By Bob Moats on June 24, 2011
I went out to where my Mom was watching television this morning and she had a
show on; what I don't know, "Good Morning America"? The show had on some singer
and her band. Mom asked me if I knew who this singer was, I had no idea. I watched
and she was good, with a distinctive voice, but I didn't know who her or her band
were. My mom's only experiences with music involve "American Idol". She can name
every singer who has performed on this show since it began. This girl was not one
of those singers. But being on this show made me think.
...
I thought about that and somehow it reminded me of book publishing. Here is a girl
singer on national television singing her latest record and hardly anyone has heard
of her. But how many people can tell you the names of the people on "American Idol",
lots.
I see this singer as relating to an author and how she was taken in by a big
recording company and they made CDs to sell, now they are promoting her and hoping
to make money off her talent. This reminds me of the big book publishers taking
on a writer and pushing his or her books.
Now you have "American Idol" and it becomes the quicky way to get your voice heard
and some face recognition. They have no contracts, yet, but they are promoting
themselves as singers. This sounds to me just like writers who put together their
own books and get them to the online EBook retailers without a publisher. The fast
way to sell their books without a contract.
I personally know a singer who had two big record hits years back and he went with
a big recording company. Years later he told me how they basically screwed him out
of royalties and he had no recourse to fight back, sound familiar? Now he sells his
recordings on his website and he can control every aspect about it. There are a
number of big name bands that have gone "Indie" with their records and have put
them on iTunes. Yet no one puts them down for doing this, they are praised because
now their fans can get their music cheap. And cutting out the big recording companies.
Movies had the big studios pumping out films, yet the number of independent film
companies has risen. They are praised for the quality of their films and even won
awards.
I wondered why writers have been distained because they want to self-publish.
Recently I read on a blog that the blogger felt the bad press about vanity/subsidy
and self-publishing and all the terrible things about self-publishing were actually
started by the big book publishers themselves to make us look bad. I have to believe
this, make sense to me. They see the writing on the wall and need to protect
themselves. I can't prove it, but it sound viable.
Writing books isn't something that would be exciting to watch on television or
reading books, other than on PBS. So we don't have any "Author Idol" shows to put
us in the spotlight, but it would be nice.
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