Closing out 2014:
Thoughts on Publishing
I begin with this quote by vocal artist Taylor Swift. While I am not a particular fan of Ms. Swift, I immediately identify with her reluctance and ultimate refusal to devalue her work by having it offered on Spotify. I won’t profess to know the details, nor have I made a study of the program or its workings. But I do understand that Swift has made a study and simply put, I trust her belief that she lost money in the process. Her thoughts could easily be applied to the book market: “Everybody’s complaining about how [music] sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things.” Sound familiar?
I’ve long stood behind the philosophy that giving away one’s creative endeavors weakens the industry. As David Streitfeld discusses in “Amazon Offers All-You-Can-Eat Books. Authors Turn Up Noses.” (New York Times, December 27, 2014), the book business is already saturated and competition is enormous. The Kindle Store, he says, contains more than three million books, and free books were up by one-third last year*. Streitfeld focuses on Kindle Unlimited, a program that may help unknown authors gain followers but clearly penalizes established artists by reducing royalties.
While informational, the article doesn’t offer any solace or solution. For those of us hanging on to the edge of a sinking ocean liner, good luck. I feel like we are wandering around in the dark, occasionally gravitating toward a distant flashlight that dims and flickers out by the time we get there. Still, if we return to the real reason we (most of us unknowns and midlisters) write, we can rejoice in the modest following of happy readers we do have. We can be thankful that we are able to publish independently. There are still stories to tell and readers to read them.
Perhaps 2015 will see a balance in the cosmos, and indie authors will have a day or two in the sun.
*presumed to be 2013.