Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club discussion

Thought this might be of interest to my fellow readers:

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/05/...

Obviously the big publishers have got a lot to fear from trends like this.

That IS interesting. One aspect that I found most interesting is that this is apparently already a widespread enough phenomenon that one can hire specialists to help in formatting the book for different editions and designing covers.

This may well be the future of publishing.

I already own one printed book, Wearing the Cape by Marion Harmon, which was originally published only as a e-book and which I liked enough to buy in print when it became available last month. There are going to be others without question in the future. (I also have one in both printed and e-formats: The Tao Te Ching translated by Stephen Mitchell.)

I don't know that the existence of specialists actually has all that much to do with the self-publishing phenomenon. I've got a few friends in graphic design and their crowd (which can encompass the spectrum of formatting to design to infographics to web animations) tends to do a lot of free-lance stuff, even when they have regular jobs with particular companies.

In counterpoint, a writer/artist that I like posted a blog post a while ago that I thought was a pretty well articulated statement in favor of traditional publishing (not for everyone, just saying that it's an option that likely is not on the outs): http://www.redwombatstudio.com/blog/?...

And to make sure we're looking at a more complete picture, it's probably important to point out that two of the three self-published phenoms that were mentioned in that first article have since signed contracts with big publishers for at least the release of print versions of their books.

So it seems to me that what's really happening is that the big publishers only have so many books they're going to put out in a year, so self-publishing gives a second chance to those authors who's work wasn't picked up by a publisher. Instead of giving up on their dream of publishing a book, they've now got this very active, reasonable alternative means of getting their work into the notice of the reading public. Which is awesome, for sure. I'm super impressed by those authors who are out there doing it all on their own and grabbing the attention of Amazon and getting promoted that way. But that great success story is not the norm for every self-published book out there.

I don't really think that traditional publishing has anything to fear.

Oh, I don't think traditional publishers will disappear, just that a new publishing paradigm is being created. The industry will have to adapt.