What I most like about Wendig is not that he has one foot firmly planted on both sides of the fence, strategically taking advantage of self-publishing opportunities, while also working the traditional channels. It's that he's a good writer and gives good story. When that's your starting point, business models are simply tools, not useless badges to prop up your sad little ego.
In the pre-digital days, influential media brands like Cosmopolitan and Vogue were one of the primary gateways for marketers to connect with consumers. They offered an attentive audience that would have been difficult for most marketers to gather without investing heavily in staff and infrastructure. Today, those media brands are no longer primary gateways, and marketers aren't nearly as reliant on them to reach their desired audience as they used to be as they now have cost-effective tools at their disposal to engage directly with consumers.
Journalism is more than soundbites or "just the facts, ma'am" but getting "the facts" is a critical first step that involves the kind of research, investigation and perspective few link-bloggers can offer. While people may think they don't care about "journalism," they usually realize that's not the case when the lack thereof leads to things like political scandals, financial disasters, and ill-conceived wars.
In backing down, I suspect Jobs saw the HTML5 on the wall and realized he was fighting a rare losing battle, playing hardball with major content producers whose early, enthusiastic and unabated promotion of the iPad -- as inherently a consumption device as has ever been conceived -- helped demonstrate its value to consumers. It was, theoretically, a mutually beneficial relationship until his reach finally exceeded his grasp.
"Just do it!" was definitely an underlying theme of the day as the deceptively sexy notion of the "democratization" of content creation and distribution was frequently noted, but I realized towards the end of the day, what was missing was any reference to the issue of access, and the ever-widening digital divide.
And now blogging is — and very shortly became — something people do do because they are ambitious.
When all is said and done, one of my personal highlights from 2010 will undoubtedly be the “Why Keep Blogging?” panel I participated on at SXSW, partly because it was a great session that was very well received, and partly because it introduced me to Lizzie Skurnick, of whom I am now a complete and total fanboy.
The quote above is from a post that represents almost everything I love about the whipsmart and outspoken Skurnick distilled into one wonderfully compelling rant, and it’s a must-read, if only peripherally related to the rest of this post, which is mainly about social media, “platforms” and an article I wrote for the September 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest on 10 questions writers should be asking themselves about the future of publishing.
One of those questions is, “What else am I going to do with MY platform?”
You’re blogging; you’ve amassed a decent number of fans and followers on Facebook/Twitter; you even have a book deal (or for my DIY friends, a formatted book and/or eBook).
Now what?
BEA is North America’s largest gathering of book trade professionals, typically attracting between 20,000 – 30,000 people. Book industry professionals who attend BEA include: booksellers (independent, specialty, and chain); book distributors; marketing and publicity professionals; editors, agents; scouts. BEA is also attended by assorted film and TV professionals and is covered widely by the media for the attention it brings to upcoming books as well as for the notable authors it attracts to the event itself.
Book Expo America represents a bizarre conundrum for me. Maybe I’m just burned out on publishing conferences, and since I’m not buying or selling books and have never cared about free galleys, it feels less relevant to me personally than some of the other conferences I’ve attended this year.
I don’t know if it’s just too big for me to get a firm grip on, or maybe it’s trying to be too many things to too many people?
This will be my third time attending BEA, and the first time I’m attending more than one day, and by all rights it should feel like Book Nerd Nirvana, akin to how I felt about the first NY Comic-Con (was that REALLY back in 2006?!?!), but in reality, it just feels like three really long days of extra work standing between me and the holiday weekend. (more…)