What are your predictions for the publishing industry in 2019?

[LilyBLily]

The biggest hurdle any established Stephen King-level author would face in taking a book out on their own is print distribution. Most of us indies make so much (most or all) of our sales from ebooks that we forget how important print still is. It's still the case that trad publishing owns the means to print and distribute books for lower per-unit costs than we can.

If King wanted to publish a book entirely on his own, he'd either have to pair up with a publisher for print-only to get his books into the same places his other books can be found, or decide print wasn't worth the bother.

I could see him doing an ebook first and then contracting with a trad publisher for the print rights. They'd be valuable because there are so many King collectors who would want the book(s) in hardcover or paperback at least. But I don't really see why he would bother. I doubt his publisher would cavil at any story idea he has, and for him, the publicity machine gets rolled out in a big way, and it costs him nothing.

[guest1038]

Rise of the Planet of the Content Mills

[Bill Hiatt]

That said, most authors who are perennial bestsellers are happy in their current situation. They are the few people for whom traditional publishing undeniably works.

That right there is what I'm getting at and probably not voicing clearly. How many top-tier writers want to run businesses? As most of us indies realize, being an indie means being a business owner and operator. For Stephen King and others to have the same success as indies they would have to start publishing companies of their own. How many of them want to do that? Yes, JK Rowling did it, as did a few others, but I suspect most are happy letting others handle the business side of things while they sit at their computers and write.

Without question, letting someone else handle the business side is attractive.  That's why some successful indies moved over to trad. Most of them probably would if the terms were right.

Unfortunately, trads don't have any real competition for that aspect. As far as I know, there's no one out there willing to take the business end of things out of an author's hands, leaving the author with the creative control and a bigger chunk of the royalties than the trads tend to want to relinquish. From a business standpoint, I can see why no one does that, but it would be nice if someone did.

[okey dokey]

Didn't Stephen King write an ebook for the Kindle back in 2009?

[Mammasan]

Didn't Stephen King write an ebook for the Kindle back in 2009?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/10/stephen-king-kindle-ur

[Alec Hutson]

Prognostications!

I don't think B&N crumbles this year. But the trajectory is not good . . . and I don't think it's because of the brand or bookselling in general. Horrible, horrible management. It really seems that the upper management is far more concerned with draining B&N dry than running a bookseller. Despite the unstable financial footing it's still a dividend stock, and there are a host of executives taking massive salaries while steering the ship into the rocks. I'm reminded of the news from a year or so ago when B&N fired many of their long-term employees to save a few million dollars, while still handing out dividends and multi-million dollar executive salaries.

https://teleread.org/2018/02/14/barnes-noble-lays-off-hundreds-of-experienced-employees-may-not-be-long-for-this-world/

 It's really being run for the benefit of the large shareholders and the executives - disgusting, predatory capitalism at its worst. 'Merica.

But I think the business is still viable, and the brand is strong. I predict that after the blood is drained from the corpse the parasites in the boardroom will strap on their golden parachutes and float off into the sunset, and then a buyer will emerge that will revitalize the stores. There's too much potential for it to stay dead.

On the issue of trad authors going indie . . . it won't be the Kings or the Rowlings or the Roberts. They have more than enough money, and they love the fame that comes with being feted in trad publishing. What I predict is that more and more strong mid-list authors will go indie . . . the authors that release a hardcover book every year or two, get a decent advance and critical acclaim, but still have to hold down another job to pay the rent. It's a surprising number of authors - household names, award-winning name in houses that love particular genres, who are being exploited by trad publishing. NK Jemisin - who has won multiple Hugos and is one of the biggest names in Fantasy - could only go full-time as a writer through Patreon donations. Kameron Hurley - another writers with 10+ books to her name - several quite successful - wrote a blog post about her income from trad. Despite so many successful books her income (advances and royalties from her writing) was only 16,000 last year. 

https://www.kameronhurley.com/writing-income-made-2017/

Now, a lot of these trad writers would prefer the social respectability that comes with trad over the money and freedom of indie. But I think a lot of them don't actually realize the potential - they almost intentionally ignore the news of indies making living wages because it sends cracks through the foundation of their world view. But some will start to make the jump, and then others will follow. And this will increase competition.

Successful indie writers will continue to get poached by trad publishers. This past year a bunch of the top indie fantasy authors have signed deals with major publishers - Kel Kade, Duncan Hamilton, Brian Anderson - the difference is that these deals aren't for past works (like when Blood Song and The Riyria Revelations or the Shadow of What Was Lost was re-published) but rather new works. (Though we did see several indies books republished - Senlin Ascends and Gray Bastards, though they weren't huge sellers before so the rights might have been reasonable) Trad Publishers - smartly - are realizing that getting attention in this new publishing landscape is extremely hard, so it might be more practical to partner with indie authors with significant followings than trying to develop debuts from obscurity. I was even contacted by a senior editor at Tor asking to see my next series. The indie ways of getting attention -  AMS and Facebook Ads / Groups and KU and email lists built through various means - are proving more successful than the old trad ways (bookstore placement, reviews like Kirkus, etc)

I think the top tier of indie books will keep getting more professional. The covers, the lettering, the editing, and the writing. The era of mediocre work succeeding based solely on price is fading, and as KU and other indie readers find more high-quality books they will turn away from the stuff that's just okay. The low-price books will still exist, as in volume they can clearly still be very profitable, but the quality of what moves will keep increasing.

[Joe Vasicek]

New prediction: in 2019, indies are going to lose a lot (and I mean A LOT) of money on advertising. Over time, this will blur the line between the indie movement and vanity publishing. Before the end of the year, many black-pilled authors will argue that KDP is little better than a vanity press.

Long-term, the future of publishing is not with indies or with the large publishing houses, but with small presses. The successful indies who don't die out will gradually transform—indeed, are already transforming—into single-author small press publishers. The trick for authors seeking to be picked up by a small press will be figuring out which ones offer genuine value and learning how to spot red flags.

One potential area of interest is author collectives, where indies band together to publish their books under a common banner and/or cross-polinate their audiences.

Another AoI is short fiction. Authors who make a name for themselves in the pro-markets can leverage that to build an audience for their other books. Over the next few years, short fiction is going to become an increasingly important part of career writing success.

[guest1038]

One potential area of interest is author collectives, where indies band together to publish their books under a common banner and/or cross-polinate their audiences.

This is exactly the thing I fear.

[Tom Wood]

Audiobooks will continue to grow as a share of the story market. Storytelling via text will change so that the text can be performed in order to create a better audiobook experience.

[Morgan Cole]

New prediction: in 2019, indies are going to lose a lot (and I mean A LOT) of money on advertising. Over time, this will blur the line between the indie movement and vanity publishing. Before the end of the year, many black-pilled authors will argue that KDP is little better than a vanity press.

Long-term, the future of publishing is not with indies or with the large publishing houses, but with small presses.

This is a bold prediction. I can see it, really. The problem is that there's a balancing point there. How long until the small press that's really attentive to all of their titles, that's able to market each one with care becomes just another medium sized publisher that doesn't have the time or resources to promote books that are more than a month old?

How do they keep from falling into the traps of scale?

The successful indies who don't die out will gradually transform—indeed, are already transforming—into single-author small press publishers. The trick for authors seeking to be picked up by a small press will be figuring out which ones offer genuine value and learning how to spot red flags.

This is just semantics unless you can point out some way an indie and a single author "small press" are different. Both do exactly the same things and probably have similar corporate structures.

One potential area of interest is author collectives, where indies band together to publish their books under a common banner and/or cross-polinate their audiences.

Agreed. Collectives are great, until someone doesn't pull their weight. Then what? What if Bob's series isn't making any money and John is lazy and refuses to market? Tragedy of the commons and all that.

[Joe Vasicek]

This is just semantics unless you can point out some way an indie and a single author "small press" are different. Both do exactly the same things and probably have similar corporate structures.

Indies try to do most of the work themselves. Single author small presses either hire employees or contract out for most of the work, with the publishing company set up as its own entity (LLC, etc). Admittedly, it's a bit fuzzy, since plenty of Indies are LLCs and still try to do most of their own work, but it is an important transformation.

I suppose another thing to watch for would be successful single-author small presses taking on multiple authors.

[Joseph Malik]

This is just semantics unless you can point out some way an indie and a single author "small press" are different. Both do exactly the same things and probably have similar corporate structures.

I might be misunderstanding this, but I see this as the difference between being a DIY'er and an entrepreneur. I don't consider myself an indie author because I'm anything but independent; I have a team of professionals that I hire for nearly everything short of the whole putting-words-in-a-row thing. I'd be dead in the water without them.

[Morgan Cole]

This is just semantics unless you can point out some way an indie and a single author "small press" are different. Both do exactly the same things and probably have similar corporate structures.

I might be misunderstanding this, but I see this as the difference between being a DIY'er and an entrepreneur. I don't consider myself an indie author because I'm anything but independent; I have a team of professionals that I hire for nearly everything short of the whole putting-words-in-a-row thing. I'd be dead in the water without them.

Yes, this is my point. Only the rawest of hobbyists will try to do everything by themselves. If that's what you're calling indie then I don't want to be that. :D

I've got beta readers, editor, cover artist, typographer. The things I do are ebook and print layout and the writing.

So if that's the case that prediction boils down to the newbs getting screwed completely or becoming "pro"

[okey dokey]

Advertising is the key area indies are missing out on.
I remember when trad publishers inserted full page ads into paperbacks.
Can we do the same with our paprbacks and/or ebooks?
Does Amazon tack on their promotions at the end of our ebooks?
If so, does adding that or anything else violate our copyright?
Perhaps I'm coming our of left field with these concerns.
But we haven't thought out what we're really giving up as indies.
We ran from the trad gatekeepers, but where are we now?
Authors built a long court history of fighting censors. Yet we allow our ebooks to be vetted by folks in third world countries with different cultures to object to our covers and subject matter and dump us into the dungeon.
We need to really look at these things.

[Joe Vasicek]

One potential area of interest is author collectives, where indies band together to publish their books under a common banner and/or cross-polinate their audiences.

This is exactly the thing I fear.

Why do you fear it?

[Bill Hiatt]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that advertising is not going to transform KDP into a vanity press.

The old vanity presses were con artists who got people to pay to print thousands of their own paperbacks without telling them that no book store would ever touch their books. KDP does provide store access, and it does avoid having to order a huge backlog of paperbacks that we can't sell.

I see the challenge to visibility as not coming just from advertising costs. It's the growing number of books and authors (who drive ad costs up by bidding higher and higher to rise above everybody else) that is actually the problem. That's inherent to self-publishing as we know it.

I don't see small presses as a likely response to this problem. Remember that a lot of legit small presses have gone out of business since the rise of self-publishing. I do see the possibility of indie cooperatives, but that's more like organized cross-promotion than it is like a full-scale publisher. (And yes, I'm in the group that sees single-author publishers as being indies under another name. Today, most successful indies farm out parts of the work.)

What I do see happening is a winnowing out process. (Literary Darwinism?) I hope that doesn't result in domination by content mills. If those become too powerful, I think Amazon will take steps to check them, as others have suggested. Definitely, self publishing will eventually become an opportunity only for those who can work full-time (or at least move to full-time as quickly as possibly) and who have a fair amount of money to invest. Hobbyists will still exist (because they aren't dependent on their writing to produce an income, but the days of people using part-time indie writing as a supplemental income may be coming to an end.

That may seem grim, but making a living at writing has always been tough. If anything, the early days of the KDP gold rush were highly atypical. I think self publishing will remain as an opportunity to get one's foot in the door, but the foot will have to be backed by a lot of effort and money to get even minimal results in the future--just as has almost always been true. Before self publishing, the vast majority of writers were unable to make a living from writing. Why would now, with a much larger number of writers competing for attention, be any different?

[cecilia_writer]

Why would now, with a much larger number of writers competing for attention, be any different?

It is different now because ebooks have made it possible for new writers to get a foothold without having to invest in real-world stock upfront or to trek round real-world stores to try and get some shelf space. Even although this has led to an exponential increase in the overall number of books available, it's still possible for writers to get an audience if they produce something marketable, and it doesn't now have to appeal to cynical big publishing companies but to real readers.
Personally I am one of the hobbyists who makes some supplementary income from writing, but there is still a lot of satisfaction in finding and growing my readership, and I don't expect that to change for a while yet.

[Post-Doctorate D]

Advertising is the key area indies are missing out on.
I remember when trad publishers inserted full page ads into paperbacks.
Can we do the same with our paprbacks and/or ebooks?

Yes, but then people will accuse you of "page stuffing" or be disappointed the book ends before the absolute very last page.

Authors built a long court history of fighting censors. Yet we allow our ebooks to be vetted by folks in third world countries with different cultures to object to our covers and subject matter and dump us into the dungeon.
We need to really look at these things.

My personal opinion is that what is really needed is an industry standard for eBooks, such as ePub.  Proprietary eBook formats should go the way of the dinosaur.  Or, if ePub is not to be the standard but mobi (or whatever Amazon calls their format these days), then maybe Amazon should follow Adobe's PDF example.  PDF is an industry standard now.  Multiple applications these days can create a PDF.  And there are multiple applications to view and print PDFs.  If you have a PDF, you can take it anywhere, use it on any device or platform.  Windows, Mac, doesn't matter.

Books are the same way.  You can take a paperback anywhere.  Not so with eBooks.  You're typically stuck in one ecosystem.  If you buy a Kindle book, you can't (easily) move that to a non-Kindle device or app.  You cannot even create a Kindle book for sale outside of Amazon without violating the terms of service for KindleGen.  As for getting books to your Kindle, sure, you can sideload it, but covers won't come through right and they don't show up under Books but rather Documents or whatever.

You should be able to move and read the eBooks you've purchased as easily as a PDF.  The eBook file should be device and platform agnostic, like a PDF.

But, what's the incentive for Amazon to do that?  And how would we convince readers to demand such a thing?  I don't know.  But if it were as easy to buy an eBook from a website as it was Amazon, and you could easily load that eBook onto your device without complicated sideloading and sending the file into the "Documents" dungeon, that would tend to decentralize eBooks.  It would make it easier for competitors to sell eBooks and for authors to sell direct from their websites.  It would be good for readers too.  Without Amazon as the middleman, we could keep 100% of our money or we could sell our books for 70% of their normal price.  The latter would mean lower prices for readers.

[Tom Wood]

Dan - This doesn't address your main point, but regarding the 'Documents Dungeon' there is Send to Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle

It sends the file to the ebook Library of your device. I compile .MOBI files out of Scrivener and use Send to Kindle to get them on my Kindle and phone so I can see what they look like. Scrivener will also compile .EPUB files, but I'm going into KU so I may as well stick to .MOBI for now.

[Alec Hutson]

Advertising is the key area indies are missing out on.
I remember when trad publishers inserted full page ads into paperbacks.
Can we do the same with our paprbacks and/or ebooks?

One potential area of interest is author collectives, where indies band together to publish their books under a common banner and/or cross-polinate their audiences.

To address both these points, I'm part of a group of fantasy authors called Sigil Independent. The idea behind it is that the authors in the group are vetted, and so readers can expect that Sigil books are of a certain quality. 

https://www.sigilindependent.com/

We maintain a website and do some marketing together, and for my latest release I included a full-page ad at the end of my ebook advertising the group. I wonder if more authors will band together to make similar collectives. 

[okey dokey]

QUOTE:
". . . then people will accuse you of "page stuffing"


Well, I don't accuse newspapers of "page stuffing" with ads.

Two points I was trying to raise about ads in our books:

- do we get a cut of the ad revenue, and if not, why not?
- does the inclusion of ads or promotions at the end of our books by Amazon violate our copyright by adding material we didn't create?
And are readers really complaining about that?

I also raised another point: censorship by folks in third world countries who can dump our books in the dungeon. In past years before the digital world, authors won several battles against censorship, but now those cases don't help us.

[David VanDyke]

I might be misunderstanding this, but I see this as the difference between being a DIY'er and an entrepreneur. I don't consider myself an indie author because I'm anything but independent; I have a team of professionals that I hire for nearly everything short of the whole putting-words-in-a-row thing. I'd be dead in the water without them.

You're independent because you're the boss and they're your team. YOU are not dependent just because you depend on having a team, because you could hire and fire and always find more team members, if that's what it takes.

[Lorri Moulton]

I believe the self-publishing industry is going to see even more writers doing this for the art.  The 'gold rush' days are over as KKR calls them.  There's still money to be made, but I believe we'll see more books written for love over money.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I do think this will open up some interesting discussions about how we can offer readers concepts and ideas, while still entertaining them.  I know many authors do this now, but I think it will become a more popular reason to self-publish. 

We have a lot more influence than I think we sometimes realize. 

[guest1038]

One potential area of interest is author collectives, where indies band together to publish their books under a common banner and/or cross-polinate their audiences.

This is exactly the thing I fear.

Why do you fear it?

Goodness, how much time have you got? 

There's a whole other thread about this particular subject under the heading "Team Writing" where I've laid out my fears ad nauseum...and then some...lol.

Suffice it to say, I worry that authors banding together in the form of "collectives" under one or a few common brand names essentially gives rise to the content mill model. No?

Well, if that is the case, I worry that model could come to dominate the market leaving individual indies with little recourse but to join them or try for trad in the face of prohibitive visibility costs as the mill collectives drive the price of ads beyond what most individuals could afford - that represents a fairly substantial paradigm shift - and I would argue not in a positive direction for individual indies looking to remain independent. What I'm saying is, that it essentially plunks us back into the kind of gatekeeper land we lived in prior to 2008.

The good news is, in that 'Team Writing' thread, regardless of my dire outlook, there is some cause for continued optimism for individual business owners from some of the posters there - while also reconciling that the content mill model may still rise to prominence in the near term.

[CoraBuhlert]

Author collectives can be content mills a la Michael Anderle or Chris Kennedy, but they don't have to be.

The Bookview Café is an author collective of several SFF authors, usually with a traditionally published backlist. The Ursula K. Le Guin was a member. However, while they are an author collective, they are not a content mill.

And there are other examples along those lines.

[Alec Hutson]

Goodness, how much time have you got? 

There's a whole other thread about this particular subject under the heading "Team Writing" where I've laid out my fears ad nauseum...and then some...lol.

Suffice it to say, I worry that authors banding together in the form of "collectives" under one or a few common brand names essentially gives rise to the content mill model. No?

Well, if that is the case, I worry that model could come to dominate the market leaving individual indies with little recourse but to join them or try for trad in the face of prohibitive visibility costs as the mill collectives drive the price of ads beyond what most individuals could afford - that represents a fairly substantial paradigm shift - and I would argue not in a positive direction for individual indies looking to remain independent. What I'm saying is, that it essentially plunks us back into the kind of gatekeeper land we lived in prior to 2008.

I mentioned the collective I'm a part of. We collaborate on marketing and support each other but we are certainly not a content mill.

https://www.sigilindependent.com/

And I wouldn't be too worried about content mills. Only some readers are satisfied by the product they create. In fantasy, at least, they do not dominate AMS. The biggest self-published writers in fantasy - Kel Kade, Will Wight, Jonathan Renshaw, Duncan Hamilton, etc - are not involved in farming out their names and worlds to ghostwriters and collaborators. 

[ragdoll]

Sigil is a great looking site, Alec. And the works displayed on there look very professional.

[guest1038]

Author collectives can be content mills a la Michael Anderle or Chris Kennedy, but they don't have to be.

The Bookview Café is an author collective of several SFF authors, usually with a traditionally published backlist. The Ursula K. Le Guin was a member. However, while they are an author collective, they are not a content mill.

And there are other examples along those lines.

Once again, Cora is there to pull me back off the ledge. lol See, I was not aware that these kind of collectives existed. This must be the kind of thing Joe was referring to in his post. I'm glad to be corrected about this. Thanks, Cora.

Goodness, how much time have you got? 

There's a whole other thread about this particular subject under the heading "Team Writing" where I've laid out my fears ad nauseum...and then some...lol.

Suffice it to say, I worry that authors banding together in the form of "collectives" under one or a few common brand names essentially gives rise to the content mill model. No?

Well, if that is the case, I worry that model could come to dominate the market leaving individual indies with little recourse but to join them or try for trad in the face of prohibitive visibility costs as the mill collectives drive the price of ads beyond what most individuals could afford - that represents a fairly substantial paradigm shift - and I would argue not in a positive direction for individual indies looking to remain independent. What I'm saying is, that it essentially plunks us back into the kind of gatekeeper land we lived in prior to 2008.

I mentioned the collective I'm a part of. We collaborate on marketing and support each other but we are certainly not a content mill.

https://www.sigilindependent.com/

And I wouldn't be too worried about content mills. Only some readers are satisfied by the product they create. In fantasy, at least, they do not dominate AMS. The biggest self-published writers in fantasy - Kel Kade, Will Wight, Jonathan Renshaw, Duncan Hamilton, etc - are not involved in farming out their names and worlds to ghostwriters and collaborators. 

Thank you for this, Alec. I guess the author collective thing isn't anything to fear after all.

I'm glad this forum exists. 

[Joe Vasicek]

Yes, Sigil looks quite professional. How does one go about joining one of these collectives? 

[ragdoll]

Yes, Sigil looks quite professional. How does one go about joining one of these collectives? 

I imagine networking with existing members helps :D

[Tom Wood]

Yes, Sigil looks quite professional. How does one go about joining one of these collectives? 

I imagine networking with existing members helps :D

Connections. It's always about who you know, and if your dragon's egg was in the right nest and did the magick work and were the dwarves tossed at the right angle.

This is no way to run a business! 

[ragdoll]

This is no way to run a business! 

As someone incapable of making connections, I agree.

[Lorri Moulton]

There's a new group on Facebook.  Fantasy Focus.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1641299382682520/

[Alec Hutson]

Yes, Sigil looks quite professional. How does one go about joining one of these collectives? 

I think everyone in the group participated in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off and most of the writers were finalists in the competition.

[R. C.]

The global economy slows down, and perhaps enters a recession.

Ummm... Ah.... Shocking prescient, if a year too early.

Cheers,
R. C.

[Joe Vasicek]

Ummm... Ah.... Shocking prescient, if a year too early.

Yep! But don't forget the second part:

…more people turn to ebooks, especially cheap indie ebooks. So things get easier in some ways—or rather, new opportunities are opened.

[R. C.]

... rather, new opportunities are opened.

Too true.  A couple of days ago I started a "Ten Days of Free Books and Short Stories" campaign.  "If you need a nice diversion from the chaos that has enveloped our collective conscious, how about a free book or short story?"

The results, while not profitable, have been terrific in increasing my "brand" awareness.  As I write this, traffic through my site is up 1950 percent in six days. But any up from almost nil is all good.  A couple of the short stories have jump up quite a bit in small, specific, categories.

#41 in 90-Minute Teen & Young Adult Short Reads
#22 in Teen & Young Adult Time Travel eBooks

Net, net: Economic bad times are here and will not recover quickly.  Improvise, adapt, overcome... I think I heard that somewhere. 

Cheers,
Roger