Writers Discuss the Future of Publishing – Round 4

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 changes do you see arriving for this business in the next five years?

Jason Pettus: The exact same changes we’ve seen happen to the music and movie industries in the last five years. Doom and gloom and eventual downfall for the big corporate outfits; a celebratory rise among independents and self-producers. We’re going to see a virtual duplication of this within the publishing industry over the next five years.

Carl Thomas: There will be more publishers that are independent and a better, review driven, POD service. Also, ebooks will take a greater share of the market as the Sony Reader and the like becomes more popular. In the long term, I doubt the dwindling number of readers will support the big publishing houses.

Alexander McNabb: I’m pretty sure we won’t all be rushing off to embrace Kindles. I’m also sure those that have used Authonomy will bear testament to the fact that reading books onscreen is a pain in the arse.

I can see POD developing and being an interesting sideshow. But again, I’m wary of predicting the “death” of mainstream publishing. I’m not sure how publishing would be served by the atomisation of the Internet, either. The average global readership of a blog is 1.1: the 1 being the blogger who started it. Facebook is burning money a great deal faster than it is making money. So I don’t think we’re really necessarily on top of the Web 2.0 revolution in many ways. In fact, it’s likely that Web 2.0 thinking will be folded into existing business models rather than being revolutionary. Look at Authonomy, for a start!

And I think the same is true of publishing – the “long tail” business model works for Amazon.com at the distribution end. But I’d worry about a world where the barrier to entry was so low that the long tail resulted in the availability of 10,000 second rate and essentially undifferentiated titles on POD. And I don’t think I’d have written a book if I’d just had the prospect of 300 sales to get me going.

I think mainstream publishing on bits of tree will still be there in five years. But I also think it’s hard to call quite what the world will look like in five years. Certainly, people are consuming a new type of medium onscreen, mashing different media streams and rich content types. I do think it highly likely that people will consume less books and more online information moving forwards and could quite foresee a world where books are considered a quaint thing that old people read within my own lifetime.

Elizabeth Jasper: I think all major publishers of fiction will embrace POD in a big way and redirect their marketing budgets towards promoting their books through their own on-line bookstores (many already do this) and through writing sites and personal networking sites such as Facebook, and through major supermarkets, who will have POD slot-machines where a customer can select a book from a catalogue. By the time they’ve finished their shopping their book will be printed and ready for collection.

I see the conventional bookstore, carrying hundreds or even thousands of fiction titles in stock disappearing and being replaced by “libraries,” where customers can browse before ordering a POD book, which will be almost instantly printed on site. This has the advantage of doing away with pulping millions of copies printed surplus to demand. That cannot be a bad thing all round.

I see the author’s “advance” disappearing altogether and contracts with authors reflecting a higher percentage return on sales rather than an advance against future sales.

Erik Hare: I believe that one way or the other, what we will have five years from now will have so little relationship to what there is now that it will be easier to note what hasn’t changed.

LS: Will these changes help writers participate and shape the industry? If so, how?

Alexander: I don’t think they will, to be honest with you. You could see something like Authonomy as a new egalitarianism – a peer-reviewed race to be the unanimously agreed top quality book on a 3500-strong slushpile. Or you could see it as a social networking site where a load of wannabes waste their days wrangling about POV changes. I’d love to think it was the former, but only its inventors at Harper Collins know how sincere it is – and I don’t think we’ve seen much evidence of that sincerity, to be honest. So I don’t think we’re changing publishing at all. It’s just a different form of slushpile. Saves on postage, though.

Debbie Bennett: Sadly, the big boys are the ones with the budgets for advertising. Contacts will become essential. Inevitably quality will suffer which won’t do anyone any favours.

Paul Fenton: Hopefully cheaper publishing methods, like POD, will enable more new writers to get their books into print, as the lower cost commitment means lower risk for the publisher.

Elizabeth: Although the power of writers to reflect and shape society through fiction should never be underestimated, and the power and beauty of language should never be allowed to fade, if writers were regarded more as business partners (through more realistic contracts) than a disposable commodity, this would enable the business of fiction to function in a more controlled manner for both writers and publishers, minimising risk to both parties.

Simon Forward: I don’t know. For the moment it still seems very much like an US and THEM scenario. Writers feel like outsiders trying to break in, while publishers – to us anyway – feel like gatekeepers trying to keep us out. The impression is of an institution trying to maintain the status quo, and then in their letters to US they complain that the publishing industry is experiencing difficult times. If I was facing difficult times, I’d want to change the status quo – shake things up and turn it around – not preserve it.

LS: How do these changes have the potential to be negative for writers?

Simon: It’s possible major publishers will switch more to a reliance on POD. Writers will be left with reduced deals and be expected to do ten times the work they do already to promote their own books, while readers will be left to their own devices to seek out books – in which case, sales will inevitably drop (further), as people much prefer to see books in shops on the shelves and pick them up, rather than be pointed to an internet browser.

Elizabeth: Although easily accessible POD might be both convenient and profitable for some writers who are not looking for mass-market sales, I don’t think these writers will be in direct competition with major publishers who will maintain their pre-eminence in both editorial and marketing spheres.

Paul: My fear would be that if POD becomes too heavily used, publishers might “cheap-out” on writers by only offering their books POD from online stores. Again, tangibility is a key element of any consumer purchase decision. And having paperbacks in bricks-and-mortar stores fills that requirement.

Debbie: There will be an even bigger pile of wannabe writers competing for a market-share. And the quality of books will drop dramatically as books are published without any real editorial input.

Carl: No, I think it will be the best thing since the written word as there’ll be no controlling publisher to say what is or isn’t “commercial.” It may even get a lot of people reading again, as they won’t be limited by what’s available in the shops.

What’s your take?

I’m also interested in hearing from you. What’s your take on the changes that publishing is undergoing? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.