In pure ebook publishing, reputation will be everything.

[dsrtao]

Let's start a thousand pure ebook publishers. They all start out as small startups -- one to three partners -- and adequate funding. Their mission: to make enough money to survive and thrive in the world of selling ebooks.

Some of them try to replicate traditional publishing, in which the good taste of one or a few editors determines the selection of investments:

Costs:
- slushpile reading
- editorial selection
- proofreading and continuity
- editorial advising
- formatting
- web service
- programming
- office stuff (banking and incorporation and insurance...)
- attracting new writers
- attracting customers

Others will try to do it in a new-fangled method with people voting on the slushpile, which slashes editorial costs by substituting the vox populi. (This is not a recipe for getting a new Jay Lake or Walter Jon Williams or Daniel Abraham: this is a recipe for getting a dozen imitators of Twilight).

Costs:
- web service
- programming
- proofreading and continuity
- formatting
- office stuff
- attracting new writers
- attracting new customers
- attracting slushpile readers

Some will be even less than that: with no editorial costs at all, they will be a combination of catalog and review-publishing service.
Imagine Amazon, if it offered nothing at all but electronic delivery of ebooks, with the same deal open to everyone who could fill out a form: XX% of the price you set, payable via PayPal every $50 or remainder if you close your account.

Costs:
- web service
- programming
- office stuff
- attracting new writers
- attracting new customers
- attracting new reviewers

In all of these three cases, all other things being competent, I believe the reputation of each firm will determine market position.

Comments

Efficiencies

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I think there'll be some other important factors. One big one will be how efficiently the publisher can do all the second-order stuff. Anything that lets them spend less money on nonessentials will mean cheaper books and/or more money for reputable authors and editors.

One interesting place to attack might be the slushpile. You've got to have one, especially at first, but you've also got to be ruthless about it. If you had a program to filter it, you could let the program be ruthless, and have humans concentrate on the stuff that's got potential.

It wouldn't be a trivial bit of code, but it could be done. Start with a grammar analyzer, work your way up to something that can detect plot holes and LOTR pastiches.

Something like this would have blocked e. e. cummings, but there's probably a downside, too.

Re: Efficiencies

[dsrtao]

Note that in the second group, you eliminate slushpile reading by paid staff in favor of putting everything up and letting people vote on it; in the third group, you publish everything and let the market (and a review system, and perhaps an AI like you suggest) sort it out.

Re: Efficiencies

[metageek.livejournal.com]

True.

Although I think the third option isn't so much a publisher as a vanity press.

Re: Efficiencies

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Option 3 does already exist; it's called "Amazon". Actually it's called Digital Text Platform, but other than being collocated with Amazon you could almost think of it as its own site.

And it has all the problems you'd expect. Self-publishing of the most ghastly sort. And other stuff, too.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at the slash 'market'? A lot of these things have been hammered out. In the absence of actual money exchanging hands, for sure, but market forces are quite apparent.

My knowledge is sadly second-hand, so I can't just say "go look at X", but I recall past conversations with slash-readers talking about how writers are cultivated by their audiences, who provide a combination of editor, publicist, and marketing functions on top of being the reading audience.

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

I think your thesis fails to account for the influence of third party reviewers.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

http://nancylebov.livejournal.com/390671.html has some more interesting discussion on this front (based on another interesting post from haiku_jaguar).