In his blogpost The Incredible Resilience of Publishing Fantasy , author Michael Levin responds to a piece in the Atlantic by former Random House editor Peter Osnos. Osnos makes the case that books will survive, while Levin makes the point Osnos avoids saying: trade publishers might not, having "lost the two things that made their business model work: the hammerlocks on distribution and marketing that the Internet has utterly destroyed." Levin's correct, but I also agree with Osnos that trade publishers are resilient and adaptive.
Penelope Trunk
Earlier this month I mentioned a blog post by self-publishing writer Penelope Trunk on how clueless she found her traditional publisher when it came to marketing her work on-line. The blog post was later carried by The Guardian in edited form. Since then, John Self has written on the Guardian’s Book blog about the (largely [...]
When author Penelope Trunk wanted to publish a book about the American Dream, she writes in her blog that she was blown away by how inept her traditional publisher was when it came to marketing it. (She does not name the publisher, but says it’s a major household name.) This publisher had already paid her [...]
More Blogs