Longtime readers of this blog will know that a core theme here is charting the death of oldpub and trying to envision what comes next.
I predicted oldpub’s demise years ago, not that it takes a prophet to foresee that a business locked into expanding its share of a contracting market isn’t long for this world.
The fact is that no new author has any reason to seek a Big Four book contract. That’s been true for years, but now it’s inarguable. Landing an oldpub deal is all but impossible for normal, sane people. And all it gets you is a $2500 advance you have to pay back 12.5% at a time from sales through a narrowing channel. You are better off getting 70% through KDP, and that’s damning criticism in light of Amazon’s faults.
At the dawn of newpub, most indie authors were sure that the Kindle was the future. Amazon would disrupt and disintermediate the big New York publishers, creating a level playing field where authors could reach their readers directly. Big names of the Wild West days foretold that an A lister would do the math and abandon oldpub to self-publish through KDP. The theory went that the first big domino to fall would start a mass exodus to indie. Most oldpub authors, used to writing a book or two a year, would fall hopelessly behind veteran indies publishing at pulp speed.
As of this writing, the Kindle-dominated future that the indie elders predicted has come and gone. New authors were able to bypass the New York gatekeepers and hit it big on their own. Amazon did grab a majority share of the book market. Name authors did test the newpub waters.
Where the old-timers went wrong was in failing to look beyond the Kindle-led market disruption. It turns out that Amazon wasn’t the savior we were promised after all. Of course, some doomsayers predicted betrayal from the start. But they were right for the wrong reasons. Around 2013, Stockholm syndrome-ridden authors, snobbish acquisitions editors, and thieving agents warned that Amazon would hook naïve writers with that juicy 70%, then slash royalties once it had a monopoly.
The truth proved far stranger, as instead of succumbing to corporatist greed, Amazon fell prey to the same Death Cult that did in oldpub. Endless strata of code no one living understands, bugmannish A.I. worship, and reliance on linear-thinking outsourced wage slaves has made Amazon’s search engine a useless mess. A world-class system that once connected readers with books based on their preferences has degraded into a pay-for-play scheme that requires taking a loss in time and money to make at all functional.
It became clear a few years ago that Amazon wasn’t the ultimate answer. Instead, it was an intermediate step from the decrepit oldpub model to something else.
But what is that something else?
Longtime readers of this blog already know my answer. For a while now, I’ve predicted an even more decentralized system wherein authors would be commissioned to produce books by groups of their staunchest fans. Amazon would still factor into this model, but as a secondary income stream ancillary to money fronted by backers through crowdfunding sites.
I took to calling this hybrid model neopatronage. It’s an update of the Renaissance-era arrangement whereby wealthy patrons would bankroll favored artists. Now, instead of being attached to a certain noble’s court or doing exclusive projects for a particular merchant, artists can earn a living funded by loyal customers who pool their resources to back the entertainment they want.
My own crowdfunding success aside, some remained unconvinced that neopatronage would take hold. Even I thought it would take 2-5 years for the new model to fully emerge.
Earlier this month, King of Epic Fantasy Brandon Sanderson proved me wrong – and right with his all-time #1 Kickstarter campaign.
Right now, Sanderson’s project has raised over $35 million. And he did it with a small team outside the auspices of oldpub.
The indie elders’ prophecy came true. They just got the platform wrong. An A lister didn’t just decapitate oldpub on Amazon. He did it on Kickstarter.
He did it with neopatronage.
Now, in a masterful coup de grace, Sanderson has turned around and given a considerable chunk of his gains to smaller authors. To the tune of backing every publishing campaign on Kickstarter.
Watch him share the wealth:
One artist has become a patron to over 300 others.
Do you see how this works now?
In one fell swoop, Brandon Sanderson has proven the neopatronage concept, destroyed the last of oldpub’s credibility, and cemented newpub as the publishing industry standard.
Am I saying that neopatronage is the permanent answer everybody thought Amazon was?
No. This is a mid-term solution that will solidify into something more stable once wider socioeconomic upheavals run their course. But the Kindle revolution had a good decade-long run, so we should expect neopatronage to stay viable about as long.
Will every author who goes the neopatronage route get rich?
Again, no. There has never been a guarantee that any market will make anyone rich. The collapse of oldpub’s artificial bottleneck has most likely ended the era of the multimillionaire rock star author. Pro artists will go back to their origins in the skilled artisan class with carpenters and plumbers. For the Zoomers’ kids, living next door to a professional rock musician won’t be unusual for the son of an electrician.
The point is, if you can set reasonable expectations and content yourself with being comfortable instead of filthy rich, neopatronage gives you a better chance than oldpub or Amazon did.
The future is here. Come and join your fellow artists in making the most of it.
And patronize artists who want to entertain you:
