This Los Angeles Times feature on the future of reading starts to describe the shifting ground in the publishing world. Now that technology allows writers to bypass the old publishing paradigm and basically cut traditional publishers out of the loop, more and more established authors are seeing this as an opportunity to increase their profits and take greater control of their careers.
It’s an excellent development, but it’s also important to recognize the contribution of the many thousands of independent authors who built the groundwork for this development. Shut out of the old publishing platform, these indie pioneers were first to explore the digital publishing possibilities, and they usually did so on their own dime, with the open derision of the bricks and mortar publishing world.
Market leverage and connections will always matter, but the end result of these digital developments is a more level playing field where the reader can pick the great writers and the good, and publishers will have to scramble to remain relevant.
Maybe they’ll need agents…
