At the Tools of Change conference in New York City this week, author Scott Sigler delivered a provocative presentation entitled: Who Needs You, Big Publishing?
After publishing the thrillers Ancestor, Infected, and Contagious with Crown Publishing, Sigler (pictured, via Amy Davis Roth) founded Dark Overlord Media to self-publish a science fiction football novel called The Rookie–“a limited edition hardcover with a 16-page, full-color insert.” According to the writer, he earned 10 times more per unit with his new strategy, but managed to sell one-tenth of the copies he could sell with a major publisher.
Nevertheless, he speculated during his presentation about a future where bestselling authors could defect: “The bigger names (if they wanted to do this) they could bring in a crapload of money and not have to share it with anybody. Stephenie Meyer in particular–if she was to write a book of short stories about some of the Twilight characters and sell that directly from her website which gets a massive traffic, she could clear 200,000 copies on her first day without batting an eyelash. So that’s the kind of kind of thing that could take away from big publishing and put some of that control back into the hands of authors.”
What do you think? Is this an inevitable future or a pipe dream?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The conversation continues at this post, complete with additional commentary from the author.