Archive for September 29th, 2009:

Humans seem to be attracted to visions of great change, whether social, religious, or economic, especially during periods of instability. Publishing is not immune. With people reading fewer books and spending more time on the Internet, and with paper books, long the preferred container of long narratives, beginning to give ground to ebooks, there is a lot of speculation about what is going to happen to publishing.

Among the most interesting publishing visionaries today is Richard Nash, formerly editorial director of Soft Skull Press. Nash is one of many people who think traditional publishing is broken and needs to be replaced by the new tools and social habits of the twenty-first century. In Nash’s view publishing has to stop selling books as objects (wholly opposite to the current fetish of the object in literary publishing) and consider a different way to get writers and readers together, especially on the Internet.

Nash outlines that different way in a recent Publishers Weekly article. According to Nash, except for the 500 best-selling books, which will be published on the Hollywood blockbuster model, the future of publishing will be based on niche social communities. Reflecting this vision, Nash is starting a new publishing venture, Cursor, which will contain a “portfolio” of online membership communities to which people can subscribe. The first two will be Red Lemonade, a “pop-lit-alt-cult operation,” and charmQuark, a “sci-fi/fantasy community.” Nash explains these communities in Publishers Weekly.

Each community will have a publishing imprint, which will make money from authors’ books, sold as digital downloads, conventional print and limited artisanal editions—and will offer authors all the benefits of a digital platform: faster time to market, faster accounting cycles, faster payments to authors. But the greatest opportunity is in the community itself. Each will have tiers of membership, including paid memberships that will offer exclusive access to tools and services, such as rich text editors for members to upload their own writing, peer-to-peer writing groups, recommendation engines, access to established authors online and in person, and editorial or marketing assistance. Members can get both peer-based feedback and professional feedback.

Nash is looking for investors, so we’ll have to wait a while to see Cursor in action.

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