5 ms·

How much of the 'future of publishing' discussions do you think are driven purely by ardent desire not to lose the status quo? I mean, it seems to me that look

How much of the 'future of publishing' discussions do you think are driven purely by ardent desire not to lose the status quo? I mean, it seems to me that looking at it objectively, the future is very self-evident. What product did publishers provide? Among other things, their business model was completely built upon distribution being a valuable service and the entire industry being impossible without it. This made them rich. Now, distribution is a worthless service. In fact, the way in which they provided distribution for so many years, they are actually actively destroying value by having to adhere to all of the arcane, unnecessary geographic limitations that made distribution possible a decade or so ago. Now, they will either morph and stop even charging for distribution (since any 12 year old with an Internet connection could beat their ass at the task) and radically shink their business (from billions to thousands) as they have lost their golden goose, or they close their doors. They can still make money providing a few services like aggregation (when distribution is essentially free, aggregation becomes a valuable service... not as valuable as distribution used to be, but not worthless either). They can provide promotional services to their writers (who are now the bosses, while the publishers are starving service providers) and things like that too. If they're really smart, they will realize that the future is consumers getting their journalism from, gasp, journalists directly since distribution is now basically free. How can they profit from that? Well, finding journalists, managing logistics for journalists, etc could be valuable services. There is no question, they have to face the fact that there will no longer be The Fifth Estate and they will no longer be international power brokers, they won't even be reasonably wealthy businessmen. They're going to be working from home and shuffling bits unless they're willing to get on a plane and go where the danger is and become a journalist themselves. I understand from their perspective this is a scary prospect, the same for anyone who feels that the status quo gives them safety and predictability. And I can't help but think that a lot of these talks are based on that fear...

stdbrouw 14y ago
> How much of the 'future of publishing' discussions do you think are driven purely by ardent desire not to lose the status quo? Depends on what you're reading. If you read e.g. Clay Shirky et al.'s "Post Industrial Journalism" report [1], which is close to the consensus view among people talking about the future of journalism, you'll find that it aligns pretty well with what you outline in your comment. It's different when you talk to the owners and managers of newspapers and magazines because it's their job to make sure the ship doesn't sink, not follow the disruption to its logical conclusion as fast as possible but to delay it as long as they can so you can avoid social and financial drama. Yes, they're grasping at straws ("Let's license Marco's iPad app and everything will be better. Or let's put up a paywall."), but they're in a very unenviable position and I don't know what I'd do if I were in their shoes. [1] http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/ http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/
pdog 14y ago
> Now, distribution is a worthless service. Worthless? Distribution is about more than just shuffling bits from point A to point B. For one, it requires an building an audience.
- jcurbo 14y ago
  I think a better way of saying it is that distribution is a commodity. It is easy and painless to distribute newspaper-style information these days compared to 100 years ago. Not to say there aren't ways to make money - look at Newsstand for example.
  - mjn 14y ago
    The distribution market is very unevenly commodified. Hence, Apple is able to take a 30% cut of The Magazine's gross, in return for distributing it.
- addlepate 14y ago
  Useless is the wrong word, but the point is that publications can no longer capture the value of the distribution itself.
- otakucode 14y ago
  Building an audience is not distribution. That's a separate service. Distribution is, by definition, just shuffling bits from point A to point B. This was for the longest time the single most valuable product the publishers offered both to consumers AND to journalists (most people seem to ignore that employers are required to provide a service to their employees in order to be able to obtain their services at a rate low enough that they can profit from it). Building an audience is now handled by search engines and somewhat by marketing services... marketing services operate on a flat rate, not taking royalties let alone the 90%+ cut publishers want, and the sheer scale and reach of the Internet makes building an audience not terribly difficult. In addition, a MUCH smaller audience is necessary to support a single journalist than to support a large inefficient corporate publisher. Whereas you needed millions of readers to stay afloat, now far fewer are necessary and niche markets are entirely exploitable by individuals.
thecopybara 14y ago
While I agree with many of your thoughts on distribution losing its value, as someone in book publishing, I would argue that aggregation, though not in the exact same sense in which you use it, has always been and continues to be the special, important, and valuable product that publishers provide. A lot of your insights make a tremendous amount of sense from the writer's/journalist's perspective, as in, 'what can I get out of my publisher, since I can distribute my content so easily... only their marketing team is valuable to me now, and they're not tremendously good at their jobs anyway.' I think a good objection to raise to that way of looking at the situation is that we should really be considering the value of publishers from the consumer's perspective. 'The future of publishing' discussions are driven not only by some weird desire for the status quo (which can be found in any industry) but, in my experience, also by the huge fear that we will be living in a world in which there are no gatekeepers. The stodgy traditional industry chugs on because it serves as a quality stamp. I don't mean to just cite anecdotal experience but it's pretty clear to me that the majority of self-published 'journalism' is simply not up to the level of say, The Economist, and I know that the Amazon self-published scene is full of both unreadable, horribly formatted, typo-heavy books and straight up nutjobs, which doesn't happen too often in the big six. Another way of saying this, if I haven't gotten the point across, is that publishers DO find journalists and manage logistics for journalists. They also give them a soapbox that has a big stamp on it that reads, 'trust us, she's a great writer. All this stuff is true.' So yes, I do fear a world in which anyone can become a 'journalist.'
- otakucode 14y ago
  >has always been and continues to be the special, important, and valuable product that publishers provide. I'd have to disagree with that. While I definitely think aggregation is a valuable service, it has never been able to hold a candle to distribution. Without distribution, a work could only be sold or acquired in extreme geographic proximity to where it was created. Distributing it far and wide is what creates the entire market, and makes it possible for publishers to exist. Once anyone at all is able to distribute things far and wide, however, that's no longer valuable and the publisher will hopefully simply go away. As for aggregation, there are 2 issues I see with seeing this as very valuable - first, publishers are terrible at it. See the book "A Drunkard's Walk" for some statistics on the matter, but the bottom line is that no one in publishing is capable of telling the difference between what will be a success or a failure. 9 publishers passed on the Harry Potter series before one 'took a chance' on it. It's not really their 'fault' exactly, it's just that the public responds to entertainent products randomly and anyone who claims to have noticed a pattern in the noise is a (usually self-deluded) charlatan. So, from that aspect, publishers cannot offer anything superior to what anyone else can offer. Secondly, machine-learning-based recommendation systems such as Amazon, Netflix, etc have completely automate the aggregation process and reduce the value of aggregation nearly as much as the Internet has reduced the value of distribution. >They also give them a soapbox that has a big stamp on it that reads, 'trust us, she's a great writer. All this stuff is true.' If there were evidence that publishers had an accuracy rate greater than random chance at this (there isn't), this would certainly be something they could profit from.
johnrgrace 14y ago
I suspect that people WILL get their journalism directly from journalist, but most will get their start working on a piece rate basis then salary for websites like gawker.com. From what I can see of Gawker business people CAN make good money by hiring journalists, it's just that the skill that will get you rich is the ability to spot talent as opposed to traditional business skills. Also of course those that build armies of digital ink stained techno slaves may become wealthy as well.

stdbrouw 14y ago

> How much of the 'future of publishing' discussions do you think are driven purely by ardent desire not to lose the status quo? Depends on what you're reading. If you read e.g. Clay Shirky et al.'s "Post Industrial Journalism" report [1], which is close to the consensus view among people talking about the future of journalism, you'll find that it aligns pretty well with what you outline in your comment. It's different when you talk to the owners and managers of newspapers and magazines because it's their job to make sure the ship doesn't sink, not follow the disruption to its logical conclusion as fast as possible but to delay it as long as they can so you can avoid social and financial drama. Yes, they're grasping at straws ("Let's license Marco's iPad app and everything will be better. Or let's put up a paywall."), but they're in a very unenviable position and I don't know what I'd do if I were in their shoes. [1] http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/ http://towcenter.org/research/post-industrial-journalism/

pdog 14y ago

> Now, distribution is a worthless service. Worthless? Distribution is about more than just shuffling bits from point A to point B. For one, it requires an building an audience.

jcurbo 14y ago
I think a better way of saying it is that distribution is a commodity. It is easy and painless to distribute newspaper-style information these days compared to 100 years ago. Not to say there aren't ways to make money - look at Newsstand for example.
- mjn 14y ago
  The distribution market is very unevenly commodified. Hence, Apple is able to take a 30% cut of The Magazine's gross, in return for distributing it.
addlepate 14y ago
Useless is the wrong word, but the point is that publications can no longer capture the value of the distribution itself.
otakucode 14y ago
Building an audience is not distribution. That's a separate service. Distribution is, by definition, just shuffling bits from point A to point B. This was for the longest time the single most valuable product the publishers offered both to consumers AND to journalists (most people seem to ignore that employers are required to provide a service to their employees in order to be able to obtain their services at a rate low enough that they can profit from it). Building an audience is now handled by search engines and somewhat by marketing services... marketing services operate on a flat rate, not taking royalties let alone the 90%+ cut publishers want, and the sheer scale and reach of the Internet makes building an audience not terribly difficult. In addition, a MUCH smaller audience is necessary to support a single journalist than to support a large inefficient corporate publisher. Whereas you needed millions of readers to stay afloat, now far fewer are necessary and niche markets are entirely exploitable by individuals.

thecopybara 14y ago

While I agree with many of your thoughts on distribution losing its value, as someone in book publishing, I would argue that aggregation, though not in the exact same sense in which you use it, has always been and continues to be the special, important, and valuable product that publishers provide. A lot of your insights make a tremendous amount of sense from the writer's/journalist's perspective, as in, 'what can I get out of my publisher, since I can distribute my content so easily... only their marketing team is valuable to me now, and they're not tremendously good at their jobs anyway.' I think a good objection to raise to that way of looking at the situation is that we should really be considering the value of publishers from the consumer's perspective. 'The future of publishing' discussions are driven not only by some weird desire for the status quo (which can be found in any industry) but, in my experience, also by the huge fear that we will be living in a world in which there are no gatekeepers. The stodgy traditional industry chugs on because it serves as a quality stamp. I don't mean to just cite anecdotal experience but it's pretty clear to me that the majority of self-published 'journalism' is simply not up to the level of say, The Economist, and I know that the Amazon self-published scene is full of both unreadable, horribly formatted, typo-heavy books and straight up nutjobs, which doesn't happen too often in the big six. Another way of saying this, if I haven't gotten the point across, is that publishers DO find journalists and manage logistics for journalists. They also give them a soapbox that has a big stamp on it that reads, 'trust us, she's a great writer. All this stuff is true.' So yes, I do fear a world in which anyone can become a 'journalist.'

otakucode 14y ago
>has always been and continues to be the special, important, and valuable product that publishers provide. I'd have to disagree with that. While I definitely think aggregation is a valuable service, it has never been able to hold a candle to distribution. Without distribution, a work could only be sold or acquired in extreme geographic proximity to where it was created. Distributing it far and wide is what creates the entire market, and makes it possible for publishers to exist. Once anyone at all is able to distribute things far and wide, however, that's no longer valuable and the publisher will hopefully simply go away. As for aggregation, there are 2 issues I see with seeing this as very valuable - first, publishers are terrible at it. See the book "A Drunkard's Walk" for some statistics on the matter, but the bottom line is that no one in publishing is capable of telling the difference between what will be a success or a failure. 9 publishers passed on the Harry Potter series before one 'took a chance' on it. It's not really their 'fault' exactly, it's just that the public responds to entertainent products randomly and anyone who claims to have noticed a pattern in the noise is a (usually self-deluded) charlatan. So, from that aspect, publishers cannot offer anything superior to what anyone else can offer. Secondly, machine-learning-based recommendation systems such as Amazon, Netflix, etc have completely automate the aggregation process and reduce the value of aggregation nearly as much as the Internet has reduced the value of distribution. >They also give them a soapbox that has a big stamp on it that reads, 'trust us, she's a great writer. All this stuff is true.' If there were evidence that publishers had an accuracy rate greater than random chance at this (there isn't), this would certainly be something they could profit from.

johnrgrace 14y ago

I suspect that people WILL get their journalism directly from journalist, but most will get their start working on a piece rate basis then salary for websites like gawker.com. From what I can see of Gawker business people CAN make good money by hiring journalists, it's just that the skill that will get you rich is the ability to spot talent as opposed to traditional business skills. Also of course those that build armies of digital ink stained techno slaves may become wealthy as well.