Interesting article on the future of publishing

Good article.

I think there will always be some market for printed books, probably for those that don't fit the e-book model. For example, I have a large book about the Roman Empire, 8.5" x 11" and one inch thick, weighing over 2 lbs, and filled with hundreds of large images and maps. While it may be possible to format that for a large tablet, it will never fit on a smartphone. I only bought it because I need it for my research. Everything else, I would much rather read on my phone while lying down to relax. I'm reminded of Captain Picard, who loves reading physical books in the 24th century, where printed books are collectors' items.

However, the shakeout in the publishing industry is far from over. Their monopoly over what gets published or doesn't is gone. Aside from self-published books, there are already online businesses that an author can use to help publish AND market books. Full service publishing "packages" paid for by book authors will be an increasingly viable alternative to traditional publishers who take on most of the publishing risk at their expense. The latter are too few in number given how many people are trying to publish books.

One area that has yet to develop fully is successful authors lending their name to new authors, just like real estate agents who work for other real estate agents (a business within a business) in return for a small cut of all homes sold under the leading agent's "brand."

Dirk

I think the end question for the future is will there even be authors remaining? This topic is interesting in that it leads to discussing the rip current while the Tsunami isn't far away. Quill is an existing artificial intellligence that already can take data and rearrange it in a story mode setting for easier understanding by clients. The developers of Quill and many others are already predicting similar and more advanced AI will soon be able to construct stories as good as any human author. As it was with the first: calculator, PC, television, etc. time is on the side of such technology. What we may laugh and feel confident won't take place, will simply be staring us in the face later on. I used to play a mean game of chess, and thought no AI would reach a point where it could beat a world champion. Along came Deep Blue and put an end to that. One more piece of motivation to get our writing done asap.

Once upon a time, radio would replace books, then television would replace radio, then computers would replace television, then phones would replace computers,  then watches would replace phones .... There is always something to come along which is going to replace the existing something. Things have a way of balancing out and the old will most always have a niche even as the new takes over. And now I'm going to go write a letter with my quill. Take care. Vern

Certainly we have put AI in the Whitehouse, so literature and then all the arts cannot be far behind for the exact same purpose.

One other idea that seems more workable in the short term is to create a kickstarter-like site dedicated to raising money for book writing/publishing/marketing. The best proposals would hopefully get the most funding.

Sol, start coding. :-)

Dirk

Well, Kasparov had sour grapes and accused IBM of cheating in the match. In time they will be able to program an AI that can do the same. It will have clauses, dialogue examples, and so on at it's disposal to construct a story. As I mentioned, time is on the side of the AI. I would also like to think a person will prefer the hand made sweater over a machined piece by a robot, and a human authored book over an AI one. But when the day comes that you can no longer distinguish between the quality, it will go the way of the ATM and banking. Initially, customers rebelled against the ATMs, then over time with some unnecessary shoving from the banks, it speaks for itself now for how widely implemented it is.

I'd like to think as that time approaches, the big 5 publishing houses and others will exert protectionism and not allow such novels to be published thereby preserving humans for humans.

Or we can band together and conduct our own Fahrenheit 451. Instead of burning books we perform public deletions of such programs. Maybe we can get some of the big fish to lead it. Orson Scott Card can delete the first one, to the maddening cheers of authors everywhere, as the programmers slink back to Silicon Valley.

Kickstarter is already used for publishing.  The Girl Genuis people (Professor and Professora Foglio of Transylvania Polygnostic U ) use it to finance their print collections.  They've got a vid out on the GG site now for their next volume ("We must buy great big barrels of Perfect!").

This line in the article caught my attention: As start-ups and interlopers begin to grasp both the values and deficiencies of contemporary publishing they will engineer radical change.

Interlopers, lol. I think this is what predatory capitalism is all about. Indian, Russian, Chinese coders can  sweep the slow to change publishers out of existence within months.

The big problem is that publishy and bookish people have no concept of the electron.

I predicted this radical change 4 years ago, stating here that eBooks would take a large percentage of reader's money, time and space.

Having run a book store for many years I experienced the following: bulk buying and storage of printed paper products ate up WAY too much money; readers wanted lightweight, fast reads by media touted authors and book publisher's money driven reviews; a way to exchange their old books for new; a method to support and recommend an author they like.

Printed book's weight will kill them in the long run. So inefficient, when virtual information can be sold and exchanged in miliseconds.

Bookstores, libraries of the future will only offer database access for a price.Printed books will become novelties, as the work of monks scribing did.

My wife runs a university library. She's inverted the entire physical place to a meeting place with access to databases. The physical books remain, but the cost of repair, replacement, cataloging and physical moving of them makes them obsolete as more and more books are turned into organized electrons that weigh almost nothing. Most of the paper books go to the dump or used book stores for the poor.

What I predict is the entire reading thing will be eliminated when a word- to-brain interface takes an author's words directly to an internal movie screen. The interface hardware will be a brimmed cap worn on the head with a small propeller on top to cool it. LOL