The Future of Publishing - A Veteran's Perspective

• Pages: 14-16

DECEMBER 2011

14

1 Random House is

the largest English-

language general

trade book publisher

in the world. In 1998

its ownership passed

to the German private

media corporation

Bertelsmann.

THE FUTURE

OF PUBLISHING –

A VETERAN’S

PERSPECTIVE

law. The 500-year-old Gutenberg system, with its

physical inventories, costly warehouses and xed

retail locations, is being replaced by a radically

decentralized, digital world market served by a vir-

tually unlimited and largely unltered, multilingual

and rapidly expanding digital inventory, stored and

delivered at virtually no cost and which can be

downloaded with the click of a mouse practically

anywhere on earth.

In the digital future, anyone, anywhere, can be

a published writer, and anyone can become a

publisher. The traditional lters – agents, editors,

reviewers – will continue to identify talent, for this

is a function of human nature. However, even the

great, undierentiated mass of content made pos-

sible by digitization requires protection, for who

knows in advance when other Shakespeares will

emerge from the digital chaos?

Tomorrow’s publishers will be very dierent from

today’s multinational conglomerates with their

many imprints, costly and time-sensitive physi-

cal inventories, layer upon layer of management,

costly midtown premises and, in the United States,

a shrinking retail marketplace. Today, an edited

manuscript ready for production is assigned a

place on a publisher’s production schedule whose

stages – copy editing, design, legal vetting, galley

proofs, galley corrections, market planning (includ-

ing publicity arrangements, manufacturing, ship-

ping and so on) – will consume months before the

book is nally put on sale. In the digital future these

functions will be eliminated or compressed so that

most content will be posted online for instantane-

ous worldwide distribution and evaluation within

days of completion.

What I know about copyright is only what I needed

to know as Editorial Director of Random House. Of

one thing I was sure: our industry and the writers

on whom we depended, and the culture which

they helped create, could not have survived with-

out eective copyright. Writers must eat. Without

well-fed writers contributing over millennia to

human knowledge, we would know practically

nothing about who we are, where we came from

and where we may be going. Of ideas, the great

J.M. Keynes said “the world is ruled by little else.”

The onrushing digital future, a radical departure

from the 500-year-old Gutenberg system, while a

blessing to readers and writers, presents a complex

challenge to copyright theorists not only to con-

trive new systems of protection but new means

of policing.

Gutenberg’s press mechanized copying and made

copyright necessary. Digitization makes copying

instantaneous and viral, and renders existing laws

obsolete. I leave it to experts to nd a solution and

hope they succeed, for – to put it bluntly – they

must.

Our civilization has been enriched, preserved, inter-

preted and handed down to us mainly by writers.

Our future too is in their hands. Copyright is the

sine qua non

of their survival. Without it, writers

cannot aord to write, and how then shall we learn

who we are?

The publishing industry... is in the early stages of a

radical transformation that will render all traditional

functions, procedures and infrastructure techno-

logically obsolete, including traditional copyright

Earlier this year, the acclaimed publisher Jason Epstein participated in the WIPO High Level Dialogue on

the Book and Publishing Industry. He shared his views about the future of publishing, and the need to

ne-tune copyright law to the demands of the digital environment. Throughout a distinguished career

spanning 50 years, Mr. Epstein’s foresight and entrepreneurial air have helped push forward the frontiers

of publishing. In addition to serving as Editorial Director of Random House

1

for 40 years, he co-founded

the New York Review of Books, launched the paperback revolution with the creation of Anchor Books, and

was a founder of the Library of America and the Reader’s Catalogue, the precursor to online bookselling.

The following are excerpts of his remarks at the WIPO event.