|
Publishing is a business and is dominated by
supply and demand. It always has been. Richard Charkin, the
Chief Executive of Macmillan, said a publisher exists to make
money. Such a fundamental point often escapes the rejected author,
the independent bookseller, and the chain retailer.
But that does not imply any reduction in the role that the publisher
plays in all these fields, including supporting authors, providing
a worldwide market for their books, promoting through publicity,
web and catalogues, and providing an environment in which an
author/editor relationship can flourish. That's going to carry
on, in the hands of conglomerates and in the hands of all those
small independent publishers who spring up every day.
To look at the future of publishing, you must
look at the past. And many of you will be told how much better
the past was than the present.
I don’t believe in a Golden Age of Publishing.
It’s a myth. It’s probably true that we produce
much more crap today than has been published in the past –
magazines for lads with 10-second attention span, biographies
of celebrities who dribble rather than write, for buyers who
gawp rather than read. I can’t pretend I like the ranks
of stupid magazines and porno on the shelves, the tawdry tabloids
that pass themselves off as newspapers.
But many believe that a Golden Age of Publishing
shimmers somewhere in our past, a time when the trade spoke
of inspired judgment, impeccable ethics, and standards of quality
and expertise which now evade us.
Oh well, pity to have missed it, whenever it was. Oddly, a visit
to an antiquarian bookshop, or even a glance at my own shelves,
makes me realise how difficult it is to pinpoint that lost world.
There are some ghastly titles, terrible books that should have
been left as trees, many with poor illustrations badly reproduced,
designed by Blind Pugh. They were published anytime over the
past four centuries – and idiots must have frequently
published them.
Ah, those leisurely days when yes, indeed, there was time for
the taking of the toast and tea. Except, of course, some newcomer
to publishing was sitting in the basement with a bare light
bulb trying to make sense of the contract that had been signed
by someone from the top office over lunch. And couldn’t
afford the toast or tea.
This is the Golden Age of Publishing. It’s your time.
And it’s not that far removed from yesterday. Yesterday
just wasn’t that good. And the future may be different,
but it’s no less bright. We still produce incredible amounts
of complete rubbish. But we are also capable of inspired design,
achieving the highest levels of quality, and nurturing many
of the young people entering publishing today to be the professionals
of tomorrow.
I predict – lovely word, predict, makes
you feel like a soothsayer – that printers, in the traditional
sense, will have to become more pro-active. Printers seem to
forget that it is they who were the original publishers. They
who took the financial risk.
If they believe a project can make money, why
don’t they share some of the risk? Sell advertising for
the travel guides they produce? Share the advance to a high-rolling
author in return for royalties? Empty machines will need more
entrepreneurial imagination to fill them. Publishing houses
are only one part of the market for book print: some legal and
accountancy firms now have publishing divisions equal to many
commercial publishers. Half the books manufactured in the UK
are for non-publishing houses. This being so, those with publishing
skills – and those skills imply printing skills and knowledge
of the technology of print - are just as likely to be in demand
outside of the publishing industry and the publishing houses
dominance of book publishing may be over.
Have you noticed how afraid some printing houses
are of editorial processes? A machine may stand empty because
a text has not been edited or proof read. So why shouldn’t
the printer do it? Acquire the skills, even on a freelance basis,
rather than hold up schedules? When we started Book Production
Consultants, we were the first company to offer all the publishing
skills under one roof. In the Seventies, a publisher went to
a typesetter, a designer, a repro house, a copy editor, a proof
reader, a translator, a paper merchant.
We, as BPC, brought all those skills under one
roof. By the 90s, most printers were offering design and repro,
and the more imaginative offer copy-writing. But there’s
still a fear of offering editorial skills. Just as publishers
think that printers are inky and rather techy, so printers think
publishers are eggheads and only good at lunch (it’s only
printers’ reps who offer ‘a pie and a pint’).
Well, that sort of fragmentation is over. It’s
got to stop, this ‘them and us’ business that so
divides the industry. As I said, we’re all publishers
now. The ordinary computer skills which you and I take for granted
are part of the array of talents you now have to bring to the
table to show how versatile you are. It took an apprentice compositor
seven years to become a comp as a typesetter, skills jealously
guarded by the unions, particularly the NGA. You can't blame
them for all those restrictive practices but the writing was
on the wall - or rather the computer screen. Now you and I choose
from dozens of type fonts, repaginate at the touch of a button,
import documents – and these are regarded as basic skills
by the potential employer.
This publishing industry needs a much broader
base, needs the publishing services department of the future,
not a production department of the past. The production department
will become both more technologically competent and more versatile
in what it produces and skills won’t be confined to producing
just one product such as books. The ‘publishing services’
department must maintain web sites, produce DVDs and software,
magazines and catalogues.
The Director of Publishing Services will become increasingly
important, not the least because, at Board level (especially
in publishing houses), few others may understand the technology
that has transformed their business.
Ask a Commissioning Editor what CTP means! Ask the M.D. how
those electronic files are turned into books – and where
they are stored! And if there are no answers, ask for a board
directorship. It’s about time that the oil rags were admitted
to power, no longer regarded as the Production Department down
there.
Writers, too, are required to be far more savvy
of the whole publishing process, taking their articles to PDFs,
journalists providing copy formatted into Quark files, designers
acting as editors and picture researchers. Job titles continue
to change. Taylor & Francis, a scientific and academic publisher.
employ freelance editorial project managers who are in charge
of editing, design, picture research, final edited files. Even
Literary Agents have got to come to grips with the implications
of electronic publishing in order to safeguard the rights of
their authors. An author can be kept prisoner under a contract
to a publishing house so long as the book remains in print -
and the publisher can use POD to ensure that and prevent an
author moving on.
page three
|
