That was the question I posed in 1993.
I want to set the stage for my discussions on digital publishing today by first telling you what I was thinking then. Others were thinking about it too, of course, and more cleverly and in more detail than I, but this is my starting point.
In the same note which produced Knowledge Central, which has now morphed into Project SQUAWK, I wrote the following and I’ve put in some paragraph breaks which got lost along the way.
It was written in January of 1993 and appeared with edits in the on-line only October edition of the ASCII text-magazine Grist Online #1.
Section 4.0: Why should print publishing inherit electronic publishing?
I hope that by now you should be able to see the answer – there is no overriding reason at all. Print publishing has the potential to inherit electronic publishing but so does the PC software industry and that industry is moving faster than a speeding bullet while the print publishing industry is sitting on its hands.
What the print publishing has which the PC software industry lacks is content. Just like fossil fuels the copyrights that the print publishing holds are, potentially, only a one-time resource. For example – Microsoft Publishing approaches Mr. S. King (or in fact his agent) and says “we would like you to do your next novel on CD- ROM. We will give you the best editors money can buy (and believe us we have lots of money), more money per copy so that your take will be larger than if you went into the printed word, even if the total sales are smaller. We will even coordinate the release of this work onto many other different platforms – Franklin, CD-I and so on. And you can include pictures and scary noises. And if you want to release it in hardcover in six months go ahead.” What is Mr. King going to say? And what will he say in five years when the technology is even further advanced? And what will all the other authors have to say?
Currently the print publishing industry has access to content and good editing/preparation skills and a distribution system. The giants have money, the others none. I predict that the current crop of electronic publishers will work with print publishers on licensing deals until they understand the acquisition of content and then that will be it. And lets not forget that an individual can release a work to millions of people for next to nothing. Print publishers MUST learn how to publish electronically – how to create the physical object and distribute it. Or they will eventually bear as much relationship to the publishing business as hand-letter presses do to the publishing world today. They have a slight advantage now (if they can hold onto them and it is not at all clear that they can) and that is their intellectual property rights. I agree entirely with those who say that printed publishing will never entirely disappear – this point of view misses the point. Printed publishing will gradually become just a tiny piece of the publishing industry.
— from Thoughts on electronic publishing – Janurary 1993, published with edits in on-line only ASCII text magazine Grist Online #1, ed. John Fowler, October 1993 as Electronic Publishing: What is it and why does it mean Choice?
So there we are. That’s my starting point.
Now, I was talking about print publishers releasing a digitally-prepared file in a physical packet, like Kindle does now, so I missed the boat on the possibility of online-delivery. I did however manage to catch myself by the time the note was published, since, between the writing of it (January) and the publishing of it (October), a certain “Mr. S. King” did, in fact, get into the act.
I added a section 2.1.4 to the published version of the note:
2.1.4 On-line delivery services
The latest Steve King short-story was available only from the online Internet bookstore for two weeks prior to its publication in paper. Viking, his publisher, intended it as an advertising gimmick but it’s dangerous for them. If Mr. King makes money from the online downloading service he has got to be thinking that maybe for some work he won’t go through his publisher for at all – he’ll just cut a deal with the online bookstore directly…
It’s interesting to see so many ingredients being thrown into the pot. I only wish we had been able to move a little faster.
