Technology and the Future of Publishing
James Gleick’s recent article in the New York Times How to Publish without Perishing has sparked several prominent opinions in the blogosphere. Gleick’s premise is based around Google’s digitisation of over 7 million written media (books) into a central repository. My real problem with this Googlisation of books has to do with my fear of World Googlisation, not a fear for the publishing industry. Gleick, if I’ve read this correctly, sees the book as a valuable object and that publishers should focus on creating beautiful artifacts that can be cherished and loved by book lovers. And, stepping back from digital publishing, concentrate on books.
Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it.James Gleick
Clay Shirky, in his first guest blogging post on Boing Boing, takes exception. He basically asks the incredulous – is that saying that publishers should step back from the digital medium and concentrate on selling objects? That’s obviously a nonsensical direction for the publishing industry to ignore digitisation simply because Google’s heavyweight status is overshadowing that market. And, I’d agree. As Clay points out, the number of readers far surpasses the number of book lovers in the world.
At the same time John Allsopp has posted on Scroll Magazine his agreement with Gleick’s thesis and highly recommends the article for it’s stance. And, to some extent, as a writer and a book lover my heart goes out to books – one has a relationship with books presently unattainable through electronic media. I love to feel the texture of books and smell them and when I think about a book that I’ve read from my past I visualise and recall features that could never be Googlised.
But publishers are about making money so this is very similar to how file sharing relates to the music industry. Smaller indy artists start to get exposure to audiences they were previously prevented from engaging, and some big fish swim around gulping down large doses of lawsuits on 12 year old girls in a vain attempt to capture the wind. Publishers, like record labels, are simply going to have to be smarter about their business models and relinquish the current lockdown on authors.
We’re seeing it already to some extent, indy authors allowing the free downloadable version as PDF and selling the paper version. Professor James Boyle’s The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind published by Yale University Press is also available as a free PDF download. Another author who comes to mind recently is Seth Godin with his new book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us which is also available as a free audio version from Audible.com. The book can be, and still is, a thing to be held and loved and handed over to a friend but smart marketers and smart publishers will look for new ways to get exposure. Sometimes giving a little gets you out there. Publishers should be selling experiences rather than objects.
Books on paper will have their place for a long time yet, simply because interface design and the advancement of technology hasn’t lived up to the promise of being a substitute for the paper and ink experience. The milestone for creating a substitute to paper has to be when you can roll it up and swat a fly with it, put it under your arm and read it on the toilet. Then, and only then, is paper going to be in danger of disappearing. Paper provides a specific experience – touch. Paper provides a tactile relationship of adoration for the book lover. Paper is easier to read, can be folded for convenience, and travels easily between people (there is no conflicing file format – eyes + book = reading).
The real threats to the printed publishing media are global warming and pollution. Bill Buxton hit this on the head when he said in five years time we’ll look at someone who buys the weekend paper as a sociopath. How much forest dies for our newspapers, magazines and books? This will be a growing point of angst at the heels of print publishers. Also, the inks themselves are hostile poisons that leech into the ground in massive doses. It won’t kill book publishing, but in the next five to ten years they will have to pay the piper – adapt, find new business models or be overwhelmed by newer, smarter players entering the publishing industry from both print and digital directions.
James Gleick’s article stands as a good one. It stands because to some extent he is right and in one major facet he is profoundly wrong. He is right because publishers do have to change their current business model. He is wrong because a book, and any book lover will tell you this, is more than an object – book lovers belong as a subset of readers (in most cases), and book readers are where the money runs. Without readers, and only having collectors, you might as well quit publishing right now. My suggestion to that conversation is to watch the emergence of the indy writer into this publishing space who can write lean, self-market and glean a living from creating Seth Godin style Tribes.
Businesses don’t survive in the long term because old people persist in old behaviors; they survive because young people renew old behaviors, and all the behaviors young people are renewing cluster around reading, while they are adopting almost none of the behaviors tied to cherishing physical containers, whether for the written word or anything else. Can you imagine a 25-year-old telling a publisher “To get my business, you should stick to a single, analog format? Oh, and could you make it heavy, bulky, and unsearchable? Thanks.Clay Shirky
There will always be different business models required for dictionaries and encyclopedias than for novels and biographies. References lend themselves far more effectively to being searchable. Novels need not be searchable. Novels can be enhanced by being printed, by sitting in the shade of a tree. No less is required of the publishing industry than of the music industry, the car industry or anyone else. Business needs to adapt to survive. Gleick simply advises publishers to die quietly.
