Wednesday, March 18, 2009

`The Publishing World According To Karen

I look at the publishing industry and simply watch its inevitable decline. My generation was born in the middle of the digital revolution, allowing us to embrace the technology without giving the immense changes a second thought.

For forty, fifty and sixty-something-year-olds who have watched the change towards the digital and information revolution unfold have a very different sentiment toward the recent changes in the publishing world. My peers and I can only watch the subtle but steady collapse of the industry, not truly understanding it, while our parents live the change everyday. 

Last night, I met up with a friend who was visiting town for a few days. Karen Escalona, an accomplished journalist and striving literary writer, has been a part of the industry since she left Julliard in the late 60s to purse another passion: writing. Once our catch-up conversation died down a bit, I decided to tae the plunge and ask Karen her thoughts about the continual decline of the publishing industry.. Ass so as the question was in the open, she hesitated for a moment, aced her cup of tea on the bar top before raising her heard and said: "Let me tell you a story about my neighbor, Roberta">

Roberta Valvarez* was a beat reporter at the Miami Herald for over fifteen years before coming a syndicated columnist in 1992. She is a veteran of the newspaper industry, having been an active journalist for over thirty years. Her bilingual skills allow Roberta to do two jobs for the price of one employee. She writes for both the Miami Herald and the Nuevo Herald- the paper's Spanish edition. Roberta first noticed the industry changes when other publications began paying the Herald for the rights to publish her column in their newspaper. This change was quiet and did not affect anyone else's job, but Roberta never saw an extra dollar for these additional publications.

The first officially market shift in the newspaper industry took place five years ago. The Miami Herald began to downsize, the known and feared first sign of trouble in the workforce. Now, the Herald was in the "red"- the industry's term for a substantial loss in revenue. The Herald's advertisements were not accumulating enough revenue, so in its bleak effort to compensate for the loss in profit, it began replacing article space with advertisements. But the Herald has such a large financial obligation that its marketing strategy could not save it from the quicksand of debt, leaving the newspaper with no other chose but to sell its rights to Knight Ridder.

The second marked industry change occurred exactly five years preceding the first, as if the timing was planned. Instead of The Change taking shape in the form of downsizing, the newspaper was giving itself a "makeover", complete with a new boss and the dismissal of reporters. To encourage the leave of certain employees, the paper supplemented the resign with a large financial package. The strategy was to dismiss those who could not take on more responsibilities, thus leaving the remaining employees with double- or triple- the workload.

Roberta Valvarez was considered an employee of value. After working her way up to an accomplished syndicated columnist of the paper's most popular column, Roberta was forced to take on beat journalism in addition to her current work, the entry-level position she long abandoned. Once again, Roberta did not see an extra dollar for her time.

Like so many writers in Roberta's position, she cannot afford to abandon her job and career. Widowed as a young mother of five, she still has children to send to college and a standard of life to uphold. Roberta compared the Herald's situation to walking through a morgue. Everyone is digging their own graves, waiting, waiting, for their turn to come.

Stay Tuned! As I find out more about the story, I'll post what happens next.

*name changed

The Publishing World According To Karen

Write for TV

There's a guy at NU TV who is interested in getting people together to help work on original programming. He was wondering if anyone had a particularly interesting short story or script they'd like to see adapted. It sounds like NUTV is looking for people who would work with them to produce something for the fall semester. If anyone is interested or knows someone who might be, email Austin Park at Park.au@neu.edu .

While this doesn't directly address the question posed, it shows there are opportunities for writers in other forms of media.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

SXSW and Question of the Week

In class yesterday, I perhaps mistakenly conflated the various South by Southwest (SXSW) events. In truth, as you'll see if you click on the link, there are three related events: the Film conference and festival, which takes place March 13-22; the Interactive festival, which overlaps with the early part of the week; and the Music and Media conference, which gets started tomorrow. (You can access the report on the publishing meltdown here.)

All this leads to the Question of the Week:
What can publishing learn from developments in music, film, and new media?
If you have been missing blog posts -- and some of you have, in a big way -- I'd like you to try to catch up now. Use this question, if you want, as an opportunity to explore the tech/publishing relationship. There are plenty of blogs on the right that explore that question in some detail.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Talkin bout tech

I’ve just read an interesting article in Harper's, “The Last Book Party: Publishing drinks to a life after death”. In it, the author is attending a German publishing festival where publishing houses bid for the international rights to the year’s ‘hottest’ new books. What is interesting about the article is that the author is expressing a doubt I myself have about the future of the publishing industry and the different ways in which both authors and publishers are dealing with it. The author, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, also covers some ground familiar in Epstein. Lewis-Kraus creates a vision of the older generation of publishers as people genuinely interested in literature for literature’s sake, content with small profit margins with the greater goal of being purveyors of thought. This environment of people actually taking pride in their work was transformed when entities like Viacom and CBS entered the mix and “were insulted by margins of 5 percent”. We have all read about how this has created a craving for the next bestseller and authors receiving huge advances usually out of proportion with how well their book will actually sell. New technology, and more importantly the author’s ability to manipulate this technology is changing the focus once again. One author at the Fair, in a move similar to Stephen King’s online novel, has put his entire catalog on his website. He quips that he is “stealing from myself”. I find it interesting that by being on the vanguard of this techno-movement, the author forces the pendulum to swing back the other way, away from huge advances and inflated expectations. Because, at the moment, there is not an adequate system in place to create revenue for authors using technology to spread their work, we may be left with those authors that are true artists and whose greatest passion is to create great literature. Conversely, we may get to the point where everyone with an internet connection thinks that their work is worthy of being read to the masses. It will be interesting to see in the coming years how the publishing industry continues to navigate the issues arising from the use of newer technologies.