Science fiction writers, editors, critics and publishers talk the future of ...

Science fiction writers, editors, critics and publishers talk the future of publishing

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 1/27/11

SFSignal, a website for the science fiction publishing industry, asks a number of writers, editors, critics and publishers "What will the publishing industry look like after 10 more years of advancing technology?" The answers are a mix of honest forthrightness about the unreliability of long-term predictions, grim business reality, and fascinating insight about the complimentary nature and economics of print and electronic publishing. Here's writer Tim Pratt:

More authors will experiment with self-publishing, as the barrier to entry for doing so with e-books is comparatively low. Some will have success with that; lots of others won't. Amazon.com and perhaps other purveyors of online books will increasingly attempt to take on the role of publishers, "curating" e-book collections. I don't expect publishing as we know it to disappear, by any means, but the field is going to become crowded by self-publishing -- some of it quite good -- and weird hybrids, and new companies springing up to fill whatever inevitable gaps are left by the relatively slow-moving major publishers.

It will likely get harder for writers to make a living doing nothing but writing fiction... but most writers I know don't make a living exclusively writing fiction anyway. We'll have to explore new methods: direct appeals to readers, weird limited editions with interesting extras, patrons, corporate sponsorship, kickstarter fundraisers in lieu of novel advances -- who knows.

Those are pretty cautious guesses, I know, but hey, science fiction writers are generally crap at predicting the future. (And I'm mostly a fantasy writer!) In ten years, the world could be unimaginably weird. I certainly hope it will be. But I'm sure I'll still be reading books, even if they don't look much like the books I grew up with.

Q: What will the publishing industry look like after 10 more years of advancing technology? (via Futurismic)

(Image: Government Printing Office Building Number Four Jackson Alley Cast Concrete Presswork Bas Relief (Washington, DC), a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from takomabibelot's photostream)

 

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