Crystal Kindles: what does 2010 hold in store in the literary world?

It feels like I've been away for an age. In reality it's been a week in Northern France eating rillettes and thinking about all things literary.

Which has given me time to think about the future - more important to get my foot in the door and be the first to ask what 2010 holds for the literary world. It wouldn't be a proper one of my blog posts if I just said "This and this and this will happen" so I'm putting a bit of a spin on things. First up, a few predictions about what I think the mainstream will be touting as the hot topics of 2010. Then a little something about the hot hot topics, the nascent waves they haven't seen coming. Not too much on the why and wherefore or I'll be here all night - just enough to get the conversation going; and maybe make some of it self-fulfilling...

Don't forget: when January 1, 2011 comes and I was wrong on every count, you can all have a good old laugh at my expense.

So:

Read the blogs, visit the websites, read the trade papers, flick through the magazines, and what will you see in 2010 (the bandwagons it's too late to jump on though many will try)

1. Google Wave, Apple Tablet, Wiki-software as my TECH no-brainers (and yes, sadly I DO think some people will still think the Kindle's news in 2010)

2. PUBLISHERS will be talking steampunk (yes, STILL - you only think it's passe already because you're ahead of the game) and post-recession (thrillers, dramas of the Full Monty ilk, and lifestyle books - both how-to and "how I survived"). They will lock horns with writers over advances and publicity (or, at least, the more foresighted ones will). They'll also suddenly catch on to serialisation - Victoria Barnsley got there this year, when it was still almost newsworthy, but very few have followed.

3. The LITERATI will probably, courtesy of Neil Gaiman and the fact literature always lags behind art and Gormley got there this year, be talking crowdsourcing

4. PUNDITS will be banging on about the success or failure of Richard Nash's Cursor. The freemium debate will, inevitably, linger on like a stale odour, and some people will still think the price of ebooks is a debate because ebook sales will rise apace, masking the facts that 1 - talking about ebook pricing will be by then a category error in terms of obsolescent business models, and 2 - ebooks will, by early 2011, already be on the way out (despite continued rise in numbers). Note - this is a dead topic for pundits, but very much not for writers - the year and a half the ebook boom has left is very much worth riding.

5. WRITERS be trying to ride the steampunk wave once they've sucked vampires dry. They will also be engaging in full-scale war over Creative Commons, ebook pricing, and how to make a living from content provision. We will see some real disgruntlement at publishers, too, over decreasing advances and increased marketing demands - with particular objection to the demand for authors to do webcasts and YouTube trailers. More writers will catch on to the value fo chapbooks and special editions - expect to see beautiful one-offs and companion pieces.

And here's where the action's really at in 2010 - the waves that are still way out at sea with plenty of time to catch them before they break:

1. in TECH, intelligent paper is a long way from being viable as a mass commodity, but for those who love the book, it's where the smart money is. And for those who like reading on the run, the iPhone is old news but it's still the only news in town, but expect a raft of new apps from serialisations to interactive reading to exciting blue-tooth functionality like random read-shares and collaborative reading (blue-tooth-operated collaborative writing harnessing flashmob appeal is the future of wiki-software, but I'm not sure even the good people of Silicon Valley have figured that out yet - the potential for creating geo-specific novels this way, meshing geocaching, LAN gaming, extreme tourism, flashmobbing, and wiki-creativity IS THE MOST EXCITING DEVELOPMENT I SEE COMING, but it may be for 2011). The only Tablet worth speaking of is the one for the massive hangover B & N and Waterstone's will catch when their e-readers go belly-up. I like ether-pad and the kind of stuff MCM did with 3D1D, involving the reader in the writer's real-time editing.

2. The smart book trends for PUBLISHERS next year are world fiction (come on, we have so much access to so much incredible global talent - we need imprints backed by quality translation teams to tap it); and post-environmentalism: in particular books focused on individualism and existentialism (fiction AND non-fiction) - yet another reprint fo Epicurus would fly off teh shelves, and anything else that debunks the delayed gratification model of environmentalism as people realise 1. we're screwed anyway 2. there are more immediate dangers than climate change and 3. saving things for the future is a philosophy that has serious emotional as well as logical flaws. On a related note, look towards historical fiction that captures the same spirit - the 1920s, fin de siecle, early 1960s and early/mid 1980s are hot for this reason (in particuar the hedonism of the period - Punk is passe, New Romanticism will be, for a very brief window, cutting edge).

3.The LITERATI to watch will be playing cross-genre games - fed up of Bunny Munro and Punk Fictin, writers will want a piece of the music/film/art pie - and they'll want to bend them in literary ways. Collaborations are out (sorry, Mr Gaiman, you're passe in very many ways in 2010, albeit still successful), and DIY is in. And, dare I say it, as people start playing around with form and genre - Modernism is back.

4. PUNDITS may finally sit up and start asking ethical questions about the global implications of the future face of publishing - in particular, how to embrace, expose but not exploit emerging talent.

5. WRITERS should stop locking horns with publishers over advances and push and embrace new contractual models like ebook only contracts and zero advance contracts. They should also consider direct outsourcing - and in particular look to start creaming top music industry PRs into the literary sphere.

Can't make up my mind:

I want to say something about self-publishing and print-on-demand espresso machines, but I really can't make up my mind where to put them. My personal feeling is self-publishing is just a non-topic now - it's about how not whether it's acceptable. Espresso machines are tricky. I thought 9 months ago they were the saviour of the Long Tail. I still think they have a role to play, but I didn't realise just how quickly intelligent paper would progress.

And the "hot topics" that are just stone cold

I think Indie will be a buzzword in 2010 - bookstores and collectives in particular - but I also think these are battles that have been won already. There may even be people who tout niche as hot - it's not. It wasn't this year when I was talking about it. It certainly won't be next year. Collective likewise. I'm afraid anyone who is going to succeed with any of these has already started.

PLAY THE GAME AT HOME by ticking them off one at a time as they headline - or rather, watch as the bingo card stays blank. Happy predicting :-)

Publishing's in BIG TROUBLE

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.