All posts in publishing

There's This Thing. It's Called The Internet

Posted January 3rd, 2011 by Bill

It looks like iPad magazine sales are down.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's not about content, it's about interaction and the ability to find and remix the things that matter to you.

With the declining magazine sales on the iPad, it's hard not to see this as another nail in the coffin of the "you will pay for my content tethered to my device" business model.

And it's fun watching the music industry and the publishing industry flail about, largely because the textbook industry is next. The textbook industry has been able to buffer their fall because they have a captive audience. Textbook industry involvement in the development of new standards can be seen as a way for the industry to play a role in designing the cages in which they want to lock districts, schools, teachers, and learners for the next several years.

But the internet solves many of the logistical issues related to distribution. And people can learn without traditional textbooks. And people are voting with their feet - by running away, fast - from delivery models that tether content to a specific channel or distributor.

There's this thing. It's called the internet. It works.

Image Credit: "It's the internet" taken by Robert Jagger, published under an Attribution-Share Alike license.

Don't Blame The Textbook

Posted September 19th, 2010 by Bill

The business of creating and selling textbooks contributes to the mediocrity of textbooks, but the medium itself still has potential.

What options aren't possible using an existing text? Many of the shortcomings of existing textbooks are artifacts of the creation, licensing, and distribution mechanisms of traditional textbook publishers, and not of the textbook itself.

The licensing structure of textbooks interferes with remixing, interaction, and reuse; this is a business problem, not something inherent in the medium.

The medium (print) drives up cost, creates the practice of remaindered copies (and the cost of remaindered books is factored into the price of the book) and creates a need for "updated" editions. Print on demand mitigates this to an extent, but a version of a text where the digital copy is always accessible makes this problem smaller still. Textbook manufacturers could be providing access to digital versions of the latest copies now, but their business model doesn't allow for this type of transparency (One notable exception to this is Flat World Knowledge, who puts current versions of their texts online, under a Creative Commons license).

Textbooks are aligned to standards that have been shaped by the same people writing the textbooks. This is an issue with the infrastructure around learning, and not a problem with the textbook.

People talk about reinventing the textbook. Too often, this is code for "discovering a business plan that helps us license, sell, and profit from content." As we talk about creating the next generation of texts that support learning, we need to focus on what worked with existing texts, and what didn't. The pedagogical need must drive what textbooks evolve into. The existing business practices of textbook manufacturers are the chaff that prevents textbooks from being as useful as they could be. Alternative means of creation and distribution - that allow localized solutions to specific learning contexts - provide a cost-effective way into a new phase of what learning can be.

So, when I read announcements where a person describes a planned text where "a student would watch some things, read some things, but most importantly, do some things" I need to wonder: given that open content supports precisely this type of learning, why do we need to "create" a "new" textbook to do this? The next iteration of texts that support teaching and learning need to be shaped by the needs of teachers and learners.

Creation and Curation

Posted June 29th, 2010 by Bill

In various corners of the web, the idea of curation as creation has been gaining some currency. Some people see it as a new form of news gathering, and the most visible embodiment of this is probably the Huffington Post. Even the current-day use of curation in museums has not escaped scrutiny.

In a recent piece over at Business Insider, Steve Rosenbaum attempts to make the case that content is no longer king, and that curation is set to take its place (of course, as several commenters observed, the author has a pretty enormous financial interest in making this case, as he is the CEO of magnify.net, a site that supports video curation - but the effect of an overwhelming financial incentive on a person's "judgement" is a topic for another post). His arguments are pretty familiar - people like sharing, devices make it easier to post content, increased bandwidth will make it easier to share more; and he points to Foursquare as evidence of just how much people like to share content. Ironically, his piece feels like a curation of other people's ideas, which is okay, as writing has always included an element of curation. But more on that later.

Ease of publishing has changed. The process of distribution is vastly simplified. In short, just about anyone can take a video of their cat, and that video can be distributed with ease. And the same is true of text, images, and audio, in any combination.

But that doesn't make us all filmmakers. All content is not created equal. Some things are better than others, and the reality that - from a technical perspective - high quality content can be published and distributed with the the same ease as low quality content should not blind us to the reality that some content is just better than others. And when it comes to creating content, it has always been done within a context, or within multiple contexts - historical, intellectual, or cultural, to name a few. The rules around plagiarism, and the disdain for the plagiarist, are an indication of this - the internet, and the ready availability of content, doesn't change this. We have always incorporated the ideas of others in our creative work, to a lesser or greater extent.

Creation has always included an element of curation. Certain technologies (especially some search and aggregation tools) can automate the legwork of collecting what eventually becomes curated. Design choices (such as clearly presenting the original source of the work, presenting a summary of the original piece, and clearly linking back to the original publication) can highlight that the work is curated, as opposed to original. But these are only changes in process and presentation - a lot of what gets called curation is more akin to sharing notes. Of course, on the internet, creating an either/or argument will get you more pageviews. The sharpness of it inspires responses (like this one). Fortunately, reality is more inclusive; content still matters, and skilled curation of good, relevant content will act as another peer-driven means of distributing that content to new audiences.

A real question drives these curation versus creation debates: how will any of this return print, and/or journalism, into a moneymaking enterprise? The conversations about curation, in some places, have more to do about the search for a business model than the search for new, more effective ways of communicating.

It's Only A Flesh Wound

Posted June 6th, 2010 by Bill

I ran across another eulogy for the not-dead-yet publishing industry; this one is written by Garrison Keillor and appeared in the New York Times.

Keillor's op-ed opens with a description of a Tribeca "rooftop party" replete with bestselling authors. The description of the party is almost Gatsbyesque, albeit smaller in scope, down to the detail of Keillor as a modern-day version of Nick, the star-struck midwesterner in the city. In any case, without going too far down the rabbit hole of authorial intent, the point is made: traditional publishing has elegance, style, and glory.

But all is not good. Keillor goes on to note:

These are anti-elitist times, when mobs are calling for the downfall of pointy-head intellectuals who dare tell decent people what to think

Keillor is correct, of course, but it should be noted that traditional publishers are happy to give voice to this sentiment when it moves books. Sarah Palin has trumpeted this message from Alaska into the lower 48 as a part of, among other things, her book and the accompanying book tour. And book tours are increasingly rare these days, as publishing houses are less willing to take the risk on an expense that won't get repaid in book sales. From a business place, you can't blame traditional publishers from cutting back, but if you are making a case/waxing nostalgic about the good old days of publishing you can't ignore the role that publishing houses have played in crafting their decreased relevance. Unless, of course, you are writing fiction.

Keillor then proceeds to trot out one of the traditional digs leveled at a world without major publishing houses controlling the flow and distribution of texts (or, a world in which people of varying levels of expertise are allowed to have opinions on a subject):

And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.

This argument is rooted in the basic notion of supply versus demand, and assumes that as supply goes up, demand - and therefore profitability - goes down. The notions of quality, choice, and taste are completely (intentionally?) left out of this conversation; I can only assume this oversight is allowed to stand because if we actually assume that people are rational actors with the ability to discern good from bad, we would also have to admit that "better" writers will be more widely read, no matter who controls how their work is distributed. The existing publishing houses and media companies have lost stature for many reasons, but in part because they provided too big a megaphone for too few people. On a side note, this is one of the reasons Net Neutrality is so important, as without net neutrality, Internet Service Providers could place comparable limits on how we are able to freely communicate over the internet.

The people who made money in the world of traditional publishing are predictably nostalgic for it - I understand this, as it's difficult to watch the thing that helped you become prominent wither and fade. But, as we begin to face the inevitable, we need to remember that the publishing houses supported a small number of authors and then distributed their creative output; they didn't actually enable the act of creation. Talent is talent, and the ability to articulate a nuanced point should not be conflated with the mechanism that distributes the resulting content. The demise of traditional publishing is not the same as the end of an author's right to profit from their creativity and perspective. However, the demise of traditional publishing should lead to the end of content distributors placing unrealistic and unhealthy restrictions on how people use and interact with our cultural inheritance in the name of protecting the author.

Authors

Posted June 4th, 2010 by Bill

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a post up where he ruminates on the fate of the author, and of content. Over on Techdirt, Mike Masnick responds.

These two posts provide some necessary backstory, and are definitely worth reading. However, two quotations (one from each post) help frame the issue, and help illustrate some of the misconceptions people have when discussing authorship and the future of publishing, and the future of the writer.

From Scott Adams: "I predict that the profession known as "author" will be retired to history in my lifetime, like blacksmith and cowboy. In the future, everyone will be a writer, and some will be better and more prolific than others."

From Mike Masnick: "'Best selling author' is a description of a type of author, so, sure, that might go away if people aren't selling books, but I'm not at all convinced the profession of 'author' goes away."

And here, it's necessary to point out that the vast majority of authors, even the ones who are famous and revered, didn't survive on their writing alone. Some didn't survive on their writing at all. Some died thinking they were complete and utter failures. So while a lot of people self-identified as writers, and many of those people also have books in print, many of those same people didn't make enough money from writing alone to pay the bills.

The best selling author, of course, is the exception, and this is where the rise of the large bookstores, combined with the growing unwillingness of major publishers to take what they considered a risk on new writers, contributed to a homogenized experience of literature that was less than compelling. While there were always enough good titles to provide fodder for Oprah's book club, the distribution mechanisms of the major publishers became closed to many writers. Given the ease with which the internet solves issues of distribution, it's surprising that people are surprised that authors are using it.

Which gets us to the current state of the author: I would argue that authors are doing well, and that writers are doing well. Book publishers and book distributors, not so much. The excitement over the iPad and the Kindle are symptoms of the industry's hunger for a device that will allow them to start selling for access to content again. In the coming years, when these devices do not pan out as the panacea for an industry with a dated delivery model, I wonder how closely their arguments around content piracy will mirror those of the record and movie industry.

But authors are doing well. Authorship provides a gateway to credibility, and that can remain true no matter the distribution mechanism. Given the efficiency of the internet at distributing to a large audience, and the power of good search to help an interested audience find a kindred voice, I'm looking forward to what the authors will continue to create.

All posts in publishing

There's This Thing. It's Called The Internet

Don't Blame The Textbook

Creation and Curation

It's Only A Flesh Wound

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