Monday, August 29, 2016

Market Share: It's a thing

And the Big 5 publishers are losing it. Their audiences are shrinking, as they keep pushing diversity. There's this little thing called the Author Earnings report, and it shows that people aren't reading less, just shifting where they purchase their fiction from. Hint: it ain't  the big publishers, and it's becoming unlikely that agents will be useful.

Enough of my little ranting. Brian Niemeier has a great blog post analyzing it, and why do the work twice?  Those trends look like small publishers and self publishing is the way to go. Hmm. Like Brian Niemeir, Declan Finn, and Nick Cole have done. They found their audience, Mr. Cole was even kicked to the curb by a major publisher, and had a bestseller by self publishing.

So who's buying, if the SJWs aren't? Could it be their enemis, the Sad and Rabid Puppies are moderates and conservatives who establishment SFF kept insulting? Could it be that Christians are returning to genres they practically founded, as the atheist brigade can't gatekeep them out?

It's just like in English classes when the teacher had a favorite subversive thing that bored everyone to tears. It went unread except by those that wanted to actually know the topic. Everyone else read the Cliff Notes. Now the suckups parrot all the talking points of their "leaders", guys like Damien Walter, who can't even compose a well written newspaper article, but has a grant from the Crown for a book he hasn't finished yet.

I'll do my own reading, thank you, review what I want to, and watch as the Big 5 collapse. Oh, Baen will keep one open, but only as a printing company. Castalia House is doing two books almost every month, and that will likely increase by the end of the year.

When you play Social Justice, the world loses.

2 comments:

  1. Glad you found my post useful. I'm here to help!

    Nick Cole is an enlightening model for once traditionally published authors who got the boot from the Big 5 only to score big on their own. JA Konrath is another classic example.

    And if you want a refutation of the old canard that self-publishing will disqualify you from ever working with a publisher, look no further. I can't wait to show you all what Castalia House and I have in store.

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  2. That parallels my experience as a reader. My spending on books for a decade consisted solely of donations to the library via the used book sales. Within the last 12 months my spending on books has tripled, and all of it goes to independent publishers and self-publishers.

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