publishing and beyond

In the year 2020, there will still be only three channels worth watching, the porn industry will be revolutionized by "Sarah Palin: Cougar Loose in Wasilla", and the big guys in publishing -- Macmillan, Random House, and the like -- will all be subsidiaries of Amazon. There will still be small, independent presses, but they will either grow ever smaller or stay right where they are in the big corporate scheme because competing with such behemoths would kill them. That's the nature of a successful corporation, for better or worse: Devour and conquer until you are an obscenely huge fish in a rapidly shrinking pond.

But don't worry, little villagers, all is not lost. In fact, it might be that, in the long run, the big guys are in deeper trouble than the indies. We could be at a new, exciting beginning.... if we want it.

New technologies like POD and e-books cry out to the small fries in publishing to carve out their own niches and thrive in them, consolidation be damned. Indie publishers have the opportunity to reap the ultimate Long Tail strategy: They can create the exact number of books they need on request, and live well of a relatively smaller but fiercely loyal customer base, one that last them well into the future.

With the advent of less wasteful, more financially prudent on-demand publishing virtually at our fingertips, it no longer makes sense to print books in bulk, most of which will rot in a warehouse at a horrendous expense. From the looks of things, the monster publishers either don't understand this or refuse to; their world will get smaller and smaller as the rest of us are freed to explore a brave new world that might well outlast them all.

A fool's hope, maybe, but one that keeps me going.