Tuesday's Wall Street Journal has an interesting article
about Seth Godin's decision that, going forward, he would solely self-publish. He no longer needs a traditional publisher like Penguin Books. Notably, Godin defines "publishing" far more broadly than a traditional publisher; he plans on distributing his content in a number of media --
audiobooks, apps, podcasts, PDFs, print-on-demand, etc. As long as some version of it appears in Amazon.com, it's on the same virtual store shelf as any traditional book.
As for the value of publishers, Godin comments:
Publishers provide a huge resource to authors who don't know who reads their books... What the Internet has done for me, and a lot of others, is enable me to know my readers.
I wonder if we're seeing the beginning of a disintermediation between the content creator and the content user, similar to the old one between library users and high-end digital information.
There's still a role for
content aggregators, but perhaps a far different one than in the past. In an environment
in which we content creators interact directly with our readers - in multiple
settings, no less - any intermediary (publisher / news aggregator) has to show its tangible value to both the originator and the user of the content.
If publishers can't find new ways to create a market
for an author's content, and if more successful authors shift to Seth Godin's
model, we may get to the point where print publishers are seen as the vanity
press and high-quality self-publishing is the new professional standard.
As someone who has had 6 books published by traditional print publishers, I have seen the transformation of a manuscript to an edited, indexed, laid-out publication. It is a sight to behold, and certainly something I couldn't do on my own. And there are other ways that I can distribute content directly to my readers.
Traditional publishers have all the tools needed to create vibrant communities for their content providers authors. Can they, in essence, get out of the way and help their writers make direct connections with their readers? Can they expand their vision of publishing to include the media in which ideas flow most easily, if not freely?
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