Publishing Goes Electronic

Publishers are irrevocably changing their industry as they make more and more titles available as e-books, says Goodnight Gutenburg. Soon agents may be publishing their authors electronically. “Once you remove the complexities of distribution from the book equation, an author has to ask herself what she gets from a publisher. After all, publicity is a function of the author’s own fame, talent, or personal story. And publishing is, at its very core, nothing more than publicity plus distribution. In the contemporary book business, the publishing house’s role is really one of risk displacement. … But as the marketplace shrinks and publishers are forced to become more selective, agents are having a harder time placing work. They’re also waking up to the fact that distribution is easy to accomplish with e-books.”