The last panel I attended on Wednesday was Barbara Peters of Poison Pen Press and bookstore, speaking on the future of publishing. This is a woman who knows her stuff; knows the industry from a publishing standpoint as well as the brick and mortar bookstore point of view.
For the immediate future, it doesn't look especially appealing. (See the volcano picture? Shall we all jump in now?) I don't know that I'd particularly like trying to get an agent or a publisher at this time. It's not too keen feeling the pinch to make sure you can remain published either. It's Barbara's contention that authors need to have "another income stream." In other words, don't expect to make a living at being a novelist. Well, we all know that. At least, that's the expectation in the first few years. Years ago when she started in the business, she said that only 17% of novelists could make a living at it and now that percentage is up in the air. When the publishing business model is buy high and sell low, it does seem that there is something a bit upside down about it. But to insist that authors are the ones to suffer--those people who make the publishing industry possible--must continue to eke out a subsistence while surely publishers don't need day jobs seems disingenuous at best. However, this is a horse who is beaten, dead, and rotting at the side of the road. It is what it is and though it stinks, one must be pragmatic and look at the options. Today's technology might offer those extra tid bits: i-phone short stories, ghost writing, creating the stories for video games, novelizations. Clearly these options aren't for everyone but the vista is wide and its all about creative thinking and marketing.
And you just thought it was about the writing.
There's always the volcano option.
What did I think of this Left Coast Crime? I thought it was a marvelous coming together of all our little lost tribes of one; getting a chance to feel like a community when so often we spend our time alone in little offices with nothing but the sound of our keyboards for company. Putting faces to those emails we see all the time. Meeting new authors and new readers across the country. Despite the bleakness of the immediate future, that kind of re-energizing by the mere presence of other writers, is priceless.
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