
Professional publishing is fiat publishing, while indie publishing is free market publishing. The professional publishing industry, which consists of the “Big 5” book publishers (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster) and literary agencies, are like central banks in the economy: they manipulate the market and create artificial scarcity by limiting which authors and books can be published. Indie publishing (self-publishing and small independent presses) is the free market for books, as it has a more natural flow of supply and demand. Everyone has the same opportunity, and success is more closely correlated with merit—or how much readers actually enjoy a book.
Continue reading
