publishing

What Whitney Houston’s Death Teaches Us About Publishing

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I'm going to confess I'm a bit uncomfortably writing this story.  Whitney Houston's death was a troubling event, and among the love and sorrow I see over her passing are things that disturb me; snarky jokes, exploitation, disrespect for the dead.  So as I write this, if it's not the usual "Steve" please understand.

Also, admittedly, it's a bit personal; she's one of the distinct singers I grew up with.  It's a familiar voice, and it's gone, and even sadder as she had her personal demons to cope with.

Alan Cross notes an interesting phenomena in the wake of her death – fourteen books on her life appeared within seven hours of her death.  Fourteen.

Cross notes this is part of the larger trend of changes in media, and is much like what happened to music.  Those are very true words – publishing is being changed rapidly with technology, much as music was.  I recall how even a near-decade ago the rap scene was getting a lot of indie people with home studios who made a living with a small market – stuff that today comes cheaply or pre-installed.

Publishing of course is something computers have let us do for decades – it was just the publishing of a word processor and a printer.  Now technology is interlinked enough we can make books in what would seem to be an instant to an author of 20 or 30 years ago.

It's so fast that people can shovel out books the same day as an event.  I'm quite sure a lot of these are crap, but for all we know someone put out their near-finished personal work or some hidden gem of dedication.  Yeah, I doubt it, but . . . it's at least possible.

We're now in an age where book publishing and journalism/reporting (and yellow tabloidism) are on the same speed.

Think about that.  Me, I'm still a bit sad and I'm going to end this here.

– Steven Savage

Must Read: Digital Comics Roundup

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The gang at Comic Book Resources put together this fantastic roundup of the state of digital comics.  Go read it anyway or I'll make you watch "The Last Airbender."  For those who did, or are undeterred by my threats, big takeaways:

  • iAuthor has a LOT of people thinking about comics on the iBookstore.  Pay attention to this, it could shift the battleground over digital publishing.
  • Graphic.ly is going to do self-publishing.
  • Pay attention to Robot Media.  They seem to be expanding a lot.

– Steven Savage

Apple’s Easy iBook Author Tool

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As everyone predicted, Apple released an ez-iBook maker and there's controversy over it's features and possible lock-in since you can only publish to the iBookstore. Admittedly that's not surprising as it's a specialized ePub format so you can only read it as an iBook (that and I'm not seeing a lot of anger over Kindle . . .).

So what do I think?

  • This was inevitable. Apple had a platform and a book system and of course an authoring system was coming.
  • Content is king, but delivery pays the bills. This is also an inevitable financial model. Right now being a gatekeeper pays.
  • Amazon is going to follow suit so fast it'll make your head spin.
  • I'm not sure what, if anything, Microsoft will do.
  • This might mean more effective freelance writers – and more jobs.
  • This also means that rating systems are going to be even more important, as is good relations. So build that author platform.
  • Have I noted we REALLY NEED a universal book format everyone uses? We do.

– Steven Savage