On the Harvard Business Publishing ‘Conversation Starter’
blog, Dave Balter suggests a new model for publishing. If you’re an author, you
probably won’t like it. Here’s the core:
Authors self-package their book entirely on their own.
Authors distribute digital copies of their books for free to attract readers and to identify a market. They use self-distribution tools to sell as many books as they can.
Based on the response, the publisher determines which books to pick up, and pays a licensing and distribution right and uses their relationships to distribute a product that has developed an initial marketplace of buyers.
Publishers take the completed product, make tweaks as author and publisher feel necessary, print more and distribute them through the strength of their partners.”
(If you want to write a book but are not sure how to start, my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey will soothe your fevered brow and get you started in the right direction. You can buy online and from bookshops. And for an extra injection of creativity, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin--just send an email request now to [email protected])
At least Balter is putting his money where his mouth is. This is what he says he’s done with his own novel:
“I wrote and produced the book entirely on my own. With some help from my good friend, John Butman, I hired a book packager in NY who helped ‘produce’ the book to our vision (just like they would for the major publishers)
We set up our own Amazon page where we’re selling the real thing.
Then the big kicker: as of Monday, June 16th, the entire book is available in PDF form for free from 20 ‘Big Thinking’ bloggers like Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, and including HarvardBusiness.org’s own Bill Taylor.”
Hmm, I might go for that—if the publishers agreed to increase the royalty payments now that they are taking less of a risk that a book will not find an audience. Do you think publishers will agree to that? No, I don’t either.
