In the days before printing, the main way that authors made their livings was to find a patron. A patron is a person (usually rich) who commissioned the work of an author. These relationships could go on for many years. Authors received their money primarily through gifts from the patron, and relatively little money was made from the making of copies for individuals. Of course, if an author became very well-known, other patrons would try to "steal" him or her away and the original patron would have to come up with more money or lose the client.

Christine de Pizan presenting her Collected Works to Louis of Orleans (London, British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol 95r)

Publication Process: After Printing
When real publishers appeared, authors no longer needed to rely on pleasing their patrons, and they could enter into formal business relationships. But now there was a major difference: money was made by selling copies of the item. The only way to do this was for the publisher to create a lot of copies (which in the case of books involves editing, layout, typesetting, printing and binding) and ship them to places where the publisher believed these copies would be sold.

This involved (and still involves) a lot of risk for the publisher. It costs money to pay the people who will edit, print, ship, etc. the books and there is no guarantee that the copies the publisher has paid for will sell. As a result, it is the publisher who will be stuck with all of them if they don't sell. The money the publisher paid to make the item will be wasted. Therefore, publishers are very careful about taking chances with new books and especially new authors.

The following illustration shows how an author's book goes from the idea stage to the hands of the readers.


When the readers pay money for the book, everyone along this path gets a share. The publisher normally gets about 50% of the price, and they pass some of it on to the author (typically 10% to 15% of the price). The author has little to do in this process, except perhaps to help market the book. Obviously, if nobody buys the book, a lot of people are out of money.

What happens if no publisher wants to publish the book?
An author can always decide to publish it him or herself. Before typewriters, this was very difficult unless someone was wealthy, but once typewriters and mimeograph machines came along, people could type their own books and make their own copies. You could staple the pages together, or if you had enough money, you could even have the copies bound. Ultimately though, a typewritten book copied on a mimeograph machine, all stapled together looked pretty bad and it certainly looked worse than a professionally made book.

Therefore, almost nobody wanted to buy those books. Bookstores would be even less willing to take a chance on your book. As a result, average people lacked the possibility of distribution and book stores to make their items available to their readers.

Although you could make your book, you would still be stuck with them. You would take the risk.




Publication Process: Desktop PC (ca. 1970-1980)
Before the 1970s, computers had always been large and expensive, but with the introduction of the desktop PC for home and small business use, matters changed completely. Inexpensive word processing software allowed the average person to make attractive versions of their writings, since different fonts and font sizes were available, and people could even include images and other nice features. Coupled with the introduction of templates and laser printers, the final item looked a lot better than the stapled, mimeographed typed pages.

BUT, although the final product looked better, it didn't make much difference for getting the items to the readers since an average person could still not get into the networks for distribution and the bookstores. These businesses preferred to work with accepted publishers, since they did not want to take the risk.

The author was still stuck with all the copies.



Publication Process: Internet (ca. 1995)
With the Internet, everything has changed. A person who has a book no longer needs the publisher to share that book with someone else. With electronic copies that can be downloaded over the Internet, the process of creating copies and distributing them through retail stores has changed fundamentally. The risk has been almost eliminated. The most someone may have to spend is to rent space on a server, which costs very little and even this can be done for free. The user (who can be anywhere on the planet) can decide to read the item online, or print it out. If the author wants to make money on what he or she writes and puts on the web, it becomes much more problematic.

The controls that the publishers have always had are also disappearing, and this is both for the better and for the worse.