Wanna buy my Junie doll? How about a T-shirt?

The BEA (Book Expo America) and Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, seem to have incited a great deal of anxiety, this past week, in the publishing and writing communites with the assertion (or reassertion) that e-book domination of the publishing industry is an inevitability and profits and royalties are on their way out. Just as network television gives away sitcoms, dramas and reality shows to attract attention to advertising, so will writers be giving away our books, in the not too distant future, to attract attention to websites where we will be advertising spinoff products or other people's products and services in order to make a living from our writing.

One of the most interesting takes I have read so far on this topic was posted in response to agent Nathan Bransford's June 11 questions: Is this the future? And how do we feel about it? My question is, should I stop rewriting my novel and start designing Junie Bodine (my main character) T-shirts and action figures? Jackson Perlow, thanks for your insight. Anyone else care to weigh in?

Jackson Perlow said...
The reality of our free market economy is that profit from our endeavors is controlled by supply and demand. As evidenced by the flood of manuscripts that threatens to overwhelm Nathan and his ilk, there is a massive oversupply of fiction out there. The reading public is not screaming for more great fiction, and they rely on the gatekeepers, agents and publishers, to help them find the gems hidden in the river of mediocrity. This is frustrating to those of us who think we've written one of those gems (all of us), and many search for alternative markets to bypass the gatekeepers. What is likely to result is a two-market system. One market will continue to serve up products that have the seal of approval of the traditional publishing industry's gatekeepers--a limited supply that will assure sufficient profit for elite writers and publishers alike. The second market, already developing, will use the Internet to distribute an unvetted, unlimited supply of e-fiction. This market will suffer from greater supply (because of the absence of gatekeepers) and lesser demand (because of the difficulty of separating quality fiction from crap), resulting in dramatically lower prices than could be obtained in the traditional market. Nobody will make money.So I think authors who are part of the traditional market will continue to make their money in the same way they always have--writing and selling great fiction. Authors who can't crack the traditional market--whether because of a lesser quality product or an inability to convince the gatekeepers of the value of their product--will continue to toil in poverty. I doubt the oversupply will diminish the pricing power of traditional publishers because they control access to the one orderly market the public trusts.