The Venture Edge

I've been a full-time professional writer and author for about 15 years now. When I started out in the business, if you wanted to get published, you had to convince an established publisher to take on your book. In return for giving them the rights to publish your book for as long as they wanted, they agreed to pay you an advance and royalties. Aside from some marginal vanity publishers who you would pay to get your book published, this was the way the game was played. 

The publishing industry is increasingly becoming a tough place to do business. It's no secret that fewer people are willing to shell out the $20 or $25 it costs to buy a new book (much less the $1.50 it costs to buy a newspaper). And why should they? All they have to do is turn on their computer and fire up their Web browser and they can get the latest news and all the savvy analysis and in-depth articles they want -- for free. While this is a great thing for consumers of information, it's a not-so-great thing for those traditional publishers that are selling fewer books today than they were a few years ago. Many of these smaller publishers are simply closing their doors and going out of business, while the larger ones are feeling the heat -- and responding by drastically cutting costs, laying off staff, and reducing the number of books they publish.