In a USA Today Op–Ed this week, the authors Harold McGraw III and Phillip Ruppel present five myths about the future of book publishing the digital age. Their top two are:
Myth No. 1. Publishers are merely printers. That would be news to companies like ours, which don't even operate their own printing presses. Publishers today are in the content business. We develop it; we design it; and we deliver it however our readers want it. And while a large part of our business remains in paper and print, we are seeing an unmistakable and irreversible shift toward bits and bytes with e-books and digital delivery platforms accounting for a growing share of the total market.
Myth No. 2. Authors don't need publishers in the digital age. Anyone who has ever written a book knows this to be false. Many great authors would never have found their audience without a great publisher willing to take a risk on their talents and market their works. At every stage of the editorial process, publishers partner with their authors as creative consultants, editors and designers. Ernest Hemingway had Maxwell Perkins from Charles Scribner's Sons, and Norman Mailer had E.L. Doctorow from Dial Press.
This week I attended a seminar designed to orient out of work print journalists on opportunities for web writers and web editors (as a job distinct from that of web designer). The moderator insisted there were plenty of good-paying jobs based on the same-value added argument. Firms will hire journalists to produce web content because they have skills and training that readers value, such as fact-checking and interviewing. As encouraged as I was at the thought, I found myself wondering at the same time if this were true. My sense is that people don’t miss what they don’t notice.
For example, I am more likely to read a film review by Anthony Lane of a film that I am not going to see than I am to read a review by David Denby of a film that I am because I prefer Lane’s writing (and I rarely go to see, or avoid, films based on reviews anyway). In other words, I tend to read reviews for the writing and the quality of argument, but I suspect that I am a small minority. Anyone seeking movie reviews on the Web can go to Rotten Tomatoes and not only get reviews but rankings of box office tallies (something that I doubt either Lane or Denby much cares about), links to buy tickets, watch clips, read celebrity gossip, and countless other features and adornments—all of which I’m guessing were proposed in design meetings in which the idea of improving the quality of writing of the reviews was never raised.
The key questions become for how much longer will publishers, regardless of the format in which they are publishing, feel it is worth the expense and effort to play Perkins to Fitzgerald (or, for that matter, Lish to Carver) and how much longer will readers continue to expect such a marriage of literary and editorial skill?
