So, in case you haven't heard already, two of the top 6 publishing houses (Random House and Penguin Books) are merging into a super-publisher to contend with Amazon, Google, and other mega digital business giants that are monopolizing the publishing industry.
A nice summation of the Pro's and Con's of such a merge can be found here: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/10/random-house-penguin-what-the-merger-means-for-publishers-authors-readers303.html
Many expected Amazon to find the next "Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Twilight" mega-seller which would have further hurt the traditional publishing industry, but that hasn't happened… yet.
Instead, traditional publishers are talking about creating self-publishing niches similar to Amazon's, and coming out with their own computer apps and kindles to compete with Amazon.
But, I'm interested in what you think about the future of the traditional publishing industry. Commercialization offers favorable results for consumers (hey, it means a wider variety of books at more affordable costs to readers, after all), but unfavorable results for the industry workers (authors have less room to negotiate since there are fewer publishers to compete in bidding wars for your book, various house-indents will cease to exist which means hard-to-market stories will be even harder to market without those special niche genres, and editor jobs will be replaced by computer programmers).
So what do you think? Favorable or Unfavorable for you, as a writer and/or reader?
Added (1). @Cath:
Self-publishing is only a small aside note to this deal, though. I'm not just talking about self-publishing. This affects everything on a grand scale. With mergers like this, other companies will have to merge in order to compete, leading to fewer overall publishers. This affects sales. Costs of books decrease b/c they're mass-produced and if they're digitalized costs of kindles and such will also decrease… killing Amazon as a monopoly. Target, Walmart, and Barnes-n-Noble refuse to even sell kindles or kindle-version books that are published through Amazon to boycott it.
But this won't continue when Random House/penguin begins the trend. And if all of these traditional publishers start investing in digital sales, what will that do to traditional book sales, especially when there are no brick-n-mortar book stores left to sell those books? That's what I'm getting at.
Added (2). These companies are merging so that they can cut costs and allocate more money to digital technologies/sales. (since digital sales now dominate all global book sales).
I can see both good and bad coming from this. Easier access to publishers if traditional publishers take over self-publishing, for instance, or decreased author royalties (through Amazon, authors get 90% of royalties, how much will they lose if a traditional publisher takes over?)
Added (3). @Steven: One example is Walmart or Asda. Their discount pricing benefits consumers. This merge is the new discount publisher. All publishers might have to merge to compete, driving book costs down (and author royalties down). On the flipside, lower costs could result in more sales for the author.
Variety will increase with digital sales b/c department stores like Target/Walmart (who are boycotting Amazon), will sell digital books and kindles again if the top publishers take control.
But I agree regarding self publishing. Though, I'd point out that there are always people who buy into gimmicks. Self published authors will take a smaller royalty in exchange for RandomHouse/Penguin's brand name, thinking the brand name will help their sales.
>>> Future of Traditional Publishing: Favorable or Unfavorable?