10 Publishing Trends You Don't Want to Miss

Janalyn Voigt

Confused by rapid-fire changes in the publishing landscape? The following posts give an analysis of 10 publishing predictions.

1. Self-Publishing Will Lose Its Stigma

One of the media transformations I expect to take place over the next 10 years, if not sooner, is that book publishing will become more blog-like — that is, micropublishing, the interest of the New York houses in putting out blockbusters, and the decline of the industry (and its retail counterpart) generally will lead to a proliferation of vanity presses that will, over time, lose their stigma. ~ David McCarthy

2. Motion Comics will Evolve into a New Form of Entertainment

Motion graphic novels will continue to evolve with the likes of new mobile devices such as the iPad and iPod Touch. They will become a new form of entertainment and something of great value to new and avid comic book fans. ~ Nick Defina

3. Large Publishers Will Restructure Themselves

So, unless one CEO arises who, I'm appalled to see myself write, lays off about 50% of the workforce and utterly reconstitutes the company (as IBM did 1990-1995) all the aforementioned leads to one significant prediction — that all the giant publishers will be pygmies in ten years, publishing perhaps 100 books a year, all blockbusters or would-be blockbusters, and continually under threat of going out of business.~ Richard Eoin Nash

4. More People Will Become Published Writers

If the big six NY book publishers (the fat head) today publish 50% of what's sold, and the long tail of thousands of indie publishers comprise the rest, then 10 years from now the fat head will shrink to 10% and the long tail will get both taller and longer. There will be more published authors than ever before, and collectively they will earn record revenues, yet individually the average "published" author 10 years from now will earn less than the average "commercially published" author today. Advantage will go to those with best ability to reach their audience. ~ Jeff Rivera

5. E-books Will Gain in Popularity

In the next twelve months the relationship between book content, online content, marketing materials, ad campaigns and experimentation will continue to break down, seeing the development of a new style of work that exists somewhere between them all.~ Michael Bhaskar

6. Media-Savvy Authors Will Gain an Advantage

Ideally, promotion will begin much earlier – perhaps even the minute the book's contract has been signed – and continue much longer than 60 days beyond the launch date. This is a model used in both the music and entertainment industries (both of which have much more expensive production costs) – so why not for books? ~ Josie Brown

7. The Memoir Genre Will Continue to Grow

Memoir has been a popular genre these past several years, and I don't think it will fade any time soon. In 2010, we will continue to see a rise in the number of published memoirs and the genre will become even more creative. ~ Matilda Butler

8. Books Won't Have a Minimum Length Requirement

Ebooks that are too short to be print books will become a real factor in ebook sales, opening up new opportunities for publishers but even more for authors. ~ Mike Shatzkin

9. More Small Print and E-book Publishers Will Start Up

First, 2011 will be the year of the publishing start-up. I think we're going to see an explosion of new companies. Technology changes (in the way books are written, edited, acquired, produced, marketed and sold) have slowly re-shaped the large publishing houses. But those houses have tried to keep the same basic model in place for how they run their businesses. Now we're going to see a bunch of small, print and e-book publishers arise who are faster, more nimble, and conduct business in an entirely new way. ~ Chip MacGregor

10. Rights Negotiations Will Take Longer

Agents will become more aggressive in pursuing more rights to each book causing pre contract negotiations to take longer than ever before; bigger authors will push to sell only print rights to publishers. ~ Jane Dystel

 

© 2010 Janalyn Voigt

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