The New Cyber Gatekeepers of the Book World – Same Old, Same Old
From tech blog Gigaom comes a techno-view of publishing’s future”
Hot on the heels of Amazon signing publishing deals with authors, and thus doing an end-run around their publisher partners, another major e-reader company says it plans to do the same: Kobo is launching its own publishing arm and looking to sign deals with authors directly. All of this is more proof (as if we needed any) that the Internet is potentially lethal to middlemen. Does this mean that traditional publishers will soon be extinct? No. But it does mean that they are going to have to work harder to try to do what Amazon is already doing — namely, making it easier and more profitable for authors to reach their readers.
The solution, they seem to say, lies in connecting writer with reader.
That’s a simple idea, with a complex and so-far-unperfected system that remains somewhere over the horizon. There exist many different sites that are trying to do that: Amazon, Good Reads and others. But they all still lack a targeted approach.
I really have no clear idea how to reach the hundreds of thousands of people who have bought each of my previous books. I have a new book coming out next month, but have no idea how to reach fans … other than frantically posting on blogs and Tweeting.
Some of those messages will get to a few readers directly, but the fate of the book will end up in the hands of a new set of gatekeepers: Those who decide (like dead-tree gatekeepers of old) which books will be featured and promoted at the top of their sites and searches.
Thus, the lucky winners of the e-book and cybersales lotteries will find themselves as the same sort of outliers as legacy print bestsellers.
For the average author, the brave new e-world looks like the same old one with new sheetmetal.
Read the entire article at Gigaom
