Are traditional publishers stuck in a marketing paleolithic?

[Steerpike]

The link below is to a blog post from an author who self-published a book that had already been bought by a big publisher. Her overall point is that the publisher had no idea what it was doing in terms of marketing and selling her work in the new digital publishing age.

The read is an interesting one. She is a non-fiction author, so perhaps in fiction we are working with a different dynamic. I do think traditional publishers are having a hard time adapting, however, and that is a key factor in the decline of the industry. Who knows where we will be in ten years. I wonder how many people will be left publishing through the big, traditional publishing houses. How about in twenty-five years?

How I got a big advance from a big publisher and self-published anyway | Penelope Trunk Blog

 

[TWErvin2]

The only SF/Fantasy print publisher I know that is somewhat branded is Baen. They have a pretty decent following and a loyal customer base.

The author from the blog post, Penelopy Trunk, appears to already have had a fan base or a platform for her work/blogging, which, with self-publishing, I think makes a big difference. And I agree, there is a bit of difference as well with non-fiction vs. fiction, especially in many cases with targeting of potential readers.

I do agree with her about some of the major publishers being slow on how to market, and that the online sellers are the ones holding the cards. Amazon, for example, knows who bought what. And with Kindle sales, they even know if the reader actually read the book, where they stopped, how long readers spent on pages even. All that data is sent back to Amazon. Something that I am sure they will use themselves some day, beyond how they target their current customers. Maybe they'll eventually sell that information to publishers...maybe.

It was an intersting article. Thanks for posting, Steerpike.

 

[danr62]

Bloggers have been self publishing nonfiction as PDF ebooks for years. Build a blog around a topic, build a following of people interested in the topic and who trust you as an authority on the subject, and selling information is easy.

Trad publishers can't do this. There is no way a publishing house is going to build a loyal niche audience with the same effect that a blogger can. It's very personality and relationship driven.

Fiction is a very different beast. You can't just choose a niche and write problem/solution based posts and expect to sell fiction to them with the same level of success. In fact, I think publishers would be able to do this much better than individual bloggers. Tor, for instance, publishes short stories and news articles on their blog on topics that appeal to the SFF audience. Because they have stories and articles from a number of authors and in a variety sub-genres of SFF, they can build a mailing list that has wider appeal than most individual writers could manage on their own.