Marc Coker, CEO of self-publishing site Smashwords, has outlined his predictions for publishing this year.
He expects the self-publishing stigma to continue to go away; indie authors to face more competition from traditional publishers in 2015; and free eBooks to lose their cache. Here is an excerpt from his blog:
Many indies will quit in 2015 – Authorship is tough work. Discouraged by weak or slumping sales, many indie authors in 2015 will either give up on publishing or will decrease their production rates. With the rapid rise of anything – whether we’re talking tulips, dot com stocks or real estate – bubbles form when the market becomes too frothy, too optimistic, too euphoric, and too crowded. All markets are cyclical, so this boom-to-bust pattern, while painful for many, is healthy for the long term, especially for authors who stick it out.