Skipping Publishing, or Launching it?
June 16th, 2011
As someone who spends a good deal of my time figuring out what the web is going to do/be/have next, I have been waiting for the day when book publishing will be a thing of the past – i.e. – when a person creates content that he would normally go to a publisher to have published into a book, but now just posts it (for a price) on the web to be consumed by the interested. He can publish it himself, market it himself using social media as well as traditional SEO.
Of course, this has been happening in bits and pieces for as long as the web has existed but I have been waiting to see the TREND. It’s starting to happen. There are many bloggers who create e-books, lots of how-to ebooks, etc. But it’s just starting to become a phenomenon when a whole book goes viral. Case in point, the rather disturbing/funny book written for adults, but looks and almost sounds like it was written for children “Go the **** to Sleep”. Sorry, not going to be typing out the “f” bomb on my blog. Call me old fashioned or whatever. This book, posted online last year, has gone so viral that people are actually now requesting hard copies of it. (I’m not sure what this says about our society in general, and I don’t really want to spend a lot of time pondering it.) This book has now been read aloud and recorded by the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and some other dude I don’t know, but others seem to think he’s something. Werner Herzog, or something. These video recordings of the book being read aloud are expected to go viral as well.
But this whole business of the book going viral on the web first, and then being published brings up a whole new question. And not “Why would people want a hard copy of this book?” Though that question does come to mind. (It’s one thing to laugh at it online, even commiserate a little with the thinking behind the book, but to want a hard copy lying around that looks like a real childrens book? Nah.) The real question here is: is the web going to change the way books are published? Will the trend in book publishing become such that you have to release it online first, maybe in chunks, to see if there is interest before you can get it published? I recently downloaded a “sample” of Steven Tyler’s book “Does the Noise Inside My Head Bother You?”. Curious, and it was a free sample.
I am sure publishing houses have folks trolling the web as we speak looking for great material to turn into a book. There are plenty of bloggers who have been approached about writing a book, to the point that bloggers often mistakenly think that perhaps they will be asked to write a book. But is this going to be the trend in publishing from here on out? Publish it on the web, and then it may go to hard copy (at least for as long as hard copies exist), or will it be more of a trial on the web before publishing?
What do you think, do you see a trend in publishing happening in your industry, or on the web in general? Have you read books on the web, and then felt compelled to buy the hard copy? Have you considered publishing a work on the web – bypassing a publishing house altogether?
