the end of publishing as we know it (or something)

[mckitterick]

Thanks to supergee, sartorias, and others. Three articles by Richard Curtis about the world of publishing, its impending doom, and all that:

Part 1: http://www.bksp.org/RichardCurtis1.html
Part 2: http://www.bksp.org/RichardCurtis2.html
Part 3: http://www.bksp.org/RichardCurtis3.html

Best,
Chris

Comments

[gwyndolin.livejournal.com]

*goes to find a wall to bang her head against*

[skyflame.livejournal.com]

This is one reason why I finally gave up on getting published traditionally and just went to Kinko's to make chapbooks of various things to give away to friends.

[florilegia.livejournal.com]

While the publishing industry is indeed a bureaucratic behemoth and makes decisions that seem far from practical to me, I cringe to think of the demise of the book. I wish there was some way the text could be published online, and if enough people request it in book form, then it could be published in paper?

I can imagine an apolyptic future in which power is unavailable so no one can read if texts (especially scholarly material) is only available online. Not to mention that online visits are easily trackable so 'resistance is futile'.

I cry bullshit.

[professormass.livejournal.com]

Things I learned from my time in the ebook industry: publishers are stupid and archaic, authors are frightened little weasels, and technology companies are only interested in fucking the other guy. It's sad, but true.

There are two points that Richard Curtis doesn't take into account in his articles, but I think they're two key points:

1) Ebooks didn't die because of technological and financial concerns. Ebooks died because the publishing industry, and especially the author organizations, fought them, every step of the way. Author organizations published full-page ads decrying electronic rights and ebooks. Publishers refused to even consider going the ebook route, for fear of piracy. And they nuked any ebook company that didn't have insane Digital Rights Management in place.

Furthermore, the ebook industry stagnated as soon as it hit the security wall. The Open eBook publication format took less than two months to have 90% complete, and six more months to be finalized.

By the same token, the digital rights discussion has never even gotten to point of quantifying their needs, as the DRM companies all jostled each other for position, so they could be the Next Big Thing. It's six years later, and the Open eBook Forum has become a sad joke.

It also didn't help that Adobe spent much of the early Open eBook efforts trying to destroy the organization from the inside. Turning over the efforts to NIST, whose representative was a mealy-mouthed corporate shill, as also counter-productive.

In short: the authors killed ebooks because they were afraid of piracy. The publishers killed ebooks because they refused to look at it as a new model of doing business. The tech companies killed ebooks because each wanted to rule the new standards.

All about money, kids. If ebooks will succeed, it will be because of an open source, grassroots movement. And we're already seeing the beginnings of it.

2) When Curtis says things like, "People are submitting manuscripts via email," he doesn't take into account that most publishers require you to send manuscripts in paper format. It degrades the slush pile by wittling down submissions only to people who will make the extra effort to print something and mail it by hand.

Yes, the publishers are facing an electronic revolution. And their response has been to fight back. The more electronic things go, the more they push back. They go after electronic publishing as "vanity press," they refuse to accept submissions via email, and so forth. Basically, for the prospective author, you're being told that it's their world, and you get to live in it.

In some ways, I can't say I disagree. I've been highly dissatisfied with the self-congratulatory back-patting that seems to be involved with every online magazine I've seen. "Look at this! Brilliant fiction by a guy I play Warcraft Online with!" Whoop-dee-frickin-doo. I very rarely see anything published online that I'd bother reading. These people need editors. Even the talented authors are pissing their potential down their leg, because it's not being honed by critical eyes. There are serious advantages to professionally trained editors.

Curtis decries the poverty of the publishers, and the changing state of the publishing industry. As far as how it's affected quality, I agree. But the publishers aren't starving. The audience and the authors are starving, and a lot of new talent is being wasted in this brave new electronic world of which he speaks.

His articles have serious historical value, but I'm afraid I don't see how they bring anything new to the discussion, and many of his points are too exaggerated to be of any real merit.