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I just spent a few days at the London Book Fair - my headline from that would be 'Publishers are terrified of losing role of curators of the written word, in a
by eclw 13y ago
I just spent a few days at the London Book Fair - my headline from that would be 'Publishers are terrified of losing role of curators of the written word, in a world where anyone can publish'.
What publishers currently seem to be missing is that in a world where the barriers to publication are reducing to zero, good curating is going to be the commodity that I, as a consumer, will value most highly. By good, I mean 'feels correct to me.'
The problem is volume. First person to discover a means to curate at high volumes is king.
tldr - you are spot on - be good at high volume curating and there is your fortune.
- r00fus 13y ago> First person to discover a means to curate at high volumes is king. Surely you are talking about Google? After all, what is search but massive-scale curation?
- eclw 13y agoIt occurred to me that I'd ended up somewhere obvious as I hit reply - but two days in a strip-lit barn in Earls Court can do that. But to be fair, in book publishing the problem is deeper than web search - you need to be a better curator because the consumer investment is bigger. Hitting a search link is close to free for the consumer, but accepting a book recommendation is relatively expensive, both in time spent sampling and pounds sterling. So good curating has greater value. I'm going to be less happy if the third book on the recommendation list is the one that hits the spot if I've had to purchase and start to read recommendations one and two.