NBC as Win XP: The platforming of books
If you want to know why book sales in the States aren’t growing as quickly as they should, one big reason could be publishers’ infatuation with predictability. Nowdays it isn’t enough to write a good book to enjoy really serious attention from major publishers. You must have a “platform”–for example, your own TV show or a business with an army of PR flunkies. A Washington Post article offers NBC interviewer Tim Russert as an example of the platforming of U.S. publishing.
The TeleRead take: Via a TeleRead-style distribution system, books could be easily and legally shared by readers. What’s more, librarians would matter more; marketers, less. Publishers and the rest of society could consider books more on their merits and less on the basis of the authors’ PR connections. Word of mouth has always been one way for good books to find an audience. Now imagine the power of being able to pass on whole books in a flash, so your friends can immediately grasp why you’re so enthusiastic about particular titles. Ideally, other countries will avoid the mistakes of U.S. publishers and build publishing industries–especially the electronic variety–around more appropriate business models for the Napster generation. TeleRead could help, not hurt, good publishers.
The bottom line here? Books should rely less on the whims of the news and publicity industries. Of course, this is an old problem in a new incarnation. Witness all the difficulties that Upton Sinclair had with the trendies of his time, especially those with corporate connections. Although Sinclair found many thousands of readers in his heyday, it was often in spite of, rather than because of, big media.
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