[TheOtherHobbes]

>They're in business because they provide value to the authors and artists

Publishers provide value to themselves, not to authors or artists.

Argument from quality: nope. Most publishers won't touch quality writing, because they know the market for it is limited. Joyce would never be published today. Austen might, but Austen is a bit difficult, so probably not. Lessing was turned down by a major publisher when she tried submitting under a different name, just to see what happened. I have my doubts if Pynchon or Vonnegut would be taken on today. (Has anyone of equivalent ability been signed in the last twenty five years?)

There's a huge market for ghost-written celebrity blather nonsense, landfill SF and Fantasy, and two-glasses-of-wine-and-a-billionaire chicklit, and a much smaller market for self-absorbed litfic. But quality literature?

Argument from services provided: nope again. Editors aren't quite two a penny, but good ones are available for hire. Likewise cover designers. Because you're paying them direct, you'll find that an editing process that takes publishers 18 months can be completed in a few weeks.

Argument from marketing: Publishers literally won't lift a finger to help any author who isn't already selling in the millions.

Argument from financial support: A couple of $k up front if you're very lucky, in return for losing 85% of future income. And you'll probably be offered a crappy work for hire contract.

So - what is this 'value' that publishers provide?

[ganeumann]

> Has anyone of equivalent ability been signed in the last twenty five years?

Whether they're of equivalent ability is subjective, of course, but plenty of difficult but beautiful literary works are published every year. And I would bet that their first run is a lot larger than Ulysses' was :)

Authors I've read in the past couple of years that were not mainstream but were published recently include Roberto Bolano, John Banville, Tom McCarthy, Eduardo Galeano...and I'm not much of a fiction reader. There's an enormous number of books published and almost all of them are not mainstream.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Most of those have had established careers for a long time. McCarthy is relatively new, but he was soundly rejected by all the big pubs, published by a tiny house, and then the big pubs reconsidered when he started shifting copies.

Which is almost exactly what happened to JK Rowling, only her books are slightly more accessible.

The big pubs do not take risks. If a writer can show evidence of critical interest and existing strong sales, they suddenly become interested.

Signing on the basis of a strong, original manuscript? Not any more.

I'm sure there's an exception every year or five, but it's a good bet that unless you're incredibly lucky and/or know commissioning editors personally already because you all went to university together, the odds of getting in through the front door are not good now.

[res0nat0r]

Then why do so many authors keep using a publishing house? This is the same tired argument used for the music industry on HN.

Yes, publishers do provide a value. Also one of the best selling books of late is a 700 page non-fiction book about finance, which reached #1 on Amazon's non-fiction list, published by Harvard University Press.

Saying that all publishing is just mass media crap is a just plain false.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Authors keep using publishing houses because too many authors are insecure dilettantes and want a pat on the head from someone to reassure them they're Real Writers - and therefore people of cultural weight and import.

And it remains true that top-selling established authors do okay out of trad pub. The 1% of writers in that category get decent enough advances and some PR support.

Everyone else is wasting their time and getting screwed over. Including a tragically large number of people who write for university presses. (I really hope Piketty got a lawyer to look over his contract.)

Writers are not, generally, minded to think of writing as a business full of business people doing business people things.

But some do - in increasing numbers. If you know anything about the industry, you'll know that where ten years ago it was taken as read that you needed an agent and a real publisher, otherwise you were just some noob with a vanity contract, the reality now is that writers are stampeding away from the agent+publisher deal package.

Agents are literally panicking about their jobs.

The charge has been led by romance writers, who have a terrifyingly efficient business and support association (the RWA) and not a few self-made self-pub millionaires.

The problem with a site like HN is that most people posting here know very little about the industry. But when you're in it, and you've been following developments in detail for a few years, the picture doesn't look the same as it does from outside.

[justincormack]

Harvard UP did not promote it, or indeed print enough copies. It could have been self published and done just as well. It was written in French after all and still succeeded, with the interest starting before it was translated. Academics use academic publishing houses largely for historic reasons.

[res0nat0r]

So HUP or the original French publisher provided Piketty no benefit?

[justincormack]

I doubt it. Academic publishers do not really do much promotion, other than sending lists of books to academic libraries (where there is a reputation effect however, which does help, but for Piketty those sales were nothing compared to retail). Academic bestsellers are extremely rare.

[mcguire]

I don't know about HUP but Springer certainly doesn't. The only editorial support is answering questions about providing camera-ready copy and the only marketing support is ensuring libraries get copies of their catalogs.

[_delirium]

Springer is definitely bad; they're mostly just a service for printing books, stamping their logo on them, and getting them into academic libraries. However, MIT Press is excellent. There's a big range of support and quality control among publishers. Zero Books is also quite successful as a nontraditional quasi-academic press. They've developed a niche style that's popular in a certain audience (academic but readable and short, ~70-100 page books on a specific subject). So authors publishing a "Zero Book" through Zero get a bunch of built-in exposure to the audience the publisher has cultivated, in part through marketing (the brand is known, individual academics often aren't), and in part because readers trust it to do some quality/style control so the books in their catalog fit the expected style.

As a reader I like finding publishers like that because it reduces the noise for me considerably and improves discoverability: browsing http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-titles or http://www.zero-books.net/forthcoming-titles.html is actually manageable. With a few such publishers (I follow about 5 semi-regularly) you can keep abreast of a lot of interesting things happening without having to recognize the individual authors or do extensive research on them; I outsource the job of doing that to the publisher.