曾几何时, 作者的权力并非完全依赖于她的话的力量，激发人的精神. 这让她的才华无力冲突是可发现的可能性. Then along came a knight in shining armor called technology. Technology innovated the way her words were written, 生成, marketed and even enjoyed. Perhaps most important of all, 技术递给笔者的权力 (她应该选择) 控制她的话的命运.
企鹅 (受全球媒体公司拥有, 培生集团) is part of one the world’s big six traditional publishers. 作者解决方案公司. 是世界领先的自助出版服务提供商 (该公司已公布 190,000 书籍 150,000 作家). When Penguin embraced self-publishing by acquiring ASI this July, publishing industry experts scrambled to their technology platforms to debate what it all meant. I asked Kevin Weiss, 总统作者解决方案总裁兼首席执行官, 讨论企鹅工会，特别是, 它可能意味着作者的力量.
究竟是什么让企鹅和作者共同的解决方案? What synergies were seen?
Traditional publishers have been watching the fast changing developments in the publishing landscape. Four or five years ago self-publishing was a very dirty word. I tell my staff that I could pick a fight on any street corner because of where I worked. Today I can’t do that because self-publishing has gone mainstream.
The time was right for us to look for a new parent. We are thrilled that Penguin made the decision to embrace us because we believe we are now a significant part of the publishing industry. We don’t do what Penguin does in terms of curation and aggressive distribution of content. 然而, we do things that they do not do. We build platforms for authors and we can build them at a lightning pace compared to the pace of a traditional publishing company. I think Penguin saw those services as important in terms of how their business model will transform moving forward.
Author Solutions sees the Penguin process as one we can continue to learn from. 例如, three years ago we made the decision to take our business model to traditional publishers such as Harlequin and Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson embraced our model (在Westbow新闻 — 基督教自发布印记) and it has been a very successful imprint for them. Compared to our own self-publishing imprints such as AuthorHouse and iUniverse, 合伙印像Westbow出版社给作者独特的接入服务不印其他的可及家长手表的标题为潜在回暖. 事实上, Westbow出版社已经有五个冠军拾起传统的出版商，只有他们三个人已经由托马斯·纳尔逊. 基于这个例子和其他成功的印记车型, 我们认为，传统出版仍将是我们正在做的一部分.
稿件提交到企鹅的数量必须运行到 5 figures each year. Only a small percentage of those submissions ever get published. Did you see an opportunity to convert rejected authors into self-published authors?
We are very careful not to redirect unsolicited manuscripts. Over time we may have to think about whether there is a way to help authors with rejected manuscripts find another route to develop them. Penguin has been trying to do something like that with Book Country (企鹅在线写作社区拥有). 在作者的解决方案, 我们正在开发的都做得很好自助出版作家的早期预警系统，使我们可以与我们的母公司共享信息. 我们只能这样做了我们拥有和经营的印记发表的作者. 我们的合作伙伴印将是禁地我们的父.
最近在WestBow新闻印记作者得到了回升，由另一传统出版商 — 不是托马斯·纳尔逊. 不管是谁发出合同, 我认为这是对独立作者的好事被发现时，他们.
Author Solutions has a global network of POD printers and distributors. You also have a great deal of expertise and resources in the digitization of books. Did you see operational synergies here?
我认为，企鹅正在走向POD业务的战略与再版冠军. I think our experience in this area will be beneficial to them. We are currently one of the largest global companies in POD in terms of the number of books we handle. We also have published more than 100,000 电子书冠军，所以我们相信，我们在数字体验也将是一个资产. One other thing that is exciting to me is that we will have access to great in house designers at Penguin. Our team is looking forward to learning from them.
当将按需印刷达到成本平价胶印?
It is getting there. HP just came out with some incredible new printers. Costs are coming down dramatically. I’m not sure if or when POD will reach cost parity with the bigger offset runs, but with shorter runs, we are not far away from being comparable to offset.
Would you say five years time?
I’d say maybe even less.
Once that happens would you agree the risk would be significantly lowered for authors who want to take the plunge and self-publish?
是的, but of course there’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into making a successful book such as editing, cover and interior designs, and marketing and promotion. I think in the future the traditional publishers are going to become far more transparent with authors about what they can and cannot do. At that point it will be time for authors (especially up and coming authors) to understand how things work. Instead of thinking they have a publishing contract so they don’t have to do anything, they will understand that from an economic standpoint, that just isn’t the case.
Author Solutions hopes to work with Penguin in the same way we work with our other traditional publishers. We do a tremendous amount of data analytics in our business. This enables us to see where books are being sold so that we can explore new opportunities for authors. We hope we’ll be able to assist authors in terms of building their platforms through the services we offer. Once an author has built a large following, the publisher is able to make a greater investment in terms of marketing the author’s book.
Any new predictions on market share for physical books versus e-books going forward?
ASI has not seen a decline in our physical books in the retail channel. We’ve seen a rapid growth in the units we have that are digital. I know that traditional publishing has seen a lot of pressure on hard cover but at the same time e-books have grown. What’s interesting to me is that although e-books are still growing, they now appear to be growing at a slower rate. This is despite the fact that tablets continue to grow. I don’t have a crystal ball so I can’t tell you at this point if e-books are going to be 30%, 40% 或 50% of the market.
Why should an author publish for a fee when he/she can publish for free?
There are a lot of free services in the marketplace. ASI has a free service (Booktango) and I think we’ve got one of the best platforms in free publishing. The tools are fairly good in the marketplace for free publishing because they’re easy, the process is fast, 它的在线, and so why would somebody spend $1500 to publish their book when they can do it for free? The primary reason is our focus on quality. We work with authors to make each book the best that it can be. We are there for authors 24x7x365. We are a one-stop shop for all of the services needed to make your book successful in the marketplace. In the free publishing space, there is still work to be done to increase the depth and quality of the offerings. We have years of book publishing experience and we are working to embed that experience in our Booktango offering, but one thing that we do offer are the highest royalties in the industry with the broadest distribution network of any of our competitors. As I’ve said before, it’s the best time ever to be an author. Authors are able to do a tremendous amount of research on the publishing process and make choices depending on the goals they want to achieve.
Will ASI be developing partnerships with other traditional publishers going forward?
During our discussions with Penguin, it was important to us that we were able to continue to expand our partnerships with other publishers. Penguin was emphatic that we do this. I was an IBM sales rep when IBM announced the PC in 1981. 当时, many believed that PC’s had no future as business tools. We know now that not only did PC’s have a future, but the innovation and adjacent product lines that followed were unbelievable. In five years time, when people look back on what we’ve done with Penguin, I believe they’ll see this as a watershed moment – this will be the moment traditional publishers and Penguin in particular recognized that self-publishing is a real and a vital part of the industry.
Photos courtesy of Penguin Group (a division of Pearson plc) and Author Solutions Inc.
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ç. M. 鲁宾是两个广为传诵的在线系列，她接受了笔者 2011 厄普顿·辛克莱奖, “全球搜索教育” 和 “我们将如何阅读?” 她也是三本畅销书, 其中 真正的爱丽丝梦游仙境.
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