This time last week I was sat on a hard seat (you know the bum-numbingly rigid tubular style beloved of hotel managers, presumably because they stack so neatly?). I was willing to suffer the discomfort because it was the annual Writers’ League of Texas Agents’ Conference (1). I have been a member of WLT for a couple of years but it was my first time at WLTCON. I was surprised to find that of the 300-or-so attendees about half were newbies like myself. Creative writing, it seems, is alive and well in the Lone Star State.
Over the next two days we learned a lot about the publishing industry. An estimated 275,000 books are published every year in the USA alone. Nearly one in two Americans read a book last year, according to Bowker’s 2008 PubTrack Consumer Survey (2). Amazingly 80% of books are bought and read by women.
One view is that the industry has lost the plot and is in self-destruct mode, sacrificing quality of product for the cult of celebrity, where high profile personalities are paid huge sums of cash to write flimsy stories that mostly do not live up to the blurb on the glossy dust jacket (3).
Another view is that the industry is in flux, a period of dynamic change, brought on by distribution and technology change. The Big A (that’s amazon.com) and the Big B (that’s Barnes & Noble) and more recently the Big C (you guessed, Costco) are locked in to a slug fest over who can wrest the most dollars from the book buying public looking for titles on the NYT bestseller list. Bigger retailers have led to concentration among the publishers (goodbye Bantam and Collins, hello Random House and HarperCollins).
Enter electronic books (amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and book apps for Apple’s iPhone) that could potentially upset the apple cart, and there are a lot of unhappy literary agents and book editors. Having just a month previously visited the Society for Information Displays (SID) 2009 expo in San Antonio where the great and good of digital display technologies showed their latest wares, I was well aware of the advances in platforms (4). You want 3D TV? It exists. You want ultra-thin, low power displays? Yup, got ‘em. A driver’s licence with a full 360 degree image of your head? I’m not so sure I’m keen on that application (do I want to see the back of my head?) but working prototypes exist.
Cambridge, Mass.-based E-Ink, the company that makes the ‘imaging film’ for the Kindle (and yes the screen is made in the USA with American know-how) is making larger active matrix screens and now has prototype product capable of delivering both colour and moving images (5). Imagine ‘how-to books’ in full-colour with moving video as well as 2D photography, with bookmarkable and searchable text. It’s coming and not necessarily from a bookstore near you – more like your wi-fi or 3G connection. Which, of course, is why book retailers are worried.
For many self-publishing is a viable way to get into print. For others it is the only way to get into print. Even here, print-on-demand (POD) such as lulu.com, has evolved enabling, for example, teachers to print course high quality books in small print runs for their classes. The writer retains copyright, but all the production, marketing and promotional activities have to be driven by the author. Having spoken with a few newly published authors, even with the full weight of a large publishing house behind them, much of the marketing – arranging book signings, radio and TV appearances, website – falls to them anyway. For first book author maybe the difference between self- and traditional publishing is not so different. It still requires the author to get out and sell books.
Adding up all the forms of delivering books to readers, one estimate is that annually some 500,000 new titles are published.
Not so long ago, the only way to get a book published was to go to a printer and pay him to print copies. Visitors to Williamsburg, Virginia or Ironbridge, Shropshire can see working presses (6). The process is fascinating to watch, from the typesetting, the setting up of the press, the inking of the plates and applying the platen. The resulting books are wonderful. You can feel the impression of the cast type with your fingers. Pages are stitched together. These are the works of craftspeople in a pre-industrial time. It’s very different to high-speed laser printers or large lithographic printing machines, which are the products of our industrial age (7).
Yet Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type is only 570-years old (8). That technology breakthrough enabled small businesses to print bibles, almanacs, political pamphlets and later newspapers for local communities and create new industries, trades and professions. Only with the invention of the railways did distribution of regional and national newspapers become viable.
Before Gutenberg, an author had to pay a copyist to produce duplicates from a master copy. A writer such as Tacitus or Pliny the Elder would go to a copyist workshop and his team of scribes would laboriously copy out each volume word for word, line by line (9). Buyers of books could chose expensive versions on the highest quality papyrus or parchment with added colour, to undecorated versions on lower grade ‘paperstock’ according to their budget. The great library of Alexandria was stocked with books copied from the great writers (10). Every ship docking at Alexandria was required to lend the authorities its collection of books so that they could be transcribed (often, sneakily, the owner received the copy while the Library retained the original). This method of book publication continued with the monks at the Christian monasteries, to whom the world owes a debt of gratitude for passing on the written heritage of the pagan classical world. We can read Tacitus and Pliny the Elder in the original or in translation today thanks to publishers of books.
But the Internet has changed everything. As it has done with news, so it is now democratizing the book industry. If an author cannot get a book deal with a traditional publisher, the Internet is a channel through which he or she can reach the reading public. Even if the author does secure a publishing contract, the Internet will still play a key role in launching and promoting the book. So-called ‘viral marketing’ (the electronic version of ‘word-of-mouth’ through websites, blogs and now Twitter) can spread word of a new book as fast as its user community’s fingers can type. The Internet makes possible delivery of books in a variety of formats, from the printed book brought to your front door, to a myriad of digital formats for a variety of devices. Some buyers – like myself – will buy books in multiple formats depending on our lifestyles: the hardback (hard cover) for the library and the paperback (soft cover) or e-book for the vacation or business trip.So I have Tacitus and Pliny the Elder in both Loeb Editions and Penguin Books (which I paid for) and can access other classical authors online from my Mac (free of charge) or iPhone or even carry some of them in my pocket care of the app Stanza (some
gratis and some at minor cost).
So is the printed book the new buggy whip in a world of digital devices? I think the printed book still has a bright future. Even in a recession, the US publishing industry saw only a modest decline in 2008, according to Bowker – there was even growth in one segment, ‘on demand’ publishing (11). The printed book is portable, never needs recharging, can be personalized with annotations, filed on a bookshelf in a library, and in its twilight years be recycled by loaning it to friends or donating to a charity shop. I would not be willing to loan my Kindle or iPhone. The new devices enable readers to carry complete libraries of books with them and update them for the latest editions in a way the printed book cannot.
Perhaps, for the time being, readers have it made. They can get content in many formats and much of it free. In the Internet Age, how the book industry will make money is the key issue. But then again, that is not a question unique to publishers.
If you read books, what do you think? Twitter me [at]Lindsay_Powell
References- http://www.writersleague.org/events/2009-conf.htm
- http://www.bowker.com/index.php/press-releases/564-nearly-one-in-two-americans-read-a-book-last-year-according-to-bowkers-2008-pubtrack-consumer-survey
- http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/books/entries/2009/06/28/writers_league_of_texas_agents.html
- http://www.sid.org/
- http://www.eink.com/
- http://www.history.org/Almanack/life/trades/tradepri.cfm and http://www.ironbridge.museum/our_attractions/blists_hill_victorian_town/Canal_Street/index.asp
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printing and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyists
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_alexandria
- http://www.bowker.com/index.php/press-releases/563-bowker-reports-us-book-production-declines-3-in-2008-but-qon-demandq-publishing-more-than-doubles
