By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
At Frankfurt Book Fair: Is It Time for Publishing to Call a Truce?
[dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]A[/dropcap]mong the many good comments that Amazon’s Jon Fine brought to the panel in Frankfurt, his thoughts on this aspect of where self-publishers are going were apt.
Hopefully the service providers—and I include everybody in that—will make it as easy as possible for people to get both print and digital. And, frankly, audio. And translations. That’s really what you want to drive for. To me, it’s exciting and intelligent on the part of authors to want to go both routes [print and digital].
Fine went on to lay out a fundamental element of the challenge for self-publishing authors that even many of them might not yet see. For that matter, their traditionally published brothers and sisters may not be clear on this yet. But I believe he has put his finger on the actual struggle to come. And it’s not self- vs. traditional publishing. Fine said:
In a world where you have so much competing for your attention—movies, music, video games, the whole nine yards—to make it as easy as possible for people to get to books, both buying them and then accessing them after they buy them, is huge. It’s absolutely essential as we move forward.
Note that Fine has just called a truce, of sorts. The battle is not between self- and traditional publishers. It’s between books and the rest of the entertainment array, most of it digitally powered long before books were.
It may be time we all got back on one team and started facing outward—at the real competition.
Read the full article at PublishingPerspectives.com