Posted by Sara Lloyd
on 14 May, 2008
Continuing my six part epic essay on the future of publishing. If there is one….
As digital reading devices go, Amazon’s Kindle is probably the first to at least recognise the importance of the ‘connectivity’ between our differing modes of reading, the fact that readers might like to follow up references within the text or to conduct a related search. The addition of wireless connectivity to the device and the capacity (although frustratingly limited) to connect to blogs, online newspapers and other web-based content goes some way towards recognising this as well as to acknowledging the fragmented, ‘always on’ nature of most people’s reading habits today, allowing readers to move seamlessly from reading a few pages of a novel, say, to snacking on some news, before picking up a couple of blog feeds. This is absolutely not to say that the Kindle has tied up the future of digital reading and defined what the experience should be; far from it. It signals a step change in that it connects downloadable digital units of reading matter (‘eBooks’) with the more exploratory-style online reading and researching, and it is the first device to be intrinsically connected to a commercially viable eBook platform. However, the Kindle is merely one device with one very specific agenda and, as such, it only provides one small, rather flawed element of the picture that is emerging of a future for digital reading.
Continue reading "A book publisher’s manifesto – Part II" »
Posted by Sara Lloyd
on 13 May, 2008
Over the next few days I am going to blog a piece I have written for a US-based library journal, Library Trends, on how traditional publishers need to position themselves in the changing media flows of a networked era. It’s a very long article so I’m gonna serialise it and blog it in six ‘bite-sized’ chunks over six days. Here’s the introduction, which aims to set the picture. Scary.
Print sales are falling. According to the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2007 report To Read or Not to Read both reading standards and voluntary reading rates of traditional print material amongst young people are falling. Textbook publishers are fighting for sales; campaigning to alert students to the necessity of using their products. Hardback fiction has almost gone the way of the dinosaur. The open access debate rages on. Publishers and retailers have consolidated. More and more books are produced, but there is less and less choice on the high street. Leisure time is transferring away from books and reading, away from television even, to the Web; to social networking sites, blogs, instant messaging, video and music file sharing sites. The attention economy is shrinking, fast. Academic research is – for many students – all about search. Let’s face it, for most students, actually, it’s all about Google. Who needs books anymore? More to the point, who needs publishers?
In an ‘always on’ world in which everything is increasingly digital, where content is increasingly fragmented and ‘bite-sized’, where ‘prosumers’ merge the traditionally disparate roles of producer and consumer, where search replaces the library and where multimedia mash-ups – not text – holds the attraction for the digital natives who are growing up fast into the mass market of tomorrow, what role do publishers still have to play and how will they have to evolve to hold on to a continuing role in the writing and reading culture of the future? Will there even be a writing and reading culture as we know it, tomorrow? Is the publishing industry acting fast enough and working creatively enough to adapt to the new information and leisure economies?
Continue reading "A book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st century" »
