Every year around this time, industry experts and fans of self-publishing start to think about the future of their chosen industry, and contemplate what is going to happen in the next 12 months. Self-publishing – and the book world in general – is going through a huge and exciting transition at the moment, as the web opens up new opportunities for authors, indie publishers and the big five publishing houses.
Sadly, the emergence of the web and eBooks as a major player in publishing has also meant that the decline in hard copy book sales in stores on the high street has led to the closure of many stores, much to the dismay of the hardcore book fan. But with every change in technology and trends, the industry has to adapt, and many libraries and book stores are using digital technology as a way of ensuring people who have made the switch to eBooks can still get something out of visiting their stores.
2014 has seen Hugh Howey’s Author Report kick up a storm, the traditional versus self-publishing debate continue (even when it really didn’t need to) and readers ability to be able to tell the difference between self-published and traditionally published works becoming more difficult due to the authors ability to use fantastic proofreading, editing and design services to make their eBooks look like they were produced by Harper Collins or Penguin.
All of these factors will still be in play in 2015, but here are six predictions for what the other talking points will be between January and December 2015:
1. The Self-Publishing versus Traditional Publishing Debate will continue
It is almost impossible to read two articles on self-publishing and get the same conclusion. One person will say that self-publishing is on the decline, and the next one will say that self-published authors will soon come to dominate the market, with not a lot else in between. There seems to be a trend in the self-publishing world to be seen to not be promoting the opinion that self-publishing is for everyone, whilst also highlighting what a fantastic opportunity it is and that it should be considered.
The problem with promoting the idea of self-publishing is that as soon as you do, there is always somebody who will instantly assume that by self-publishing, you are automatically damning traditional publishers to hell and attributing to their downfall (which is a criticism that is often aimed at Hugh Howey, who is seen as the ‘poster boy’ of self-publishing).
This is simply not the case, and more needs to be done to educate both sides of the argument, besides focussing on a few cases of people who have struck it rich with self-publishing and ones who are traditional published and have a damning view of going it alone. More should be done to show examples of people who have used both forms to their advantage. Maybe that will help calm the conflict down.
2. More Self-Published Authors will sell Movie Rights to Hollywood
Adaptations have always been big business in Hollywood, because an existing property brings a ready-made audience to the piece (although this can sometimes be its downfall) and makes it a lot easier to market to the general audience. Check out these statistics from Linda Seger’s book The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film:
- 85% of all Academy Award-winning Best Pictures are adaptations
- 45% of all television movies-of-the-week are adaptations
- 83% of all miniseries are adaptations
There are hundreds of authors who have sold the movie rights to their novels, and so far, only two of those have been high-profile self-published authors: Hugh Howey sold the rights to his Wool series to Ridley Scott a few years back, and the movie adaptation is expected to be huge in 2015. E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey will also hit the silver screen in 2015, meaning that there will be a lot of publicity and focus regarding the self-publishing origins of both of these phenomenons.
With this in mind, expect a number of Hollywood studios to be circulating the Amazon KDP bestsellers list around the summer of 2015, with an eye to purchasing the rights to at least a dozen of the self-publishing success stories of that year, and to roll them out quickly during the 2015-16 hype of Wool and Fifty Shades, similar to what they did with the success of Twilight and Harry Potter, when every YA novel was optioned for a movie within five minutes of Twilight’s opening weekend box office numbers coming in.
3. Print on-demand Services will become more popular
In the UK, Tim Waterstone – the founder of the Waterstones book store chain – recently predicted that the eBook revolution will go into decline because of the UK’s innate love for literature will always lead them back to books. The sales stats hold up to this theory: British book spend in 2013 was £300 million (on 80 million e-books) compared to £2.2 billion (on 323 million physical books). If this doesn’t show that the sales of both sides of publishing are strong – at least in the UK – then it’s difficult to see what does. The notion that the popularity of one has to mean the end of the other seems a little naïve.
Reading these stats, it seems likely that more self-published authors will try to enter the printed book market in 2015. This is more likely to be the kind of author who has had a high success rate with their sales (or who has a sizeable budget for design and printing costs), but there definitely seems to be a gap in the market for more authors to use print on-demand services and get hardcopies of their works into local and national bookstores. If the eBook boom has come to an end, why shouldn’t authors make the most of digital and print in 2015?
4. Amazon and co. will start to implement stricter quality control procedures
The most popular argument against self-publishing is that there are often examples of books that are shockingly put together – with poor formatting, dodgy spelling and grammar and cheap covers that don’t give self-publishing a good name. The folk who like to bash self-publishing as an inferior form are quick to hold up examples of these books when they go on the attack.
The self-publishing boom has been a free-for-all, there is no doubt, but it is likely that in the next 18 months or so, stricter quality control procedures will come into place, especially as more and more eBooks are likely to hit the market in 2015 than at any time before. The more legitimacy self-publishing achieves, the more the likes of Amazon, B&N, Lulu and the other marketplaces need to put their foot downs and act as Editorial staff at a traditional publishers. It is the only way that authors of poorly written and formatted books are going to learn that self-publishing is not an easy option.
5. Amazon will open a B&N style book store – with a Self-Published section
First of all, some crazy yet awesome news: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has agreed a deal with NASA to open a bookstore on the ISS (International Space Station). It will be the first physical bookstore for Amazon – and definitely the hardest to reach – but it is also likely to be the first of many as Amazon continue to take over the world of books. One company who won’t be happy with this prediction will be Barnes and Noble, the largest physical bookstore in the US. They have enough competition with Amazon online (and from Books-A-Million in physical form), and Amazon could substantially eat into B&N’s approx. $7 billion a year revenue from book sales.
The reason for this prediction is simple: Amazon are one of the biggest companies in the world, and they can afford to branch out into physical bookstores. It is also likely that an Amazon bookstore would also feature a self-publishing section, which would be the first of its kind and an incredible opportunity for self-published authors to sell their eBooks and print-on-demand books in Amazon’s very own stores.
Do you think that any of these predictions will come true, or do you have some of your own to share? Let us know in the comments below and let’s have a debate on the future of self-publishing in 2015 and beyond…
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