Writers Discuss the Future of Publishing – Round 2
Publishing is in the throes of a revolution, and all the old rules are being put to the test. As CEOs, senior editors, agents and booksellers all scramble to guess at how they’ll participate in the future market, Lauri Shaw asks a panel of writers where they see this business going – and how they each expect to contribute to the wave of change that is, for the time being, the only certainty in sight.
LS: What do you like best about publishing as it stands today?
Erik Hare: That it will not stand as it is for long.
Paul Fenton: There are still plenty of good books out there – it’s finding them that’s the problem.
Max Dunbar: I like the fact that original, talented writers like Irvine Welsh, M. J. Hyland, and Christopher Brookmyre can get published and sell books.
Lexi Revellian: Books are still being published in quantity.
Jason Pettus: I like seeing the rise of independents, and out-and-out self-managing artists. The ones who publish their own work, book their own tours, distribute their own product, and negotiate their own contracts.
Elizabeth Jasper: I like that some publishers and agents are finally embracing modern technology for submissions. And the advantages offered by POD.
Simon Forward: HarperCollins is due to launch a new Sci-Fi imprint next year named Angry Robot. That name alone suggests that they are keen to break the mold. It’s at a time when we’re going to see a sixth Hitch-Hikers book emerge on the stands, plus a resurrection of Red Dwarf in the form of a few TV specials. So it’s a good time for science fiction comedy, but it’s also time for something new.
If someone in the industry recognises that it’s time for something new, then the best thing about the publishing industry will be that there are people with vision still working in it. Willing to go the distance to get something of quality out there where it belongs.
Hannah Davis: I actually really love the Book Club endorsements. Think they bring good books to the mainstream public and can really make an author’s career. It’s my professional goal to make Oprah’s book club!
Carl Thomas: Sorry, I can’t think of anything.
Alexander McNabb: There’s really relatively little to like. I think the publishing system as it stands is iniquitous to new talent. I think that it is ripe for being blown apart by the egalitarianism of the Internet, dis-intermediated in the same way that other “gatekeeper-led” industries have been by the web. And I, for one, would love to be at the head of the screaming mob that invades the palaces and burns the Savonnerie carpets and smashes the Ormolu clocks.
At the same time, I am also perfectly happy to be a well-kept lapdog of the royalty if they’ll have me. Like most revolutionaries, the seed of my revolt lies in my rejection from the corridors of privilege, wealth, and power.
I had had high hopes of Harper Collins’ Authonomy, but I don’t think that HC is taking the initiative and its potential as seriously or genuinely as I had previously believed. If you were really smart, Authonomy would be a wonderful thing. But one kid in a basement applying some “wikinomics” style thinking won’t reverse a whole corporation’s attitudes towards the shape of its business.
I wish that Authonomy had been thought of by a smaller publisher willing to take a few risks and be led by the market. That would have been wonderful. As it is, the mob is more attractive right now.
Debbie Bennett: It still exists. With all the doom and gloom and electronic readers, there are still libraries and still books. And kids are reading again!
LS: Are you worried about the recession, specifically as it affects the publishing industry? Why or why not?
Debbie: Not really. If anything, it will be the more expensive coffee-table hardbacks that will suffer – the luxury end of the market. Paperbacks will flourish.
Max: Not particularly. Times have been tough for new authors for a long while and we get used to it. You write for pleasure, not cash or status. I’ve heard talk that the recession may lead to a kind of “credit crunch lit.” Like Depression-era American fiction.
Paul: Am I worried about it? Yes, but far less than I’m worried about the effect on other areas of the economy.
Everyone will be affected by the recession. But there’s the conventional wisdom that popular forms of entertainment thrive when economies shrink, with people wanting distraction from the doom and gloom. A book is cheaper than a film ticket and lasts much longer.
However, if the publishing industry operating model became heavily reliant on credit during the last decade, then that could see them cutting back on costs very sharply.
Jason: I agree that the major presses have lots of reason to worry about a recession. As the owner of a basement press, though, a recession is one of the best things that can ever happen to me.
The first thing to shrink in hard economic times is a person’s entertainment/discretionary budget. In the case of book lovers, gone suddenly are the $35 hardbacks they were picking up at Borders once a week, to be replaced with a lot more five-buck PDFs they can print out and bind at work themselves when the boss isn’t looking. And I’m the guy making the five-buck PDFs, so sales actually go up for me during times like these.
People have stopped buying $300 boxed sets of “Friends,” which is too bad for NBC. But they’re buying one-dollar downloads at iTunes by the ton, which is good news for all self-producing musicians – since they have a more intimate relationship with their audience than any corporation could.
Hannah: It would be foolish to ignore the fact the world is poorer right now. Think it won’t stop people buying books but it might not give the writer those big, healthy advances of old.
Simon: The recession is a concern. But it also presents opportunities.
Investments will be risky. The only way you can turn that around is to be bold. Caution at this tricky time will result in a publishing industry that continues to stagnate. Something new is needed to excite interest in books.
I don’t know if I’m typical, but I used to be a prolific book buyer. Why did I stop? Was it economic recession? No. If anything my earnings have increased steadily over the last decade. I’ll tell you why: because the standard of books reaching the bookshops consistently failed to excite. If I see one more celebrity biography, I swear a Fahrenheit 451 scenario will not be far away.
And yet it’s the most generic pap that’s given the greatest prominence in the store or books in various genres where we’ve frankly seen it all before. I am all for commercial. But quality, original, and commercial is a perfectly achievable combination.
Elizabeth: From a personal point of view, the recession is not affecting me as a writer as I’m not yet published. As far as it affects the industry, there are pluses and minuses.
The pluses are that when people can’t afford to go out as much, they may turn to books as a cheaper alternative to more expensive DVDs.
The minuses are that publishers are even more reluctant to take on and promote new writers, who can’t be guaranteed to show a return on their investment (not that they invest that much in new writers to start with, it seems).
Lexi: I’m not particularly worried. If it gets any more difficult for a newcomer to get published, something will give, and the face of the industry will change, possibly for the better.
Alexander: I’m more worried about how it’s going to affect our breadlines. How does fiction get affected by recession? I could see people wanting to escape more.
Carl: It’s not as if publishers will worry about us.
Erik: I am strangely hopeful. This may precipitate the crisis that we all know has been quietly kept in the background for many years. We will no longer be able to deny the deep problems with quality, profitability, and the general inability to recognize and develop new talent.
Don’t miss the next round, in which our panel answers questions about what changes they each see arriving for this business over the next 5 years.
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Tags: Alexander McNabb, author, Ben Tanzer, Debbie Bennett, Erik Hare, Hannah Davis, Jason Pettus, magazine, Max Dunbar, Paul Fenton, Paul Stokes, publishing, Simon A. Forward, web
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December 11th, 2008 at 6:05 am
What do I like best about publishing? Well, Lauri, I’m with Alexander pretty much 100%. I fully intend to be in the vanguard of the new breed of authors who tackles the industry head on. My musician friends spit their beer halfway across the room when I tell them what the industry’s like!
The problem is, we’ll only bring about a sea change if we work together – have you tried getting TWO writers to agree on something? That’s what the industry relies on.
Still, the best thing about the publishing industry? It’s such a monolith it won’t see us coming!
The recession? Hmm, I read publishers talking about what they’re taking onto their lists because of the recession and it reinforces everything I thought about how backward they are. If they wanted a recession-busting list they needed to put it together 18 months ago. If they had their finger on the pulse of something other than their own dead corpse they’d be signing the authors writing the books for the start of the new upswing – they could take us on for a pittance. Will they? No! And the result? The casualty of the recession will be the publishing houses, not the writers they publish.