Authorpreneurship - Disruption in the Publishing Industry

Abstract

Information technology has brought in self publishing to the fore and digital publishing has considerably changed the creation, production, distribution and reading of books. However, it still takes more than a year for an aspirant to become an author. Several budding authors dump their ideas and manuscript after making huge effort only because of the time and drudgery involved in running around publishers, printers and distributors. And of those who succeed to get their books through, a vast majority does not recover the cost they incur. At the same time, publishers to struggle in handling the existing portfolio of authors to get quality books and make a business sense. Being a successful author in the 572 year old industry is not easy. The paper presents innovation in the publishing industry by placing Authors in the center of the business. It thus turns Authors from mere creators of literature into entrepreneurs who define the way publishing industry works and in a way that makes their work remunerative too. At the same time, it increases the productivity of the publishing house while improving quality of the books. The content of the paper is taken from a real life case study of bringing a game changing book, ‘The Path’.