I am going to skip the part about how, as an author, you go through this rough phase of sending across your manuscript to numerous publisher, and how pitiably you have to wait for infinite periods of time to receive a response, that if you are lucky to receive one. Enough of the author's sob story; let's get down straight to the publisher's angle.
For that, you need to put yourself in the publisher's shoes. And it would be so difficult to get into those shoes, because you have no idea how much it hurts in those, how tough it is to walk in them and how many blisters it adds to your soles. You will find it difficult to empathize with the publisher because you have been writing your masterpiece with the selfish expectation that the publishers pick it as their finest discovery; and you foresee yourself in the next six months ahead of that dream moment, on the pages of magazines and newspaper with the title shouting 'A Literary Star is Born'. You have already piled up a couple of more fantasies while the crucial part is yet to be achieved. And when you don't receive any communication, you tend to blame them (all the publishing houses) for your collective failures - the guys who would put you on top have suddenly turned into a hurdle between you and your big fat dream.
So why wouldn't they, the snobbish publishing companies, wish for you to succeed? Especially, if your work is as good as you think it to be, or perhaps better than what your self-bias suggests?
It's simple. There's a possibility they like your work, but they don't know whether they will make money out of you. You are an artist; they are entrepreneurs. Maybe you have intentions of spending chunks of money on promotion; maybe you have a great plan for flaunting your creation; maybe you've already spoken with a celebrity friend to assist you with the launch; maybe you have that breakthrough idea to advertise your book which will guarantee you mind-boggling sales.
But do they know it?
Or let's say, they have this miraculous ability to judge, from your detailed marketing plan, your seriousness and the superb, path-breaking strategies you have chalked out and poured to them. So it all looks good. Huh? What could be stopping them?
THIS: They could be over-invested in your kind of genre. They could be over-invested in all kinds of genres. They could be over-invested in the whole business of publishing.
It's simple - they might not be having the money to do this right now. Everybody goes through the crunch. And given the industry average of a quarter of the books making profits for overall book sales, the business doesn't look as lucrative as we, the authors, want it to. So, don't expect charity from a publishing company. Don't expect charity from ANY company, in fact.
I have a suggestion which goes out to all major publishing houses. You reject a manuscript because of quality issues, Fine. You reject a manuscript because it's not the kind of work you're interested in, Fine. But if you're going to merely reject a manuscript ONLY and ONLY because you're over-invested, then you really got to open up one option for the aspiring author.
And that option is Hybrid-Publishing.
No, not vanity publishing. Vanity publishing is when you publish just anything because the author pays you. Hybrid publishing is when any author's work has matched the standards you wish to maintain for the sake of your reputation, but the only aspect holding you back is Capital. Make an offer to the author that your'e interested in collaborating with him. Decide upon the royalties as you otherwise would, but ask the author to make an investment. And if the author has made an investment, he's more like a partner in that particular venture i.e. his own book, and hence entitled to returns as well. How exactly you intend to share profits is not something that I can dictate to you, because I am not in the business of publishing. You are. But I am sure you get the gist of what I am saying.
So, in this case, everybody wins. The author gets a brand name that his book deserves. He gets benefits of your widespread network of distribution. Most importantly, he gets published. It benefits, you, the publishing house as well. You have more titles to boast of, more variety, more attention - that makes your entire process of supply and distribution cost-effective. Authors will actually look forward to working with you on account of the turnaround time now cut short because you are no longer awaiting funds.
And... if the book fails, the loss is not yours alone. In fact, the chances of the book failing is much lower in such cases, because the author will run an extra mile to promote his work. It's a proven fact that one will always feel more motivated in any avenue where he has put his own stakes.
So that was the rough sketch of how I feel Hybrid publishing should be. There could be some flaws in the pattern, but none that I can think of. Of course, you are welcome to point out.
There would be a lot of skeptics who would argue why an author shouldn't take the self-publishing route instead. If stakes themselves can motivate the author to do a wonderful job at promotions, why wouldn't the author slog for his own self-published book? To answer that question, we will carefully analyse the downsides of self-publishing: Majorly, a terrible distribution network and the low chances that bookstores would shelf self-published books.
There's yet another downside that comes to mind, and I am not sure how many others think like I do. But if we're going to sell something, we need to think from the buyer's perspective as well. In this particular case, the buyer is the reader. Personally, as a reader, I do not read (or purchase) self-published books. And those from debut writers, not the slightest chance. This may be a result of having come across too many terrible books that were self-published, which has kind of killed the faith. But given the facts that self-published books do not get distributed well enough, regardless of their quality, makes it safe to assume that my attitude towards a debut self-published book represents overall market sentiment.
So it's like this. Traditional publishing sucks the author's energy in the waiting period itself (the royalties are nothing great either). Self-publishing sucks the author's confidence. Vanity publishing sucks the author's money. So as an author, I would really hope that some of our publishing companies really mold their norms and introduce this hybrid publishing model, thus infusing fresh, new enthusiasm into the lives of those authors who are both good with their skills and confident about selling them.
That's about all I got to say on Hybrid-Publishing. Maybe if some company out there takes notice, we have a winner here.
