There's no doubt about who's winning the \u00a0American Indie Revolution.\u00a0 The castle walls of the old publishing royals stand in ruins.\u00a0 Even former staunch allies like Barnes & Noble have defected to the insurgent writers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDigital publishing and digital book selling will soon become the most explosive development in the history of our industry and will sweep aside those who aren\u2019t participating,\u201d Leonard Riggio, B&N's\u00a0founder and chairman, said during\u00a0a recent presentation<\/a> highlighting the company's expanding forray into the digital market.\u00a0<\/p>\n The e-reader market is in the midst of a price war that is putting more and more of the devices into the hands of the book-buying American public.\u00a0 Fewer readers visit the brick and mortar bookstores as more readers demand that the bookstores come to them, via their PCs, Macs, e-readers, iPods and cell phones.\u00a0 Via America's strong and ever expanding wireless networks ebooks get delivered to readers\u00a0instantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n When American publishers lost control of the distribution system, they lost control of the readers and the writers.\u00a0 Today\u00a0authors like Joe Konrath<\/a>\u00a0have chosen to forego offered publishing contracts for some books, electing to\u00a0get them out in print and ebook format on their own, thank you very much.\u00a0 Books of writers doing it their way are, more and more,\u00a0 transitioning readers to expect stories undiluted by editorial changes demanded by publishers.\u00a0 An American indie book or ebook is becoming an intimate experience shared only by\u00a0the writer and the reader.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But\u00a0even in the present economic downturn, America's companies\u00a0invested the time and resources to build the pipelines that allowed the Indie Revolt to succeed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Those pipelines are being strengthened as demand encourages more investment.\u00a0 Our writers can now\u00a0write their books, publish them, sell them to readers and get paid via those same magic pipelines that funnel money directly into their bank accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the heady\u00a0atmosphere of power and possibility now held by the creators themselves, it becomes\u00a0rather easy to forget that America's Indie Revolt is not yet the world's.\u00a0 Imagine an American publisher today saying the following:\u00a0 \u201cEveryone knows that almost all publishers cheat their authors on their royalty payments, and there\u2019s \u00adnothing the authors can do about it.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Attitudes like that\u00a0may have prevailed amongst\u00a0that publisher's\u00a0American colleagues a few years ago, but they should be\u00a0long gone today.\u00a0 Because today, in our country, there's a lot the authors can do about it - even aside from having an eagle-eyed agent.\u00a0 In our country, the authors can punish the publishers by taking business directly to the people.\u00a0 In the e-age,\u00a0who needs the middleman?<\/p>\n The above quote is\u00a0from a piece in The\u00a0Herald\/Herald Scotland about 4 young Italian writers who have joined forces to fight the\u00a0\"predatory practices of the Italian publishing industry.\"\u00a0 In a month, their Writers In Litigation<\/a> website got the support of over 50 authors to warn writers of industry practices and help them guard against \"fraudulent royalty payments.\"<\/p>\n The Italian group notes that their publishers cultivate \"the impression that they are bestowing a privilege by \u00adagreeing to publish their works, rather than entering into a straightforward business deal.\"\u00a0 Sergio Nazzaro, one of the group's\u00a0founders, published\u00a0a fictionalized account of a meeting with the editor that reflects prevailing attitudes of those in the country's publishing companies.\u00a0 In the fictional meeting, the editor tells the author that he pays low royalties and no advance because\u00a0\u201cThere are lots of writers \u00adwilling to write and to pay to get published, and many of them are very good. This is the cultural mass: there are more people who write than who read. And they\u2019ll pay to write.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That attitude is precisely the sentiment that led to the downfall of America's publishing royals.\u00a0\u00a0The attitude infuriated indie authors for years but, like their Italian counterparts, they could do little about it in reality. It\u00a0took technology\u00a0and the rise of the wireless society to provide American writers the tools to change a theoretical insurgency to a new literary marketplace.\u00a0 \u00a0Borders, laws, and the realities that technology in other places hasn't kept pace with America's advances all combine to make it difficult for foreign\u00a0 writers to\u00a0publish and distribute\u00a0with the ease that we in the U.S. now enjoy.<\/p>\n Reading the piece reminded me of a couple of things.\u00a0 First, I don't know if I've ever expressed how grateful I am to companies like Amazon and Smashwords for making e-publishing easy and profitable.\u00a0 I also appreciate Amazon's affiliate, CreateSpace and its new distribution system for making it easy\u00a0to get paper copies of my book out on the digital shelves of nearly every major bookstore.\u00a0 Someday soon, I hope, CS will have a returns policy in place that allows the stores to shelve the books in their brick and mortar locations.\u00a0\u00a0I also owe a big thank you to Smashwords retail partners who carry my ebooks - Sony, Apple's iBookstore, Kobo, and B&N.\u00a0 SW's partner Kobo is now distributing to Borders and some SW author's books have also appeared there.\u00a0 Not mine - yet - but maybe soon.\u00a0 More shelf space always means more sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thinking of the Italian author's struggle reminds me, also, of how petty some of our concerns are.\u00a0 Authors on Kindle worry and gripe about Amazon's new TOS that accompanied the e-tailers rolling out of 70% royalties to authors rather than the former 35%.\u00a0 Sure, there are some issues with the new system but complaining about it is like complaining that our caviar isn't Beluga.\u00a0 Wouldn't our Italian comrades like to have their largest complaint be about\u00a0rules they have to meet to get a 70% royalty?<\/p>\n Frankly, I DON'T OFTEN SYMPATHIZE WITH ANYONE ITALIAN<\/a>, but I realize that - perhaps - I've been unfairly blaming the nation for the fact that an Italian company downsized my programmer\/analyst hubby a couple of years ago.\u00a0 The economy went to pot in those intervening years and my tough times have, I fear, fertilized\u00a0my\u00a0tendency to paint with too broad a brush.\u00a0 The\u00a0Italians who downsized hubby were definitely in the\u00a0same \"haves\" category as the Italian publishing company - family castle and all. And in considering the Italian manufacturing families'\u00a0attitudes, I begin to have a greater respect for the plight of the Italian authors.\u00a0<\/p>\n To my Italian brothers and sisters who also toil away at keyboards, I hope that the Indie Revolution hits your shores soon.\u00a0 Please\u00a0know that it is coming and prepare yourselves.\u00a0 Soon the day will arrive when you will be your own publisher and\u00a0your own editor.\u00a0 It will not bring large up front advances, but it will bring independence and creative freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n And to all those companies that made America's Indie Revolt the new literary reality I say -\u00a0thank you.\u00a0 I hope that I and my fellow indie authors make you more than proud - I hope we make you rich.<\/p>\n Nothing will take the Indie Revolution to every nation on earth as fast as the bottom line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There's no doubt about who's winning the \u00a0American Indie Revolution.\u00a0 The castle walls of the old publishing royals stand in ruins.\u00a0 Even former staunch allies like Barnes & Noble have defected to the insurgent writers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDigital publishing and digital book selling will soon become the most explosive development in the history of our industry and ...continue reading \"America’s Indie Revolt: Why It Matters & Will It Spread\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1113,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110\/revisions\/1113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}