| 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. |