What do publishers do in a world where anyone can publish a book? It's a question with a good answer.
What isn't as clear is what publishers do in a world where anyone can be publish a best-seller. One of the interesting trends in the ebook revolution is that established authors who have had long-standing relationships with large publishers have in some cases decided to abandon those publishers and go it alone. Some of them have been so successful at it that they've made more money doing it themselves than they ever did working with a large publishing house.
Take Bella Andre, for instance. She has been published by Hachette, Random House and Simon & Schuster but has long since left the traditional publishing world to go it alone. She told me earlier this year that she made over $1 million in 2011 and recently told TIME Magazine that she's made $2.4 million this year. In the past three months, she has appeared on the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller List twice (here and here).
This week, another self-published author with a long history publishing with full-service publishers rocketed up the list. Stephanie Bond's Stop the Wedding is currently the No. 6 best-selling ebook in the U.S. Bond has been published by HarperCollins, Macmillan, Random House and others. In the past few months, Bond has had several top-selling titles that have graced best-seller lists (here, here and here, to name a few).
Publishers are of course not ignoring the opportunity in self-publishing. Most recently, Simon & Schuster decided to launch a self-publishing business in partnership with Author Solutions. Author Solutions is another good example of publishers trying to capitalize on self-publishing: One of the world's largest self-publishing platform businesses, Author Solutions was acquired by Penguin earlier in the year for over $100 million. Publishers are also using the self-publishing world as a new source of talent. For instance, Simon & Schuster recently acquired the rights to distribute some self-published works by Colleen Hoover (Slammed and Point of Retreat) and Penguin went ahead and acquired the rights to publish Tammara Webber's self-published hit Easy.
At $0.99, Stop the Wedding isn't your typical ebook best-seller. Most ebook best-sellers are published by the largest publishers in the world and sell for over $10.00. So, the book isn't racking up the revenues like the big boys -- but it is racking up the readers and that's something worth paying attention to.
