Hay Festival Dhaka
THE FUTURE OF PUBLISHING
Rosie Boycott and Shahidul Alam discuss the future of publishing. Photo: Prabir Das
William Sieghart, Photo: Prabir Das
“In the next few years we should expect to see major changes in how we think of books, publishing, marketing, reading and even writing,” with these thoughts from Diya Kar Hazra, Publisher of Bloomsbury India, began an interesting session at the Hay Festival 2013, about the much talked about future of publishing. “In the UK and US the rising e-book sales have caused a decline in print sales. Print editions of newspapers and magazines have been shutting down, Random House and Penguin have merged to form a company that controls a quarter of the world's book publishing, and self publishing companies are offering a one stop solution to writers in publishing and marketing their books. These changes have been happening so rapidly that we have no idea what the future has in store for us.”
With such changes upon us, how is Bangladesh coping asks Hazra, to Shahidul Alam, world renowned photographer and writer. “I think publishing itself is at a very exciting stage,” opines Alam. “Its largely old school, certainly here, we introduced email in the early 90's so we could see what the future might lead to,” he explains. “At this time we are about to engage in major workshops on e-publishing, because that is the space one needs to go to. I think some of the differences have also got to do with cultural practices, here for instance as soon as a book comes out, you see cloned copies of it on all the streets for a fraction of its actual price, so the conventional economic models that work elsewhere don't work here to the same extent.”
For Alam it is more about what publishing offers to the public which is very thrilling. “With devices such as an I pad or a computer you can access any book written,” he says, “This redefines the role of the publisher, the editor, the author and the reader and that role is a very exciting space that we haven' really engaged with in this country. One of the ways in which we have read books is very personal, you curl up in a corner, you tuck away somewhere and you read a book, but now, the experience of reading can be far more public, good or bad and that opens up many interesting possibilities and I think, the user is no longer a passive recipient of what someone has published,” he continues, “I think it's a very different space where the user not only engages, but actually contributes in some way to the publishing procedure. Within Bangladesh there's a lot more publishing going on, but the reality is publishing itself is difficult to keep alive, here is one of the few regions where newspapers still thrive and are increasing their circulation, whereas in the rest of the world its going down. At one stage for me what is very important is that writers are able to make a living from their writing, and unless we find an economic model that allows that, this cannot exist, it is bound to come to a grinding halt.”
Rosie Boycott, editor of the Independent on Sunday, writer and broadcaster, on the other hand, believes that printed books will survive, but in smaller quantities. “We're in the middle of a revolution but at the end of the day I think people want the same things. They want the stories, and they want news and they want to know what's going on,” opines Boycott. “I think this makes the role of the editor increasingly more important. I do think its important that people make a living and that is one of the crux's we are at during this time,” she explains.
“Newspapers in the UK are not doing so well and a publication like the Guardian that would make money from advertising, through their supplements are no longer doing so because all their stuff has gone online. The Guardian I have been told has probably five years more of cash reserves. They probably more than any other publication in the world, have invested very heavily in an online product, they have millions of daily readers who rely on the skill and expertise, of journalism that's there online, and they pay nothing and they have decided they will make their online content free,” Boycott informs us. “The Sundays Times however among others have erected something called the pay wall and you pay 52 pounds a year and access the same stories and get extras. What's happening is that there are lots of different models going around. I have a friend whose sons have started a Youtube channel and they now have four million dedicated viewers/hits. They are great for the money and the old dinosaurs look at that and think ok how can we get access to some of that so we can keep doing what we want to do. At the end of the day all of us value good investigative journalism that the world needs and it's got to be paid for,” she emphasizes.
But all said and done, will people be willing to pay for content that they can get for free?
“A few years ago publishers were terrified that books would become obsolete, bookshops would disappear, books would be circulated for free and the publishing industry would be out of business,” says William Sieghart, publisher, author and regular broadcaster as well as founder and chairman of Forward Thinking, a London based NGO. “But that has not happened, to the great relief of authors, publishers and libraries, but we're still in the middle of a revolution, and we are not quite sure what the model is going to be. There is a music site known as Spottify, and the model here is that you pay a certain amount per month and you get musical choices, and I think that model may well develop with books as well. The publishers may agree to conglomerate or aggregate and for a certain amount of money per month, people may be able to access every book ever written,” he muses.
“It's unclear, but we are in the middle of something but certainly, you can look at this revolution as a challenge or an opportunity, and there are plenty of publishers who see it as a wonderful opportunity,” says Boycott. “A lot of publishers are making money out of this revolution. The sale of e-books is promoted just like printed books etc.” What is interesting is that according to Sieghart, people want e-books in certain genres but not in others. “For instance, sci-fi, crime, romance are big sellers for publishers, over in Europe and the US, but for high literature, not so much,” he tells us. “I think if it's a book you want to read over again, hand to others, something you treasure, you don't want it just to be in the digital form. So it's not straightforward, what's going to go in what direction. I think we will develop models which will work, and I imagine pay walls for the news will work.”
The panellists all agreed that this revolution, wherever it may land us, will be exciting and fun. It will make the readers more conscious, aware and savvy and at the end of the day more empowered. “The human appetite for stories, story tellers, the news etc, will remain the same, that human instinct will never change, it's just the question of the packaging,” says Boycott in conclusion.
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