Hey folks,

Thanks so much for visiting the site. I’ve got a lot to talk about this week, but I’d like to start with a question.

Do you feel like your book is good enough to publish and that no one in the publishing business recognizes your talent, skill, or ability to connect with readers?

I imagine a good many of you have been treated unfairly, neglected, or just simply overlooked. Yet you have a book that matters, that could change people’s lives, and could get them to appreciate the world in new way… only no one with the power to get your book into those readers’ hands will give you the chance.

And that’s all you’re asking for really. A chance. A chance to see if your book would sell… to see if it would find a receptive audience. Because you know in your heart that it would sell, that people would love it. They’d see your humor, your wit, your ability to tell a story. Your compassion perhaps.

This past week I had the opportunity to interview publisher Kevin Watson, founder of Press 53. One of the major points to come out of the discussion was the realization that the landscape of publishing has changed in a significant and irreversible way.

For the first time since figures have been kept, print-on-demand titles outpaced traditionally-published titles in 2008 according to Bowker. Self-published print-on-demand titles make up a large portion of this expanding sector… self-publishing is a large and vibrant part of the publishing industry today. (Kessler, November 20, 2009)

I believe that self-publishing is part of a larger cultural landscape that has fundamentally shifted in our values regarding entertainment. Namely that shift is from an elitist to populist dissemination of entertainment.

The traditional publishing business model works fundamentally on the principle that a small group of (largely Ivy League-educated) editors select for the rest of us what we should be reading. What I have realized after more than three decades in publishing is that these editors are significantly out of touch with the lives of most Americans.

They didn’t grow up in trailer parks like you and me. They don’t know what it is to make less than 15,000 dollars and wonder how they’re going to feed their families.

Don’t get me wrong. People in major New York publishing are obsessively hard-working. They’re passionate about what they do.

They just simply run with a different crowd than the rest of us.

And their perceptions of what we want to read are grossly out of touch with working class Americans.

This is why traditional publishing must change or risk financial collapse.

This past week Harlequin Books announced a new self-publishing venture called Harlequin Horizons. It was the first time I’ve ever seen a traditional publisher try to merge a self-publishing business model into its practice.

I have said for years that this is a desperately needed change in how traditional publishing works because it allows the rest of us to get our books into print and then we have to sell them. And for the handful of writers who would sell well, you’d have an opportunity to rise to the next level.

Let me state very clearly: the most significant challenge facing publishers today is how to find new writers whose books will sell well.

The traditional model relies on literary agents and a small cadre of editors to guess what the rest of us want to read.

The self-publishing model relies on actual #s of books sold. Books that the rest of us have bought.

Self-publishing is the ultimate American Idol Contest… it is democracy in action. Nothing speaks louder than an individual author who puts her book out there and then sells 5,000 or 10,000 copies completely on her own.

Traditional publishers need to adopt a “farm system” based on the Lulu.com no-fee option of self-publishing. With e-books on the rise in a phenomenal way, any major publisher could create a self-publishing imprint that affords aspiring writers the opportunity to compete to see who sells the best. All in a low-risk option to the publisher.

This is a fundamental and desperately needed change in how new writers are discovered.

So what happened when Harlequin Books adopted this change in its business model this past week?

Professional writers organizations RWA, MWA, and SFWA threatened to remove Harlequin from its list of eligible publishers for their awards. This was the single worst response imaginable, and a sign of how desperately out of touch these writers organizations are with the cultural shift that has already happened in America.

Consumers of entertainment want to select their own entertainment. Whether it’s YouTube, American Idol, Amazon Kindle, or free music downloads from independent bands on independent labels. There is a populist shift that has occurred as a direct response to traditional models for selecting our entertainment, and RWA, MWA, and SFWA are essentially trying to force Harlequin to back down from changing its business model to capitalize on this shift.

The tragedy is Harlequin is losing money on these writers’ books and cannot afford to back down. Nonetheless, Harlequin acquiesced to some degree by agreeing to remove the “Harlequin” name from their new self-publishing imprint.

It is important to understand that if publishers do not change their business models, they will fail.

Harper Studio represents the best compromise I’ve seen, but it still is a traditional model in that a handful of folks decide what to publish.

What is needed is a major publisher like Harper, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Putnam, or Macmillan to adopt a very real and vocal self-publishing imprint that offers a no-fee option to writers… the Lulu-business model based on Long Tail Economics.

This past Friday night on my podcast Book Chatter, I invited one of the most vocal critics of the Harlequin Horizons label. We brought on the show four traditionally published authors and three self-published authors to debate these issues.

 

 

It’s kind of a moot point to even debate because it’s going to happen. Publishers are struggling because they rely on the traditional model: a model lets a handful of editors select what millions and millions of us will read. Traditional publishing does not give consumers adequate freedom to select what they want to read. In a Web 2.0 consumer culture, traditional publishing as it currently exists will collapse.

The future (and quite honestly the present because it’s already here in Amazon Kindle) will see this model change to allow anyone to publish his or her book. The traditional publisher that adopts the best imprint to facilitate this (as Harlequin was trying to do) will have access and loyalty of the greatest number of aspiring writers… and out of this mass, a few will rise and sell exceptionally well. Those are the authors the publisher could then take to the next level with broader distribution.

To conclude, I would ask anyone reading this who feels compelled to send RWA, MWA, or SFWA an email to let them know that you disagree with their stance on Harlequin Horizons. Because theirs is a stance that ultimately holds you down as an aspiring writer and reader and prevents you access to self-publishing your book at Harlequin and to new voices from which you have the freedom to choose what you want to read.

Sincerely,

Stacey Cochran