Never has so much content been published
A friend and digital maverick gathers his thoughts as he prepares to write his article on “the future of publishing”.
Judging by what we’ve seen in 2010, that article could paint a watershed for some publishers. Trends like the increasing prevalence of social media, the never ending supply of user generated content, the power of blogs, the arrival of content farms, the impact of the iPad and its rival tablets, as well as the growing importance of brands as content providers, are all adding shade to the shadow in which the mainstream media companies are being forced to take a long radical look at their business models.
Earlier this month in an article in the Bookseller, Victoria Barnsley, the c.e.o of HarperCollins, admitted “Our business needs to change, regardless of whether there is a recession or not (….) I don’t anticipate the market ever returning to pre-recession levels in its current form.”
And just last week a huge dispute erupted between the behemoth publishing group Random House and one of the industry’s most influential agents, Andrew Wylie. The issue that has enflamed publishers began in late 2009, just as the sales of digital editions were starting to grow and the RH claimed they owned the digital rights to all of their long backlist. Andrew Wylie, unhappy with the royalty terms on ebook sales, has set up his own digital imprint and is marketing the authors and their digital editions directly via the world’s biggest book retailer, Amazon. Everybody who is anybody is bemoaning this situation which was totally predictable.
Anyway, the story is a timely reminder of just how unsettled and pitted with mines the publishing landscape is. But there is an inherent danger in the mainstream media reporting the big hitting stories and missing out the on the granular picture. They inevitably cast a shadow of doom and gloom on what is otherwise a dynamic and thriving business sector bristling with innovation. I want to address this imbalance by juxtaposing the good and the ugly.
First, the good stuff about the state of our industry
Depending on where you work you could say that there has never been a more dynamic time for publishing. After all, a lot more people than ever before are publishing – writing and finding readers, connecting their ideas and being influential. Bloggers, micro-bloggers, social networkers, content farmers, content strategists and digital community builders are all publishing content. Even household brands, once dependent on broadcast to reach consumers, are pushing out content not just about their products, but also about issues surrounding their brand. So, if these people are all employing the age old craft of publishing to create quality, informed, accurate and engaging content to share with their hungry audiences, it goes without saying that the state of our metier, seen from this perspective, looks healthy and offensive.
Now the not so good stuff about publishing
Mainstream publishers are undoubtedly facing new and aggressive rivals (listed above) who are using innovative techniques to create new burgeoning communities of readers. We read about the demise of the mainstream publishers on a weekly basis and our media futurists warn regularly about their unsustainable businesses. An analogous tale of this dying-patient-status is to be found in Charles Handy’s fateful frog story. His famous allegorical story tells of a frog which, when put into gradually heating water, doesn’t stir itself, preferring the warm water and feeling too comfortable with continuity to see that continuous change eventually demands a change in behaviour. The frog doubtless to say lets itself die.
My point about the state of publishing is that what is poison for one is meat for another. The storms, fault lines and rifts we are seeing today will continue to rage in publishing for a good while longer because, not unlike what we have seen in the music industry, change in our industry needs to be more radical and a lot less progressive than what we are seeing. Real change will only come when publishers see readers, not the retailers, as their main audience. Community, curatorship, co-creation and direct-to-consumer channels are all coherent models for the future. My advice is think outside the book, be radical and rebuild your business around community and from the ground up. I fear that if we don’t see rapid structural change on this scale in the mainstream publishing houses and a proper alignment with the market, the next allegorical tale will be The Three Little Pigs.
