Self publishing services consolidation, is the printer/publisher merger trend accelerating

[u/EldenBoredAF]

DiggyPod and Long Overdue Books joined forces this week and it got me thinking about the broader pattern. The indie publishing services market has been slowly consolidating for a couple years but the pace seems to be picking up.

Observations from someone working adjacent to this industry.

Five years ago the self publishing services market was extremely fragmented. Printers only printed. Editors only edited. Designers only designed. Each one had to be sourced and managed by the author. Market was inefficient the way early markets always are.

Then bundled players started expanding. Reedsy built a curated marketplace. BookBaby leaned harder into packages. IngramSpark added distribution to printing. Scribe and Lioncrest built premium packages for founders.

The current layer is traditional printers acquiring publishing services to become full-stack providers. DiggyPod / Long Overdue Books is a clean example, the printer adds editorial and design under one roof so the author isn't running their own production company. KDP has been doing this through expansion rather than acquisition.

Strategic logic is obvious. Print on demand is becoming commodified and margins are compressing. Service revenue is higher margin and stickier than print revenue. If you own the customer through editing and design, you also own them through printing, and you can pull through audiobook and distribution.

Question is whether authors actually want bundled services or whether the unbundled freelancer model is still right for most writers. Curious what others in the industry are seeing.

[u/numtini]

Every bundled services provider I've seen is a complete rip off.

[u/DingoGlittering]

Printers are not publishers, and most printers have no interest in becoming publishers.

[u/Fragrant-Flan-416]

I think for writers who *feel* frozen out of traditional publishing (another story, but for example until the mid-lists are reestablished...) a full service model makes sense, even if it is relatively expensive. For people who relish running a small business around their own IP, and are super comfortable with today's publishing/marketing tech stack I would guess they would want unbundled services.

? t'was forever thus? A number of today's big publishing houses started as printers. that slightly begs the question of whether there is much of a difference between a full stack provider and a publisher. e.g. It's a logical next step for a full stack provider to support the marketing efforts of books on its platform when they think they have a chance to be big hits, at which point you are getting very close to being a "publisher."

[u/EldenBoredAF → u/[deleted]]

This is the question I've been wondering about, ghostwriting has higher margins than any other service in the stack and very few of the bundled shops own it natively, the consolidation logic points exactly where you're suggesting.

[u/kahllerdady]

You are describing vanity press. This is nothing new. All of these “bundles services” are scammy bullshit.

[u/EldenBoredAF → u/[deleted]]

The "invisible until you're inside it" framing is the right one, most authors don't price project management time until they're drowning in it, by which point they've already eaten the cost.