Issue 49 - September 2010
Editorial Intro - Matt Nicholson
Our next issue is our 50th, and we will be celebrating that fact with articles that look back at the products and innovations that really made a difference over the past 50 issues (which take us back to the start of this millenium); and forwards to speculate on what might be in store for us over the next 50 issues (taking us up to 2023). We are asking for your help with this (see page 7 for details), but in the meantime it got me thinking about two such innovations: one which transformed the print industry back in the 1980s; and another which could be transforming the book industry right now.
The first I experienced first-hand. Nowadays, virtually all printed material is designed and laid out using desktop publishing software: the publisher, who can be an individual with a laptop, delivers a set of PDFs to the printer, who turns it into a publication professional enough to grace even the most select of coffee tables. However it wasn't always like that. When I first entered publishing, typewritten copy and any accompanying photos and drawings had to be sent to the typesetter, a separate company that turned them first into galleys and then into film that could be sent to the printer. The whole process took around three days.
But the typesetter's days were numbered. In 1986, a new device appeared in our art department: an Apple Mac Plus running first Aldus PageMaker and then QuarkXPress. Within just a few years printers were able to to print directly from our floppy disks, and those three days disappeared from our schedules. Some typesetting companies survived by turning themselves into specialist design houses; others simply went bankrupt.
The device that concerns me now, in 2010, is the new Kindle from Amazon. So far books have resisted this modern age, with most of us sticking to the old-fashioned paper and ink variety. However the Kindle does offer an increasingly attractive alternative at an increasingly attractive price.
My understanding is that the Kindle itself is fairly open, able to read and display a wide variety of formats. However the ease with which you can browse, buy and download from the Amazon e-bookstore effectively turns the book publishing world on its head, and gives Amazon an inordinate amount of power. At the time of writing the Kindle had sold out, and with Amazon boasting an 'e-bookstore' of more than 415,000 titles, downloadable from almost anywhere in the world, it has an unbeatable head start. Then there is Amazon's Digital Text Platform, ready and waiting to publish your book directly to the Amazon Kindle Store.
Existing publishers (and authors, libraries and bookshops) are going to have to adapt to this new world, and quickly. I hope they do so, as without them we are left with a monopoly, and that would not be good for the industry - or indeed for society.
|