2009 – A summary of the year for the publishing business
2009 may go down in history as the most tumultuous year for publishing since 1440, the year Gutenberg’s printing press was invented. The subsequent years will seem to be more dramatic for this business, and the media will no doubt defend it, but this was the year that everything changed.
Two forces materialized this year: online self-publishing and the collapse of traditional publishing models, thanks mainly to the recession and the fact that advertisers are moving online. It seemed that all businesses related to print publishing were affected. The major magazines died. Newspapers, which had long struggled financially, saw many closures, such as the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News. The New York Times and the Washington Post issued severe job cuts of 40-60% of their staff. And the big book publishers found that their megabooks were well below their sales projections.
It is remarkable that in the midst of this chaos there is so little innovation from these dying companies. It’s as if these traditional print organizations were saying that nothing is wrong, or that the problem would go away soon if they were patient enough. This ostrich-in-the-sand mentality was comical to watch. But the real innovation was happening online in the form of new businesses. And perhaps these big presses could have held out much longer; but for the recession. However, these companies are still resisting and trying to hold their ground by cutting back and raising prices. The New York Times is now $2 for a copy and $5 on Sunday. Clearly, that’s too much to pay for a newspaper, especially when every piece of information (and much more) can be found online.
Parts of the business models that distribute newspapers and paperbacks were born in the Depression of the 1930s. These models required mass distribution and low cost, and they were the way the struggling economy got out of the Depression. So high newspaper prices are counterintuitive and don’t work. Traditional book publishers went in the opposite direction in 2009, slashing prices and creating sales to get deep discounts on their books. Which is frankly ironic, because this is also going in the wrong direction. Books must have a high price and be seen as a quality product by consumers.
Despite all this change, the big companies still have plenty of cash and control most of the market share. Content is king on the Web these days. Writers and what I call publishing startups can make a living writing for websites. And that means that online publishing can compete with traditional models through quality. In the old days, there were certain outlets that determined the quote-unquote quality of a book, like the New York Times Book Review. But those outlets are also struggling mightily and some, like the Los Angeles Times book review, are dead and gone. These outlets were linked to the distribution system of traditional publications: they were integral in terms of sales. Now, they have become irrelevant. (I never thought I would live to experience the sheer joy of typing that last sentence.)
2010 will be the year that New Publishing comes true. 2009 saw the maturity of all the technologies involved in online publishing, from print-on-demand technology to e-books and YouTube marketing. The last piece of the puzzle is money. New publishers are already competing with traditional publishers in terms of quality, excellence, and recognition. And therefore new publishers are growing rapidly. But there’s a big difference between the fast-growing company and the established mega-company. And that difference is cash on hand. But if the mega-businesses can’t pay their staff or their bills, their decline is sure to be precipitous. And if New Publishers’ market share continues to rise rapidly, surely they, too, must see even faster growth.
For its part, World Audience has recently published important books. Our luck is probably attributed to the declining market share of the large print companies. Great authors are still looking to publish and a growing company like World Audience can serve them. Big names like Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his two World Audience books, glimmerIQs (ISBN 9781935444886 and 978-1-935444-86-2) and When the People Bubble POPs (ISBN 978-1-935444-91-6 ). Plus, World Audience can branch out into multiple genres with ease, with everything from the WORD humor book! THE BARE TEACHINGS OF SWAMI ANACONDA BANANARAMA by Swami Anaconda Bananarama (ISBN: 978-0-9820540-3-1) to the travelogue In the Footsteps of Dracula: A Personal Journey and Travel Guide by Steven P. Unger (ISBN: 978-1-935444-20-6). These types of intense disorders are probably unhealthy and potentially dangerous. But they sure are fun.
