So, since the referendum, the British economy is in freefall, the value of the pound is plummeting, and big chunks of the world have decided they're not trading with us until we're out of the EU and renegotiating terms with them. This doesn't look good. My assumption (as someone with half a politics PhD, and next to no knowledge of the industry) is that publishers will be incredibly wary of taking on new authors and new risks, since there's likely to be less money floating around for people to buy books with. They'll release fewer books per year, probably concentrating mostly on their sure-fire existing sellers. Am I anywhere near on the money? Does anyone have any insight here?
Publishing is much more global than it was, and the UK market is relatively small compared to others. I would imagine (like in general business) it's the smaller, 'boutique' presses that will suffer the most. Big publishers will still be able to spread their risk and sell ebooks worldwide. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think the EU has many regulations applicable to publishing, besides general worker's rights. So my uneducated analysis? Not much will change unless you're dealing with small presses.
I would have thought there's a lot of intellectual property laws that apply - but I'm not sure what kind of effects that might have.
Also, to be positive, Brits can just replace an "ou" with an "o" here and there, call the second floor the first floor (and call the ground floor the first floor), etc., etc. and you're ready to try to sell it to the American market. Spoiler If Trump doesn't win though and ban books or something. Lalalalala, the world is going under.
And it's pronounced al-a-min-ium, not aloominum. I feel the need to be more British considering the thoroughly unbritish thing that just happened.
I don't think it will have any effect on it at all, to be honest. The markets will bounce back. I could be wrong, but it's just the first day. No hellfire and brimstone just yet.
Though I'm American, I found this and thought I would share. http://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/keep-calm-and-expect-change-338121
It sounds brutal/Machievellian/selfish, but UK authors may benefit from this, assuming they sell in the US... Most of my sales are American, and when the Canadian dollar is low, I make way more money. I started getting income from the US when the dollars were close to par, or sometimes even the Canadian dollar higher. Then the Canadian dollar started to fall, and now I get enough in the exchange to cover my agent's cut and then some on top. Internal economic turmoil can be good for an industry, like writing, with lots of exports and few domestic expenses.
I'm not English so I really have no knowledge as to how the 'exit' translates to the people on the ground. But I would just add in that I think you're better off having excused yourselves from the machinations of the banking families that established the EU.
It makes us edgier. A little less slavish than other countries. I imagine we'll see an uprising of small, independent presses that challenge the status quo. It may not be 'marketable literature', but it will play an important role in the reshaping of our culture. More to life than making money. By the way, anyone in Britain notice that the air tastes sweeter, the roses seem brighter, the birds chirpier? What a lovely day
Your response is somewhat refreshing. Admission of guilt: I went to the NME page and they were interviewing these musicians at Glastonbury who thought anyone who voted to 'exit' was an unequivocal moron. Of course, this coming from self-insulated, genius-in-their-own-mind "talent."
Oh, that sort of media manipulation is the tip of the iceberg. Much of the media in this country is deliberately engineered to serve the needs of the establishment. A lot of corruption at newspapers like The Sun, Times and Daily Mail et al. But it's changing. Some people are waking up to it. Becoming intellectually sharper.
Most in the US will deny that there is media manipulation, but that's what the media has convinced them to believe in the first place. Our most obvious transgressor is Mark Zuckerberg, then followed by particular news correspondents who are actually paid 'commentators' masquerading as 'journalists.'
Hi, No one knows. For me I've already lost income. The royalties I get from the UK have decreased by approx ten percent because I was paid in pounds. And the ones I got paid in euros are also down, though not by so much. But the others are fine and I expect the greenback to rise in due course. As to issues of copyright etc, I have no idea. I don't know how many of those matters were set out by British law and how many by euro law and which if any Britain will decide to adopt as their own as is. It's going to be a wait and see. But the wait period is interesting. Most British commentators are talking about two years from triggering artical 15 or what have you. However, some of the Europeans are saying that they want this done quicker. Rip the bandage off quicker and all that. (Translation, they're angry. They want Britain gone, and they will likely not take Britain back even if they come begging.) The main effect in the short term is likely going to be a cut in discretionary spending by readers. They'll be saving up their pounds and euros for the coming rain. There may well be a drop in readership for a while. Cheers, Greg.
Aside from the crash in value for the pound, not much. Any other kind of legal changes that might happen won't come into affect until a few years from now.
Reality is that nothing will change. Fleet St will continue to decline in its influence. The national economy will make no difference to authors who achieve massive global popularity such as J.K. Rowling. Great Britain has been a leader since before the USA was even an embryo with the likes of Shakespeare and Dickens. It will not be top of the pile but its influence is too strong to ignore. All it has done is freed itself of the bonds imposed by other nations.
Hi Sam, I hope you're right, but I wouldn't count on it. Even if everyone gets through the next few days and allows hot heads to cool, the EU will be faced with having a member country in the process of leaving, which will create all sorts of financial turmoil for them as well. They may decide to expedite matters and Britain may well find itself thrown out long before the two years are up. And apart from that Britain's leave campaign promised that they would no longer be giving money to the EU. Problem is that that money will be required if Britain wants to remain a member of the Common Market. So if they refuse to pay, they'll be out of the Common Market and fifty percent of Britain's trade will die the day it happens. I'm not sure that the term recession is sufficient to describe what will follow. Cheers, Greg.
Great Britain is the 4th biggest economy in the world and the largest in the EU. Its leaving will create a massive hole. With the likes of Greece and other countries continuing to be a drain the response by the bigger economies in the EU will change. Germany will be the first to tighten their belts. The knee jerk reaction from the EU is to ask GB to speed up the departure but as the 2 year deadline approaches this will probably change to try and delay the departure to get the biggest contribution from Britain as possible.
We were the fifth biggest economy in the world, and the second-largest in the EU (after Germany) before this referendum. We're now the sixth biggest, and the second largest in the EU (falling behind France).
People who deny it are simply naive and uneducated about their own society. Even as we speak, there is a massive propaganda campaign to make people feel bad about the result. A huge petition calling for the referendum to be held again. The media are presenting this possibility as though it was something reasonable and necessary. But you can bet your life on it that if Remain had won and there was now a petition from Exit, the media would be portraying it as unreasonable; they would say, 'Exit voters are sore losers. The people have spoken and that is final'. The bias is obvious. As Roger Waters says, 'What god wants, god gets'. There is no real choice. We'll be bullied both emotionally and fiscally until the Establishment gets what it wants. That's the reality of it. The tactics they're using are quite obvious: Delay. David Cameron promised that if the decision was in favour of leaving, he would immediately activate Article 50 to get the ball rolling. What did he do? He resigned and said it should be the next PM that does it, thereby delaying the process, giving them enough time to work on the people's emotions and soften them up for 'renegotiation' of EU membership. I'll be very surprised if we actually leave. There is a clear agenda. The Establishment has made up its mind. What the majority think and feel is irrelevant.
Really? That's a little bit tin-foil-hat, don't you think? This result is the culmination of decades of lies from those papers - nonsense about the EU forcing us to have straight bananas, and so on. I've even seen people adamant that the results of Tory policies are all the fault of the EU, rather than the fault of 40 years of damaging neoliberal hogwash. The thing is, the result was such a tiny little majority that claiming it as a mandate is clearly absurd. Add to that the fact that arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage said that a narrow victory for remain should lead to a second referendum, but forgot about that completely when a similarly narrow result in favour of his favoured side occurred, and the fact that a lot of people feel lied to as the Leave campaign immediately admitted that a Leave result wouldn't lower immigration, and wouldn't free up extra money for the NHS. Democracy is based not only on consent - but on informed consent. A result based on deliberate lies and misinformation is not a valid result. To claim otherwise is a mockery of everything democracy means.
