New Year’s Resolution: Re-read These Articles

Michael Jensen | 01/04/2010

As I reflect on 2009’s events in e-book publishing—the release of Android, the rise of the handheld user experience, the next iteration of the Kindle (and the competitor Nook), the establishment of .epub as the de facto open e-book standard, the decline of newspapers, the dominant rise of Facebook, the explosion of strategies to attempt to control the releases of e-books (delayed, simultaneous, and pre-press), the attempts to control access through Digital Rights Management regimes, the continuing confusion and consternation over Google Book Search, Amazon’s Big Brother-like intrusion into 1984-holding Kindles across the US, the shifts in user habits seemingly inexorably toward brief distractions rather than deep dives into immersive experience—I’m somewhat astonished.

E-books became for the first time more substantial than print for a major publisher (O’Reilly), late in the year. Amazon reported bigger e-book sales than p-book sales in the few days before Christmas.

Much humming and humbugging was made about data points, advances, and what they did or didn’t signify… there was much sound and fury, perhaps signifying something (but nobody’s sure just what, yet).

Sometimes change simply signifies change. We have yet to see what the landscape will be for book publishers—because the book-publishing (and book-exporting) ecosystem is still exceedingly unsettled. Will it settle in 2010? I suspect not.

Instead, 2010 will see continuing experimentation, exploration/ exploitation of new markets, and attempts to retain old markets. Being willing to experiment is the only way to stay with the waves of change.

2010 will be an interesting year—and thoughtful perspectives will likely often be drowned out by breathless next-now-next reportage.

Here are a few key articles that can help with developing “thoughtful perspective,” well worth rereading. If you haven’t read these yet, they’re a great way to start the year—pertinent to the future of publishing either directly or indirectly:

A smart, canny, nuanced analysis of ebooks as a cultural artifact, with imperatives of their own:

Wall Street Journal:
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write by Steven Johnson
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html

Two of the most influential and connected members of the new media environment, on the megatrends of the Web and society. These themes are what we as publishers must compete with, as well as work within:

Tim O’Reilly and John Batelle
Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On
http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194

And finally, Canada’s digital conscience, Cory Doctorow, in his seminal presentation to Microsoft Research on Digital Rights Management. Five years old, and still fresh and pertinent, true, and pretty much undeniable:
http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

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