Interestingly, this is more of a difference between small publishers and their acceptance of e-publishing. Publishing has historically been a widely popular field for small publishers since you can create a small, specialty press easily, print off some books, and have a nice little business. Perhaps your authors can’t quit their day job, but you’re publishing. Yay!
Most of these publishers are not very tech savvy, in the sense of computers and outsourcing and so on. They’re very tech-savvy in the sense of book creation, of course.
Music publishers, I feel, quickly embraced digital, probably because it solved many problems for them. One, it allowed them to actually get “shelf space” without worrying about a distribution model. Two, it let them handle this portion of production directly, since any computer can create MP3s – no shipping off to India for epub conversion required.
For e-publishing, though, the publishers have lagged behind. There are very few small publishers who are exclusively (or near exclusively) e-book, and few that will add e-books as a simple part of their contract. Yes, if you’re expressly interested in e-books, you can find one, but most will try to pass those costs down to the author, especially if the author is not established.
Not that I blame them; I worked a job for about 18 months where a lot of my responsibilities involved explaining to smaller publishers just how fractured and weird the e-book market was, thanks to the proliferation of different devices, all of which interpret epub differently.
That being said, I think the “doing it yourself means your job turns into production and marketing” isn’t as bad as it sounds. Readers prefer authors who are not aloof and actually interact with them. Some of the most popular indie e-book-oriented authors, like Mr. Howey, are popular because they interact with their audience, rather than sit in a Big Publisher ivory tower.
