Uncategorized

Ian Rogers On Publishing, Trusted Sources & Connecting Content With Audience


image from www.google.com This guest post comes from Topspin CEO Ian Rogers who blogs at Fistfulayen.

I encourage you to spend some time with Cory Doctorow’s thoughtful piece from The Guardian re: the changing role of publishing in hopes it will cause you to consider what publishing really was, and what it might become. Cory mentions “publishing” as it was defined for him more than ten years ago:

Once in a while, someone will say something that’s so self-evidently true, and so unexpected, that you’ll spend the rest of your life working through its implications. For me, one such truth is “A publisher makes a work public, it connects a work and an audience”, and the person who said it is my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, senior editor at Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world.

He discusses how, because of the reality of the atom-based pre-digital world, “publishing” used to including “manufacturing” and “distributing” by default. The fact a book existed on the shelf meant it had passed through gatekeepers who thought enough of it to edit, print, and ship it somewhere. But, as Cory points out, while those were necessary steps, they were just part of what it means to connect a work to an audience.

In today’s world manufacturing and “distribution” can both happen without making any connection at all to an audience. I can easily upload a video to YouTube or a song I just made in iPad Garage Band (<3) to Soundcloud, but have I published it under the definition above? I’d argue no, the act of making something available no longer says anything about its likelihood to find an audience. It’s not until someone picks up that video or song and places it in the stream of consumer attention is it “published”.

I’ve been trying to pay attention to the path things take as they move from unknown to known. There are more “publishers” than ever and no longer do a few gatekeepers decide what can find any audience. That channels and technology now allow for the viral spread of content and ideas is undeniable. It’s not hard to think of videos which have gone from an inexpensive hand-held device straight into your home simply because a friend thought it was funny. But while content with exceptionally broad appeal may find a quick viral spike, there’s a difficult road for something more sublimely enjoyable, a piece of music which takes a nudge from a friend and a couple of listens to appreciate the depth and begin enjoying (my favorite kind). For those we need trusted sources, and I believe those trusted sources become increasingly important and influential as our number of options increases. In this way it feels as if those formerly thought of as critics or filters might become the true “publishers”, the ones who connect content with audience.

Funny, I’m about to hit “Publish” on this blog post in WordPress. Perhaps they need to change that verb. It isn’t until Feedburner drops this in your inbox or Hootsuite sends my scheduled tweet or you re-Tweet or post to your Facebook wall that it is actually connecting with an audience and therefore published, right?

Share on:

5 Comments

  1. Isn’t this more or less saying that “publishing” involves more than just “distribution”? Now that it has become increasingly easier to “distribute” anything digital via the internet, focus needs to be made on the “marketing” aspect of it, one of which is those who have an attentive audience.

  2. I don’t understand why people keep saying there are gatekeepers. Distribution has always been easy to get, even before the digital world.
    You don’t sign to a record company for distribution, but for marketing and promotion.
    I guess tech companies have their pitches.

  3. There is a significant difference between book publishers and music publishers today. At one point it could be argued that the labels went to Tin Pan Alley and begged for songs from publishers in a time when few artists wrote their own materials and so there were similarities and there was indeed a certain cache to having a name publisher. Today not so much.
    Today many publishers make their money from passively administrating copyrights and the more successful the artist (songwriter) the more likely a song of theirs will be sold. Publishers now use key word technology to sell tracks via computer searches, they act like vast libraries and charge a serious fee for keeping songs on the shelf. They are hardly the ones who connect any dots and the labels fail to connect the dots 90% of the time on the marketing side.
    With that said I have no idea what any of this has to do with actually marketing or connecting with an audience. Book publishers have marketing departments, music publishers claim to and labels certainly do, but to say a work is not published until it connects with an audience is to say a song is not a song until it sells or is heard by the public.
    Since when is art in any given generation judged by contemporary acceptance?
    I would argue that something may not be “successfully” published if it fails to reach its intended audience and remains unknown as you say, but it is still ‘published’ the instant it becomes available and that is the promise of the internet for artists,not the ever changing gate keepers, bloggers or online marketing platforms.

  4. Obviously you’ve never been signed to a major label or really understood the old model. It was all about gatekeepers and distribution. The labels were the only ones who had the finances and available distribution channels. It was like Google and advertising or search, they were the only ones playing big and who really mattered. So the only real way into a retail establishment(record store) or radio play or even performing in other states, countries, etc. was through the major label machine where their muscle was distribution.

Comments are closed.