Your only partially correct. This article’s author certainly IS a sales person, but one who’s looking to the future.

What you’re missingis that of *course* Big Pub is just as much a sales force … their business and selling is what businesses do. The sad fact, though, is that Big Pub is selling in the world of 30 years ago and has buried their heads in the sand.

So what do you call a sales person who does that? You call them very sad, very *bad* at their jobs. Willie Loman comes to mind.

In the end, all the rhetoric in the world can’t change reality and the reality is, Big Publishing is dying. It’s apparent if you look at the data and pretty soon it will be apparent to all. 20 years from now — and likely well before — you won’t recognize the world you thought you knew.

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Hugh Howey is – first and foremost – a salesman and he is selling the story of self-publishing. I’ve sampled the wares he is hawking, but found them lacking. Not every sees beyond the sales schtick. Salesman sell what they’ve got – no matter if it’s good or bad – and some people are happy with whatever.

While I couldn’t prove it in a court of law, I’m convinced that other self-published authors, on media sites like Goodreads, engage in reciprocal five star reviews to inflate the appearance of quality in their books. Or friends praising friends, unable to to turn in an unvarnished criticism.

What would happen to serious authors like Philip Roth or Robert A. Caro in a post big publishing world? The small presses for some, I suppose, and maybe nothing at all for others. In any case, I doubt Hugh Howey’s suggestions would help. He is out to sell and – to barrow a phrase – every word out of a salesman’s mouth is a lie, including and and the.

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On the other hand, word of mouth can only carry a book so far. When a book starts to take off, the advertising money that a major publisher can spend may make the difference between a niche success in a specific genre (fantsy for Harry Potter) and one that takes the world by a storm.

I wouldn’t bother putting little bookstores into shopping malls. Apart from the Christmas holidays, people don’t visit a mall that often. Amazon is moving into that space. They do, however, shop for food at least once or twice a week. Put those small bookstores there.

As Apple did with their Apple stores, I’d look for an appealing layout for a bookstore in the larger supermarkets. And I wouldn’t just have racks of books scattered hither and thither. I’d treat it like the wine or cheese departments at my local and recently greatly enlarged Krogers. I’d have knowledgable people staffing it.

I’d go to great trouble to stock, at an Amazon-level discount, bestselling books from popular authors. I may loathe James Patterson & Co., but if he has a new book coming out on a Thursday, that morning there’d be a display of it ready for purchase at every store. The selling point would be “Why wait for Amazon, when you can pick it up as the same price at your local supermarket?

I’d also look into tapping the goods distribution system of major supermarkets. Readers could order books online or at their supermarket and there’d be an efficient Ingram-to-warehouse-to-store system to get them that book quickly.

Think Starbucks, but for books.

–Mike

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