Mr. Mapster. You still seem to think that it takes the traditional (I won’t stoop to calling you old as others do) publishers to weed out the good stuff, as if readers don’t know what’s good for them. True, many readers aren’t ready for writers at a certain time, or that author is not ready to engage their readers, but do we really need you to understand and mediate for us and get that author to print? No, because in the “New Publishing” world, those books will stay in “print”, they will never die, they are burned onto thousands of servers memories and propagated everyday. Or they sit on a computer at the offices of “ye ole’ print on demand shoppe” waiting to be called into service. There is no shelving, no remaindering, no corporate archiving of someone’s great work. Eventually it will be discovered and understood because regular people who do get it will take it up and champion it via all the new media outlets at their resource. And they’ll do this all without you. Isn’t that amazing?

You might want to work on your resume if that is the kind of argument you bring to the table against New Publishing.

My god, I can’t wait for BEA!

I have long ago thrown down the gauntlet against literary snobs and donned the moniker”1,000th typing monkey” and wear it proudly. I have self-published 5 books to date (not to worry, three more are slowly being shaped–Type monkey! Type!) and two of them have consistently been among Amazon’s top sellers. Traditional publishing must change and adapt or it will go the way of the dinosaurs. The advent of a keyboard for every set of fingers has made writers of all of us, and authors of more of us than ever. Quality will always be an issue, and like we see in Hollywood, major houses can put out crap just as easily as any amateur, especially when profit supersedes artistic integrity.

Self-publishing is quickly becoming “personal publishing” (pardon me for introducing a new term into the lexicon, but it is appropriate). Gramma can now publish her secret recipes and get them on Amazon for posterity. Is that so sinful? Who cares if only 10,000 people buy her recipes over the next 100 years, or if only 5 people buy them. One may be the next Wolfgang Puck.

Personal publishing is about sharing our viewpoints, knowledge, and the democratization of knowledge. Not every vote is scrutinized, and not every book is read, but if the author can empty their bladder and thus fin some validation in this world, is that “three-copy” seller really threatening Random House?

Major houses need to watch out for small houses who are smart, savvy, and nimble, as they become major players in the new game. It is simply about adapting to the market, which means retaining the collective wisdom distilled from ages of professional publishing, and firing the old codgers who stand in the way of progress. Get some new (internet and caffeine powered) blood working under the careful guidance (guidance, not dictatorship) of J.Jonah Jameson types and the publishing world will, as a whole, rise from the ashes of the bonfire it has currently lit under itself.

Quality books will sell. Those books need distribution and proper, effective marketing. That means a publishing industry. If the old guard expects to be “that industry” forward-thinking CEOs need to hoist the bones, plank the bean-counters, and shanghai the best new blood they can for internal creative organization. New techniques of scouting quality authors need to come to the fore, and less reliance needs to be put on the fascination with non-author celebrities.

I stand at the gates and shout into the vaunted halls of publishing. The short game is killing the industry. Keep dumbing down America with the crap that is currently being published and your core audience of readers will shrink. Or have you learned nothing? To those publishers who pit out the intellectual equivalent of People magazine in book form, you-ill-die on the vine. New blood is coming, and we will dominate the readership. If you want to maintain control of the information flow, you need to come down from your high horsie, harness the best we have to offer, and humbly help us help you become billionaires.

Now excuse me, but monkey has typing to do. It takes a lot of hack-typing to end up with one readable draft, but I never stop.

Really start to select authors based on the quality of writing and story-telling rather than on their celebrity status

Use print on demand and e-book technology to produce the book. Follow a no-discount, no-return policy.

Focus their energies on selling the book to the public by contacting bloggers who review that genre. It’s true that the book review sections in newspapers are being cut down, but the blogosphere is awash with review sites.

And yes, they need to pay their editors better! I spend a lot of time reading and correcting bad writing and critiquing some awful manuscripts. And I do this for a pittance. I find that in many cases, publishers are swayed more by their contacts than by their common sense. I remember editing a book last year that was so badly written that I honestly wondered how the publisher ever managed to read the book to select it.

Mapster – regarding your last comment, maybe you’ve hit the nail on the head – maybe the most important function for publishers going forward will be to filter out the white noise – find the best content and deliver it to readers who don’t have the time, patience, or expertise to find new content on the internet…