I’ve reread a great article a few times over the past week and last week when I first saw it I retweeted links to it. Dominique Raccah expressed succinctly why I believe Publishers will have important roles in the future.
Publishing is undoubtedly going through a major transition with clear concerns from disintermediation to rights associated with both simple and enhanced eBooks. And pricing. And production. And, And, And.
The processes are changing but the heart of what a publisher does remains the same. If I were an author (and let’s face it, that’s a stretch to imagine, I’m not even a good blogger) I would want my book to be “birthed” by a Publisher. I would want all of the groups highlighted above to be involved in getting my book out into the marketplace.
I would describe myself as a generalist with knowledge in many of those blue groups listed above but my professional experience was behind the scenes in sales – think of an internal customer service group to distribute sales & marketing materials and create tools to allow sales reps do what they do best – sell books. In all of the positive talk of self publishers who can DISTRIBUTE your book into all imaginable channels to my knowledge there is no one at those companies who SELL your book into those channels.
Sales reps and booksellers make up the traditional Word of Mouth marketing and publicity channels. And a lot of these smart people I know are now also very active in the social networking sites that are becoming the new Word of Mouth channels. I’m fairly certain that I would never have picked up a lot of the books that constitute some of my favorites if not for the enthusiasm of the sales reps. And because I was in the business and because I’ve not steered them wrong before my friends asked me for recommendations on what to read. My answers often began with the sales reps were crazy about X, so I read it and loved it and I think you will too.