Understanding The Singularity

One of the greatest benefits of earning a living from writing is that you are constantly stumbling across new things and people from worlds you had no idea existed.

In the course of writing "The Change Agent - How to Create a Wonderful World", the story of futurologist James Martin, I was introduced to the concept of "The Singularity" - the name given to the fast-approaching moment when the powers of technology and artificial intelligence will come together to overtake the powers of the human brain.

All who work in publishing should be deeply interested in The Singularity and its inevitable ramifications on everything to do with knowledge, learning, writing and reading because soon the shiny IPads and Kindles we were all given for Christmas will seem as primitive as words engraved on stone.

A guy who goes by the name of Socrates is providing a website which does a good job of explaining at least some of what is going on - http://www.singularityweblog.com/ - have a look around it and see what you think. The revolution is upon us.

A Golden Age for Writers

Stephen Covey has shown us what the future might hold for writers.

If there is one thing that everyone in the publishing world can agree on amidst the current chaos, it is that everything is about to change. Insecurity is all around us as the big players all try to work out how the business is going to develop; are e-books finally going to take over the world? Will Kindles and the rest soon be as ubiquitous as mobile phones and laptops? And, if so, who the hell owns the rights to what?

As all the big corporations rush to their lawyers, it may be that this is about to become a golden age for those of us who have remained hungry and nimble and are used to living by our wits.

It is beginning to look as if in the long run none of these changes should trouble writers too much. We are used to insecurity. We are used to never knowing if we are going to be able to sell our work. We are used to not knowing how much we will be paid for it or when that money will ever actually arrive. We have never had regular salaries or pensions or subsidised canteens to lull us into a false sense of security. We have always known just how much of a jungle it is out there.

We have always been forced to accept that we have little or no control over our careers or our work, that we have to write as much and as well as we can and then basically hope for the best. We are used to being promised the Earth and then somehow not quite getting it.

We are also familiar with the exhilaration of a sudden triumph; a book that tops the charts, sells all over the world, creates a buzz and brings unexpected amounts of money pouring in. We know that those moments, and the dreams we have of those moments, make all the struggles and uncertainties worthwhile.

In this new age of e-books, self-publishing and print-on-demand, it is beginning to look as if we won’t necessarily have to rely on the patronage of publishers to help us reach our readers.

The writing life will still be a struggle, as it has always been, but it may just be that we are going to have more control over our destinies in the coming years than we have ever had in the past. It is possible that we will soon be actively choosing who we want to hire to edit us, design our covers and help us to market our wares.

Is it possible that we are about to enter a Golden Age for writers?

The Future of Books as Big Events

The big fear in the publishing world seems to be that books will go the same way as CD’s, rendered redundant by the wonders of the Internet. But maybe books will survive and prosper in the same way as blockbuster movies and pop concerts have.

Movies that you have to travel to and then pay to see should have been put out of business by television, by the DVD and by downloading, but still people flock to the multiplexes for the big screens and the social experience. Live pop concerts should have been destroyed by CD's and Ipods, but actually they have been fed by them instead. CD’s were just a way to listen to music, whereas books, like movies, live theatre and music, are much loved and user-friendly products in themselves.

That’s not to say that technology shouldn’t be changing the whole way we think of books, many of which do not need to be published in the traditional way. Business books, for instance, and topical academic works are often served much better by the convenience and speed of the computer download, (and the Kindle and the Sony Reader et al will take the concept to the next stage).

Peter James, now one of the world’s most successful thriller writers, has been predicting such things for at least twenty years and is finally being proved to have been both right and ahead of his time. His own enormous successes in the traditional publishing formats however, demonstrate that the book is still a long way from being dead.

What I believe the developments show us is that we have actually been publishing books the wrong way round, starting with the hardback format and then, if that is successful, republishing in ever-cheaper paperback versions. What if we turned the whole process on its head?

Imagine a writer has created a 70,000-word piece of work. We start by circulating it on the Internet, maybe doing some print-on-demand to test the market and build word of mouth. Maybe it will get no further, in which case it probably wouldn’t have worked as a book either, but at least trees will have been spared in the new process. If it does well, however, and shows that it has a potential market, it could then be published in paperback for a wider market.

If the paperback proves successful then beautifully designed, hardback souvenir editions could be produced as gift items and to be treasured on bookshelves for future generations. Hardback books would then be the equivalent of the great pop concerts that cater to demands that have initially been fed with downloaded tracks, videos on MTV, CD’s and all the rest.

There would still be exceptions like sure-fire hits, (a new Harry Potter for instance or a lushly illustrated companion to a popular television cookery programme), but I believe the vast majority of books would suit this route to market. It is as ridiculous to put a first time, unknown novelist straight into a glossy hardback, as it would be to book an unknown band into the O2 Centre.