Monday, November 30, 2009

future of publishing: not books, bookisodes?


These days publishers crying poverty thrust myriad duties on writers aside from meeting manuscript deadlines: gathering blurbs, providing jacket photos, hosting book parties, arranging reading tours, (travel expenses unreimbursed), even negotiating shelf space. One intrepid author I know regularly tours NYC bookstores and reshelfs his book, facing out. Now writers are expected to create industrials?

More and more books sold on Amazon are accompanied not only by reviews and reader ratings, but by promotional videos. (Sorry, image isn't linked, click here and scroll down to video.) Chilling glimpse of a future of publishing that sidelines books altogether, publishing manuscripts direct to screen.

hat tip to Corporate Rock

2 comments:

Marcelle said...

Jeez.
MH

Murr Brewster said...

Ah! And I am trying to attract the attention of a literary agent in order to get that agent to agree to look at a shard of manuscript, thus possibly attracting the attention of a publisher, both of whom need to know up-front that I can bring my own 25,000 readers along with me. Blog on!