The Future of Book Publishing, Part 3

Part 3 of my discussion with business guru David Maister about the future of book publishing, which orginally appeared as a comment on David's blog. Part 1 of may be found here and Part 2 here. And yes, I have written Part 3 all by myself. [Full disclosure: David Maister is a client of my employer, stresslimitdesign.]

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David Maister's post Writers and Peformers is right on the money—but I’m still disturbed by the cynical postmodern fatalism here.

The growing trend towards trained monkeys and dancing bears worries me (cf Kaavya Viswanathan, the plagiarizing Harvard undergraduate novelist and the Spice Girl-ification of the publishing industry), and I don’t want to go gently into that slick, infomercial-populated night. I don’t know if this generation would recognize a Shakespeare unless he got a hair piece, received a thorough Queer-Eye treatment, and was willing to shake his booty on Americon Idol. Surely the end results is we wind up with more pap culture (sic) idols, and less qualified content producers. Quel dommage. How many Shakespeares, Momma Casses, even Peter Druckers might we be losing in the current system? I’ll take talent and ability over photogenics any day.

More after the jump

Putting aside my high culture snobbery and conservative, meritocratic ideals to turn pragmatic again, I agree of course that most people who want to succeed today as professional content providers will have to promote themselves incredibly agressively (unless sheer dumb luck and good timing comes through for them – not wise to bank on). But I find we’re back at the Catch-22 David described in his recent Marketing Complexity. If you haven’t already made a name for yourself, how on earth do you break into the other marketing channels and capture a critical mass of attention?

At this point, one so-far undiscussed piece of the puzzle is The Long Tail idea that thanks to the power of Internet search tools, it is possible to deliver highly-specialized products to niche markets at a profit. Guy Kawasaki has an excellent post on the tactical items behind Long Tail success stories – which most people forget about. One of the critical factors he cites is “a sustainable population of low-cost producers” – meaning the Long Tail game is about making money as a distributor, or middle man, not as a producer. You aren’t going to make money as Jane or John Q. Author – but Amazon is going to make money off of you.

I may be wrong, but I perceive the loudest evangelists behind the promote-your-way-to-create-success school to be the gatekeepers or service providers behind the “collateral revenue” channels cited above—the A-listers of PR, publishing, blogging, etc—who are A-listers and gatekeepers in some cases because of merit, wisdom, and ability, but very often because of first-mover advantages or the power, money, and reach of the institutions behind them. The gatekeepers behind for-profit promotional channels are going to be the real commercial winners in the Long Tail, celebrity-creator game – the people who are really making money in all of those “collateral revenue streams” they recommend.

This means, of course, that the people who make money telling content-producers how to succeed…are in the business of making money promoting content-producers, but not necessarily in the business of making money for content producers. I don’t know about you, but I am generally wary of taking advice from someone whose financial interests conflict with my own.

Methinks there’s something rotten in the state of iDenmark.

The real corporate excitement around The Long Tail and consumer-generated-content (CGC) seems to be “look, we can get all of these patsy consumers to create content for us for free – the ultimate low-cost production – and then turn around and make a profit off other people’s work.” Referencing back to David's training article (“Why (Most) Training is Useless” ), I feel like we are creating a cultural system that highly rewards distributors but decreases incentives for content producers. How long will creators continue to contribute content for free or for little gain? And how does that system bode for the quality of the content we collectively produce? Somehow, this all strikes me as shades of the fall of the Roman Empire.

I would like to think in the midst of this cynical, postmodern mess there is still room for quality writing, specialized artists, and big, crunchy ideas that don’t always pitch to the groundlings or encapsulate in a CNN soundbyte, that there are alternate paths to success than solely being an entertainer.

Of course, that may make me a premature anachronism and perhaps I should throw it all in and get my hair bleached and my teeth capped.

The Complete Future of Book Publishing Series

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Shaula Evans July 19, 2006 - 1:32pm

Shaula Evans's diary | printer friendly version |

Terrific insight

I've been thinking about this problem a lot lately. Like many people, I have a secret novel, and I've often thought about the disincentives to publish it. The current book market doesn't reward effort and time commitment, so I doubt the publishing industry will be associated with "quality" for much longer. In my recent adventures, I've seen that the costs of promotion ultimately translate into the author paying to have their book published - even if the author is already established somewhat and has the advantage of good connections.

I also know someone who is actually seeing a profit from self-publishing on Lulu.com. However, there's no good "trusted filter" for Lulu books yet, so it doesn't make much sense to put your life's achievement there. I do think self-publishing is the future, though. Why should people spend months or years waiting for an agent to pick them up or for one publisher at a time to get to their manuscript, only to find that they aren't the ones who are going to be compensated for either their perspiration or their inspiration?

The key to the revolution won't be what authors or publishers do, though - it will be where the public invests their trust for reading recommendations. When NPR, Oprah, etc. start celebrating self-published books, we'll be looking at a whole new market.

Meanwhile I'll continue to tinker with my secret novel and wait for a change of scene: I'm not going to donate it to WikiCorp anytime soon.

Manifest Dignity

breakingranks July 19, 2006 - 3:32pm

Have Things Really Changed?

Shaula, (and Manifest Dignity) I don't want to get into a high-brow, low-brow debate (at least not now,) but I really wonder, if one takes the long-term view, whether things have really changed that much over the centuries? Are we really dealing with something that's new?

If I know my literary history (and I don't really)authors from Voltaire to Strindberg to Updike had to do the same thing all of us do (and every musician, popular or classical) has had to do: build a reputation by just doing the work, again and again, for little or no recompense. You can't wait for someone to pay you for your art.

The issue is NOT about the middlemen or the market - it's about each one of us as content providers. Do we wish to take into account the tastes and preferences of our potential audience, or do we wish to stay true to our personal vision? If we decide the latter, then surely it's OUR choice, not the fault of the audience or the distributors.

We must each find our way, sometimes tiptoe-ing to the line between art and entertainment (as I have full confidence Shakespeare did, and I KNOW Mama Cass did)sometimes crossing it, sometimes leaping over it with abandon, sometimes making a personal choice that we care more for what we create than for the rewards.

My experience, my advice (and perhaps my personal ideology) remains the same: no-one owes me a living, no one owes me an audience, and our fate, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves. The world is what it is - each of us must decide how prepared we are to participate, and what we are prepared to do to get what we want.

You wanna be true to your art? Fine! You wanna be noticed? fine! But you can't wait, like Ibsen, for the state to grant you a state pension to create what you create.

davidmaister July 19, 2006 - 4:52pm

You give it away copiously,

You give it away copiously, hope people like it (and work to ensure they do) and in time hopefully people pay you for it.

I wrote hundreds of thousands of words for free last year. This year, I'm getting something for some of them. Not much. But something.

However most content providers will never be paid for the content they produce and the people who own the pipes will skim off the profit. It has to get to a point where what you produce is popular enough that the pipe owners are willing to bid for it because the cut is enough to make paying more worth it. (Or not always popular. Certain types of writing have other advantages. Prestige pieces for example are often supported by more popular stuff because the pipe owner thinks it raises the value of their publication/show by raising the tone.)

Ian Welsh July 19, 2006 - 5:10pm

It's true that you can't

It's true that you can't wait for patronage, and the thousands of people putting untold energy into creating fan art prove that just the hope of recognition from within your social group will drive creative production.

I do think that the inability to fund the time spent on creative activity will amount to assigning professional creativity to the upper class. Art school is a pricey proposition, and the costs of publicity and distribution are formidable. Authors in a strong position lower those costs through personal access to social networks for promotion/distribution and media gatekeepers and notable arts grants, and then the irony is the people who already had money/position in the first place get the additional revenue stream from their book. And, of course, there's the hidden subsidy of all the people willing to do you favors if they think you're any sort of celebrity.

To some extent graduate schools have been serving to temper the effect of social imbalances. Academic authors are still paying to publish themselves if they go into the humanities and accept ten years of student loans, but during the 10 years the cost of production is delayed, someone from an underprivileged background may crank out a work of genius - and with a little luck this will open doors and permit class mobility.

Manifest Dignity

breakingranks July 19, 2006 - 5:29pm