'We Can Improve On You'

I've just had a standard rejection from a well known children's publisher for a novel (with the above title) I submitted over a year ago.

Conventional publishing sometimes seems self-destructively inefficient, and unable to respond quickly to events and to changing demand; why is it so hard for them to change?

Publishers are debating how they are going to move forward and adapt. Simultaneously they are struggling to cope with the weight of received manuscripts from authors.

This is why, of course, most of them have stopped taking unsolicited manuscripts. Writers therefore need agents to approach these publishers, and agents are struggling too.

I think it should be possible for authors to be part of the debate that publishers & agents are having amongst themselves.

For example, one of my new commercial publishers for my non-fiction work, Do Sustainability, is adopting an entirely new business model.  I am currently writing my second e-book for them.

Both Cambria, the publisher of my recent ebook, and this publisher have the advantage that they can move quickly and respond to a new market demand, or process manuscripts, more cheaply and faster.

I believe that traditional publishers should be looking at doing the same thing.

Is it any wonder, if publishers are taking so long as a year to respond, that more and more authors are turning to self-publishing, through e-books or print-on-demand?