The death of the publisher?

In his story Turning the Page, Jonathan Heawood writes in The Guardian blog: "People used to worry about the death of the author. Now they worry about the demise of the publishers, agents, booksellers and other middlemen who convey books from writers to their readers. These middlemen -- poor souls -- are being placed under considerable pressure in the newly globalised literary economy." The story further reports a debate (with no one offering a readers point-of-view) in with literary agents, publishers and retailers defend their turf and their positions in the food chain. Some of it is quite funny. I mean like publishers claiming "that the brand value of a great publisher is the key to their gatekeeping facility." Seriously. How? By swallowing up all competition? By establishing virtual monopolies? With buckshot publishing? By flooding the market with crap?

Is the book in no danger of being declared obsolete? Again? In the sixties and seventies, debates raged worldwide on the effects of television on reading and books. In the eighties and the nineties the villains were the computer and the internet. Yet more books are published and read today than anytime in history.

Fingers are now being pointed at the likes of Amazon or Google who are uploading millions of searchable texts online. Bloggers, print-on-demand and e-books also stand accused of subverting the art of reading and the cherished 'book'.

One can see how online searchable text, while being a boon to the researcher, will give some publishers a severe migraine. Firstly, why pay for something when you can get it for free. And secondly, let's face it; it is much easier to look for stuff with searchable text than skim and scan a tome. The education and academic market has been dominated by a handful of publishers, a virtual "education market mafia", for too long, and one would think not too many people will be shedding tears on their account over fears of their possible demise.

Bloggers threatening books? Not likely. Some blogs provide news and comments - sometimes alternative (but not necessarily accurate) view points to those expressed in the mainstream newspapers, some are no different from magazine, tabloid, or coffeeshop gossips and some are merely personal ego trips to be taken with a pinch of salt or, better still, ignored. One fails to see how these affect the publishing industry.

The current state of publish-on-demand is no different from vanity publishing. Vanity publishing existed before the computer. Remember Minerva? Now, with the advent of the internet "anyone can publish" and, sadly many who shouldn't, do. The future, of course, is wide open. Say a 'big name' writer - say Margaret Atwood - and publisher decide to go POD, and sell directly to the consumer. Costs could go down (or not). Agents will still feature somewhere. We suppose the retailer will lose a little in the equation. But will he really? The bookshop is the author's storefront, and far more books, except for the next Harry Potter, are bought on impulse whilst browsing through a good bookshop than any other merchandise (barring, maybe, dresses and shoes). So can the author and the publisher survive without the storefront? Nope, POD doesn't look like the death knell of the industry either. Not right now at any rate. On the other hand it looks like a brand new opportunity.


Ditto the ebook.


So is this the end of publishing as we know it? One thinks not. The Guardian story says that Stephen Page of Faber admitted during one of the debates that "these discussions have something of the air of a phoney war." A bit difficult to cry for HarperCollins and Random House, one should think, now that they - poor souls - are facing competition from even bigger online mafia ... I mean monopolies. Maybe one day the digital era will level the playing field enough for books to become objects of value again instead of commodities.

Full report: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_heawood/2007/04/authors_of_their_own_death.html