The trouble with curation

Publishing has moved through plenty of phases over the course of history.  For most of the modern age, the limiting factor was printing presses.  Large printing presses were (and still are) too expensive for the average author to afford.  large scale printing wasn’t much better.  Therefore, the publishers who owned the presses became the gatekeepers, choosing who and what would be offered to readers.

Everything was turned on its ear when digital publishing became a reality via Amazon and Kindle.  While traditional publishers still exist, they no longer represent an iron-clad bridge by which all authors must pass.  Independent publishing had never been easier or more feasible.

I strongly believe this was a good thing.  The ability for authors to reach out directly to readers has allowed far more writers to pursue their dreams.  Niche books that might have been passed over by traditional publishers could now reach audiences, and independent authors had the ability to start small and scale their careers as they went.

This invited a wave of new books to be published, and published they were.  Like I said above, I still believe this was very much a step in the right direction.  However, it has revealed a new problem, the problem of curation.

With the gatekeepers’ power greatly reduced, over a million books are published on Amazon every year.  That’s more than any one person could read in their entire life assuming they did nothing but live in the library.  Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad, but it isn’t realistic. 

How then do writers connect with the readers who want their books?  Honestly, it’s a question I haven’t quite found the answer to.  The current path forward is marketing.  Nothing new there, but it is expensive.  The cost of pay per click ad campaigns adds up quickly.  Most authors spend in the red for a long time before seeing any profit, assuming they turn a profit at all.

There’s free options out there, such as social media, but there are literally millions of other people these channels so the fight for eyeballs is as ultra-competitive as it comes.  Once again, it’s all too easy to get lost in the shuffle.

It all comes down to a question of discovery.  How to people sift through the sea of options to find the titles they’ll truly love?  I don’t know, but there has to be an answer, or at least, a way to improve.  If anybody has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. 

In any case, I am optimistic.  The writing community is healthier now that it was twenty years ago.  There’s more people writing, creating, and enjoying the craft than ever before, and that’s a wonderful thing.  Considering the vast amount of creativity within the author community as a whole, I’m confident we can form better solutions for a brighter tomorrow.

Russell Pike