POD is a way for some independent publishers, for example, in Australia, to get their author’s works into online bookshops outside of Australia. The shipping costs are just too high otherwise. Dymocks, a big bookshop in Sydney, is going digital. Who knows, we may soon have kiosks there to print out any book at all “while you wait” that a customer may demand. The quality of POD can be the same as that of traditionally published books. There are good and bad, in content and in packaging.

Several years ago, I heard that “respected” reviewers would not touch POD-published books with a bargepole. Today, things may be changing.

If one rails against the conglomerates and their blockbusters, albeit ones that may help finance the publication of “better” works that perhaps don’t bring in the $$$$, then one can’t turn a blind eye to POD.

POD is a way for independent publishers to reach a wider audience at lower cost. An added value is that POD doesn’t clog things up with so many remainders and is still reasonably green.
Speaking of green, there are ebooks …
Best,
Merc

I’ve read quite a few articles like the one on Bookarazzi. Once a book was a something, now it is merchandise with a sell-by date. The world is changing and attitudes have to. In ‘Cranford’ one of the characters, a social reforming estate manager, is irked because he had to work with a woman. He is reminded that the world is changing but not all the changes are going to be ones he necessarily cares for. The time will come when reviewers have to accept that self-published works can be every bit as good if not better than traditionally published books.

The statistics in the second article are interesting. They do show a changing world but not necessarily one changing for the better.

jb says: Hi Jim. I’m just about to start watching Cranford. I’m not sure what I feel about it as serialised fiction. Seems to be a combination of realism and farce. Not at all what I remember of reading the book.

As for publishers promoting books, it seems to me that the only books that ever get any kind of promotion are books that the publisher knows will sell millions of copies. Appalling, outrageously bad airport novel authors like James Patterson are the ones who get print and billboard and print ads, as do a lot of non-fiction authors who are usually peddling books promoting some health or diet fad. The publishers know these books will sell like crazy and that they will more than recoup their advertising expenses. It seems to me that publishers have figured out a formula for which books they will promote: if the promotion costs will ultimately amount to about 5% of the sales revenue, then the book gets actively promoted, if not, then not.

As for reviewers ignoring self-published authors, well… I really don’t intend to offend anyone, but I think that reviewers are right to ignore them. There are very good reasons why self-published books have the stigma that they do. I admit that I’ve rarely ever read a self-published book, but the ones I have read, I did not come away thinking “Damn! That person deserves a publisher.”

There are already thousands of published books that need to be reviewed each year, books that have already gone through an editor somewhere and through a publisher that’s gone to the trouble to publish them. What self-published authors are asking of the reviewers is that they be not just reviewers, but also editors, wading through the vast global slushpile of self-published authors and deciding who actually deserves attention. Even if a self-published author is a success on the internet, and they’re selling lots of books through lulu.com or iuniverse.com that still doesn’t make them worth a reviewer’s time. Maybe you could argue that popularity does make them worth reviewing, but I still think that approval by an editor in a real publishing house still has some value–more value than mere popularity.

jb says: Hi Shawn, Good to see you here again. These are vexed questions at the present time because the whole of the publishing industry is on the verge of change. It looks to me as though there is no advertising budget for perhaps 95% of fition, perhaps more. I’m not a business man so wouldn’t pretend to know if the advertising for the other 5% (probably less) of publications actually has a positive effect. I suppose the kind answer is that publishers wouldn’t use advertising if it didn’t work. And clutching at the same thought, that they are also right in assuming that advertising doesn’t work for most of their publications.
They do, usually, try to get books reviewed prior to and on publication, which in itself is a kind of advertising, although not something they pay for.
On the secojnd point you raise, that of reviewers ignoring self-published books, I find myself on the other side of the fence. I can understand why they have traditionally ignored vanity publishers, but with the emergence of the internet and modern publishing technology, self-publishing, POD, etc. the writer’s traditional path to publication has and is continuing to change.
This, together with the replacement of the traditional editor by marketers, mean that the process of change has to be embraced by all sections of the industry, including reviewers.