As part of a continuing effort to chart the ripples of the industry’s sea change, PT has conducted an informal survey of more than 150 new-media companies that are staking claim to traditional publishing territory. We’ll have more to report from our research in the coming months, but first, here’s a brief snapshot of the seascape ahead.
While agents are morphing into digital rights managers almost as easily as editors become agents, editors themselves have thus far retained maximum job security. Over 50 online publishers exist (many focused on genre fiction, especially romance), but few other than Fatbrain have evolved significantly past the Cro-Magnon slush pile — due to their excruciating lack of editorial standards. Two new ventures, however, are targeting precisely this opportunity. TW Trade Publishing’s iPublish, which is scheduled to go online in January 2001, has been actively soliciting original material from both new and brand-name authors to sell on their own site and from major online retailers. With partners including Microsoft, Gemstar, Ingram, and bn.com, the iPublish program seems prepared for most distribution exigencies. The UK-based WritersRepublic, meanwhile, also promises to identify and promote new talent, distributing and exposing edited books in far less time than it would take to have them traditionally bound.
And on the subject of new talent, even those authors without the brand recognition of a Stephen King may soon have digital options, as sites such as authorsontheweb.com and authorsonline.com flirt with the idea of launching. These will act as portals to websites for individual authors, helping them market their books and, of course, themselves.
In the retailing world, print-on-demand is slowly infiltrating the market, as Sprout continues to partner aggressively with publishers, distributors, and an increasing number of booksellers. Watch for Lightning’s rollout in this space as well. And the long-anticipated BookSense.com has energized the already active independent bookselling community, even though its site has yet to fulfill a book order. More interesting has been the drama engulfing sleepy industries like textbook sales, which have been jolted by digital shock-troopers BigWords and VarsityBooks, only to have the latter switch gears and broaden its focus to the student services arena. This fall, watch out for Swotbooks.co.uk, which will attempt a similar assault on the British textbook industry.
The ironic flip-side of the education space is that with the digital revolution, there’s no longer any reason to buy an entire book. Questia Media and ebrary.com are poised to launch subscription-based searchable research libraries online (Questia for individuals, ebrary for institutions). Similar services such as Themestream aid users who are drowning under the spillgates of online information, and GetAbstract.com summarizes business books, the upshot being that nobody has to actually read them.
