Profit and ebooks

I asked a program panel recently with 2 literary agents, 2 publishers, and an editor whether we’ll see any more print-only deals in the traditional market, or whether new companies will arise that fill that niche by offering print-only deals.

They all said: NEITHER. They said print isn’t profitable enough anymore for a company to be interested in print-only rights, and it won’t happen.

Whether that’s accurate or not, it certainly seems to represent present thinking to a fairly wide degree among publishers and “industry professionals.”

Laura Resnick

Publishers don't seem to quite make their decision WRT ebooks. On one hand, they're the next best thing since bookbinding. On the other, they're second-best. If that.

They can't seem to decide what mindset guides their decisions. If it is the cultural one, the one that publishes only the very best, that sells properly edited, typeset and bound books that reach their reader in a pristine state; or the commercial one, the one that publishes things like Snooky, The Idiots' Guide to Getting Laid and... ebooks.

A "traditional" writer, on the ways New York can't publish to the market.

Too long publishing to themselves. Too long absorbing publishers and catalogues and not making the mindset change. When you buy another corporation you don't only get a product line and employee redundancy, you get a culture. When you grow, you get a culture. They've grown, but they've discarded their smaller cultures. They grown... old. In the way some people grow old and retreat into the good ol' times when everyone did things like they liked. Instead of growing up, they grow flat. Stodgy, unmovable.

And the thing is that times have gone critical. And when a critical event comes, you have to make up your mind, fast. In the right mindset for the situation. A cop facing a crisis on the street and a social worker facing that same person have different tools, different troubles to address. A social worker who used to be a cop? He better decide what he is, right now, and fast.

Ebook or print?

Take care.