Techdirt Podcast Episode 11: Barry Eisler Dissects The Publishing Industry

from the self-(publishing)-esteem dept

Bestselling author Barry Eisler is best known among readers for characters like John Rain and Ben Treven in his thriller novels. Among watchers of the publishing industry, he's known for something else too: having navigated and found great success in both the legacy industry and the new world of self-publishing. In this episode of the Techdirt Podcast, he discusses the evolving culture and business model of publishing with his uniquely comprehensive insight.

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Filed Under: barry eisler, podcast, publishing
Companies: amazon


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  1. icon
    Ninja (profile), 11 Feb 2015 @ 1:09am

    Which is precisely what Techdirt has been saying for years. There is life in the old model as long as it doesn't go the maximalist way.

    As a side note, I foresee a podcast article written by Tim in the future with the title "Techdirt Podcast Episode Heck-If-I-Know...".

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    John Sheffield, 21 Feb 2015 @ 5:38pm

    The one point I don't remember hearing.

    I admit I was listening to it when I was going to sleep, but the one reason for the winnowing of publishing that I don't remember hearing was that until recently, books were always printed, and large scale printing always been an expensive undertaking. They mostly try to decide to publish what they know will sell.

    Even once paperbacks brought cost of books way down, it had to be typeset, massive rolls of paper had to be fed through giant machines, and someone had to decide how many thousand copies should be printed bound and shipped to stores.

    The example of artificial scarcity where the electronic copies were not available is infuriating. The publisher was simply too hidebound (so to speak) to allow the downloadable version to be released before the paper hit the shelves since they cannot imagine electronic sales not hurting the paper sales. They couldn't imagine all of the impulse buys of the electronic version any more than they can the book buyers that rarely touch paper.

    I hope someone gave them an estimate of the book sales they lost because interest faded before the paper was available to be purchased.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Morgan Smart, 10 May 2020 @ 6:38am

    Thanks for such important info. If you think of win real money games apps with https://ipayzz.com/game-apps-to-win-real-money you should definitely pay attention on this podcast.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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