The Tongues of Men

Confession time. As a web content strategist and an aspiring novelist, I should have a strong opinion about the future of publishing. After all, it is a future in which I hope to be implicated.

But I don’t. Not yet. But I have been bookmarking interesting articles on the subject, for to read them one day, for to become incredibly knowledgable on the subject. Then I’ll tell you how it’s going to work.

Until then, why don’t I share those links with you, so that you can become knowledgable too? Then we can talk about, in excitable ways, who would win in a fight between Amazon and Google, what printers are going to do for a job next, and how on earth authors are supposed to convince enough people on the internets to throw a penny or two towards them for their tales.

These links are the proverbial tip of an iceberg, just to get us going. There are many more – please share good ones you have found in the comments. And don’t think me rude if I don’t reply posthaste: I’m on a beach in Cornwall, and will be for some time. 

ReadWriteWeb’s four part series ‘Bits of Destruction Hit the Book Publishing Industry’ is a good place to start:
Part 1 assesses the impact of Amazon, Google, e-books and print on demand.
Part 2 explores how this will affect readers, authors, printers, publishers and sellers.
Part 3 is about the publisher/retailer relationship.
Part 4 looks at authors in all of this.

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future at the New York Review of Books is a shorter launchpad into the subject.

Writers Digest briefly summarises the current publishing environment in An Exciting Future For Authors That Can Succeed Without Publishers Or Agents, including a mention of vertical publishing, all to tell us about Kickstarter – an online model for patronising creativity.

Another successful online publishing model is the self-publish print-on-demand service. Lulu is a good example.

I always love Seth Godin’s take on publishing and writing and influencing – not least in the post Why Write A Book which turns out to be a promotion for his own volume. Good ideas, clever marketing. Although more general, Godin’s Random Rules for Ideas Worth Spreading also informs the publishing business.

And here’s an author who is taking Seth at his word: Ray Connelly is serialising a book on his blog, while selling the whole book as a download and publicising through social media, with a little help from the Guardian.

And to finish, I couldn’t mention authors and social media without giving you 15 Twitter Users Shaping the Future of Publishing.


UPDATE: More links in a subsequent post.