The Publishing iPocalypse

The prophets have spoken: a literary apocalypse is on its way. Garrison Keillor says, “Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.” Environmental writer Dave Gessner sees the future as a Terminator-like dystopia, complete with robots called Nielsen Bookscan and The Kindle and Google Books. Gessner also drew this illustration:

In the foreground, in a cave, is the wretched scribbler, looking slightly the worse for wear. The bones of other wretched scribblers are strewn in the field and buried under the last of the live oaks. One poor reader, paperback in hand, is writhing in the grip of what I imagine to be a modified iPad.

We appreciate the nostalgia that writers hold for their imagined past (Keillor is the acknowledged master of the good old days). But we see a different future for the world’s scribblers, wretched and otherwise. Because we believe, first, that the “apocalypse” is already upon us. And, second, that it’s opening up a brave new world of opportunity for writers and artists of all breeds.

Let the collaborations begin.

So far we’ve written about collaboration primarily in terms of the writing process. But what we see in the digital future is a world where the interface between the written word and other media, like pictures, like sound, and like video, disappears. When that happens, books will by necessity become the collaborative product of a team of cinematographers and app developers, animators and writers.

The result? A new breed of books that is a little bit more like A Prairie Home Companion, which combines prose, poetry, and music, and is currently streamed online. Or like Dave Gessner’s blog, which incorporates multiple authors, audience participation, and smoothly integrated illustrations.

We’ll keep you posted as we begin developing some of our own media enriched digital book projects. Meanwhile, for our next blog cycle, we will be writing about the places where we see writers using new media to their collaborative advantage. We think it’s time to move beyond the doomsday vision of a literary wasteland. Remember, the first brave new world wasn’t a dystopia at all. It was Shakespeare’s Miranda, looking beyond her isolated island for the first time. “How beauteous mankind is!” she cries. “O brave new world, that has such people in’t!”