Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
For the tiny remainder of 2009, we’ve looked over our blog offerings from throughout the year and have chosen those that received the most responses. Those posts will comprise our Best of the Blog. (Can’t believe we’ve been writing this blog for almost a year!)
Among those posts that garnered a boatload of comments were two reports I wrote based on my observations of the Book Expo America Convention (BEA), which took place in New York in May. It’s instructive to read them and see how current they still are and to remind ourselves just how much flux exists in the publishing realm. Here goes…
At BEA, I attended a workshop entitled, “Product Centric Publishing in a Community Centric World,” which was presented by Mike Shatzkin. His self-appointed task was to lay out for the audience what publishing would look like in twenty years. Fasten your seatbelt and pull it snug! I’ll start out with a straightforward idea from Shatzkin and pick up speed from there.
- Be nimble but in a framework of understanding. In other words, you need to know something about what you’re attempting. So find out how Facebook works and what the etiquette of that community is before you try a creative way to connect with others through it. When you begin to use Twitter, do so with an eye to watching how others are effective in conveying their messages with it–then figure how to express yourself.
- Hard drives won’t be used any more. Material will be accessed through screens, not computers.
- Everything will be organized by nuggets and niche organization. For example, if you’re interested in Civil War uniforms, you’ll connect with material and community through such diverse areas as fabric, uniforms, and the Civil War.
- Format-specific publishing will give way to format-agnostic publishing (material can easily include pictures, games, video, etc.).
- Subscription models will be common whereas per-item sales will be unusual.
- More titles will be created by readers than by publishers.
- “Ownership” of eyeballs will be more important than ownership of content. i.e., the person who has access to the most people will be more powerful than the person who has access to content.
- For today, production and delivery costs will rise, but revenue will fall.
- Lines will blur between newspapers, magazines, books, and games.
- e-books will have more timely info than we’re used to seeing in books because the material can be updated more easily.
- Publishing widely to reach as broad an audience as possible will go away. In its place will be publishing “vertically”–reaching more deeply into a narrower audience.
What are the pros for publishers and writers in this scenario?
- Books are the ultimate niche product. A book you like might be one that doesn’t interest me in the least.
- Publishers and writers are trained to be niche marketers and are skilled at content development.
What are the cons for publishers and writers?
- Both are product centric rather than community centric.
- A book isn’t continuous like a newspaper or a newsfeed is.
- The publishing industry lacks the resources and the culture of technology to experiment.
The two key words to keep in mind as you eye the future are: “vertical” and “community.” You must understand yourself vertically and present yourself vertically (develop a web site designed to reach your community; collect emails from your community; create partnerships vertically).
So now, loosen your seatbelt a bit and talk to me. What are your responses to this “vision” of the future? What parts of it do you buy into? What are you skeptical about?
I guess my fantasy of writing quietly in a corner of the room and having that be enough is really just a fantasy. I didn’t read anything in your post that shocked me and was pleasantly surprised by the earnestness of the cons.
For an emerging writer, the ability to market yourself and demonstrate your effectiveness at it to an agent or publisher is a huge advantage that didn’t exist even five to ten years ago. But promotion of your “brand” takes time away from writing. I see so much focus on promotion, but the work still needs to be good. I’m trying to find the right balance between the two for myself, but am giving writing more of my time. Without a quality piece of work, I’ve got nothing to promote.
I finally broke down and made myself a twitter account but have quickly realized that until I have followers then I am just basically talking to myself. Maybe once I am a best selling author I will have a plethora of followers eager to know my every move – until then I will keep updating myself with what I am doing.
http://www.twitter.com/aslapintheface
To be honest, Janet, it makes me a little sad.
While the concept of more materials developed by readers sounds exciting, and new technological advances offer some fun and effective options for both writers and readers, it has also seriously blurred the line between “reality and the perception of reality.” Misinformation spreads faster than anything and the content of current examples of reader-based sources that I’m familiar with have to be suspect simply because there are no real expectations or qualifications required of those that contribute. Maybe in fiction this will be less of an issue and the quality of writing can trump it all but I’m not sure at this point.
And I will confess (in case you haven’t guessed) that I’m one of those that believes a Kindle will never be the same as my favorite non-battery-dependent, dog-eared, paper-scented, firmly-bound, tactile-quality, stacked-at-my-bedside, constant-companion books. So more talk of screens just does not stir the blood.
The idea of e-books resonates with me.
Ten years ago I wrote a history curriculum for home schools (which I suppose would be a community/niche market). I chose to publish on demand on CD-ROM because that format allowed me to use photos as economically as text. I was also able to feature and update weblinks. The original programming process was time-consuming and can require costly software, but the actual reproduction costs are very low. It’s a ‘green’ option, which is attractive, and there’s no physical inventory to tax. Shipping costs are minimal, and would be even lower if I could deliver the product digitally. Some parents had to warm up to the idea of not having a “real” book, but most students prefer working from their computer.
For the publisher, e-books are a wonderful development!
Dawn, you’ve written about the dilemma of being a writer in the 21st century: You’re asked to be a very strong writer and a very strong marketer of yourself simultaneously. Oh, for the good ol’ days when an editor was heard to utter, “Writers should be heard and not seen.” But good writing still counts big time.
Gina, making a twitter account was a good beginning, the right place to start. As you follow individuals, some will follow you in turn. Study tweets and think about which twitterers are adept at branding themselves through their tweets. Learn from them. And read widely on the web. When you read an interesting, insightful blog or article on a web site, link your followers to that. You can mostly be a conduit of interesting info, and if you tie those links to some aspect of your writing (say, your latest novel has an autistic child in it so you create a place for yourself in the online community interested in autism), you’ll be relevant and be building vertically. It takes time and dedication, but you don’t have to have a big voice to start out.
Valerie, you’re right that one of the dangers in the way publishing and the Internet interact is that the filters (i.e., the publishers) are losing their role. Who is checking for accuracy and documentation? We’ve relied on publishers to do that for us. We are living in a virtual wild West, where lawlessness rules. So we have lots of room for creativity and exploration, but the downside is troublesome.
Actually, Janet I like the idea of marketing myself vertically. It feels safer or something, tighter. Once I can identify my audience, the folks who in my case enjoy quirky novels I can spend my marketing time and dollars creating stuff just for them. I think a greater sense of personal community for writers is kind of nice. Scripture tells us to cast our bread on many waters but perhaps the time has come for the author to cast her bread on more specific bodies of water. I like it.
This makes me sad and glad: sad, for those who will have never known the industry as it “used to be”–and glad, that I will have finally retired before this comes to pass.
I really like the idea of thinking in terms of community. I’ve seen a lot of that in the blogging world. Thanks for this post and the glimpse of the “future”. This was fascinating.
I’m still thinking about the ideas presented by Michael Shatzkin. What a fascinating hour it was.
If you don’t like change, much of this might sound scary but I like the idea of getting back to a niched focus. Think about it this way: instead of trying to write the illusive blockbuster that will somehow hit everyone (and rarely does) we can focus on our own tribe. I can handle a village, it’s the giant metroplexes that paralyze me. It’s more economical, more focused and promises us a much better chance of becoming a big fish.
And once you’ve won your own “village” over, just think how they can spread the excitement.
We just need to be gathering our peeps around us and writing (and marketing) to them. That’s our comfort zone anyway. We can do that, right?
This information is great. It makes three statements to me:
1. Be evangelistic with your writing. Believe your message and be willing to “spend and be spent” for its sake… and with that,
2. Speak the language of the culture. The language of our culture is digital. I feel more challenged than ever to master this contemporary idiom… “I have become all things to all people that I might by all means save some.”
3. Welcome the future. We who believe in Jesus can’t be found tilting away from where society is headed. All too often, Christians have played catch up. Why don’t we help forge the path? Learn to love the technology… What an open door for the gospel!
Sorry for preaching… I come by it honestly.
Bill Giovannetti
How to Keep Your Inner Mess from Trashing Your Outer World. (Monarch Books 2009)
Four Letter Words (Hopefully 2010)
I’m pretty excited about things. The transition will be an adjustment, but it’s one that energizes me. I like that community is rising. There’s been a hole there too long. One who knows and cares about his/her community will end up writing to serve that community and in turn be served and enriched by it.
As a newspaper columnist (yes, we still exist) much of my time is spent uploading, linking to other articles and responding to readers. All that occurs on the surface of my writing life; the best stuff is found deep within and demands Facebook-free time, Twitter-free thought and patience. Lots of patience.
Imagine for a moment if Virgina Woolf had Twittered. How about “friending” Tolstoy and learning what he ate for dinner? Weird, right? This constant access to one another robs us of our privacy, our lovely mystery and our ability to dig deeply. Trust me, I get it – I’m just not sure it’s good.
Thanks to everyone who has chimed in with his/her responses. It’s good for us to talk about these things together. We have plenty of challenges to rise to, but so much room for innovation. Because we’re creative types, we need to let our imaginations soar.
Not to be too much of a Pollyanna in the group, but this forecast excites me for two reasons.
1) I’m not as concerned about the future of books as I am about the future of readers.
If readers are being trained to follow a writer, then we have a much greater opportunity to go deeper in our “discipleship” of readers. Sending a book out to the masses has been a shot gun evangelism approach for the sort of writing I do. My desire has long been to continue deeper and more purposefully in communicating truth to my readers. The new world publishing order (sorry!) invites that sort of connection and ongoing relationship between authors and readers. Instead of trying to hit as many faceless consumers as we can, we now have the privilege of shepherding our own little flocks and building community with them. That excites me as a Believer.
2) Over the years my best writing has happened when I’ve had a circle of critiquers on my heels asking for the next chapter.
The concept of serialization of novels was all the rage 150 years ago. Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin chapter by chapter for a weekly newspaper, The National Era. Talk about staying on deadline and building a readership! When she finished the last chapter the book went to print the same day and sold out the first print run in less than a week. I wouldn’t want to write all my future books a chapter a week but the possibilities are now before us to creatively build our flock while we’re writing, invite them to share ownership of the story while it’s being created and be the first to grab a copy when it’s completed. The model for community excites me.
“So find out how Facebook works and what the etiquette of that community is before you try a creative way to connect with others through it.”
I love Facebook and the way community is no longer limited by geography. One of my recent updates drew comments from four continents. But the etiquette observation is very important. A couple of my (175) FB friends use it to plug herbal suppliments or other businesses. I think that abuses the community ethic. Nobody goes to a social networking site hoping to be hustled. I do post links each time I update my blog, and have noticed a five-fold increase in blog traffic. I don’t have anything to sell yet on my blog, but if and when I have a book, I’ll no doubt celebrate its release with a status update for the friends who care more about me than about my book, but I’ll confine my plugs to my blog, where only those who care to visit and might actually want to purchase a copy will be able to view them.
For most of my FB history, my friends list has been limited to people I already knew, but lately I have added several friends whom I have never seen (or would have run into) outside cyberspace. I value that too highly to risk commercializing it.
I am not doing twitter. My cousin would be laughing at me now because he knows I can’t resist commenting. I do facebook and I have my own personal website. In between, I write short stories to create a reader base while I work on my book. All in all, my world revolves around electronics. Now I say, I won’t do twitter, but eventually, it might become my marketing tool when I finally get my book noticed.
Facebook is a joy. However, it is only used for friends, family, and occasionally a friend of a friend who share my enthuasisam on a subject. Facebook is my private domain where I can share with family and friends and the occasionally trusted network buddy. Okay…maybe I’ll do twitter.
I finally got a blog. I sometimes wish I didn’t have to “sell myself” (that sounds uglier than it really is) but I suppose its the name of the game now.
I love the idea of “community”. I’m new to the world of writing and have found several communities with some stellar writers–both publishd and not. I love how welcoming and supportive everyone is. Willing to help you learn the craft, and willing to help you market. I love it.
Great post. Happy Monday.
I’m just trying to learn all I can as I go. Thanks for a great post and “community”. 🙂