Dear Publishers: Why Do I Need You?

As an author, you slave and slave over your manuscript until it is polished. You then try and convince a publisher to purchase said manuscript. If you are lucky enough to sell it, your publisher has a staff of editors who work with you to bring it to perfection. Once it is ready, the publisher has a vast marketing department who packages your book and develops a comprehensive marketing strategy to sell it for you. Or at least that is the way it used to work.

Last year I attended a panel about non-fiction publishing at CanWrite, the Canadian Authors' Association conference. I heard publisher after publisher talk about how they would like you to include a market analysis of your idea along with strategies for how you are going to sell it. I thought, "wait a second here, isn't that their job?" So naively, I asked them. "Aren't you the professionals who know the market best? Isn't that why I am signing with you?"

I was roundly shut down by all them. "Gosh no," they all said. "You know your market best, because you wrote the book."

Mmmm, no. I'm a writer. Not a marketer. You have marketing staff. But more and more, writers are being asked to do their own marketing, organize their own book tours and signings. Many agents and publishers won't even consider your manuscript if you don't already have an established presence in social media and on the Internet.

As a writer, more of your time is spent on business and less on the creative process itself. You are being expected to do the work your agent or publisher used to do. Recently, Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Heighton bemoaned this very thing on The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers.

Traditionally, self-publishing has been discouraged if you wanted to be taken seriously because generally these books were by authors who weren't really all that good and didn't see the benefit of having a talented editor working with them to help refine their work.  But in today's world, getting signed with a publisher no longer guarantees an editor will touch your book. Editors are being laid off in droves by publishing houses. Many agents and publishers don't want to look at your book unless it has already been edited—yet another expense for the author.

So the question in my mind now is, if my publisher is no longer properly editing my book and no longer marketing my book, what is it that they are doing? Printing it? But with today's technology I can distribute it myself using clever technologies such as ebooks and, for you Luddites who love your hard copy, the Espresso Book Machine. As an author in the 21st century, what does my publisher do for me?

You still can't enter most contests, such as the Giller prize, with a self-published book, but that too will likely change as self-publishing begins to gain respect as more and more good authors give up on publishers who want a cut of sales, but provide little service in return.

The publishing industry is in crisis. Large publishing houses are laying off staff and small presses are closing every day. There is all kinds of blame thrown around, but the general public is still buying and reading books. If I have to write my book, get it edited and market it myself, then why would I sign with you? Publishers might save money in the short term by offloading work to authors, but in doing so they are quickly making themselves obsolete. If publishers are going to survive this brave new world they are going to have to give up on flint knapping and find innovative new ways to work with authors, make the most of modern technology and let authors get back to the job of writing.

So dear publishers, why do I need you? It's a serious question. I don't write for my own pleasure; I want to sell books. How will you help me do that?