Publishers Weekly has an interesting article entitled "15 Trends to Watch in 2008." On the list at number 3 is this gem: "This will be the Year of the Author" followed by some drivel about publishing brands and speakers bureaus. Hmmm....not so far, it would appear. Number 11 is about literary agents begining to experience "the same kind of consolidation hit other parts of the book business, as the shrinking of advances below the very top tier of authors and the growing need for agents to provide editing, marketing and increasingly detailed rights management make it hard for smaller agencies to bring in enough money to cover their overhead costs." Indeedy. Though doesn't shrinking advances diminish the Year of the Author? Oh well, why bother putting that old formula together? There's more nuggets to be mined over there about experimentation, etc. Worth a click.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Year of the What?
Publishers Weekly has an interesting article entitled "15 Trends to Watch in 2008." On the list at number 3 is this gem: "This will be the Year of the Author" followed by some drivel about publishing brands and speakers bureaus. Hmmm....not so far, it would appear. Number 11 is about literary agents begining to experience "the same kind of consolidation hit other parts of the book business, as the shrinking of advances below the very top tier of authors and the growing need for agents to provide editing, marketing and increasingly detailed rights management make it hard for smaller agencies to bring in enough money to cover their overhead costs." Indeedy. Though doesn't shrinking advances diminish the Year of the Author? Oh well, why bother putting that old formula together? There's more nuggets to be mined over there about experimentation, etc. Worth a click.
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2 comments:
The predictions/analyses strike me as about as lame as anything else you read in publishing. Agents doing editing? If you read pretty much any agent's take on the business, they say they won't do much editing, nor indeed, much of anything else, except maybe shopping your MS if they feel like it on a good day. But then, a lot of agents these days spend their time blogging about being agents and what a pain in the ass their current and wannabe clients are.
My prediction is this will be year n+1 of agents, publishers, and editors discovering blogs and how much fun they are, about a decade behind the curve, and we'll have to wait for them to get bored with cutest cat contests before we see anything else new -- though that, as well, will be ten years behind the curve.
The publishing industry is in the midst of a revolution, largely created by cyberspace. I am still experimenting with the marketing aspects in cyberspace. I am in hot pursuit, but I have not yet discovered the magic bullet. Stay tuned.
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