Brave Old World

 

June 24 question: Terry here, with our question of the week: Looking into your crystal ball, what's the writing business going to look like 5 years from now? Do you think it's going to be more or less the same, or will AI and other technology trends transform it dramatically - if so, how?

Given the dramatic changes in the past five years in publishing, I hesitate to make any predictions. Five years ago seems like eternity. During Covid, like so many other businesses, the publishing world took advantage of the pandemic to quietly make brutal changes. Some companies folded and slipped away. Others pared down their stables of writers, giving the publishing world’s version of pink slips to mid-list authors. Advances were minimized or cut altogether. Editors were fired (with disastrous results, in my view. Some of the books I read, I suspect have never been seen by an editor.) Promotion budgets were slashed. (Not that they were ever  generous for mid-list authors). Contracts were “tightened.” Why is it that when the publishing industry makes changes it pretty much never benefits the authors? 

I consider myself lucky. Right around Covid time I signed up with a new publisher, Severn House. Although my advances were cut in half, at least I still get a reasonable advance. They put out an attractive book, with good covers, and they have a strong editorial staff. But being in the UK, they also had some business practices that seemed strange to me. For example, they do little promotion, selling mostly to libraries. And their paperback version comes out several months after the hardcover. And sometimes, not at all. Not only that, but their ebook prices were quite high—not competitive. But they recently have begun some moves in the direction of attaining parity with U.S. publishers (I hope that’s a good thing). They will be putting out paperbacks six months after the hardcover, and their ebook prices will drop. I was happily surprised to find out that Deep Dive, which comes out in July has an ebook price of $15.99—way below the $24.99 that they used to be. 

 So…about the future. Will tariffs affect publishing? Probably. Maybe not so much in the mystery world, but certainly any books with photos will be much pricier, as a lot of color photo work is done outside the U.S. I don’t know if paper will be in short supply, if printing fluid will be in short supply--driving the prices up…who knows?

 Will AI affect publishing? Without a doubt. A conversation has been under way for quite some time about whether AI content can replace human content. The general agreement is that although AI can come up with book-like content, it is lacking “soul,” for lack of a better word. Is that going to matter to readers? As long as it’s a good story, a lot of readers will be fine with a writing style that seems pedestrian. After all, there are published writers who get badly-written prose published now. Why would that change?

The question is, will writers keep writing? Most certainly. Will they get paid even less for their work? Again, almost certainly. Why would a publisher negotiate fair terms with a mid-list author when they can spew out an “okay” book for a few bucks and sell it for the same price as usual? 

 How to fix that? Writers’ unions? Writers’ collectives that publish the non-AI content of their members? You already see writers making a little extra money on subscriptions, or publishing their own books. This doesn’t seem like a sustainable model as more writers try to crowd in on that bandwagon. 

 I wish I had a more sanguine view of the publishing world, but I’m worried—not so much for me, as for authors who are just starting out. The good news is that good books are still being published, writers are still plugging away, people are still reading. I guess until techies come up with a way to zap a book into readers’ brains without actually having to read it we have a little more time in our brave old world of writing and publishing.

And now for a bit of that old-fashioned blatant self-promotion:

Out July 2 and available for per-order at your local bookstore or https://tinyurl.com/38acauwt

"...a must-read thriller." Booklist