This is an excellent Session and I would very much like to be a part of it. A crucial question.

Great! Please feel free to invite your colleagues, students, friends, etc.

Hey Hugh - this is a very interesting question to me. I would be happy to contribute or, if you're too busy this day, I would be happy to moderate it. Feel free to contact me seancranbury [at] gmail [dot] com to discuss, brainstorm, etc...

hi sean ... thanks for the note. how bout adding some brainstorm/thoughts here?

[duh} - apologies for only having one foot in this century...

ok. these ideas are coming from a conversation with my friend Monqiue Trottier (@somisguided) - the good ideas are hers, any botching is mine. Anyway - publishers are storytellers about the books that they publish. They possess many specific benefits for a writer - expertise in design, distribution, editorial focus, backlist, relationships with media, agents, booksellers, sales knowhow and wherewithal... but their greatest skill going forward in this new digital environment may be the ability to tell the story of their book - publicity, marketing, merchandising, relating to and supporting the book's audience - in order to give the book relevance in the market. Small press, major, indie, whatever - the publisher's job is to tell the story of the book, position it, put it in the right places with the right story for why it should be read, talked about, reviewed, made into a movie and a video game - how it gives value to the lives of the people who read it.

What are your thoughts, Hugh? What kind of angle were you approaching this from?

Go Sean! I'm all for this stuff being represented at BCTO.

Yes, this session came about after the famous SXSW event:
http://medialoper.com/hot-topics/print/traditional-publishers-crash-and-burn-at-sxsw/

one conversation i had with Dan Wagstaff in the aftermath, where he said: "the role of the publisher is to be an advocate for the writer in the wider world ..."

and to me that strikes home. new technology means anyone can publish, but publishers still have an important role to play ... the mechanics are changing, but something like "advocate" sounds to me like a very powerful formulation.

I'm curious to see if others agree ... and if they do ... what does that it mean now to be an advocate?

advocate/storyteller = excellent. where is the affable mr wagstaff in this convo? perhaps i'll send him a message and ask him to chime in. regardless, this will be an exciting discussion and i can't wait to be a part of it.

thanks, john! looking forward to your www>xml discussion.

An email from Dan Wagstaff - some more kindling for the fire.


Publisher's don't know what they're "for" any more.

The idea of publisher as filter or curator is flawed, but more crucially it only explains
why people should buy books that are published by publishing houses rather than books
that are self-published.

Neither concept explains what publishers DO for authors (i.e. answer that dude at SXSW)

The old answer was that publishers had expertise that was not available to most authors.

Technology has changed this.

Authors still aren't experts, but many can muddle through on their own with a certain
amount of proficiency and get to "good enough".

SO

FIRSTLY Publishers need to stop thinking of themselves as experts and start thinking of
themselves as collaborative partners taking "good enough" hand-picked projects to the
point of excellence. Almost all creative projects are improved by collaborative
partnerships (even though we believe artists create things in a vacuum - this is the
exception not the rule)

If neither the author (e.g. the dude at SXSW) or the publisher recognises the need for
collaboration then they shouldn't work together! (IMO - publishers should be honest
enough to say "we can do nothing for you")

SECONDLY Publishers need to be advocates for their books. This sounds similar to
your/Monique's idea of publisher as storyteller. Basically I think this comes down to
conviction publishing -- i.e. adopting a sort David Simon-ish attitude of "fuck the
average reader" and publishing what you believe to be good/worthwhile/important and then
fighting it's corner. Curating is obviously part of this but I think 'advocate' is a less
passive description and less elitist.

Anyway - i'd love your feedback and I'll let you know when I finish the blog post... (if
ever!)...

Looking forward to meeting you in TO.

best

Dan

Posted at The Casual Optimist (http://www.casualoptimist.com/?p=919):

Part One:

An unforeseen consequence of the “New Think for Old Publishers” debacle at SXSW in earlier this year is that I will be a participant in a session on the role of the publishers in the digital age at Book Camp Toronto on June 6th.

The now infamous SXSW panel was supposed to discuss “what’s going right and what’s going wrong in publishing, assess success of recent forays into marketing digitally, digital publishing, and what books and blogs have to gain from one another.”

As has been well documented elsewhere, things did not go according to plan.

Despite the presence of heavyweight panelists (including the venerable Clay Shirky), new ideas were in short supply. Audience frustration overflowed on to Twitter and an array of 140 character bullets (identified by a #sxswbp hashtag) ripped into the panel, with what was perhaps the kill-shot fired by a writer in the audience:

“If, as an author, I can design it myself, write it myself, publish it myself, why would I bother going to a publisher at all? What purpose do you serve?”*

The old answer to this question was that publishers offered technical expertise and mass distribution.

But, nowadays, digital technology has made it easy for writers to publish, distribute and market their own books independently. And whilst professional editing, design, production, distribution, and marketing may still be valuable and sought-after services, it’s become very apparent that the perceived gap between self-publishing and traditional publishing is narrowing.

The battering that the SXSW panel took inadvertently revealed what we have long-suspected — publishers need to change the way they think about themselves, the decisions they make, and the services they offer, or cease to exist.

Cont...

Part Two:

One idea that gained some currency in the aftermath of SXSW was that publishers are — or could be — ‘cultural curators’, a role made only more important by the explosion of content created and distributed by digital technology.

In a world where it is impossible to read everything that is emailed, texted, tweeted, posted, uploaded, or printed, there is an opportunity for publishers to become trusted advisers who sift through the vast digital slush-pile and present only the best, most interesting work. Or so the argument goes.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that publishers haven’t proved to be very effective at curating in the past, and it’s precisely this kind of pretension that gets them in trouble at events like SXSW.

A rap sheet of opportunistic publishing, self-indulgence, costly blunders, and generally too much poor product means that publishers (not to mention the mainstream media) have squandered any cultural authority they may once have had, and have been superseded by an informal network of curators connected online.

Furthermore, curation doesn’t really explain what publishers actually do for authors. If it’s just filtering (by set a of cultural criteria I may or may not agree with), why bother going to a publisher at all?

Cont...

Part Three

Not long after after SXSW I sat down in Toronto with Hugh McGuire to discuss these crumbling cultural hierarchies and the implications for publishers.

Expressing my dissatisfaction with the idea of publishers as curators — and trying to take into account Hugh’s reader-centric approach — I suggested that perhaps we’d stand ourselves in better stead if we thought of ourselves more as ‘advocates’.

More proactive than curation, advocacy takes into account that publishers do more than find completed works of art and present them to the public. And it goes at least part way towards explaining what publishers do for authors, whilst offering a model for how they can interact meaningfully (and honestly) with readers.

Perhaps, just as crucially, it also means being able to effectively publish and promote books that we believe in, without making any of the claims of cultural authority or superiority that are attached to curating — the framework of advocacy works whether you are publishing literary fiction or genre, poetry or humour.

Admittedly, there are probably minimal and maximal versions of what ‘publisher as advocate’ means. On the minimal side, publishers promote (and defend if necessary) their books in the public forum. A more maximal version — which is probably where my thinking lies — would not simply limit advocacy to marketing a finished product. It would begin with the commissioning editor championing the work in-house, and continue through the production of the book to the publicist who is pitching it to reviewers, and beyond. It would also mean publishing less and publishing better.

So:

These ideas are not definitive. In fact they’re a rather hurried formation of a jumble of ideas that I’ve had kicking around my head that need more time, but also more air and more discussion.Please feel free to leave your ideas in the comments of www.casualoptimist.com

Over and Out.

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