The publishing industry is having a difficult time adjusting to the Internet age. We’ve become a society that expects to get all of our information and entertainment instantly, whether it’s our news, gossip, music, movies, or books. Because the print forms of this information don’t lend themselves well to this instant-access age, many are beginning to fail. Newspapers are closing, and book publishers are shrinking their staffs.
“It's been a difficult year for the book industry, which has seen its share of job cuts and consolidation,” read an article in today’s BusinessWeek (
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2008/id20081215_635136.htm).
“As major publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Penguin announced layoffs and salary freezes, and new ways of distributing books, such as Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle electronic reader, continue to alter the consumption of long-form information, the future seems uncertain.”
I love books. . . the feeling of the pages turning in my fingers cannot be duplicated by an electronic device. I love buying newspapers and reading them through and through over coffee, pulling the sections free and folding their pages over. Alas, I am of a dying breed.
However, the BusinessWeek article continued by saying, “what is unlikely to change—especially in a time of such uncertainty—is the need for innovative ideas and smart, fresh ways to explain them.” I happen to agree. The question is, what are the innovative ideas that will take the publishing industry successfully into the future?
To me the idea of reading an entire novel on a small electronic device seems cold and cumbersome. But what if those same stories were published serial-style online, the way they once regularly were in newspapers and magazines? Perhaps writers’ blogs could become money-making ventures as well, to supplement their traditional publishing and to build a buzz for their upcoming projects.
There are people making money in all sorts of simple ways on the Internet. I think it’s time for us writers to start putting our heads together with Internet and new media experts. With all the creativity between us, I have no doubt that we can continue to make publishing profitable and popular in the future. It just might look a little different from what we’ve grown accustomed to.
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