[MD] Review of 'The Truth About Art'.

[Dan Glover]

Jan-Anders and all,

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 3:49 AM, Jan Anders Andersson
<jananderses at telia.com> wrote:
> Dan
>
> You are a good story teller. :-)

Dan:
Thank you! I like to think my storytelling has improved over the
years. Each book I write seems to be my best to date but perhaps I am
viewing that through the lens of self deception or more likely my
readers are simply lying to me. I can accept that.

Anyway, I happened upon an interesting article concerning traditional
publishing versus the wave of self publishing that over the last few
years has changed the landscape for both authors and for booksellers.
You can find it in full here:

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopoly

The first line is what caught my attention:

"Here's a little real talk about the book publishing industry — it
adds almost no value, it is going to be wiped off the face of the
earth soon, and writers and readers will be better off for it."

As an author and an independent publisher I couldn't agree more.
Anyone who is truly interested in the artistic quality behind putting
together a book should revel in the changes abounding in the
publishing industry.

Instead of signing away the rights to our work, authors now have the
option of controlling our own destinies. With the plethora of social
media we no longer need to rely on the entrenched publishing giants to
get our work out there. We can market ourselves. Another snippet seems
apt:

"What is indisputably true is that Amazon is on track to destroy the
businesses of incumbent book publishers. But the many authors and
intellectuals who've been convinced that their interests — or the
interests of literary culture writ large — are identical with those of
the publishers are simply mistaken.

"Wisdom on this subject begins with the observation that the book
publishing industry is not a cuddly craft affair. It's dominated by a
Big Four of publishers, who are themselves subsidiaries of much larger
conglomerates. Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS, HarperCollins is
owned by NewsCorp, Penguin and RandomHouse are jointly owned by
Pearson and Bertelsmann, and Hachette is part of an enormous French
company called Lagadère."

I don't know about the academic publishers but I'm guessing they're
riding in the same boat as the big ones. They carefully establish
industry norms meant to usurp any author hoping to publish with them,
to force them into cowing to the prevailing winds and forego any shred
of creativity..

As artists in the quality sense of the word we authors need to open
our eyes to the fact that not only can we do things our way but we can
flourish doing it. That scares the hell out of the big publishers. Oh
sure, they act all high and mighty but the true power lies in the
authors' hands in ways never before possible. The big publishers could
care less about books. They care about the bottom line... profit.

Enough for now,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com