Sunday, September 20, 2015

Assuming Ownership/Taking Control

In 2014 it was predicted by Publishers Weekly that the self publication market would experience exponential growth in the coming years (McCartney, 2015).  Due to the fact that many self published content providers have increasing options for marketing their content, the traditional distribution model of publication is suffering from a lack of talent and also content to market as it correlates to investment returns.  This hemorrhage that the traditional market is experiencing has solely been self inflicted as agents and publication companies have increasingly tailored their services to content providers have attained a certain level of notoriety to date.  As a result of this trend, newly minted content providers have been forced to seek alternative avenues that allow them to distribute their products to their target consumer base.  Additionally, the emergence of this publishing model had empowered content producers to take charge of their business enterprise to the extent that they have more control of the distribution schedule, product marketing, and related publicity of their content.

Although the self publication strategy may be becoming more acceptable, the associate risks with this model may expose self publishers to more risk and responsibilities than they expect.  One emerging trend as noted by (McCartney, 2015), is that “serialization”, or the release of books, a chapter at a time, has become prevalent in keeping the target market engaged, while allowing the author the ability to gain necessary feedback, regarding the content as a whole.  In essence, the end game with this business model is similar to the comic book, television, and film industry, as it allows the consumer market the opportunity to consume a segment of content and provide feedback prior to a major release by the content provider.  In conclusion, the increase in self publishing has increased the difficulty of new content providers to be “discovered” by their intended target market.  Due to the market oversaturation created by self publishing, this trend has cause content providers to not only become high quality content producers, but to also to create content that is definitive and worthy of extensive notoriety to the consumer base in order to generate the forecasted sales for the applicable content.

References
McCartney, J. (2015). A Look Ahead to Self-Publishing in 2015. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved September 20, 2015 from http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/65299-a-look-ahead-to-self-publishing-in-2015.html

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