Sensible and interesting predictions for the future of publishing

By Cory Doctorow at 7:21 am Monday, Jan 11

Galleycat's asked former publisher Richard Nash for some predictions for the next ten years of publishing and he came up with eight extremely sensible and thought-provoking prognostications. This has got it all: an acknowledgement of the hubris of prediction, globalism, nostalgia, realism, and a dash of vision.

4. Long-form text-only narrative will continue to thrive as it has since cavemen gathered around the fire, just as painting has thrived since Lascaux. The advent of more and richer iterations of multimodal entertainment and edification will not kill off others (either multi or single mode) in the future, just as they did not in the past, though they certainly will kill businesses with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement based on past success in a given mode.

5. The mechanically reproduced object will have its aura restored in this Age of Digital Reproduction and we'll wish, again, that Walter Benjamin could have seen all this.

Richard Nash: Book Publishing 10 Years in the Future (via Futurismic)

(Image: File:Lord Stanhopes Printing Press.jpg, Wikimedia Commons)