Let us not quibble about definitions. Writers and readers know what I mean. These are the novels that offer an experience that cannot be slotted into any genre category, stories that move the mind and the heart, and explore the human condition by authors whose need to tell these long stories of the imagination is a sacred calling.
Read more: Are the Rules of Engagement for Serious Novels Changing?
It may be time for the media that covers the book business to stop publishing best seller lists. They are, in today’s book choosing environment, disorienting, unhelpful and confusing, a valiant but failed attempt to make sense out of disorder.
Read more: Are Best-seller Lists Irrelevant?
For fiction writers in search of a publishing outlet, these are the best of times. For fiction writers in search of readers, this is the worst of times. For fiction writers in search of monetary rewards it is, for most, a disaster.
The challenges for genre fiction writers, those who fashion their stories within the confines of categories such as mysteries, romance, fantasy, zombies, vampires, erotic, and all the subgenres within them, are enormous. If such writers are unbranded and unknown, the odds of finding readership traction in an arena where thousands enter the fray daily are daunting.
Read more: Fiction in Flux
Don’t believe all that hype about government interference that is designed to foster an Amazon monopoly of the ebook business. What the six major publishers were alleged to have done was collude in fixing prices that, if true, was a desperate act that they must have known would fall afoul of anti-trust laws.
The new ploy by book publishers is to characterize Amazon as a monopoly poised to take over and dictate terms and run rampant over those who create ebook content. That is like saying Starbucks is a monopoly because it currently dominates the coffee retail business.
Read more: Don’t Believe the E-Book Monopoly Ploy
So now that the pricing structure of e-books has been resolved once and for all, where does that leave the authors, without whom the publishers, their employees, and agents might be on food stamps?
Once the gatekeepers of the printed word, the power of the publishing community has been severely diminished by the indifferent scythe of technology. The e-book intrusion on their vaunted system of cultural filtration has been breached and they are now forced to compete with anyone who believes they have something to say that will add to our knowledge, entertainment and cultural advancement, once the exclusive purview of the publisher-chosen printed book.
Read more: The E-Book Dilemma
For centuries, the author of a book has been a revered figure, a symbol of intellectual achievement, wisdom and wit, brilliance and, above all, prestige. Indeed, the book, whatever its contents, has been an item of iconic significance.
It is no wonder that a large percentage of people want to write a book. Some have motives that their composition in the covers of a book, however defined as a physical entity or a cyber product, will make them rich and famous; some see such an achievement as an expression of their persona, their point of view, their record of a life lived, a work of the imagination and the fulfillment of a secret wish for immortality.
Read more: Author, Author
While I have often patted myself on the back for recognizing more than fifteen years ago that e-books would one day surpass the printed book as the ultimate first choice of dedicated readers everywhere, I had not reckoned on the unintended consequences of an unfiltered tsunami of self-published books that would one day overtake the traditional distribution patterns of the publishing industry.
The number of self-published e-books has surpassed and will continue to surpass, by far, books published through the time-honored process of editing and distribution that has been the practice of publishing companies for centuries.
Read more: E-Books: Unintended Consequences
Now that the skeptics in the publishing industry, the media, assorted prognosticators and self-proclaimed experts have finally realized that they had it all wrong about e-books, it is time to move to the next big idea affecting readers and authors.
Matching up the serious reader with his or her natural author mate?
How does one find their reading material of choice when the filters, meaning the old army of “experts” who once dominated the book pickers round table have been lost in the fog of the Internet. Let us confine this discussion to the realm of fiction, which, for obvious reasons is my abiding concern.
Read more: The Enigma of Matchmaking Between Author and Reader
