Publishing: The Revolutionary Future

[Pardoz]

Jason Epstein has a fascinating article in the New York Review of Books titled "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future." Definitely worth reading for anybody interested in the future of publishing.

The opening paragraph, to whet your appetite:

"The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends. Meanwhile, for quite different reasons, the genteel book business that I joined more than a half-century ago is already on edge, suffering from a gambler's unbreakable addiction to risky, seasonal best sellers, many of which don't recoup their costs, and the simultaneous deterioration of backlist, the vital annuity on which book publishers had in better days relied for year-to-year stability through bad times and good. The crisis of confidence reflects these intersecting shocks, an overspecialized marketplace dominated by high-risk ephemera and a technological shift orders of magnitude greater than the momentous evolution from monkish scriptoria to movable type launched in Gutenberg's German city of Mainz six centuries ago."

[wallcraft]

I still don't understand why publishers are not giving priority to making ebooks out of their backlists. Authors and their agents should be putting all the pressure they can on getting this done (or getting the ebooks rights back). An ebook is perhaps still a small percentage of new book sales, but I'm sure it is a large and growing percentage of backlist sales (see Not enough titles available for Kindle?). This is why I am not certain that Amazon is loosing money on ebooks - they don't significantly discount backlists and they sell very well when they are available.

[Richard Herley]

Thank you for the link, Pardoz. He says: "a worldwide, uniform copyright convention will be essential".

Almost his whole argument hinges on that, and such an agreement will never be reached.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I still don't understand why publishers are not giving priority to making ebooks out of their backlists. Authors and their agents should be putting all the pressure they can on getting this done (or getting the ebooks rights back). An ebook is perhaps still a small percentage of new book sales, but I'm sure it is a large and growing percentage of backlist sales (see Not enough titles available for Kindle?). This is why I am not certain that Amazon is loosing money on ebooks - they don't significantly discount backlists and they sell very well when they are available.

It's the Hollywood mindset. Only blockbusters make monster profits. Backlist don't make enough money to be worth their while. It's monster profits or nothing.

[fugazied]

A revolution held back by the publishers who are concerned about losing their bottom line. It's a weird situation where consumers will have to drag publishers forward using market forces and big carrots.

[asjogren]

"It's a weird situation where consumers will have to drag publishers forward using market forces and big carrots. "

You can already guess which ones will become extinct - unless they change real fast. Hint: those that give their customers what they want, when they want it have a chance in the new publishing world order.

It is unfortunate that some of the CEOs are being well rewarded for short term strategies which will eventually destroy the companies that they manage.

[alecE]

Thanks for that link, the article is indeed fascinating.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by fugazied

A revolution held back by the publishers who are concerned about losing their bottom line. It's a weird situation where consumers will have to drag publishers forward using market forces and big carrots.

It is NOT a 'weird' situation. This is perfectly normal for any emerging market. The bleeding-edge types start using the stuff before it makes any sense to, then the 'innovators' types jump on, as the tech becomes more stable the 'early-adopters' climb on board and finally, about the time the manufacturers figure out that the market not only exists, but is stable and is growing (Gosh durn it! We need to tell people about this wonderful product!), the mainstream customers are champing at the bits to buy theirs! Eventually, as the market fades into senescence, the 'late-adopters' jump in and wonder why everyone else has stopped using it and consider them to be fuddy-duddys.

Derek

[Ben Thornton]

It's an interesting article; this bit is nonsense, though:

Another click might obliterate these same contents and bring civilization to an end

The intertubes are pretty resilient to single clicks. Anyway, in the future, any click that can end civilisation will probably have a dialog that says "Are you sure you want to bring civilisation to an end (Y/N)?".

So, I didn't understand the "fragility" point - perhaps I'm being thick?

He also seemed to think that super-DRM could beat piracy, which I think is nonsense. Convenient access to quality at a fair price beats piracy.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

You're not being thick... Epstein just doesn't believe digital files have any resilience. We are still relatively early in the data archiving and backup process, and it's something we need to get a handle on soon, before some event or stupid move does manage to delete a load of valuable files. But it is a solvable problem, and no reason to assume it can't be done just because it hasn't been done yet.

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

You're not being thick... Epstein just doesn't believe digital files have any resilience. We are still relatively early in the data archiving and backup process, and it's something we need to get a handle on soon, before some event or stupid move does manage to delete a load of valuable files. But it is a solvable problem, and no reason to assume it can't be done just because it hasn't been done yet.

Early in the process? Huge amounts of information are already held exclusively in a digital format - including financial data, for example - for which prevention of corruption (e.g. storage with non-repudiation features), disaster tolerance and recovery, archiving and back-up of many flavours &c. &c. are a well understood science.

Information that is published digitally is particularly unlikely to be lost (because it is held in so many places in such a variety of formats).

I can only think that his concern over the fragility of information is down to ignorance of IT.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

Jason Epstein has a fascinating article in the New York Review of Books titled "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future." Definitely worth reading for anybody interested in the future of publishing.

The opening paragraph, to whet your appetite:

"The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends. Meanwhile, for quite different reasons, the genteel book business that I joined more than a half-century ago is already on edge, suffering from a gambler's unbreakable addiction to risky, seasonal best sellers, many of which don't recoup their costs, and the simultaneous deterioration of backlist, the vital annuity on which book publishers had in better days relied for year-to-year stability through bad times and good. The crisis of confidence reflects these intersecting shocks, an overspecialized marketplace dominated by high-risk ephemera and a technological shift orders of magnitude greater than the momentous evolution from monkish scriptoria to movable type launched in Gutenberg's German city of Mainz six centuries ago."

Thanks for posting this!


Love this:

"Amid the literary chaos of the digital future, readers will be guided by the imprints of reputable publishers, distinguishable within a worldwide, multilingual directory, a function that Google seems poised to dominate—one hopes with the cooperation of great national and university libraries and their skilled bibliographers, under revised world copyright standards in keeping with the reach of the World Wide Web. Titles will also be posted on authors' and publishers' own Web sites and on reliable Web sites of special interest where biographies of Napoleon or manuals of dog training will be evaluated by competent critics and downloaded directly from author or publisher to end user while software distributes the purchase price appropriately, bypassing traditional formulas. With inventory expense, shipping, and returns eliminated, readers will pay less, authors will earn more, and book publishers, rid of their otiose infrastructure, will survive and may prosper."

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fugazied

A revolution held back by the publishers who are concerned about losing their bottom line. It's a weird situation where consumers will have to drag publishers forward using market forces and big carrots.

But can't we use DesertGrandma's STICK!

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

Early in the process? Huge amounts of information are already held exclusively in a digital format - including financial data, for example - for which prevention of corruption (e.g. storage with non-repudiation features), disaster tolerance and recovery, archiving and back-up of many flavours &c. &c. are a well understood science.

Information that is published digitally is particularly unlikely to be lost (because it is held in so many places in such a variety of formats).

I can only think that his concern over the fragility of information is down to ignorance of IT.

Maybe, not ignorance of IT, but a common sense fear that by accident, bad weather, war, etc... If the GRID in your area goes down... No Internet, NO Data...

Energy is a precious thing that too many people take for granted... pehaps keeping some data as hard copy is not such a bad idea.... Books last hundereds of years.... Computers and Main Frames.... not so sure...

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by hidari

Maybe, not ignorance of IT, but a common sense fear that by accident, bad weather, war, etc... If the GRID in your area goes down... No Internet, NO Data...

Energy is a precious thing that too many people take for granted... pehaps keeping some data as hard copy is not such a bad idea.... Books last hundereds of years.... Computers and Main Frames.... not so sure...

Sure, bad weather can take out the facilities to access information from some places - and it is a real problem for all sorts of things that we need to be aware of as we depend more on a digital infrastructure.

The author of this article was talking, as I understood him, about a concern for digital information being lost completely - not temporarily losing access to it. It is this concern that seems to me to be misplaced. We trust paper because it has been around for a long time, but digital information is easier to store and protect in the long term.