There is a shift occurring in the world of the written world. There are way more avenues for people to get their books published in this day and age so we are seeing a plethora of new authors. There used to be very few opportunities for an author to be published. There were a select few publishing firms and if you were unsuccessful at getting your foot in their door your career as an author was cut short before it even began. There was almost an exclusive club that was in in control of what the rest of us got the chance to read. The truth is if they did not deem it worthy for any reason it would go unprinted. That was an unfair system which allowed for a limited selection of reading material.
Some would argue that eventually it caused a lack of imagination in the creative writing of authors who got too comfortable with their publishers. As you can imagine the ones who suffered for this, for the most part, were the general public. We had to suffer through books which were stale and unoriginal. We also saw many fewer first time authors than I personally felt we should have.
For instance: an Australian real estate maven would have a compelling story to tell of her pioneering break through into the male dominated real estate business in Australia at the end of the 20th century. But with the former publishing model, her story would have been left untold. And there are countless other people like her with stories and knowledge to share.
Eventually somebody had a great idea, print on demand.
Instead of having a select group decide what was worthy of a large scale print allow single runs of books to be printed only when the request was made. I mean, you can’t really be upset at them for wanting to ensure the best chances of a profit, can you? If a lesser known author wrote a good book bet the authors still believed the chance of success was low they would not print hundreds of thousands of copies that might not sell, of course. However, if you allow a book the opportunity to be customer ordered and printed there would be much less risk of ending up with an excess of inventory if the book does not sell as planned.
This opened up a whole new way of looking at publishing a book. It allows for many new authors who may not have ever been recognized as such if it were not for the new system. The competition will also sharpen the writing skills of authors who have been resting on their laurels for too long. When these author are given the competition of a free market it will cause a marked improvement over the categories which we previously discussed.
Writers will all try a little harder to ensure they retain their fans with the rush of new talent that are sure to be coming to light as a result of this. I am interested to find out how everything goes from here.