The Future of Publishing
One of the useful articles on Publishers Lunch recently included a link to a really thought-provoking article on the future of publishing by Lev Grossman in the online edition of Time magazine. Grossman predicts that self-publishing will become the respectable route to “real” publication, and that what we currently consider real publication (by a publishing house) will become the top of a pyramid of other publishing, modeled after the unpaid and unedited fan fiction that’s become ubiquitous on the web.
Grossman discusses the constant changes in the novel, which he posits have always been driven by technology, from the beginnings of high-speed, low-cost printing in the early 18th century to the massive changes underway in publishing today. He expects the return of the episodic novel, doled out in sections to eager audiences, and a turn toward “less modernist-style difficulty and more romance-style sentiment and high-speed-narrative throughput. Novelists will compete to hook you in the first paragraph and then hang on for dear life.” He thinks most of it will be consumed electronically, on a Sony Reader or Kindle.
Grossman also predicts that most fiction will be available for free, not the most comforting thought for writers now spending countless hours crafting their work, hoping at some point to be paid for it. Grossman doesn’t address who will make the money to be made from novel writing. Figuring that out will, it seems, be the task of the most business-savvy among us.