OK, so publishing’s in a bad way. Victoria Barnsley was speaking at LBF on the future of publishing. She’s the industry’s chief insider futurologist. And the best she can manage is what a couple of amateur dingbats sitting on a chatroom managed to knock up months ago. Serialisation (like Dickens, in fact) – sounds remarkably like the project one of my good writing friends has been working on for a long time – G, sort out the software, flog it to HC, and set up a press fro the rest of us with the proceeds.
And as for making money out of new tech – well, it’s hardly news is it – where it IS big news, of course, is for all those “insiders” who’ve been saying the industry doesn’t need change – the news is the biggest insider of all says otherwise. And like film and music first, when she comes a looking she’s going to be seeing what the indie innovators are doing, and see how she can spin it off to make gazillions if you shove a marketing shunt behind it.
So this is my last warning to the debunkers – the industry itself is won over to what we’ve been saying. Some of those of us who do our indie thing properly and innovatively now will have our doors battered down by execs with cheques in 2010. I intend to do everything I can in 2009 to make sure I’m one of them. If it doesn’t happen, I’ll worry about that next year. It’s not too late for everyone else out there to give it a go. I told you in January this was land grab time and no one believed me. I’m telling you again now. Come share the spoils. Because if you stick to the old way because there’s time for innovation later, you’ll end up discovering what the dot.com destitutes found out –a bandwagon’s a hell of a bumpy ride unless you’re the person driving it.
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