Synopsis: For the past few decades that saw that the increasing consolidation of established publishers was resulting in fewer and fewer access opportunities for the publication books by unknown or
midlist authors.
Dr Zarqa is gold
midlist of Punjab University from where she graduated in 1989.
Publishing company HarperCollins (HC) has acquired The
Midlist, a daily e-mail newsletter that reports e-book deals, book trade news company Publishers Weekly revealed on Wednesday.
But the past fifteen years have seen an astonishing compression of the publishing industry: advances have shrunk or disappeared entirely; book tours have turned to blog tours as publicity budgets have dwindled for all except the biggest and most mainstream titles;
midlist authors fall to the bottom of the heap and struggle to make a place for the kinds of books that once found a steady readership; beginning authors increasingly find themselves squeezed out of traditional publishing entirely.
"Even big authors, if you're
midlist, you still have to sell your book yourself," she says.
So that which is original, or at least, isn't repetitive, tends to get shunted into a neglected, unpromoted
midlist that's getting smaller all of the time and science fiction is a genre which has always depended on originality.
If they didn't win prizes or sell in huge numbers, they were consigned to the dreaded '
midlist', the publishing industry's death row.
A significant chunk of the back catalog, as well as local titles, niche works, older titles, and
midlist titles (to borrow a term from the publishing industry), are not yet available via online channels.