That’s what a very senior publisher asked me quite recently.
I thought about it for a bit, then sent her this reply:
First, a caveat - this whole subject is enormously prone to over-intellectualizing. No-one can accurately predict the future. The only thing that really counts is what the consumer / reader does - everything else is just speculation. I have a lot of respect for the consumer (although I dislike the label) but they don’t behave as neatly or as logically as we might want them to! Everything about publishing is, ultimately, driven by emotion - feelings, urges, consensus, gambles - which, like quicksilver, is not amenable to static analysis. For this reason, I prefer the evangelism model of publishing to the classic market-driven one.
2) It was refreshing to hear you remark that publishers don’t always perform up to scratch. I’m too often struck by the huge gulf in excellence between author and publisher. Taking into account that motivations and outcomes (goals) are usually different, it is still broadly true that the passion most authors manifest for their work (and for their readers) isn’t always matched in execution by publishers. This is a taboo subject, most of the time, between author and publisher, and only boils over when there’s an acute issue to be resolved. Candidly, children’s publishers are often many degrees better at doing their jobs that adult publishers are. Why do you think that is?
3) So why do authors need publishers? I don’t agree that good editing is a major perceived factor, by the way. Many manuscripts only receive so-so editing. Brilliant editing is quite rare, and well worth holding on to when you find it. I’d love to include a named-editor clause in my next contract with you…
OK, authors deal with publishers for the following reasons:
a) Cash up front. Simple but true.
b) Publishers still largely control the means of distribution. They are the gatekeepers to the market, the one-stop turnkey process of converting a manuscript into a commercially-realized book. Most authors don’t know, and don’t want to know, the nitty-gritty of sales, production and distribution.
c) Validation. Having a book published by a “recognized” publisher carries some cachet, at least to the author. I don’t believe, by the way, that most publishers understand what a brand is. An author can be a brand, but mostly, publishers and imprints aren’t (exceptions being those such as DK who do understand and have evangelized like mad). People don’t go into a bookshop and say to themselves, “I feel like a Penguin book today.” No, validation probably means less to the reader than it does to the author, for whom it implies a certain recognition, some like-minded peer contact (don’t forget how lonely writing is) and the ego gratification that comes from third-party enthusiasm/respect. In my experience, authors will regularly accept a lesser advance from an *enthusiastic* publisher. This is an oft-under-rated factor.
4) What’s happening out there? Ah, big question! I was more pessimistic two years ago than I am now. Then, all I could see was media fragmentation, drastically attenuated attention-spans, more competition than ever for leisure time/money investment, increasing irrelevance of conventional book publishing to the real world.
Today I’m more sanguine. Publishing is in serious medium-term trouble, no doubt about it, but so are most other (old and new) media forms. Thriving in chaos has never been a truer maxim. A few years ago, canny old Phyllis Grann, then still president of Penguin US, coined the word “disintermediation“, in response to the possibility of direct author-reader communication and indeed sales that the internet presented, a great playing-field leveller. Many publishers believed that their control of the means of distribution (3b) was under serious attack. Surprisingly, not much happened.
For my part, I seized this opportunity to control more author access to readers. One experiment in this was the creation of www.torak.info, which was partly a learning experience for us about author-driven communities on the net. I’ve learnt plenty, one of the key lessons being that it takes more time and more resources to create a functioning, evangelical community out there than most publishers, and many authors, are prepared to invest.
5) Which way the future? The future will be driven by opportunism. Most publishers cannot act quickly enough to seize opportunities and will therefore not have first-mover advantage. What puzzles me is many publishers’ consistent failure to neither move first nor to profit from others mistakes (the cd rom, the 1st generation e-book, even websites… big publishers have lost many millions on all of these - yes, they move slowly but often manage to get it entirely wrong!). Thought: digitizing all content to a native but rapidly-convertible format will aid opportunism re new platforms.
Less glamorously, publishers need to get much, much better at commissioning. A New York agent said to me recently, “publishers mainly commission books that their friends will think are cool.” He’s right. Commissioning is a mess. No other industry has such a wacky New Product Development process.
I believe publishers now have an opportunity to redefine the industry. This is not something that most will choose to accept - the old ways are too strong and far too reactive. However, learn from what’s happening in other media!
An entrepreneur recently wanted to set up a sailing channel on Sky. The set-up cost is £75,000, and the monthly transponder fee £40,000. Then you have to pay for the programmes. Instead, he set up his own internet TV channel. Good decision - we’ll see if he gets it right. NB - suddenly, Sky / digital TV is “old” media! How’s that for obsolescence?
The key thing to remember, I’m convinced, is *stay close to your consumer*. The tools are there now, they just need using creatively. And remember - if you don’t, someone else will.
