(image courtesy of We Made This)
Jason Epstein had an article in The New York Times Book Review yesterday titled "Publishing: The Revolutionary Future." Now, normally when I share an article of such a topic by a member of the New York publishing fraternity I ridicule their ideas and call them old geezers. Not this time. I actually think Epstein shares a very level-headed view of the past, present, and future of publishing and media in general. He talks about Gutenberg, printing and backlist shifts in the 1980s and 1990s, of the current expansion of e-books, protections for authors, and of course offers his predictions for the future (though he states them as if he were a soothsayer).
Pretty cool stuff, even if he is an old geezer...
"With the earth trembling beneath them, it is no wonder that publishers with one foot in the crumbling past and the other seeking solid ground in an uncertain future hesitate to seize the opportunity that digitization offers them to restore, expand, and promote their backlists to a decentralized, worldwide marketplace. New technologies, however, do not await permission. They are, to use Schumpeter's overused term, disruptive, as nonnegotiable as earthquakes."
And later...
"The huge, worldwide market for digital content, however, is not a fantasy. It will be very large, very diverse, and very surprising: its cultural impact cannot be imagined. E-books will be a significant factor in this uncertain future, but actual books printed and bound will continue to be the irreplaceable repository of our collective wisdom."
And just for funsies, here's a short clip from a BBC documentary featuring Stephen Fry about the Gutenberg Press:
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