Archive for November, 2009

In doing a YouTube search, I found some great videos where Seth Godin spoke to the Digital Publishing Group regarding the future of the publishing industry. You can tell the employees are not happy about what Seth is telling them.

Part 1 of 3.

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Part 2 of 3

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Part 3 of 3.

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Partial Q&A sessions

I have a prediction that within 5 years, only 25% of New York Publishing as we know it will survive.  The other 75% will be acquired, move into a different business, or simply shut down.  The economics of the present model will not be able to be sustained and the technological advances in publishing continue to advance at a rapid rate.

There will continue to be celebrities and other people who have large platforms that will continue to make the remaining New York Publishers viable.  But the Long Tail effect will continue to lengthen shattering the current obsolete book publishing and distribution models.  There will be much more free content produced by authors that will monetize their efforts in other ways than from their books.

As more authors become more empowered and understand their position in the new publishing marketplace, even the best authors will consider moving off in a different direction UNLESS New York publishing accommodates them or moves with them. But I see very little of that because most employees are fundamentally not entrepreneurial. Or if they are, they are not in an environment that will support them.

Many employees within New York Publishing will find their skills obsoleted in much the same way old-style typesetters were put out of business when desktop publishing software became popular.

Those employees who continue to chase positions with the big publishers will be participating in a game of musical chairs except that the chairs being removed will taken away dozens if not hundreds at a time.  Their only hope is to find another career or morph into providing contract services to empowered authors.  However, I believe most authors will NOT take on New York publishing’s ex-employees.  They expect too much pay and the culture shock will be too great. It will probably be better for many to home-grow their own professionals or find those people who are experienced in being independent contractors.

Book publishing will continue to have its place.  Books won’t go away.  But with many more authors producing more independent titles, it will dilute the power and influence of most New York publishers.

And if you are bothered by this article, ask yourself why?  I am only one unknown guy writing on little-read blog right?  There is no power in this one lonely blog post, right?  After all, a prediction does not make it fact.  If I am wrong, I have little to lose.  But if I am right, there are LOTS of people in for a lot of financial and career pain.

Word of the the day:  TITANIC

Seth Godin, one of my favorite and insightful authors, has discussed the future of the publishing industry to its employees dismay. The flip side is that independent authors and would-be-authors are going to LOVE the changes.

Here is a fairly substantial video from TOC Conference 2008 that was brought to my attention on Twitter.

Yesterday, I was surprisingly contacted through email by Jack Sallay, Vice-President of Marketing of Vook.com, reaching out to me to ensure I had a proper experience of their new Vook product. I assumed he either saw my harsh comments on my blog or my Twitter account.

Without fully divulging the details of our email exchange, Jack Sallay did bring to light some information I did not previously know regarding the company and founder, Brad Inman and how the Vook company interacts with the major publishers.

I asked some pointed questions. He answered some and disregarded others. I did tell him that that I had every intent of being fair and accurate in my review. But I did make known that my biggest issue with Vook had mostly to do with their proprietary and closed approach to incorporating video with the book experience.

Quite frankly, I credit the folks at Vook for hugely accelerating my plans.  There is so much press activity right now with the newly-announced Nook by Barnes and Noble and the just-released Vook.  As an underdog publisher with my own plans, there was no way I could be silent especially when their plans are in direct conflict with mine.

Although Vook and I are not direct competitors in the traditional sense and actually agree on many of the larger concepts, I think we are significantly different in our approach. I believe they have a niche that will be suitable for certain clients, publishers, and authors.  But make no mistake, open standards will rule the day.

Even Bill Gates and mighty Microsoft could not stop the open standard movement that started in the 1990’s until today with the Internet, Linux, Internet Browsers, and the like.  The mighty music recording industry has been brought down to their knees in recent years with the iPod and MP3.  The giant old-school newspaper industry are collapsing around us with free news sites and active bloggers.  And now the traditional publishing industry is next in the economic crosshairs for their eventual erosion and perhaps even collapse with the advent of print-on-demand, self-marketing, ebooks, and other innovations.

In its place, there will be a HUGE movement of self-published authors and independent, non-traditional publishers will rise in its place.  It is already happening but most employees within New York publishing and traditional publishing are oblivious.  But that doesn’t bother me too much because it works to my advantage.

What I won’t let go without a big fight is let the proponents of the traditional publishing industry dictate and brainwash the lesser-resourced and perhaps less-technically-oriented self-publishers and the independent publishers that the “big guys” can “takeover” and establish the “new standard” and conversation of including/incorporating video with the book reading experience.

The standards and the open technology exist today. The technically-savvy already have insights of what I am planning.  But what does NOT YET exist is a professional sample of the true-to-life implementation. In the absence of anyone stepping out, I have decided I will provide a Version 1.0 implementation that will work from Day 1.

I don’t really have time to wait for “someone else” to do it.  I intend to take my case direct to self-published authors and independent publishers and empower them by showing them my version.  With all the creativity and mindshare, they can then take what I have done and build and expand upon it.

Stay tuned for more updates in the days to come.