Summary of…

F164. The Future of Book Publishing: How Authors Should Navigate the New Market. (Mary Gannon, Dennis Loy Johnson, Jeffrey Shots, Michael Reynolds, Lee Montgomery, Julie Barer) Editors and agents will discuss the changes that have occurred in the practices and policies of literary publishing—from acquiring books, producing them in all of their incarnations, and marketing them. They will also offer timely advice on how authors should best navigate the changing industry and the new market.

This panel was a fantastic look into the varying opinions of the direction of book publishing. Dennis Loy Johnson played the role of the electronic book sympathizer to counterpoint the general physical-paper-book consensus of the rest of the panel (as you can probably guess, the ebook v. paper book debate claimed most of the discussion…and rightfully so, I think). Mr. Johnson embraces the digital revolution. His publishing house (Melville House) was essentially birthed from a blog, so “digital,” he said, “is in his DNA.”

The moderator, Mary Gannon, asked a series of questions. The one that got the most response was: what is the biggest change in publishing over the past five years?

Lee Montgomery: Electronic books and with that, trying to figure out how to use the internet to market. Ms. Montgomery does think the physical book is safe. Though, people should not turn their nose up at the different ways people can hunt down books. She liked the potential for ebook devices (Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader, etc.) to that of the iPod, commenting about how much more music she buys now that she has a device built to allowing just that. Personally, I completely understand this point.

Dennis Joy Johnson: The conglomeration of publishing houses and distribution is one of the biggest changes and is possibly the biggest downfall. The death of independent sellers, and with that, the growth and power of Amazon.com, has made it almost impossible for independent, local bookstores to survive. Additionally, the forced discounts that Amazon.com puts on publishers makes it extremely difficult for authors and publishers to make money.

Mary Gannon: Bookscan is the biggest change. Bookscan, according to Wikipedia, is a data provider for the book publishing industry, owned by the Nielsen Company. BookScan compiles point of sale data for book sales. According to Ms. Gannon, is that the industry relies too much on Bookscan to determine purchasing quantities of an author’s subsequent books. The problem is that Bookscan doesn’t track all channels, so the numbers are often incorrect. My feeling is that the rise of POD printing, micropresses, and the fragmented distribution channels, should be incentive to have BookScan get its act together and adjust to the changing market.

Finally, which this comment doesn’t fit perfectly into the flow of this post, I still feel it important enough to cram in here at the end. Dennis Joy Johnson says that word of mouth has traditionally been a bookseller’s favorite and most successful advertising outlet, and that book blogs are the new word of mouth. So, on that note, read lots of books, so says this blog.