The meaning of the word... Published
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-05-15 22:45 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
It's not like publishers exist solely as gate-keepers or taste makers. Publishers exist to make money, and they do this by finding good authors that write popular books, and then they do the work of designing, type-setting, and having a printer print the books, and doing the marketing for them.
Once an author is established enough, then they don't really need a publisher and could self-publish without any issue. I have no doubt Steve King and Tom Clancey could self-publish and still make piles of money. For authors like that, publishers are willing to pay them enough so they don't resort to that route (although I think King has done that with e-books, at least).
I don't think most people care if a work is self-published or not, but they do want to read good books available at the places you can usually buy them (bookstores, online bookstores, kindle, etc.), and most of those will be published, at the moment.
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In the old pulp days of Science Fiction (back when it was often called "speculative fiction"), editors like John W. Campbell and Lester Del Ray were mentors to talented, aspiring writers. Many of these writers have given credit to these two men for helping them to become successful writers. Most of the old "Grand Masters" of Science Fiction, including Heinlein, Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, were guided by these two men.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
I think some of what you guys are saying is wrong, though I don't generally buy books, because I don't ever go looking for books and ask is this book from a publisher or is it self published. I look for interesting titles and covers, check out the synopsis, get reviews and suggestions from friends, and then make my decision... Never has the question of who published it crossed my mind when actually looking for/to buy a book.
And yes editors and getting a bit of advertising is good, but you can get someone to edit your book...or multiple people to edit your book, and you're not gonna get much advertising if your a new writer or are non-famous anyways so I don't see how that factors in. It's convenient to have those things under one roof and such... and certainly the "someone other than the author liked it" things is nice, but then we know there is always someone else that likes the same thing that one other person likes and I don't think it's good to deprive that one person of that ^.^ |
At one time, there was a "Del Ray" brand of SF books. As a reader, I was always confident that the "Del Ray" books would be quality. Readers of Romance books know that Harlequin books will fulfill their (simplistic)expectations. Scholastic Books are known to appeal to certain types of young readers and be appropriate topics. (They published the Harry Potter books.) While you may not care about the publisher, there are many consumers who rely upon a publisher to provide quality in their preferred genre.
Just because you can put a word or two together doesn't mean that you are a "writer." Writing saleable fiction is a craft. Ask any experienced, published writer.
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Well I've been buying ebooks exclusively for the last year and initially I wasn't particularly discriminating in the book and bought it if it looked remotely interesting. I started fairly early on stopping to check and see if it was self published or not and avoiding the self published ones because simply most of them were drek.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
I think some of what you guys are saying is wrong, though I don't generally buy books, because I don't ever go looking for books and ask is this book from a publisher or is it self published. I look for interesting titles and covers, check out the synopsis, get reviews and suggestions from friends, and then make my decision... Never has the question of who published it crossed my mind when actually looking for/to buy a book.
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If I got a good recommendation for a self published author then I would try them. Better yet if they had a free ebook or sample on their website I could read I would read that and depending on if I liked what I saw I would go ahead and buy books from them. But having been burned by bad books with decent descriptions I have pretty much stopped just grabbing self published books. If an author doesn't have any published works from a real publishing house then I tend to avoid them now.
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And how do you find those interesting cover/titles etc? How did the reviewer find them? Just scrolling through self-pub sites clicking things? I doubt it. Publishers are who gets that ball rolling. Sure some people have all the time in the world to search through the piles and piles of stuff people are putting out on their own (in any form, books, music, comics, etc) but for the vast majority of people, that time doesn't exist. And no-one's going to be making a living as an artist relying on people finding their work on their own.
So publishers exist to get art into the hands of people that would be interested in it, but don't have the time to find it own their own. It's not about *who* published it, it's that *someone* published it, and is putting it out there so that people can find it easily. Sure a new artist won't likely get heavy advertisement, but they will get their work sent to reviewers by their publishers. And because it's from a publisher, not "Joe with a Kinko's account", the reviewer will likely take it more seriously and actually review it, as opposed to round filing it.
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