Re: future of publishing

At 12:17 PM -0600 3/23/08, you wrote:
>Marion Gropen wrote:
>> Jon Noring, ...transition from filter then publish to publish then filter:
>
>>> Thoughts? Alternatives? Criticisms?
>
>> Do you then see no role in the future for all of the things that
>> publishers do, besides selection and marketing?
>
>I did not delve into any detail on this, but traditional publishers
>wear multiple hats. Certainly those who self-publish can avail
>themselves of help with each of these tasks, including all of them,
>either from a variety of people, or a single source.
>
>The term "vanity publishing" has developed a bad rap, and for good
>reason since the "vanity publishers" tried to sell, and still sell,
>themselves as "old model publishers."
>
>But services which simply assist self-published authors on a fee
>basis with the technical details (and editing) to get their book into
>a final, finished form, certainly should not be considered vanity
>publishers, nor disparaged. Such services only assist the self-
>published author to improve their product before it is made available
>to the public (i.e. self-published.)


I agree with you. Just to make it clear, these services DO exist. Authors can draw on "book doctors," "ghost writers," and other services in the editorial arena. As I think Jon is trying to point out, independent services in the other arenas traditionally handled by major publishers are also available. Overall services, such as "book coaches," are also available.

But I think that most self-publishers don't use these services for a variety of reasons:

* They often don't know these services exist, or how to find and evaluate these services.

* They don't have the funds to pay for these services. [Although I can forsee some of these services changing how they charge for the work they do. Editorial service companies, or marketing companies or others could start taking a share of the sales, for example, instead of the fee for service model they use now.]

* They don't see the value of these services for their book. [I'm often surprised at how arrogant some authors are about this -- they are certain their book doesn't need anything, that they've written a publishable book on their own, without anyone's help.



<snip>

>
>Publishing for the Amazon Kindle is an interesting archetype that,
>in my estimation, presages the future.
>

I think this is an interesting point. I thought publishing via LSI was incredibly easy. And then I saw Kindle's system (assuming you have the formatting right).

Perhaps in the future will see some system that is even easier, but I'm not sure how it would work.


>
>I believe the post-publish filtering systems of the future will help
>readers to filter out poorly-written and poorly-formatted books. (For
>example, from what I understand, it is now possible for software to
>analyze writing and determine to a good-degree of probability the
>quality of the writing.) So all will work out in the wash, with the
>winners being the self-published authors and book readers who will
>have greater diversity to choose from.

Uh, maybe.

I'm not convinced that technology will get to this level anytime soon. Perhaps in 50 years? It may not even be possible.

Editorial work is simply hard. I'm not sure it can even be reduced to calculations. A lot of it can, but not everything.


<snip>

>The whole point of my original message is simply that the vast
>majority of books (as e-books) available in the future will be
>self-published, and that new systems will arise to assist readers in
>filtering through that giant catalog.

While I agree that the filtering will certainly be needed, you haven't convinced me that the "vast majority" of titles will be self-published.

I like the model -- the splitting up of the publishing roles into component parts that self-publishers and small publishers (and even some large publishers) can contract with to get their books processed correctly.

I can buy the concept that self-publishing will expand exponentially and become an important part of publishing (whether digital or traditional). But getting to that "vast majority" standard needs I think a little more explanation. How? Why?


Part of the issue may simply be definitional -- what exactly constitutes publishing a book?

For example, my sister prepared books for members of the family one Christmas. They were nice photo books, made up of family photos with sometimes funny captions -- really no different than a family photo album, duplicated for each person in the family. BUT, unlike a photo album, its bound in hardcover, the photos are printed on pages (instead of being simply reproduced and affixed to the page), and the book has clearly been printed and bound like a traditionally published book.

Has my sister "published" this book? I don't think so. She didn't think so herself -- she was just making Christmas presents. AND, the company that printed the book didn't think so -- it doesn't advertise itself as a "publisher" -- its not a so-called "POD Publisher" -- and the book isn't available to anyone outside of our family, it doesn't appear in any on-line bookstore.

Transport these ideas to the digital realm, and I'm both publishing regularly on my public blogs and email list postings, and, I assume, NOT publishing?? when I send private email messages and post to a private blog -- or am I?

Its easy to say that publishing will expand dramatically if you include enough in your definition of publishing.

Personally, I think that the definition of publishing has to be limited. I still think that self-publishing will expand drastically, may become the majority of titles published. And you may be right that it will be the vast majority of what is published. But I'd like some argument of why it will be the vast majority of titles.


And, I should observe, that even if self publishing becomes the vast majority of titles published, that doesn't mean it will be the vast majority of sales in the publishing business! Even today self-published books are known for selling orders of magnitude fewer books per title (in general) than traditionally published books. Self-published titles are generally sales of dozens of copies where sales of tbooks are usually thousands of copies per title.

I have no idea where this falls for ebooks. Perhaps hundreds of copies per title?



><snip>

>And regarding the few thousand new publishers (I assume you mean who
>follow the old model), that still won't be enough to publish
>everyone's books -- and many of these will be worthy of publishing. If
>these dpublishers choose to follow the "old model" of filter-first
>(which they have to), there will still be millions of self-published
>books flooding the e-bookstores, a good number of which will be great
>books.


Again, I'm not convinced of the numbers. Yes, I can see a lot of books getting published that wouldn't make it through the filters of traditional publishing today. And I buy the idea that the future will be more publish first and then filter. That all makes sense to me.

But will there be enough to overwhelm the books that are published traditionally?

Remember, it would take tens of millions of books, if not hundreds of millions of books just to overwhelm the traditionally based books in print today in the US. Amazon's database includes 5 million books, the vast majority of which are traditionally published in one way or another. I don't know the figures, but I'd bet that POD titles in this database don't pass 500,000.


<snip>

>
>As already noted, I foresee the rise of "publishing services" which
>simply assist, on a fee basis, self-published authors to improve their
>book product with no promises of being an "old model publisher". New
>systems will arise to assist readers to find the books they will enjoy
>reading, a "post-publish filter" system.


Jon, do you see any of these services yet? I guess reviewers fall into this area, as do Amazon Affiliates and even Google Book Search to a degree.

What isn't completely clear in this area, IMO, is how these companies will make money or how they will be self-sustaining, if they aren't money-making enterprises.


>
>Now I don't see the "old model" necessarily dying out and all that
>experience being washed down the drain, but I do see it morphing over
>the next one or two decades in a major fashion, and that expertise
>will still be very valuable to the new system, whatever it will be.


You seem to be saying that you think the old model will have to participate in a new environment -- on in which it competes with this new model (or models, as I suppose its possible for other models to coexist also?)

IMO, I think there will always be a place for the traditional model in some way. Just as we now see versions of its predecessors today.

[As I understand it, books from Gutenberg to before the 1800s were almost always sponsored by someone who paid the bills and who almost never broke even on the deal. And then in the 1800s we also saw books sold by subscription -- pre-selling the edition and then only printing what is needed to fill the subscriptions. I see both models still used today. I don't know how much of publishing these make up, but I think they are still significant, depending on your definition of publishing.]


<snip>

>
>I am not against "old model publishing", but I do see its limitations,
>especially in that it is an inherently unfair system (due to technical
>and resource limitations) which has kept a lot of great books from
>being made available to the public, both by sheer ill-luck of the
>submitters, and by dissuading millions more from even trying to break
>into the "system" they see as stacked against them (almost like
>playing the lottery.) The market eventually replaces an unfair system
>with a more fair system when technology allows that to happen -- when
>the technological barriers are removed.


In general I agree. BUT, I don't think its always obvious, and terms like "fair" are often ambiguous. In addition, improvements don't always move in a straight line, sometimes you take two steps back to move one step forward - or one step back to take two steps forward - or many steps sideways - or ....

The advent of POD and the lack of pre-publication filtering often found in those using POD technology does agree with your argument. But while POD has generally made it easier to publish (and in a sense more "fair" because authors who would have been rejected for a variety of often capricious reasons can now get their works in print), it has also increased the difficulty consumers face in finding books. And despite POD's 10-year history, that difficulty hasn't yet seen any paradigm shift, as far as I can tell. So while the system is more "fair" to the author in terms of getting their books in print, it isn't any more "fair" in terms of marketing and distributing books.

Regardless, I'm not at all sure that the replacement will be more fair. Ebooks have been plagued by companies seeking to control the market -- Amazon's Kindle is only the latest example (the Kindle format is proprietary, and Kindles only download from Amazon). We've seen the same thing from other systems set up. Perhaps this is why ebooks haven't taken off (in part). But if its not one of the main reasons why ebooks haven't taken off, then whoever ends up with this kind of control over ebooks could make the system unfair to authors again.

I don't believe that technology makes things fair. I think its the structure of the market system that makes it fair. If you have a broad-based system with many competing vendors, you are more likely to have a fair system. But most of the large moves by ebook reader providers have sought to avoid this.


>I do not fear a future where the old model is predominately replaced
>by a "self-publishing model" since I know systems will come into being
>to help readers to filter through the published catalog and find the
>good books they want to read.


I'd feel more persuaded if I knew how these filtering systems worked or saw evidence that they are developing now. The problem is that I'm not persuaded that the examples I gave above are really what we are talking about. Somehow they just seem like obvious marginal improvements, not the kind of paradigm shift that I assume will be needed to cope with the number of titles available, or that will be available under your scenario.


>
>That is, the "junk" will remain mostly unread, as it should. But even
>such "junk" has value, especially for future generations for
>data-mining and insights into our present generation. (A whole 'nuther
>post or blog article I've thought of writing... even in scholarly
>publishing I believe everything should be published, but only the
>worthy papers should be "blessed" via peer-review.)
>


I think I agree, but I'd like to hear your argument anyway.


I do have to say that this whole idea is rather insightful. You've picked up on an assumption we are making -- that filtering must be done before publishing -- and showed that it doesn't have to be done that way -- at least not in a digital arena where out-of-pocket costs and physical resources can be kept to a minimum.

I do think that some pre-filtering will continue to be done. Publishers (as opposed to self-publishers), will still decide whether or not to publish a book based on whether or not they can make money on it. Self-publishers themselves will probably still decide whether or not the effort to publish is worth it. Depending on how some service companies charge for their services, they might also filter the works they are willing to perform their services for.

I suppose we will see how it all works out. But I've found your argument quite persuasive.

Kent





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