Our Job

In class we are continuously talking about the future of the industry. The vast majority of us want to one day work with the printed word, be it in book, newspaper, magazine, or web formatting. It’s only natural that we are so highly invested in what happens to publishing. Not only are we interested in pursuing this as a career path, but it also involves some of the things we love the most. Books! Most, if not all, of us live to read and can’t fathom a world where books aren’t ubiquitous and freely/cheaply available. And our generation, consumers of these products of publishing and educated about the system itself, will one day hold the positions of power that make decisions about the future of books.

Class guest and entrepreneur Michael Sherrod said some really interesting things when we were interviewing him. One of these was that we have to think beyond what we know to what is new and innovative, but we can’t present the general public with a concept or product that they aren’t ready for yet. He had this issue with AOL’s social media component. It was the most trafficked part of the entire website (attracting 90% of page visitors) but it was only available to users who owned a computer, had internet access, and had paid AOL to get behind their paywall. That was enough for AOL to turn a profit, but it wasn’t enough to mean immediate success if expanded. So Sherrod’s idea of advertising on this social website (one of the very first) wouldn’t have worked unless AOL was willing to take a huge risk and open the unregulated site to those who weren’t behind the paywall. Sherrod wasn’t able to sell his idea to AOL executives anyway! They wouldn’t listen to him, stuck in their old, traditional ways of doing things that always worked and so couldn’t see the potential right before their faces.

Knowing that we will be creating the business of words in the future, in some form or fashion, we can take a lot of valuable lessons from Sherrod’s experience. First, we can’t be like the jaded AOL executives. We have to let go of some of our traditional ways of thinking about the publishing industry or we will be bypassed by something fresher, newer, and way more exciting, leaving us a deteriorating relic of what once was. Gomez said it in Print is Dead: we cannot be complacent in success, and we cannot just fall back on solutions from the past.

There is a reason why books published today don’t read like any of Shakespeare’s plays or Dumas’ epic adventures. Those styles wouldn’t be relatable to where the world is today. The content details (although story arcs are story arcs however you slice them), style of writing, formatting, marketing strategy, and basically everything else has radically changed in the past few centuries. We can still read and enjoy classics of the past because we know that they are classics of the past. We know that when we finish reading we will slide the volume back onto our bookshelf (or send it back to our virtual bookshelf) right next to a Harry Potter or John Green or Markus Zusak or Barbara Kingsolver or whoever else novel. Editors have kept an eye to culture and demand; it’s time the entire publishing company did that as well. Editors are already (and need to amp up the creativity and innovation) interested in what the general public wants to read and how they want to read it. Designers need to focus on how people want to consume a product. Marketing experts need to look at what people are craving, getting into the things people don’t even know that they want yet. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to get the buyers and consumers and readers of words involved. Doritos has a really successful product because they do just this--fans can submit their own potential Superbowl commercials and suggest new products. What if books were the same way? Let us ask the people what they want, use our liberal arts molded brains to analyze and synthesize those responses to come up with what people want. This is how to ensure the publishing industry stays alive and strong for years to come.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is something to be said for catering to hard core book fans who don’t want change. I feel confident that this marketing and publishing target will continue; we will still be able to buy the paper books and crack spines and read traditionally presented text. But we are among the remnant few who would be reading anyway. Most of the ideas I am suggesting, in terms of positive changes for publishing, are simply ways to keep the public reading after they have graduated high school or college and to entice new generations to grow up reading and loving books, occasionally putting down their video games to pick up a book. Whatever a book might look and act like in the future, anyway.

Listening to what people actually want, will buy, and read will require a lot of work and constant evolving for the industry. I think we are past a stage where we can have an innovation last a century or more. The world is changing at a much faster rate than it used to, and so must the publishing industry.

We have to think outside of the box. And thank goodness we (our class and the many classes like it around the world) truly love books. Exposure to books, past and present, expands our repertoire of knowledge, innovation, and imagination. Reading the words and ideas of others helps us generate words and ideas of our own. Passion breeds sustainability.