The digital truths traditional publishers don't want to hear

The choices offered by digital publishing can only be good news for writers, says Barry Eisler. So why are traditional publishers so angry?

Barry Eisler

Monday 29 April 2013   guardian.co.uk

Still the centre of the universe? ... detail from Andea Cellario's print Harmonia Macrocosmica showing the Ptolemaic description of the heavens, with the Earth at the middle of creation. Photograph: Enzo and Paolo Ragazzini / Corbis

Until November 2007, when Amazon introduced the Kindle, the only viable means of book distribution was paper. Accordingly, a writer who wanted to reach a mass audience needed a paper distribution partner. A writer could hire her own editor and her own cover design artist; she could even hire a printing press to create the actual books. The one service she couldn't hire out was distribution. And publishers didn't offer distribution as an à la carte service. If a writer wanted distribution, she had to pay a publisher 85% of her revenues for the entire publishing package: editorial, copyediting, proofreading, jacket design, printing, and marketing, all bundled with distribution.


Was a price of 85% of revenues a good deal for this packaged publishing service? For some writers, it clearly was. JK Rowling became a cash billionaire via the traditional packaged publishing service, and obviously there are hundreds of other examples of authors for whom the packaged service has represented a good value.


But for every author who wanted and benefited from the packaged service, there were countless others who took it – if they could get it at all – only because they had no alternative.

Digital distribution has provided that alternative. And increasing numbers of authors are choosing it.
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