What change in the publishing landscape over the past decade and a half has impacted you the most?
First of all, if you didn’t read Frank’s piece yesterday…do that, because he said what I would have said, but better than I would have said it. He talked about self-publishing and the access to e-books…then mentioned the perennial problem of getting readers to find out about and choose to read your books, but – as Frank wisely observed – that’s a blog for another day.
So, moving forward – and bearing in mind that in the “current situation” (my chosen euphemism for being quarantined due to the global pandemic) my answer might change within the next two hours – I think a huge change has been the shift in accessibility to Print On Demand,both for traditional and indie/self-publishers. E-books are e-books, and print is print, and the way the two options get themselves into the hands of readers is very different (NB: Yes, I know that these are extraordinary times and that the new normal isn’t anything close to normal at all, so bear with me?).
Well, here’s the thing: my Canadian traditional publisher and my British traditional publisher both shifted my books onto a Print On Demand (POD) footing long before I stopped signing contracts with them. They took the business decision that they didn’t want their money tied up in boxes and boxes of books sitting in warehouses. Fair enough. But that meant that certain booksellers wouldn’t stock those titles because – no matter if it’s a traditional publisher using POD or an independent/self publisher using POD – bookstores won’t pay upfront for books to put on their shelves without knowing they can return them to the distributor if they remain unsold, and both my publishers had a “non returnable” clause with their POD provider. When I signed with those publishers, this wasn’t the case. But the contracts I had signed with them allowed them to do this. So, there I was, being published by two traditional publishing houses, neither of which could get my books onto bookshelves in bricks and mortar bookstores any better than I could by setting up my own publishing company and taking up the same contracts for my new books with POD providers that those publishers had.
So that’s what I did. I’m no worse off than I was.
And now the blatant self promotion…PLEASE consider trying my books while you’re holed up? My Cait Morgan Mysteries offer traditional puzzle mysteries for the armchair traveler, with each book being set in a different country; my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries feature a quartet of softly-boiled female PIs who run their business out of a Welsh stately home; my amazon #1 bestseller The Wrong Boy is a tale of psychological suspense set in a clifftop village in Wales. You can find out more about my books by clicking here.
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