[2021-06-27] Talking about publishing biz
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Place: SKP Rendevous
Time: Afternoon
My wife and I had a discussion on the particular characteristics of
the publishing business.
## Why the industry needs agents
Authors are like farmers. They have the raw products (manuscripts) but
it takes much more to make those into marketable goods. A literary
agent's responsibility is to connect the author with other
professionals. This is especially important in the age of
industrialized publishing, when the publishers have to make books in
large quantities and available to as many people as possible.
## Why the industry has to rely on luck
In other industries, say cosmetics, the R&D expense can be astronomic.
However, once the manufacturer complete a product design, they can
sell it in the form of mass-produced items, to billions of people. For
publishers to find a new "formula" to make and sell books, the R&D
cost may be at the million-dollar level, about 0.1% of the development
cost of a new cosmetic product. However, the publishers could only
sell the resulted product to about 100,000 -- 1,000,000 readers, at a
much lower profit margin. More importantly, the knowledge gained in
the development process can neither inform the development of the next
bestseller, nor serve as the basis of further research.
As a result, there is very little incentive for the publishers to try
to find a better way to organize contents and produce books at the
company or industry level. And they have to rely on the individual
efforts and creativity of editors and authors, and ultimately rely on
making as many species of books as possible.
## The individuality of authors
Literature works are largely expression of a single soul. It is almost
impossible for 2 people, let alone more, to work on one piece of text.
Texts thus are unique and rich in personality, but also difficult to
rise above certain levels of complexity and completeness.
