Diary of a Mad Editor

A Long time ago, I predicted that the digital publishing revolution would not simply be a playground for amateur writers. That, more and more, the pedigreed, professionally published writers would slowly begin defecting from the ranks of the traditional publishing realm and begin taking control of their own destinies. That’s the promise of digital: 24/7 publishing on-demand at the ready, and in multiple formats that you can do yourself with no help from agents or establishment editors or marketing pros. And so, I read with great interest Brit author, Ray Connolly’s saga of how he became the latest writer to jump on the bandwagon:

I’m now Ray Connolly, writer, editor-in-chief and head of marketing of Plumray Books, and any one of the 2 billion computer-owning people in the world who wants to read my new novel, The Sandman, can do so at the click of a mouse. It’s being serialised chapter by chapter on my website where, over the next 10 weeks, it will build like a part-work. In the words of a friend, I’m "doing a Dickens".

What’s more, it’s free – although should any readers want to find out how the The Sandman ends before October, and hopefully quite a few will, they can download the entire book for less than the cost of a paperback. After that it will go on to Amazon.

With one digital bound, I’ve become an entrepreneur.

For as long as there has been an Internet, there has been this great divide between writers who published online because they had no other option and writers who had agents and publishing deals, who scoffed at self-publishers. Writers who looked down their noses at anyone who didn’t run with the herd, extolling the virtues of their publishers as if loose diamonds fell from their open mouths. But, it’s clear what’s happened in the meantime, just as Connolly articulates:

You won’t hear it said in many publishing houses these days, where those editors and managements who have survived the 10% cull in their numbers following the credit crunch now appear frozen in the headlights of the onrushing digital revolution. But from the point of view of authors, these are potentially exciting times.

Because, although advances have been slashed, and literary agents are wringing their hands at the difficulties in finding publishers for all but the most guaranteed fiction, change is on the way. With Apple’s iPad recently joining Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader as devices for reading downloaded books, power in publishing might just be shifting in the authors’ favour.

That is it in a nutshell. Writers want and need to get their work out there to be read, and they’d like fair access to the market and a fair chance to eek out a living from it. Publishers simply provide less service than they use to.  It’s not so much that editors don’t edit anymore, so much as it is that editors don’t have as much power or autonomy anymore. Too much of the decision-making is being done by the bean-counters and bottom-liners. Only a small number of writers continue to benefit from the current system. The vast majority of writers have to be more self-reliant than ever before to get exposure.  With no more diamonds to be had, the choice is between self=preservation and loyalty to a system that no longer provides much sustenance.