Most traditional publishers refuse to publish more than one or two books per author in a given genre, out of a perception that it will hurt sales because the author's fans will only spend so much money on books from a single person per year.<p>This is why so many authors have secondary pen names or force themselves to cross over into compatible genres. (eg. fantasy and sci-fi)<p>And of course, it can take an entire year to go from draft to published novel... Traditional publishing is a grossly inefficient industry.
I don't believe the article. The idea that eReader owners consume more than those without readers makes sense. I have no problem believing people who read a lot were first into the eBook market.<p>The idea these eReader owners are now stressing the book market and putting more demand on authors for content is absurd. Ereaders don't make you read faster (slightly slower I'd say). The article is taking an old pressure artists face and rebasing it into a new techonlogy.
If the average writer is going to churn out multiple books per year, the quality is almost certainly going to decline. Sure, there are exceptions, but not many.
I can believe it, but not like this article portrays it. I think there is room for CONTINUOUS writing and engaging people in a different way, but an epub vs a book is not going to be that different.<p>Said another way, I doubt that a customers expectation is drastically different in an epub model for a traditional print model. However, an epub author CAN get their book out there sooner and they have an advantage there.<p>I room for publishing a stream with characters rather than books, like a soap opera rather than a 20+ episode season for a show. However, the mechanism to consume this style is not ready yet (as far as I know).
The good part about this is that it's much easier for a new author to build a following.<p>Anecdotally, I have a good friend who had her first book published about a year ago. In the meantime she's published another full length book and about 5 novellas. They have come out through a range of publishers, from small e-pubs up to big, well-known houses. She makes incredible use of social media, and has recently seen her books starting to climb into top 100 lists on Amazon.