Posts Tagged ‘evolving publishing industry’

Riders’ Collective just published my article about a bike tour I took with Dawn through the California and Arizona desert.  Click the picture at left to download the magazine.  The piece is called “Highway 62 Revisited.”  Enjoy!

As a side-note, this magazine is structured as an aggregate.  That means it culls relevant content from the web.  It works because Paul Kramer, the editor, works hard to meet a quality standard that his readers expect.  With so much content out there, and so many people eager to publish, Paul creates value by doing the hard work of filtering through the rubbish.  It’s like a magazine mixtape!

(as told by Seth Godin)

I just listened to an astute speech from a proven guru delivered to a convention of indie book publishers.  You can hear the whole recording here.  It’s a bit long, so I’ve transcribed my favorite points:

Godin breaks the traditional publishing business model into five components: Curation, Venture Capital investment, Production, Distribution, and Promotion.

He says four of five of those components are now dead.  Curation is the only role for publishers in the years to come.  So what does that really mean?

According to Godin, it means four things:

(1)  Curate: collect relevant content.

(2)  Lead: earn the right to talk to your audience by delivering honest, relevant information, then tell your followers what content (movie/book/blog etc.) is worth their time.

(3)  Connect:  Serve as a hub for like-minded individuals to meet and connect.

(4)  Create a movement:  Rally your audience.

We can already see this happening.  TwelvePublishers puts out a book a month, and “seeks to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books.”  FlatmanCrooked is “deeply dedicated to the cultivation of our authors’ careers,” and creates cult followings around books through limited releases, imaginative book tours, and contests.  Soft Skull Press has been called “The literary version of a punk rock label.”

These are just three examples of small presses embracing the new world of publishing.  They curate, connect fans, and create a movement about their releases.