Future of Garden Publishing – and then there were two

At the recent garden writers conference, there was a lot of information presented about the future of publishing but the major “event” happened when a small group of folks listened to publisher Roger Waynick talk about the future of his company (along with numbers and fiscal reports) and his conclusions about looking at his future.

His bottom line was that when all is said and done – the effects of technology will ensure that there are two players in the field – those creating the information (creatives) and those consuming it. All the other players will be supporting them – or they won’t be part of the equation.

I’m not going to buy into the disappearance of everybody except creatives and consumers. Frankly, my sense of most creatives is that there’s a heck of a lot of hand-holding needed to bring that creative-product to market. Not everyone is going to take on the Net and create their own independent market. At least not in the next 5-10 years – after that all bets are off.

So this is the 5-10 year “future”.

Who is going to survive?

Well, we can start with those people producing good creative content and those consuming it. That seems to be a given.

But we also require some support systems. We’re going to require designers, editors and technology folks to support the creation of material. I”m not saying those folks will be doing this in a traditional way or that those roles won’t blur but I am saying that most of the creatives I know could care less about learning and solving tech-issues. (this will change as the tech-savvy writers emerge from a new generation of creatives)

We also require a distribution channel. There will always be those going it alone and those who use a central distribution channel.

Amazon, despite the concerns expressed at the session, should do quite nicely to distribute information. The review system it has in place where even the reviews are ranked/reviewed clearly demonstrate it is becoming the online-place to shop – to get reviews about what’s good and what’s not. You can argue about the value and cost of this distribution channel but it works and creatives will find higher rates for their electronic products sold through these channels than through dead-tree traditional publishers (35% versus 3-10%) Other large bookstore chains are right behind Amazon in creating channels and the fight for e-pub software standards is in full battle-mode (a la Beta and VHS).

If your product or book isn’t in a major distribution channel, then you’re going to require your own sales channel. So develop your channel or participate in one would be the advice to creatives. In my case, I intend to do both with the main emphasis on my own channel that I control rather than on yet another reliance on yet another distribution company. My reliance on outside distribution channels is disappearing quickly as my own channels increase in size – there will come a point in the very near future when I’ll make more money doing it myself than I ever would with a traditional channel. I will take advantage of online-distribution channels to extend my reach.

I believe there is a role for editorial judgment in this process and while Amazon has that review process in place, I suspect there is a role for specialized reviews and recommendations by genre. We see this happening now as some of us sport sidebar widgets from Alltop that’s essentially creating an editorial or “transom” effect of what’s good and what’s not-as-good. I suspect there will be others put into play. No, I know there will be others put into play given the nature of the Net and the nature of editors and other creatives.

Bottom line on that thought (right now anyway)? The two essential players (those creating and those consuming) are a given. All others have to bring value to the system to survive in a changing world. The question is what they decide to bring that’s of value to either or both of the two essential groups.

And the question for creatives is whether they develop their own distribution channels and branding or whether they rely on somebody else’ channel and branding.

Having just done two major seminars/confernces in the last two weeks, you can imagine my head is spinning with information and differing viewpoints.

And sorting it all out though starts with one simple question. What do my readers want?

And that my friends has been the core of what I’ve been doing online since 1995 in one form or other. I ask my readers what they want – then I deliver it. No amount of planning or thinking about the future of publishing will ever replace this simple exercise.

It’s that simple for me.

For you?