The age of the privileged middlemen is over. All along the artist has been at the mercy of that privileged middleman to get their work to the audience. Be it be a publisher, an art gallery or a music records company – for years they have controlled who and what reaches the market. But the times have changed and so has the role of the middleman – from the controller to the facilitator.
The artist is the privileged one now – they can opt for a facilitator but it’s not mandatory. They just need their art to be good enough to reach the market. They can paint, create music or have their own comic strip – and even if they choose to go with the middlemen they can do it at their own terms.
Last I checked - book publication has just gone from bad to worse. It's like a endless chain of middlemen out there, especially if you are a rookie.
ReplyDeleteTrue and that's why the publishing business is suffering. But if you want to publish a book, my advice would be to publish an e-book via Amazon Kindle publishing. It's almost free of cost, cuts out middlemen and e-books are the future. Also, if you are good enough and are able to sell enough e-books; be sure that traditional publishers would be lining up at your door to sign the next deal on terms you can dictate :)
ReplyDeleteI recently took a deep dive into eBook publications only - trust me, it's not that simple. The copyrights, IP and other legal obligations all combined are suffocating and demotivating.
ReplyDeleteCopyrights, IP and other legal obligations will always be there and in a way they benefit the authors only - they make theft and copying difficult.The benefits that I am talking about are different:
ReplyDelete1. Publishers don't get to decide whether you are good enough to publish. Anyone can publish and let the readers decide.
2. The %age that the author gets is pretty higher than traditional publishing. Amazon claims upto 70% for the author as against 15-20% traditionally.
3. Publishing is easy so you can do it all yourself. Also, publishing costs are minimal.