In a discussion on KindleBoards.com, one of the folks mentioned that the publishing scene was often depressing nowadays. But why?

The situation with publishing is often seen as depressing mainly because the traditional business model used by the big publishers is from the cretaceous era, and would-be authors repeatedly fling themselves like lemmings into the moats around the publishing castles in vain hopes of getting published. The big houses are still the mighty predators and the indies are still just little mammals darting past their feet, but – particularly with the takeoff of reading technology like the Kindle that gives readers unprecedented choices, literally at their fingertips – the asteroid’s getting closer every minute.

As I noted before, though, the biggest block right now is simply getting the top-notch indie books that are truly competitive with mainstream books pushed through into mainstream review channels to get the exposure they deserve. Having forums like Kindleboards has been a boon for folks like myself, but it’s still a tiny microcosm of the overall readership out there (electronic and print) that the big boys can market to (helped along by reviewers who help promote their books).

The measure of true “success” for many indies also remains this: that one or more of their books gets picked up by a mainstream publisher on contract. This means they’ve “made it,” even if the book is a commercial failure (which most, sadly, are). I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that I think there’s going to come a tipping point, a day when somebody like Oprah is somehow going to come across a book she loves that happens to have been written or published by an indie (note: it doesn’t matter if you love Oprah or hate her – whatever she says she likes on her show sells like hotcakes. Love ya, Oprah!), and that person is going to really make it. And part of the story that Oprah or one of the other “big names” in reviews, whose words sell (or kill) lots of books, is going to be that, “Hey, this person published this book by themselves – how’d they do that?”

The floodgates won’t open right away (although there’ll be a stampede of eager indies trampling over themselves), but if we can just somehow get a couple indie books injected into the mainstream as concrete proof that not all self-published or small-press stuff is crap, that would be the break that could help change the tide – and that would be a great thing not just for indies, but for readers, as well.

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