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Monday, July 20, 2009

Books My Hero

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 3:52 PM

Richard Nash, who until a few months ago was the publisher of Soft Skull Press, has been thinking hard about the future of publishing. He's just published his most thoughtful essay on it to date. It's titled "Why Publishing Cannot Be Saved":

We’ve built a massive supply chain system for connecting writers and readers because it suits us, but it clearly doesn’t suit most writers or readers. The ones getting their advances cut right now are a small minority of writers (working in any language today); we should not weep for them, most were overpaid anyway. Instead of using the ever-increasing array of cheap and free tools now available to offer new ways to structure the writer-reader relationship, we’re using the technology to either thwart the readers (see: DRM) or to hustle them, using social media to move product, not have a conversation.

The question increasingly arises in today’s media: can publishing be saved? No. It cannot and should not. There are plenty of non-profit publishers that exist to create and distribute the un-economic content. For-profit publishing should not be saved — it should figure out new business models, ones that offer services that both readers and writers want and are happy to pay for.

I wrote about much of this in a feature back in June, but Nash is quickly becoming the publishing industry's leading futurist. I have no doubt that he's working on something awesome.

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Ugh. I had some problems with statements like this:

We’re also going to have to recognize that reading increasingly is writing — readers are writing back in all sorts of ways, commenting on books, re-mixing books as in fan fiction, or creating from scratch, and publishers, rather than barring this activity, or hiding from it, need to embrace it and find ways to serve it.

But maybe I'm just an old fuddy duddy.

Posted by Jigae on July 20, 2009 at 9:15 PM