The Future of Publishing: A Round Up from Experts

LAS VEGAS - JANUARY 08: Consumer Electronics ...
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At the start of a new decade and the culmination of a Consumer Electronics Show dominated by a host of new e-book readers, many are asking, what is the future of publishing.  CBS Sunday Morning aired one of the best.  While the video is not available, the show’s website carries the full story in print.  It provides a very thoughtful overview.

I’ve rounded up a few links to important stories and video that help to answer the question.  It’s easy to summarize:  while printed books and magazines will continue to be around, the move is definitely toward niche marketing and digital publishing.

Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum Interview

Jane Freidman and Larry Kirshbaum are especially notable these days because of their move out of top executive posts at major publishing houses.  Both with decades of publishing experience, they see an optimistic future for publishing and for authors, but they emphasis that the successful ones must be very entreprenuerial in their approach.  Their thoughts a captured in a long interview on Obsessed TV, itself a harbinger of things to come in the world of video broadcast.  By the way, Friedman has recently launched her own e-book publishing venture — read about it in the links at the bottom of this post.

Richard Nash Interview

Richard Nash, former publisher of a small imprint, has more provocative thoughts.  In an interview published online recently, he predicted that the major book chains — Barnes and Noble and Borders, for example — will go the way of non-defunct Circuit City and Tower Records by 2020.  Currently, he’s working a a new, as-yet-unveiled project called Cursor, which will aim at bringing writers and readers closer together in “niche communities.”  He has recently posted on his personal blog a video interview done by a friend.  It’s available also in our sidebar for the next few days, and it is in our catalog at VIDEO FOR WRITERS.

Magazines:  Changes Are Coming

Magazines are not immune from sweeping changes in the wind.  Josh Gordon of Folio has just posted a lengthy analysis of what’s coming — as early as this summer, according to him.  He points to several new e-readers unveiled last week at CES especially geared for magazine-like content.  And he talks about behind-the-scenes activity that will bring changes within months.  Actually, that’s no suprise to me:  I already subscribe to the digital editions of four of my favorite magazines.

Gordon goes visual with several embedded videos that display how magazines will look on digital readers.

Then he adds in a video summary report from CES about the flood of new e-readers.

Blio and Ray Kurzweil

If magazines can get a new “digital look,” then so can books.  Ray Kurzweil has spent the past 20 years working on ways to make books more accessible to the disabled and visually impaired.  Now he’s come up with the Blio e-book reader, due to be available in February, which promises to redefine just what is inside a book.  The Blio not only displays print — it also brings in audio and visual media in ways that open up new avenues for writers.  CNET caught up with Kurzweil at CES and conducted a video show-and-tell, accompanied by an article on its website. The video is available in our sidebar, at our VIDEO FOR WRITERS site and at CNET, where you can also read the article.

Actually, there’s already another product on the market that produces e-books similar to what the Blio promises:  DNL e-books.  I look forward in coming weeks to reporting in more detail about these two publishing platforms, how they are similar, where they differ.

MY FINAL WORD

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been following these developments for most of the past year.  I declared as early as last March that all the pieces are coming together to create unbounded opportunities for writers.  Since the Consumer Electronics Show last week and the arrival of so many new devices got so much coverage, even by mainstream media, I will not longer follow this aspect of the story so closely.  This coming year, I’ll focus more on the mechanics of getting one’s words before the eyes of the public and on the strategies and tactics of building a readership.

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