Saturday, August 7, 2010

Leveling the playing field

Publishers Weekly announced the news yesterday that Dorchester would drop its mass market paperbacks for ebook and POD format. Like NOW. I hope they gave their authors a heads up, because this is huge news. Dorchester was one of the few bigger/midlist pubs to which an author could submit without an agent.

So what does this mean for the existing indie ebook pubs? No one truly knows, but with other big publishing houses adding ebooks as an option, the tide's turned significantly toward digital.

Does it level the playing field for authors? Not yet. And with younger generations apparently believing file sharing is their God-given right, it's still going to be a rough ride until publishers figure out how to fairly compensate authors for their work. Has anyone else heard of the Pirate Party? Check out my critique partner's two recent posts.

What are your thoughts?

By the way, I'm also celebrating today - my last release of the year! My Native American historical, Follow the Stars Home, releases today. Come help me celebrate on my blog!

7 comments:

Rebecca Leigh said...

Congrats on your release today!

I think that is an interesting announcement. Totally cool from my perspective as an exclusively epub'd author and in line with my take that this is the wave of the future. But I wonder how their authors feel who have in the past only been print published? Do their authors feel negatively about their works only being print pub'd on demand? I'm curious because of the attitude that I still run into the epublishing is somehow "lesser than" traditional print.

Cate Masters said...

Yes, I hope they're not too disappointed. Part of the problem is that book stores haven't learned how to deal with POD, and it can be extremely difficult to convince a brick-and-mortar store to allow a signing for a POD author. The book stores in my area don't get it at all. So hopefully as the shift continues, they'll figure out they need POD authors too.

Vivi Dumas said...

It was a very interesting announcement. It made me think about writing in a different perspective.

It's funny. I've been in the business world for the last 15 years, running my own business, for the last 5. But when it came to writing, I never looked at it from the business perspective. It has been a very personal and emotional journey for me.

E-pub is a great business model if executed correctly. The downfall I think is that a lot of e-pub have not executed the model as effectively as possible. But this has made me to decide to investigate e-pub and find ones that I think are a good fit for me.

Arlene said...

There's alot of talk about this. There's perceptive and hardworking e-publishers who deserve credit for breaking the ground for Dorchester to follow. I sincerely hope authors who are published in print will embrace the future and even though this sounds simplistic, instead of 'looking down' on others who share their works with the internet world, give credit due based on the written word, not the means its presented. Printing press was the wave of the industrial revolution. E-press is the logical progression in a world with dwindling resources, and like color burst upon the black-white television, there's so much potential with cyberspace. I'm so happy to be of this generation.

Arlene said...

Hey forget Dorchester, did everyone notice the last bit in this post?
Wow. What a year for Cate and awesome releases. Follow the Stars Home promises to be another wonderful novel. Congrats, Cate.

Vivi Dumas said...

Sorry. I did forget to mention Cate's release. It seem to have been a busy year for many of those on the Paranormalist site. Congrats Cate.

Cate Masters said...

Thanks guys!

I'm actually more concerned with the Pirate Party - people who are putting their efforts into "sharing" others' work, seemingly without thought to the harm and havoc it will wreak on the artists.