Publishers’ Why’s and Wherefore’s When Migrating to Digital (are all the damn apostrophes correct?)

Indeed, when the current publishing upheaval began (it seems just a little while ago in the scheme of things) and the conqueror ‘Digital’ came swaggering into the publishing world, publishers were at first completely devastated; then were bombarded by all kinds of options and questions for their very survival!

You can just imagine publishers’ mental angst deciding “Should I get out of this rapidly changing fireball of an industry or should I admit that the old ways are going down the drain and commit to learning a whole new process … dealing, perhaps, with an entirely new and separate tech industry?”

Karina Mikhil (pictured), a publishing executive with a Master’s in Publishing from New York University, has some excellent questions and analyses that will help these publishing execs and their firms reach a viable decision.

From Karina Mikhil in Publishing Perspectives:

Migrating to Digital Publishing? The Six Key Questions to Ask

Here are the six “Ws” you need to ask yourself before transitioning from the old to the new: why, who, what, when, which, and where.

The publishing industry is not generally known for being agile or quick to change, yet it is facing one of its biggest times of change probably since the invention of the printing press. At the heart of this is the migration to digital.

Prior to this migration, a time-tested process and structure existed for getting books printed: from acquisition, copyediting and typesetting, to author reviews and proofreading, to print. Although hiccups occurred and no two companies had the exact same workflow, the foundations were the same and ensured quality products got released in expected time frames.

Whether publishers are dealing with online content or e-books, digital only or both print and digital, publishers are now faced with more questions than answers as to how to incorporate the new with the old. Below I provide a framework for those questions, using the traditional 6 Ws: why, who, what, when, which, and where.

Why?

Of the six questions, this is the easiest to answer. No publisher can afford to ignore the digital any longer: the tipping point has come and gone; more and more e-books and e-readers are being sold weekly; and authors will begin demanding this, if they haven’t already. And traditional publishers need to offer all things digital to compete with the emerging “digital publishers.”

Who?

Even prior to the migration to digital, publishers would do one of two things to keep costs down: outsource as much as possible, keeping headcount down, or the reverse, which is hire talent to keep all services and costs internal. With digital, publishers have to make this decision anew. Should they invest in new talent from other industries (e.g., technology) or in educating existing talent, those who are eager to learn and have a background in publishing? Or should they turn to one of the many conversion and content solutions providers that exist in the market?

What?

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Writers Welcome Blog is on Kindle right here :)

Publishing Acquisitions Faulty Strategy: ‘I Love You, Now Change.’

“What makes a small publisher’s books interesting is usually the first thing that disappears when being acquired by a larger company.”
Why is that? Instead of expounding the acquired publishers’ unique successes, the acquiring firm often wants to immediately make it over in its own image…an image which is often suffering and in need of the spark that attracted the acquiring firm in the first place!

More insight by Edward Nawotka of Publishing Perspectives :

Why Do So Many Publishers Say “I Love You, Now Change”?

“I love you, now change,” is something we’ve all heard before in relationships. It’s likely that instead of actually being in love with the person as they are, you’re in love with the person as you imagine them to be. The desire to shape them into the perfect creature is not unreasonable. Illusion is, frankly, a part of love.

The same goes with publishers. In the micro sense, they often covet a writer (and poach them) or, in the macro sense, they covet a publishing house and merge them. Publishers are by nature in love with the possibility of something, instead of something as it is. Sometimes they can genuinely improve on a writer’s work and career, but just as many times they can radically alter an author’s career path for worse. The same goes when publishing houses merge and absorb a smaller firm. Often, what makes that smaller firm’s books interesting in-and-of themselves — perhaps it’s branding, perhaps it’s an eclectic list — is the first thing that disappears into the larger entity. Does it have to be this way? Of course not. But as with today’s feature story about the rumors swirling around the merger between Aufbau Verlag and Eichborn Verlag in Germany, things can get sour fast.

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Authors' Approach to the Publishing Craft - Do New Authors Take it Seriously?

Not today. Not in this new era of empowered publishing. Everyone is running to just get their “baby” published and get their name out there in web-land.

And, of course, their are the usual carnival barkers just trying to sell something through print.

The serious self-publishers today (and they are in the minority) do strive to learn all they can about the publishing craft…INCLUDING traditional publishing standards and guidelines RE editing, copyediting, layout, design, etc…

More details at Publishing Perspectives.com by Justine Tal Goldberg :

200 Million Americans Want to Publish Books, But Can They?

Some 200 Million Americans say they want to publish a book, but lack of attendance at the IBPA’s Publishing University at BEA suggests a disregard for the craft of book publishing.

It’s often said the book fairs are no place for writers. But what about at a conference organized specifically to help writers publish?

According to writer Joseph Epstein, “81 percent of Americans feel that they have a book in them — and should write it.” That’s approximately 200 million people who aspire to authorship. Excluding those who want and never do, and those who do but never publish, we’re still looking at millions of folks hungry for the literary limelight. In light of recent trends in publishing — the fact that self-published titles have dwarfed traditionally published works nearly 2:1 — one would expect that the Independent Book Publishers Association’s 27th annual Publishing University, a concurrent event with BookExpo America at New York City’s Javits Center this week, would have been swarming with author-publishers on the prowl for a much-needed literary education. Strangely, it wasn’t.

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Technology's Relevant Opportunities for the Written Word.

The SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive, for the uninitiated) Conference kicked off Friday in Austin, Texas and many professionals in all the fields associated with new digital media and tecnology converged to discuss it's affect on publishing, marketing and retailing of books, magazines and other forms of the written word...among other fascinating things.

This conference is actually an offshoot of the 20 year old more famous SXSW music and film conference.

Pete Miller will be blogging for Jacket Copy (a bookish blog for the Los Angeles Times) from the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas. Pete gives a little history and explanation of this unique conference:

Last year I was invited to join a discussion at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival about the future of book publishing. An offshoot of the more famous music conference, SXSWi has built a sizable reputation of its own. Designers, programmers, futurists, bloggers and marketers convene each March to compare notes on new innovations, fresh uses of old technologies and the state of the community. They are consumed, to put it lightly, with the social implications of our digital future.

Unlike the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, SXSWi isn't, at its heart, a trade show. There is little or no corporate hoopla (yet). Attendees are here to foster debate and celebrate the do-it-yourself ethos. When it launches a product, it is usually of the grassroots, open-source wiki variety. Twitter broke out here -- something the festival is especially proud of.

The publishing panel was organized by colleagues of mine at Penguin publishers, and their invitation a kind of nod to my dual identity in the business. A bit of a rare bird, I work weekdays overseeing the publicity department for Bloomsbury, a midsized Manhattan publisher, and weekends behind the counter of a used bookshop I own in my Brooklyn neighborhood. While others would discuss the marketing and editorial and authorial aspects of the publishing process adapting to the digital upheaval, I would speak on behalf of the promotion and retailing of books.

SXSWi is as innovative and influential as Penguin is venerable and global. That I was asked to join a panel of other publishing executives and media experts (including their author, Clay Shirky) was in itself a peculiar decision. There were far more qualified strategists within the profession working for Penguin and other large publishers. I don't want to portray myself with false modesty as a boob in the woods, Pa Kettle touring a human genome lab. I have been in publishing for 20 years, long enough to straddle the two eras without being blindsided by change.

It turned out my role was not to explain what Bloomsbury was doing to face a paperless future, but to explain the industry challenges of promoting authors into a more disarrayed digital marketplace. Books are still around and will be so in multiple formats for the foreseeable future. How do we make readers aware of them if authority (a.k.a. book criticism) is slipping in the print media and migrating with middling success online? Is bottom-up social networking (a.k.a. consumer reviews) the only solution?
On the other hand, as a bookseller (albeit a low-wattage one) I suppose my comments would be judged with some sort of gravitas. I mean, reading is all about the end user. But can the bricks-and-mortar indie coexist with e-retailing? Shaky ground, indeed.

It isn't necessary to rehash the ensuing hijinks (I did that then), but let's just say we made a spectacularly bad impression. Perhaps it was the ambitious program name, “New Think for Old Publishers.” Perhaps it was the lack of a PowerPoint presentation instead of our single slide saying "The Internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history. Now what?" Maybe it was the mere presence of “industry” types on stage, extolling the virtues of the publishing process to an audience of cool self-actualizers.

But as each of us cluelessly rattled on behind the comfort of our analog microphones, a flurry of keystrokes below were pounding out a parallel dialogue, one that was playing out live via Twitter feed across the lit-blogosphere and making my colleagues Back East blanch in embarrassment.

Was this a fair first impression? The playing field in Austin wasn't exactly level. We were labeled arrogant insiders, but new to the SXSWi scene we felt more like pimply teenagers on a prom date with a surly cheerleader.

Undeterred, publishers arrived back in New York bruised but better equipped for punishment. According to Kelly Leonard, executive director of online marketing for Hachette, it appears there are 20% to 30% more representatives from the industry converging on Austin. Last year she practically begged Hachette to let her attend. Now her retinue is five. Collectively, they are intent on demonstrating that publishers can adapt with the times, that we are not just music execs in tweed jackets.

This year, I am back in Austin to absorb the creative impulse celebrated at SXSWi and to enter the open dialogue about technology's relevant opportunities for the written word.

Yet I can't help but carry with me a seed of skepticism for that blind valedictory spirit. Jaron Lanier -- the acknowledged father of virtual reality and no slouch in the innovation department -- laments in his recent book "You Are Not a Gadget" that the open-source movement far too readily dismisses traditional media as dinosaurs. He calls it the "blaming the victim" syndrome; I call it the "I told you so" mentality.

For the next few days I will be looking for the kind of conversation that is about solutions and not about blame. My questions about the crowd and cloud publishing remain; hopefully this time I will find the answers...Peter Miller