As many readers of this blog know, I made my living as a fiction writer for a long time – more than twenty years. But the times, they are a-changing. I haven't sold a book in two years, and am now making plans to do the unthinkable – to self-publish (through IUniverse) one or two of my unsold novels. I don't expect to make much, if any, money by self-publishing, but I hate to leave my work in a desk drawer, or more accurately on a USB memory stick, forever.
These are tough times to be peddling a book to mainstream publishers. The big publishing houses are cutting back on staff, reducing the number of titles they put out, and closing down whole divisions. Retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble are ailing. The mass-market paperback side of the industry, which had accounted for the bulk of fiction titles, is all but defunct. Where your local supermarket or drugstore used to stock fifty or a hundred paperback titles, now they probably carry a dozen or fewer – or none at all.
(Whenever I make this point, someone invariably comments that their local store still carries as many paperbacks as ever. Maybe so, but I'm looking at industry-wide trends.)
Though some people believe the situation is only temporary and things will turn around, I see it differently. I think that traditional publishing is dying out, and that before long we will live in a brave new world of e-books and print-on-demand books and serialized books online. I think publishing will morph into something more like blogging. And there's not much money in blogging, except for a select few. Increasingly, writing – especially fiction writing – will be a pastime rather than a moneymaking career.
Moreover, even in the increasingly rare event that a book is given a big commercial release, Web piracy will undercut sales substantially. Piracy is already a major problem, and it will only get worse. Before long, it will be ubiquitous. A book is easy to digitize and can be exchanged online at no cost even more easily than bootlegged movies and songs. And there is a whole generation that has grown up believing that all digital information should be available gratis – that "information wants to be free." (Maybe it does, but the producers of the information want to be paid, because they want to eat.)
Though I may seem to be painting a gloomy picture, I can see an upside to the end of the status quo. For one thing, there will be no more idiot publishers forcing writers to churn out vampire books and similar dreck. (Hey, there's an idea for a vampire book – Dreckula.) Even better, there will be no more culturally sequestered Manhattan elites dictating what the rest of the country has to read.
Instead, writers will write what they want to write – what they believe in and feel passionate about. There may not be much money in it, and they may have to settle for a smaller audience, but at least they will be writing from the heart, rather than aiming for a paycheck. That may be a big step forward, in the long run.
One thing, at least, seems clear to me: The present-day model of publishing, which has been in place since the 19th century with only minor modifications, is obsolete and will soon be abandoned. The days of printing 100,000 copies of a book, boxing them up, shipping them thousands of miles, displaying them on shelves for a few weeks, then boxing up the unsold copies (often the majority) and shipping them to a recycling plant … those days are over. In a digital world, where information can be transmitted instantaneously at no cost, the old model simply makes no economic sense. It has persisted this long only from force of habit, and habits are made to be broken.
And one other thing is clear: People will continue to write, whether or not there's money in it. The impulse of self-expression and the need to share ideas are part of the human condition, and will endure no matter what technological changes take place.