Reports of its death are exaggerated
I’M giving a talk this week at the South African Book Fair on that vexed and vexing subject, The Future of the Book. The following five quotes encapsulate, to some extent, my thinking on our dog-eared old friend.
“I didn’t buy it on Amazon.” — Stephen Colbert. The comedian launched an anti-Amazon campaign after the e-tailer put the squeeze on his publisher, making it difficult for fans to buy his book. Amazon’s battles with publishers settle the question of the future of the book in the short term, at least: books are a commodity worth billions, to blame for business feuds galore. As long as book-treasure is lusted after on this scale, books remain in good health.
“In the space of one generation, [new] print books will be as rare as vinyl LPs.” — Jason Merkoski, author of Burning the Page: The e-Book Revolution and the Future of Reading. Merkoski’s opinion, which is not just melodramatic, but probably also wrong, nevertheless speaks to the future of the place where we buy our books. Many bookshops have gone the way of pharmacies, selling in categories far distant from their core product. Bookshops as hip arts and crafts stores? There’s every chance.
Many bookshops have gone the way of pharmacies
“The problem for most artists isn’t pira
cy, it’s obscurity.” — Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly, who made his fortune publishing software manuals, may be the dandruffiest flake in books — full of soundbites and fury — but like a stopped clock he occasionally knows the time. And the time is one for changes to copyright. Players in grassroots publishing — self-published authors, indie imprints, literary hackers, et cetera — will create new business models to exploit the systems of piracy that threaten the mainstream.
“Where are the apps”?— Everyone at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. We’ve been breathless for years, waiting for the smartphone and tablet apps that will change books — the vogue term is “disrupt” — and we’re still waiting. Instead, the best book apps revolve around e-books, which merely represent new containers for information, rather than new forms. As long as there are no viable new forms, the old containers won’t be going anywhere.
“Soon . . . every university, every law firm and accounting firm . . . certainly every content creator in other media . . . will become book publishers.” — Mike Shatzkin, whose blog is one of the most astute on the book business. Expect more nonpublishers to recognise that it’s easier and cheaper than ever to make and sell books — and hence to do just that. Including your very own Sunday Times, which has begun publishing non-fiction books on subjects that complement our 100-year-old archive. (Our book on World War 1 is due out soon.)
This, then, makes for a fairly simple, and reassuring, equation on the future of books: more publishers, more books. — @benrwms