Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins, recently gave a talk at the LSE on the future of publishing. Times Emit has a summary. HarperCollins is making some interesting moves into digital, with HarperStudios/26thStory, a new publishing imprint that’s trying to shake up the old ways of the business, with ebooks, print-on-demand, smaller advances, and more revenue sharing; Authonomy, the web-based slushpile; Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook, online and ready for annotations; BookArmy, a social network for book lovers. More to come, one presumes.
From the summary notes of the Barnsley’s talk:
Barnsley does not agree entirely with Bezos. “Is the printed book dead? I hope not.” However, there are clearly changing reading patterns among digital natives, and digital nomads in the upper reaches of publishing need to ask questions. Does business have to change? Yes. Not a time for hand-wringing. Industry needs to change and maintain its influence. Can’t assume print market will stay the same. Can’t predict future, so need to ask questions.
Late arrival of the publishing industry in the digital sphere might be an advantage. Radio took some time to be understood by its proponents – great images of FDR pointing at a map and the Basil Rathbone Players in elaborate costume for radio broadcasts (someone did a great job on Barnsley’s slides).
Look at where we’ve come from: Gutenberg, 1450. Slow progress since then. Only other radical change has been Allen Lane’s introduction of the paperback in 1935, opening up a new mass market. Thinks analogue/digital dichotomy is wrong (lecture prefaced by David Cameron’s accusation of Gordon Brown as being “an analogue politician in a digital age”). Books are pre-analogue. The death of the book has been predicted before, while publishers have turned advances in other media to their advantage. The book is resilient. It’s good technology: light, easy-to-read, no battery etc. Difficult to improve on. [more...]
