[ChuckMcM]

I read Charlie's posts too, this is an area I am really interested in, and I think he missed out on a number of things.

As with any business there are 'good' publishers and 'bad' publishers, and the Amazon move (and others like it) could lead to less friction in the publishing business which will certainly boost quantity but it may (as Charlie posits) negatively effect quality as well.

The future may end up being 'karmic gods' to coin a phrase, kind of like kingmakers of old but people or organizations which, by applying a seal of approval or blessing on a work can immediately levitate it above the sea of choices, which will replace what 'publishers' do today. These people may appear to be 'super - Agents' as I've heard them referred to or 'pressless publishers' (a take on fabless semiconductor companies which already have a model that works well for them).

We should see artisan printers arising. Its a new business where you work with an author/agent to have exclusive right to put into physical form a work, perhaps leather bound on acid free paper or glue bound onto newsprint.

Amazon has an excellent chance of continuing to disrupt here and kill publishers outright. Certainly the disruption in the market is going to move around where the money goes and it will affect the net total value of a given work. Much of that value may simply disappear (which is to say authors make more and consumers pay less but a giant middle-industry no longer exists so those folks don't get salaries and their suppliers don't sell product etc etc). The economics of information march relentlessly on.

[patio11]

In 2011, all the big publishers are pressless publishers. They don't edit books. They don't print books. They don't write books. They don't market books.

They just fund books, at terms which would shock the conscience if they weren't so well-established. (If a book was a startup, the typical offer is something like "We'll put in $5k at a pre-money valuation of $1k and, by the way, we're going to claw that $5k back, too. Also, we're going to contractually lock you up from talking to other investors for your next three companies. You owe it to us, because we're rescuing you from not being published.") I will not mourn their passing, as either a reader or an oft-suggested author.

[cfn]

So true. I know someone that self-published a book and made a few thousand dollars with that first edition. That small success ended up a contract with a large publisher for the second edition. She did all the writing, editing and DTP. The publisher took care of the cover and the printing. She did not get an advance from them since she was unknown and, several years later, she still did not earn a single penny from that second edition.