One of the most useful parts of Thompson’s Merchants of Culture is the breakdown of the five modes of capital used in the publishing industry and its adjacent fields. I’ve used these to build a publishing company, guide my writing career, and solve all manner of problems.
But I also see a gap, born of Thompson’s focus. He specifically calls out Financial Capital as a key form of leverage, encapsulating all the cash-on-hand resources as well as the ability to generate credit, financing, and investment. It’s a key part of any artistic organisation, as very little happens without it.
The missing element — based on my experience — is probably time, which doesn’t appear anywhere else on his list. Traditional publishers default to the velocity models, focusing on a short, hot burn with sales — they generate interest, release the bulk of their stock into the world, and expect to sell the most copies in the first month. Failure to do so means using financial resources to warehouse books, using connections and marketing to keep books alive after the rest of the industry has set them aside, and tying up human capital managing the unsold books. That’s only viable for the evergreen titles, which generate so much interest there is constant demand.
Indie publishers can work slow, because the books are always there. The financial cost of storing an ebook or print-on-demand title is negligible, so it doesn’t matter if they sell tomorrow, next week, next month, or in five years.
If you wait long enough—and keep your costs low—every book is profitable.
And you can overcome a lot of financial resources by thinking long term and embracing the time to DIY and build your skills.
When you’re an indie publisher, every book is evergreen. And that means you can take chances, step away from the status quo, and do something surprising with utter confidence that one day—maybe months, maybe years—it will pay off.
You can write the book of your heart and eventually it will find its people. Maybe slowly, a reader gained here and there, but they will come.
