This flow is like a stream that publishers must keep swimming against. Only by continually moving your skills (and value-adding activities) up the flow towards the creative end can you keep your job in publishing. Any jobs at the automation end of the flow will be one by robots of one sort or another. In the same way, in order to add enough value to the publishing process to earn revenue, publishing companies have to offer creative, human input. Publishing companies that don’t will be operating at the automation end of the flow, employ fewer and fewer highly skilled staff, and eventually become no more than data-scrubbing clearing houses.

It is a common misconception to think that ebooks do not require as much human creative input as print books (for proof of the prevalence of the misconception, just look at how badly many ebooks and ebook readers render type; Mobipocket’s defaults are among the worst). Acquisition, editing, design, and the continuous, creative improvement of automated systems for distribution will remain as important and competitive as ever. What will change in time (perhaps several years or more), I believe, is that the distinction between ebooks and the Web will fall away (see Kevin Kelly’s big vision for the Web at TED talks, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDYCf4ONh5M).

Should that happen, what will publishers be doing then? They’ll still be finding new authors, editing their work for new tastes, and designing its presentation structurally and aesthetically for new fashions. The key is ‘new’. Only humans can innovate for humans. Innovation cannot be automated. Publishers will be companies that gather good, creative innovators. When I think of my favourite publishing companies today, that’s exactly what they do right now. For them, they should just keep doing what they’re doing already.

Peter- I couldn’t agree more. It always seems to me that the focus on newness inevitably turns to digital, whereas it could equally be applied in any aspect of publishing. One example I think was the Pocket Penguin 70- taking small texts and making them more desirable. So then the challenge becomes just finding the right digital strategy to go with it. I also think there is innovation has an obsession with the eye catching when actually what will probably be more important this year is boring innovation, by which I mean under the hood projects that save money.

The idea of a skunkworks is enormously appealing. To a certain extent I think this was a model pursued at the Nature Publishing Group, with some spectacular results. What would be really interesting would be a retailer skunkworks, a unit that basically worked on new, more effective and interesting ways of selling books. This would then mean that a) every publisher had a stake in making it work b) every publisher could benefit c) would be good for the book trade as whole.

Hugh- I make that two reasons to have hope! Still I agree that 2008 was an important year, that the iPhone is spearheading digital reading and the gnashing of teeth perhaps premature. However I would not be so sure that digital distribution will lead to less centralized publishing. I think there will be a proliferation of small publishers through the web- however at the top pressures on publishers will probably increase the intensive consolidation there industry has witnessed over the past twenty years. Still, that doesn’t change the basic challenge of finding new ways of doing what we do.

Kate and Adam- this is a difficult chicken and egg area. Ebooks were chicken and egg 18 months ago- now we are more chicken than egg. I think that something will give. Publishers are generally not risk takers because they cannot afford to take risks. Once someone achieves success with a project then they will start coming on board. If J.K. Rowling were to engage with the web and seriously innovate with ehr storytelling for the next book, then before long everybody will be scrambling for digital writers. So maybe it’s futile hoping for that, but I have confidence that something will emerge. A parallel issue though is that publishing can be too self referential, in that publishers are not taking their cues from computer games and digital media, they are taking them from other books and possibly TV and film. This makes it difficult for new forms of writing to gain a toe hold.

I believe the key aspect about digital publishing is the ability to participate. It is great fun sharing and I can see and hear the fun that my children have when they are sharing games on the Nintendo DS’s. Books provide, by their nature, solitary moments while you read them and my wife often does not see the similarity of the moment when she drifts off in the world of the book she is reading and when I play a game.

However, when you share the moment with someone, whether synchronously or asynchronously, which you experienced through the book then they become far more fun, useful or meaningful.

Speaking from my own point of view as a writer, I would say that personally I feel dissuaded from pursuing alternate models because of publishers. I don’t simply wish to pass the buck back. In my writing I innovate; I feel this is a direct, strategic element of writing, the inalienable bond between the form and the content. From my perspective as a relatively unpublished writer, I am confronted with the rigidity of submission guidelines and the often fruitless, no-feedback process of sending out work, compounded by publishers lauding over the Oprah format and making statements like “no new authors until further notice”. As such, my impetus to send out creative and innovative types of projects is about zero. Why should I go out on a limb only to receive a blank, negative response? If I am seeking to be published, I’m going to try and submit what I know gets published, because… well, otherwise I’d just keep it on the desk (or put it online myself)! This is what publishers need to think about, in my opinion. Setting an example, and inspiring innovation by saying, yes, send us your crazy, un-orthodox digital project, because if we find creativity in it, we will stand behind it and help make it work.

These sentiments have led me to self-publishing, because frankly, I have much more confidence in my own abilities to push my digital projects than I have with mainstream publishers. Of course, things might be different for established authors with existing relationships with publishers (unlike myself). But then again, why would an established author seek to innovate? S/he is already established, and already has a defined creative method and format. I think this is the key of the Nintendo argument: if the folks with the resources don’t take some creative risks, then it doesn’t matter how many innovative, ludic video games I can invent, because they’ll only ever exist in my head, and the games that are produced will always be the status quo.

cheers, Adam