Some of my thinking is informed by my experiences with dictionary publishers. Some comes from watching bands with small followings, bands too unpopular to even be noticed by the big labels, make a (meager) living selling self-published CDs advertised via youtube videos. And some comes from watching my friend Marc Snyder, a print maker, sell his art on ebay. The ebay sales led to a subscription service, which allows his “True Fans” (fewer than 1,000, alas) to get his prints on a regular basis. Soho galleries are aghast at the idea, I’m sure. But he is able to earn a steady income.

Maybe you can go to a subscription model. The first chapter is free; subsequent ones cost $0.99 each. Hey, it was good enough for Dickens!

The new wrinkle, I think, is that earning one's keep via traditional publishing vs. painstakingly nurturing a fan base online are not alternatives anymore. Authors have to do both. Even authors with decent contracts at old-line publishing houses (like me) are cultivating their base of “1,000 True Fans.” It is as if, having watched the publishers get so badly rocked this year, every author is suddenly aware of how short a distance it is from the short head down to the long tail.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I enjoy blogging and interacting with fans. But I imagine some authors don't. And for all authors maintaining an online presence certainly takes time and energy away from the real work of novel-writing. But that is a quibble, isn't it? It is a privilege to be a full-time writer in this society. We can't expect to be insulated from these crass commercial concerns as the last generation was. What an idyllic writing life Updike led, in retrospect! I never saw that bastard on Twitter – not once!

Thanks for commenting, Paul.

I am currently reading Free. (And Yes, I bought the book.)

There are certainly lots of challenges for book publishers, just as there are challenges for music publishers. But I also see lots of opportunities for authors to promote their own books. Maybe, in a way that bypasses the publishers.

Book publishers, like music publishers, only exist due to a quirk of industrial history: for a brief period, it was possible, but expensive and difficult, to disseminate many copies of a work. Before that period, work was copied by hand and performed locally. After that period, work could be copied and shipped cheaply and easily. Only during that short period (for music publishers, 100 years; for book publishers, 300-400 years) did publishers have a reason to exist: to make copies and push them into the sales channel. Remove the constraint, remove the reason for existence.

Musicians and authors, on the other hand, exist for a much more basic and long-lived reason: people like to be entertained. This was true centuries before there were “suits” in the pipeline between creators and consumers. It will still be true centuries after the “suits” are long gone. The human race needs and will support creators. It does not need publishers.

It may be a bad time for someone who wants to become the next Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, making many millions of dollars as an author. But it just might be a great time to for an author just looking to support a family. There is room in the channel now for authors who won’t sell enough to merit a whole table at Barnes & Noble. There are lots of sales models: ads, subscriptions, shareware, freemium, etc. Traditional publishers don’t necessarily need to adapt; we can do without them.