the capacity for the first time in history, to now put the author of the book, authors, writers, bloggers and post creators in full control. However this will only come about if – you – the author take control: full control of your work, its production, printing and its marketing.
Amazon have changed forever the way that people buy books, and Kindle and others are trying to get us to read them digitally, but these operations have not really changed the industry commensurate with any improved status or returns for authors. Authors have been and probably still are the poor relation in the book publishing world. Amazon themselves assist intermediary distributors and mainstream publishers to maintain the expected middleman margins that they take for their involvement in the book publishing and distribution process. Amazon do so because the structure as it is supports their own business model and their own fee structure. A fee structure which is artificially loaded and biased against the originator of the product, the book writers: you the authors.
Writers generate the product and are the lowest on the feeding chain.
This is due to the paradigm of centralised thinking and business practices.
Publishing can change if platforms like Steemit can evolve to support authors.
Did you know that the publishers description for the volumes of manuscripts submitted to them by authors is known as the ‘slush pile’ it just goes to show their mental set and probable ‘blind arrogance’ as most of them miss books such as Harry Potter! Their attitude may not help them in the forthcoming changes to ‘their’ world. They seem to be no better than you or me in spotting a winner, but still see themselves, probably due to their back catalogue of captive author’s material that they ‘own’ such titles and negotiate new media rights to them but entirely new material can escape their game. Why do we need publishers when technology can take an author directly to Amazon or better still to their own online publishing service!
Can Steemit evolve to become a platform like Kindle?
A Blockchain Alt Kindle?
Producing better and fairer rewards for all types of authors writers, bloggers and post creators?
I am optimistic.
wonderful post and narrative. Thank you for sharing!
cheers have a good day
I think you have a good point. I joined steemit to try and make money from stories and books I write without investing too much time in editing and promoting. I used steemit as a beta-reader group with some money on the side. It's important to remember that there's a good reason publishers charge authors to edit, publish and promote their book. All of that work is time consuming and requires skills most authors simply do not have.
There are two major issues with steemit becoming the blockchain for authors:
So I am not as optimistic as you. I am realistic. Which is why I am back (after a year of absence), experimenting with SP delegation to bots and different types of content to publish. Because why not?
Thank you for your informative comments, and I agree s Game of Whales it seems to be.
I am going to see how it evolves, something will EVOLVE from this still early days, Cheers Dave
Agreed. The most important part right now, I believe, is writer guilds that upvote content and help authors improve with constructive criticism. That would be good. An author whale to lead such a movement.