It’s no secret to people here that the publishing industry is in disarray. The cost of printing is up due mainly to the cost of paper and labor. At the same time, publishing companies have an archaic system that allows unlimited returns of unsold product, resulting in about one third of all books being remaindered or repulped. Strange as that is, getting rid of it is the same as killing the last proud independent bookstores.

The upshot? Every publisher is looking for that Harry Potter or similar blockbuster that will get them out of the bind, at least temporarily. They want to hit the lottery.

The real killer in all of this is the concept of quality. No one knows what quality really is, at least in the marketability sense of it. The industry has segmented into genres in an effort to get a handle on it, but that works against the scale of large presses and innovative books that cross the lines.

At the heart of the whole problem is the slush pile. We’ve all been there. I can’t get out of it, myself. The next great novel is sitting in a slush pile somewhere, waiting for someone to read it.

The problem is that the industry is caught between old technologies and market systems and something new. Certainly, in an information age, there must be a way for books to build a following. That’s where self-publishers come in, and I’ve certainly gone that route. All that’s left to do is promote yourself. Ug.

That’s what authorsden is all about – cramming the old tech into a new tech world. How good is the result? Eh. It’s not that we all aren’t trying, and there are real success stories. But how many people out there in the book buying public look to places like this for books? How many people are used to the idea of scouting for truly new and interesting titles based on what they read here or at amazon? Not that many, at least not yet.

I’m convinced that the future is in all this mess somewhere, just like some giant marketing and technological slush pile. How long will it take for someone, somewhere to pick it up and recognize it for what it is? If the big publishers are any guide, it may be when trees are completely extinct and paper is utterly unheard of.

Meanwhile, I’ll plug away and hopefully come up with something great on the marketing side that I can share with everyone here. Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be a writer, not a marketer. Well, we all learn. But if one of you is a better marketer than a writer, could you please let me know? Thanks!