Reports from the 2009 London Book Fair
by London bookworm 2009
1: Twenty twenty vision
‘Anyone who predicts the future is lying’ was the proverb quoted by the chair
before speakers addressed the subject of publishing in the year 2020.
Nevertheless, the speakers braved the risk of calumny. They all agreed that
digital is the difference and that it was digital technology which will be the
driver of change.
Getting the digits out
2008 saw the adoption of the first standard which will work across is
Epublishing. One pointer of the sales potential of ebooks was the success of a
compilation of 100 literary classics sold to Nintendo DS owners, who have a
demographic with 90% in the 14 to 25-year-old bracket.
And if it is so easy to make and distribute, will the hard work of writers be
free? This remains a big fear for the publishing industry and to combat it they
need to make sure that the work has value. So publishers might strive to make
sure their output is good entertainment and that it embodies good production
values to ensure it provides something that people are willing to pay money to
access. The entertainment value might involve more than reading the words.
So the challenge to the publisher of the future is to make sure that the
content, in whatever format it is produced, is not seen as valueless in monetary
terms. The crystal ball didn’t need polishing to predict that many more creative items
will be shipped or delivered digitally, going directly to the customer or end
user, which perhaps puts the traditional purveyors into a difficult position.
Bookshops
The future of the bookshop was not called into question. But the role of the
bookshop, as a place where a very limited range of titles can be displayed while
attempting to survive off selling a few bestsellers from the tables at the front
of the shop, was not seen as a viable model for the well-informed future.
The integration of books into the digital world alongside other entertainment
broadcasters blurs the bookselling role but opens a new range of possibilities,
making it a multimedia centre. Those looking to the future saw creative
entertainment and news media both overlapping and integrating and bookshops
could be an outlet for whatever emerges. Elsewhere in the show an in-store book printer was producing books on demand
which provide another innovative route for the fun-palace which is the media
store of the future.
Locking the gate
Another issue that was addressed was the industry’s hierarchy. The concept of
publishers getting in the way, and limiting choice, was another feature of some
future thinkers. The present top-down model for publishing is reported to be
alive and well.
The current role of publishers is as gatekeepers who exert considerable
influence on what is seen by the general public. By 2020 there will be a
transfer of power, perhaps even turning the present model upside down, although
it was not clear if the industry would be driven by the creators or the
consumers.
This was another change made possible by the digital technology. The Internet
makes people aware of what there is through the various networking opportunities
and searches that are available. It makes it easy to provide files, and even
more importantly, to distribute and market them.
Market shares
Publishers have long recognised the long tail of slow movers on their backlist.
Print on demand has already reduced stock and transport costs and this trend is
set to continue with in-shop printing a possibility.
The economic logic of creating blockbusters will not vanish. With so much of the
cost of supplying a book being fixed, the attraction of marketing a limited
range of books in high volumes will still be favoured by publishing companies
and their accountants. So there will still be superstars slugging it out with
‘Number 1, Worldwide, Prizewinning bestseller’ printed across the cover of their
book. But this will be the limelight-hogging tip of a massive body of work which
the technology will deliver direct to the customer.
Quality v Quantity
But ease of production and marketing brings with it a new set of problems.
Publishers might need to insert themselves, not as gatekeepers and guardians of
what people get to read, but as quality controllers. Their job is to ensure that
whatever is produced is written, edited and designed to a high standard. The
publishers might establish their branding, which very few publishers have so far
managed to achieve. Mills and Boon is a notable exception to this rule and
illustrates what publishers can do. In the future we might identify an imprint
as a clear mark of the content one would expect to find between the covers or
within an ebook.
Global rights and genres
The publishing industry still talks and fights to protect territorial rights.
But an issue that united the future thinkers was that the printed book market is
no longer local. These rights would be eroded by global travel and trampled into
the dust once books are delivered digitally at the local library or coffee shop.
The debate centred on the extent to which globalisation would produce new works
which crossed languages and other cultural boundaries. This generation of
creatives could see a new range of sub-ethnic genres, increasing the complexity
of an already diverse market. But marketing this ‘ocean of authors’ was not a
problem as the writers, or their publicists, can now reach out through the
digital world and go direct to their audience.
Many speakers said that the skill-set required for the future would be vision
and imagination.
Serialisation
Another more subtle theme emerged relating to future material. One model saw the
role of the writer as producing not a single work but something approaching
serialisation. This bold concept sees reading inhabiting a parallel ‘universe of
the mind’ with the reader following the progress of the work as just one aspect
of life from a particular perspective. So there might be less of a market for
what were called fragmentary works created to stand entirely by themselves. The
future market might be for works that had continuity. Could we see team-writing?
Just how all this was going to yield incomes for the producers was the subject
of some debate but little certainty. Getting paid for content remains a major
challenge. If the industry fails in this, they risk losing all the benefits
which the futurologists see for the publishing business just over a decade from
today. But that will not necessarily blight the future for those who want to
write.
© Chas Jones 2009
