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Survey: Is self-publishing increasing?

August 27, 2010, 11:20 am

A question that has been playing on my mind for sometime. Authors and writers have depended on publishers for production, printing, distribution, marketing and promotion of their content. However, the rise of the digital market is challenging the traditional author-publisher relationship.

The traditional relationship between authors and publishers centered on the capital outlay required to create, print and sell books. Publishers would provide authors with advances, bear the expenses of producing, printing, distributing, marketing and promoting the books. Proceeds from the sales of the book were largely the publisher’s and a portion of it goes to the author as royalty. The value of the publisher, thus, centered on printing and selling the books.

For authors considering self-publishing, printing and selling books are a challenge. But the rise of the digital market seems to have made it easier. The rapid growth of e-book sales has demonstrated the potency of the digital market and printing to distribute content is no longer a necessity.  Are authors and writers confident of selling books by themselves? And it they are, have they outgrown the need to have a publisher?

We have decided to run a survey on what authors and writers think about self-publishing. This survey will answer questions such as:

  • By what means do authors and writers currently publish their content?
  • Are authors and writers moving to self-publishing?
  • What are the driving reasons to do so?
  • Has the digital market made it easier to self-publish?
  • What are the inhibitors for self-publishing?
  • Do authors and writers rely on other parts of the industry value chain to self-publish?

If you are an author or a writer, your inputs will be valued very much. Please follow this link to answer the survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/self-publishing

Once we have collected enough responses for the survey, we would be happy to share a copy of the findings.

We would also like to know your thoughts or opinions. Do leave us us a comment!

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Category: Industry trends, Publishing Industry, Publishing Practice, Research  |  Comment (RSS)  |  Trackback

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  • http://twitter.com/gordonmoe Gordon Moe

    While I am not an author or publisher, I do follow the tech industry. Just heard of an open-source app that will make lovely e-books in the epub format which is readable by the iPad. With authors building their own audiences via Facebook and other social media, it will become easier to point readers/Fans/Likes to these titles.

  • http://twitter.com/CarynSWE Caryn Wesner-Early

    I'm very interested in your results – I wrote the chapter on Self Publishing on the Web for Dekker's Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, and it needs to be updated. Please do share a copy of your findings! Thanks.

    Caryn Wesner-Early