Despite dramatic changes in the industry, absorbing the costs of diffusion is a vexing problem for publishers today, much as it always has been.
It remains to be seen whether blockchain technology and distributed ledger systems will ultimately have the kind of impact on how written content is monetized and delivered that its acolytes predict. I don’t expect the impact to be great, at least not as far as quality trade-book publishing is concerned. No, for now and the foreseeable future, the costs associated with diffusion aren’t going anywhere, and they constitute the top line item on the list of expenses an independent publisher must meet in order to remain independent.
While distribution costs may be the principal expense associated with independence for publishers, discoverability in an overcrowded book market in which the Old Good Thing is routinely swatted away by the Next Big Thing, and overmarketed, focus tested titles suck up a disproportionate share of review and shelf space, is the great conundrum.
How does an independent publisher make potential readers aware of its authors’ titles to the degree that both author and publisher deserve? The once calm sea of content has become a roiling ocean. Add self-published titles to the mix and somewhere around a million ISBNs are issued every year. Readers can find no purchase. Publishers, despite their best efforts, risk failing in their efforts to make their authors’ work visible.
The challenges of securing cost-effective diffusion and of guaranteeing adequate visibility are both very old problems. Yet consolidation in the industry, hyper concentration of book retail, a crisis in the culture of reading and criticism, and behavioral changes in portions of the population that have traditionally constituted the most assiduous readers make these challenges more serious today than ever before.
Esta historia es de la edición November - December 2019 de Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición November - December 2019 de Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
The Sea Elephants
SHASTRI Akella's poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father's violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother's unfathomable grief.
The History of a Difficult Child
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
The Sorrows of Others
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs— sometimes the first few sentences— I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matter how radical, ill-advised, or baffling to those around them, seemed inevitable and true to me.
We Are a Haunting
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy.
RADICAL ATTENTION
IN HER LATEST BOOK, THE LIGHT ROOM: ON ART AND CARE, PUBLISHED BY RIVERHEAD BOOKS IN JULY, KATE ZAMBRENO CELEBRATES THE ETHICAL WORK OF CAREGIVING, THE SMALL JOYS OF ORDINARY LIFE, AND AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD WITHIN HUMAN SPACES.
The Fine Print
HOW TO READ YOUR BOOK CONTRACT
First
GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
