For Whom The Bell Tolls

The Wall Street Journal today published an article entitled, "'Vanity' Press Goes Digital". Although the article focuses on eBooks (The New Big Thing — finally!), everything it says can be applied to self-published, Print On Demand (POD), ink-on-paper traditional books as well, as we outlined in some detail several years ago in these two 2007 S&F posts titled, "It's A Whole New Publishing World Out There — Maybe", and "It's A Whole New Publishing World Out There — Maybe, Pt. 2". The material stigma attached to self-published books (a stigma made explicit by labeling such books "vanity published") is fast disappearing as the quotes around the word "Vanity" in the title of the WSJ piece subtly acknowledges. It's perfectly clear to us, as it was three years ago, that the traditional book publisher is today not only mostly unnecessary for any book author who doesn't mind taking matters into his own hands entirely (or into his own hands with the additional help of expert hired hands in the fields of PR and advertising) thereby reaping the maximum profits from his writing, but is a veritable impediment — a remnant of a bygone era, which remnant is on the verge of having outlived its usefulness except for the most specialized of book publishing projects.

Some months ago, we sent an eMail to a prominent literary agent who maintains a blog whereon she answers candidly and without pulling any punches even the most basic or most touchy questions eMailed to her by her readers about literary agents and about the publishing biz generally. That eMail read:

Given the absolute ease today of self-publishing a POD book the physical product of which is absolutely indistinguishable from the physical product put out by any major house, and given the amount of non-writing work commercial publishers today expect an author to perform in the peddling of a published book, what irreplaceable service does a commercial publisher provide an ordinary (i.e., non-celebrity) author today for its 85%-90% cut of the book's sales price beyond the stroking of the author's ego and vanity by the prestige of being published by a commercial house? I've of course asked myself the same question, and no matter how I twist it, the answer I come up with is none. Nada. Zero. Zip. Bupkiss. I guarantee you that anything you come back at me with, I'll be able to come up with an alternate way to accomplish the same end, and just as effectively, even when economies of scale are taken into consideration.

Your thoughts, please, as I suspect I must be missing something.

That eMail never made it onto that agent's blog, nor was it even so much as acknowledged.

Surprise! — or, rather, no surprise at all.

It's time the commercial book publishing industry stopped asking itself for whom the bell tolls. Manifestly, my dear dinosaur, it tolls for thee.