Transliteracy and Publishing

I was recently invited to give a presentation at the University of Alberta. The topic was "new media and publishing." This might sound simple enough, but after pulling together my thoughts with other references, graphs and statistics, it became more and more muddled. Publishing is not (or has never) really been just about publishing...editing and writing form part of this industry.  Interestingly, there were people who decidedly see three separate industries and believe there are separate experts in each very separate field. Of course, there are experts in each field but I think - what new media perhaps makes more tangible -  is the possibility to be an expert across the three fields.  I imagine this is an aspect of transdisciplinarity and transliteracy. Writers, for example, are able to blog/tweet/update their narratives, edit them, and then publish. Sure, at times writers will collaborate with editors or designers in order to create a more *professional* product, but the ability to be writer/editor/publisher is (easily) there.

Thinking about how these three fields intertwine, I wonder (as many do) about the future of the publishing industry in general.  We have heard of the demise of *the author* and then the death of books one cannot read in the bath...but with new media devices taking off, what really happens with publishing?

The Economist recently explained that John Grisham had a change of heart and suddenly, his books will be available in an electronic format. Had the publishers convinced Grisham to embrace new media or was it the (timely) arrival of the iPad that swayed him? Amazon, (I wonder if it's in response to the iPad), has also upped its voice. Moving from the online environment to TV, we witnessed an ad. for Kindle during a break from Lost. The ad. had a specific feel and I'm not sure whether it really was congruent with the Lost audience...in fact, Amazon customers are having their say:

"I can't believe Amazon is wasting money on Kindle ads during LOST on ABC. That's some of the most expensive prime-time air time out there.

The ads are TERRIBLE too. They don't say anything about the product at all, and have a terrible indie/emo feel to them. YUCK!"

The ads by Amazon might also be an effort to encourage the sale of e-books. We know newspaper sales are dwindling, print book sales are suffering and e-books (currently at least) might well be boring as Kate notes...but they are selling.

"Like many other parts of the media industry, publishing is being radically reshaped by the growth of the internet. Online retailers are already among the biggest distributors of books. Now e-books threaten to undermine sales of the old-fashioned kind. In response, publishers are trying to shore up their conventional business while preparing for a future in which e-books will represent a much bigger chunk of sales.

Quite how big is the subject of much debate. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, reckons e-books will represent about 6% of consumer book sales in North America by 2013, up from 1.5% last year (see chart). Carolyn Reidy, the boss of Simon & Schuster, another big publisher, thinks they could account for 25% of the industry’s sales in America within three to five years. She may well be right if the iPad and other tablet computers take off, the prices of dedicated e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle keep falling and more consumers start reading books on smart-phones. Mobclix, an advertising outfit, reckons the number of programmes, or apps, for books on Apple’s iPhone recently surpassed that for games, previously the largest category."

What I am interested in seeing develop is the writer/editor/publisher convergence alongside the emergence of multimodal e-books, what David Young calls "enriched e-books." Multimodality - surely that's the future of publishing?

Note: Kindle vs print image from Type Desk, e-book sales image from The Economist.