Well the annual Book Expo Canada has been canceled, sending waves of shock throughout the Canadian Publishing industry. Books are in a transition period right now, some (OK, many) might even say that we are in the midst of a technological revolution…a cool 10 years behind the music industry.
Luckily, leaders and gurus decided to start up BookCamp Toronto, based on the success of BookCamp London, an informal meeting of the minds on Saturday, June 6th at the MaRS Centre right on College Street. BookCamp Toronto aims to discuss the “future of books, writing, publishing, and the book business in the digital age.” Awesome.
To be quite honest, I am excited that this “revolution” has finally kicked into high gear. Music industry execs of years gone by have gotten away with monopolizing the popular and contemporary music scene, hand-selecting certain artists, throwing huge advances and marketing/PR dollars at them, thereby shooting them to superstardom. It was a closed club with high barriers to entry, if you weren’t selected to become apart of it, shutting out many talented reps and especially musicians. Often times it was the musicians, both signed and not signed, who got the raw end of the deal as they had virtually no control over their careers which could end at the whim of a top-level exec (dare I mention Toni Braxton, The Clipse…) When the free music revolution gained momentum in the late ’90s, combined with the Social Media revolution of the 2000s, the big labels had to wake-up, and tear themselves away from their schmoozing and expense accounts to realize that all of these technological advances were changing the industry – and not to their advantage.
Nowadays, music artists are taking BACK the control of their careers partnering with digital music vendors (iTunes) and social media (MySpace) to promote themselves, connect with their fans and sell their music. Case in point, Lily Allen and Canadian singer Lights. With declining CD sales and an increasingly fragmented audience, the music industry IGNORED and fought the technology. And they lost. Big-time.
Why am I rambling on and on about music, you ask? Because there are so many parallels between the music industry and the publishing industry that publishing has a LOT to learn from the music terms of the implications of the digital age and the nature today’s modern readers. Fortunately, the publishing community as a whole seems to have recognized that there is no way to fight the technology, we must embrace it, work with it, and evolve with it in order to flourish. I think of the tens of thousands of dollars that publishing agencies spend sending reps out to these expos and trade shows, and considering the paper-thin margins that publishers are experiencing, combined with the on-coming digital movement and digital communication tools available, these costly events of any sort simply don’t make sense. They haven’t for a while – recession or no recession.
The foundation of BookCamp Toronto serves as a step in the right direction of brainstorming ways of looking at how the publishing industry can transition into this new digital era as smoothly as possible. I look forward to June 6th, and am excited to meet, share, discuss and debate the future of publishing.
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