Readers Rule

Nearly five months have flown by since I’ve posted here. That is too long.

I have been preoccupied with work, including launching the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability at Pitzer College, hiring and integrating some fabulous new staff at the College, developing new initiatives including 50th Anniversary apparel, developing blogs for others, and producing marketing, advertising, promotions, and publicity for a variety of initiatives. For my own work, I’ve been producing new photography and developing distribution and writing. I am rewriting a novel for publication later this year.

It is notable how comprehensively the publishing industry and its business model have been transformed over the last 2-3 years. Blind submissions over the transom, the slush pile, weeks and months of waiting for agent and publisher responses to proposals, draconian publishing contracts, inventive royalty reporting… these fixed assets of the previous model have been supplanted by new energy, opportunity and visions for ways to connect with readers. Readers rule.

Writers who have stories to share can develop pathways to readers and, if their work interests them, if it engages on some level, a relationship begins. And if the writer has the energy, determination and persistence to develop more stories, and is open to learning and perfecting his or her craft, then s/he can offer another story, and maybe get a second date, and a third, and perhaps become a couple. How great is that?

Please check out some of the new work — and older titles you didn’t get an opportunity to read previously — coming online at:  Barnes & Noble     iBooks     Amazon Kindle

And, if you’re open to our getting to know each other better, check out my novel SAINT at:

Let me know what you think. Would you like to see what adventure Dr. Andrew Shepard is on now?

 

 

Publishers Are Recovering

. . . While All About Them Are Losing Their Heads

Forget the myths: television did not doom the Hollywood blockbuster; video did not kill the radio star; the Internet is not ending the prime-time sitcom; and e-books will not shutter the publishing industry.

According to the recently released comprehensive survey, BookStats, the publishing industry expanded over the last three years while housing, autos, banking, the television networks, and our political institutions faltered.

Each industry adapted, some more successfully than others. Darwin’s theory of Evolution pertains. The weakest properties, channels, and business models have suffered, some to extinction — remember Microsoft BOB (1995)? Yet, good ideas took root. Smart, passionate innovators made them better with positive results. New media are multiplying audiences. Case in point: digital e-Readers.

Partly as a result of the sizzling pace of improvement of digital book devices and software, the e-book has rescued publishers, at least those able to perceive that consumer needs were changing and they could either adapt or find another line of work.  Unlike the recording industry’s resistance to home cassette recording and then Internet music sharing, the publishing industry saw the writing on the screen and a few publishers recalibrated their attitude and business model.

“We’re seeing a resurgence, and we’re seeing it across all markets — trade, academic, professional,” says Tina Jordan, vice president of the Association of American Publishers. “In each category we’re seeing growth.”

The Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group collaborated on the report, collecting data from 1,963 publishers the trade, K-12 school, higher education, professional and scholarly categories.

For the entire article in the New York Times, see  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/books/survey-shows-publishing-expanded-since-2008.html.