A couple of days ago, Nicola posted her conclusion that traditional publishing is dead. And she pointed people to the launch of OR Books, who will publish only in e-book and print-on-demand formats — and put big bucks into online marketing campaigns for every book.
I think this is a great strategy, definitely both author-friendly and publisher-sustainable. But I don’t think traditionally published books will necessarily vanish from the earth. This isn’t (yet) the same paradigm as videotape to DVD, where one delivery mechanism kills another in a frenzy of social evolution: I think it’s more of an expansion and an embracing of an audience in transition. Perhaps someday books that you can just pick up and look at in a retail location will be a rarity: but baby boomers are still the biggest consumer demographic in the US, and if we read, many of us would rather read an actual book.
Many of us will buy print-on-demand — I expect POD awareness to reach a tipping point within a couple of years when the technology is better integrated into traditional brick & mortar retail, and when it’s transparent on Amazon (meaning that you buy a book that interests you without needing to know whether it’s in inventory or being printed on demand). But the current challenge of POD, apart from the mainstreaming of it into an older late-adopter demographic, is the aura it still carries of “vanity publishing” and the implication that if it were a Real Book, and the writer was a Real Writer, then a Real Publisher would be supporting it. And that’s very often true (stay tuned to this space for an upcoming rant about how The Intarwebs have made it possible for any shmoe with an online connection to persuade herself she’s every bit the Real Writer by benefit of her sudden ability to publish her work). But not always — there are plenty of brilliant writers who can’t get traditionally published these days — and I expect more of them will find homes with businesses like OR Books. That will help change the perception of POD.
And what will also help is a new paradigm of marketing. Money goes farther online; if it’s done right, new works can be brought to the attention of their potential audience more efficiently, effectively, and more enduringly (I recycle newspapers and magazine, but the pixels are always with us in this brave new hyperlinked Googleverse).
And can traditional book publishing be saved? Jonathan Karp has some good ideas about how publishing needs to change in order to survive.
It seems likely that the influence and cultural centrality of major publishers, as well as other producers of information and entertainment, will diminish as digital technology enables more and more people to create and share their work. This is exactly why publishers must distinguish themselves by doing better what they’ve always done best: champion books that offer carefully conceived context, style and authority.
— from “This Is Your Wake-up Call” by Jonathan Karp.
This isn’t just true for traditional publishers, but also for the new kids like OR Books and all those who will adopt their online/POD model. In a world where an unlimited volume of “books” can be available (those pixels are very efficient that way), readers find ourselves increasingly freaked out by the choices: how do we know what’s good? I think what Karp is saying is that publishers need to continue, and in many cases return to, being quality content filters as opposed to churning out the copycat thriller of the week.
Some people will howl and accuse me of elitism. I suppose if you think that shmoe we talked about is automatically a Real Writer, then yes, I’m elitist as hell. Writing is important to me. It matters that it’s done well. And books are important to me: I want them to survive so I can read them, write them, share them, peruse their spines on my bookshelves when I’m looking for something to read (try doing that on a Kindle — it’s maddening). That’s going to take, as Nicola says, a willingness to grin and hug the future. For many writers and publishers, that’s a bit like hugging a cactus, but I expect everyone will cope — we have to. And the irony is that returning to old-school values — fewer books, more editorial focus, more long-term development of books and authors — may be a big part of what saves publishing in the end.
You wrote,
“But the current challenge of POD, apart from the mainstreaming of it into an older late-adopter demographic, is the aura it still carries of ‘vanity publishing’ ….”
Maybe. I now look online for most of my reading. For whatever it may be worth worth, here’s how I shop:
I start by reading the first few lines, sometimes the first paragraph, of the piece.
This actually works well: in the past, it’s eliminated all online fan fiction (and I would really like to to have found ‘Strawberry Panic’ ffic worth reading).
If the first paragraph demonstrates that the author has technical competence (oh, I am such a bad, bad elitist), I’ll look further in the book, at least two more randomly selected paragraphs. If I now enjoy what I’m reading, I buy the book.
Many years ago, I picked up a book of Achebe, tried this. After the first paragraph, I had to sit down: I was stunned. Should I have been put off by the fact that Achebe is African, and we all know there’s no good African literature, don’t we?
I believe that people who choose by aura rather than content and skill are going to miss out on some very good fiction. For example, there’s a lucent story on my hard disc, apparently downloaded circa 1993, titled ‘Alien Jane.’
I wouldn’t want to have missed that ….
I’m glad you didn’t miss it, too (grin).
I do think people often miss out when they shop by aura rather than content, but that doesn’t change the reality that many people do shop that way, and it’s something that must be taken into account and addressed head-on as the paradigm changes.
And the reality is that a lot of what’s out there is crap, both in print and online. So people look for filters, and tend to cling to ones they think are effective. That’s why “auras” cling so long.
I thought Things Fall Apart was an amazing book.