Instability in Publishing?

There has been an increasing amount of instability in the publishing world lately that it makes me concerned. First, you have literary agents bailing from their careers. Everyone knows at least one agent who bailed, and I seem to learn of new ones every other week who also stop being agents.

That sends a signal. At least to me. Yeah, they say it's not because of anything negative, like a dismal future in the business, but I am really wondering if the self-publishing phenomenon is taking a toll. You have the big publishers making compromises lately. Like making deals for print only, whereas the author retains full ebook rights. That's a sweet deal for authors. And being an author, I like that.

When I first decided to write novels, I was convinced that I didn't want to be a self-published author because, and I'll be frank, I didn't want the stigma that went along with it. You know, that anyone can write a lousy book and get it self-published. I didn't want to pay some scam publisher money to print a dozen books that never sold even two copies.

But I'm thinking that the stigma has been lifted because of some of these self-published authors making it big. And then the big publishers come calling them instead of vice versa. It really is an interesting time to be an author. That's for sure. We'll see what's next.