By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief
Prognosticating about the future of the publishing business is a commonplace practice. But if publishing has proven anything, the marketplace is unpredictable. Who, after all, could have predicted Fifty Shades of Grey? That said, we all do our best.
So tell us, will 2013 be the year when Goodreads finally becomes a bookseller (as predicted by Jeremy Greenfield of Digital Book World)? Will we see more consolidation, as predicted by both Mike Shatzkin and George Lossius (in our feature article today). Will this be the year when Amazon gives away Kindles with Amazon Prime membership (something that seems to have been a perennial prediction dating back to 2007)?
My prediction for 2013: self-publishing will continue to gain more and more relevance worldwide, especially in the wake of Amazon, Kobo and Apple’s rollout of their ebook platforms across the globe. Publishers in much smaller markets than the US will be forced to an even great extent than their American counterparts to justify their roles. This is especially true in places where print runs from traditional publishers hover in the low thousands (which covers countries ranging from Brazil to Italy), since the financial margin between working with a traditional publisher and doing it yourself is likely much smaller. To me, this will be a much more disruptive force to traditional publishing than was the advent of ebooks.
At home in the United States, where self-publishing if firmly established, I believe 2013 will also be the first year we see a self-published title shortlisted for a major book award.
What about you? Get out your crystal ball and share your predictions with us in the comments below.
3 Comments
2013 will be the year ‘Spotify for Books’ will take-off. The trend we see in other media (access over ownership) will reach the book world this year (in a serious way). The best-known example is 24Symbols, which operate for some years now. But there are launching start-ups like them (all with different business models) all over the world as we speak.
The key challenge for publishers is to manage the loss of profitability to their core print book businesses being hastened by B&N store closings and the expenses required to compete in new digital publishing. Publishing insiders should look at the photography industry and Kodak in particular as an example of trying to manage the core erosion while investing in the new new thing. Unfortunately the cost structures have to be hacked far more than anyone on the inside wants, or believes necessary, and that was what Kodak thought also. The analogy is apt because there were far more photos printed in the 1990s than books and digital eroded most of that business. (As may happen to books, it shifted from 100-plus years on the East Coast to the West.) The one key difference was the major photo companies had huge capital equipment investments in their core businesses ranging from wholesale photo-processing plants to long-life photo paper plants. Major publishers do not have these expenses but still have very large fixed overheads. Personally, I think the future of book publishing will shift to the West Coast as well.
Publishers will likely react to the growth of self-publishing by finding ways to offer services to self-publishers on an a la carte basis, and this is already beginning to happen. So, self-publishing can be an opportunity, not just a threat, to established trade publishers.