A shining dream. Essay. 500 words, 3-minute read.
Getting Too Close to Indie Publishers
By Ray Tabler.
“…Don’t get too close to people. You’ll catch their dreams…” – Martin Landau, Tucker: The Man and His Dreams
I recently learned some interesting facts about independent publishers.
There are nearly 70,000 indie publishers operating today. And they represent about 40 % of market share for books.
The top grossing indie publisher, Microcosm only has annual sales of ~$4 million. Compare that to $800 million for the 25th largest large publisher in the world, France’s Editis SAS.
The largest employing indie (1517 Media) has 43 employees. The 10th biggest indie publisher employs 8 people.
Wolfpack publishes the most titles per year (322). The one with the 10th most titles (Barefoot Books) only puts out 20 titles per year.
Some of these statistics are several years out of date. The top dogs may have changed in the meantime. Even so, the “big” boys of indie publishing aren’t all that big. What about the rest of the 70,000? They are, in a word, tiny by any metric you’d care to apply. Employees, sales, titles, or market share.
I strongly suspect that the at most indie publishers, the term “employee” has a rather flexible definition. Meaning, they don’t get paid much, if at all. Which begs the question, why are these people even bothering?
They have a dream, a shining dream. And that dream isn’t primarily about making money. Good thing too, because publishing is the last place anyone should expect to make money, or even a decent profit. Amazon corporation is the exception. And Amazon hatched out of its publishing shell long ago.
Indie publishers are driven by the romance of delivering the written word to a hungry readership. They are in love with storytelling. That love motivates them to forsake sleep, financial stability, and sometimes even family to midwive books into being. Dollars alone won’t buy that kind of dedication. Only dreams fuel this fire.
To be fair, employees at more conventional publishers often share this passion. But those poor unfortunate souls are shackled to the quarterly dividend, bullied into prioritizing profits over passions. They are oppressed by the bean counters, who have conquered so much of the modern world. How many people at large publishers day dream about starting up an indie, like running away to join the circus?
As a writer, I know a few indie publishers. Frankly, I don’t envy them. The demons I wrestle and cats I herd are all internal. An indie publisher’s demons demand cash up front, and their cats, theoretically, write books. Except when we don’t.
The hazard in sailing too close to an indie publisher is the very passion which drives them. Dreams are contagious. A person with a dream is like a wild-eyed messiah, wandering the wilderness and tempting solid citizens to embrace madness, to run away and join the circus. Visionaries are dangerous people. And indie publishing is overstocked with visionaries. Don’t get too close. You’ll catch their dreams.
END.
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