Science fiction writers, editors, critics and publishers talk the future of publishing

SFSignal, a website for the science fiction publishing industry, asks a number of writers, editors, critics and publishers "What will the publishing industry look like after 10 more years of advancing technology?" The answers are a mix of honest forthrightness about the unreliability of long-term predictions, grim business reality, and fascinating insight about the complimentary nature and economics of print and electronic publishing. Here's writer Tim Pratt:

More authors will experiment with self-publishing, as the barrier to entry for doing so with e-books is comparatively low. Some will have success with that; lots of others won't. Amazon.com and perhaps other purveyors of online books will increasingly attempt to take on the role of publishers, "curating" e-book collections. I don't expect publishing as we know it to disappear, by any means, but the field is going to become crowded by self-publishing -- some of it quite good -- and weird hybrids, and new companies springing up to fill whatever inevitable gaps are left by the relatively slow-moving major publishers.

It will likely get harder for writers to make a living doing nothing but writing fiction... but most writers I know don't make a living exclusively writing fiction anyway. We'll have to explore new methods: direct appeals to readers, weird limited editions with interesting extras, patrons, corporate sponsorship, kickstarter fundraisers in lieu of novel advances -- who knows.

Those are pretty cautious guesses, I know, but hey, science fiction writers are generally crap at predicting the future. (And I'm mostly a fantasy writer!) In ten years, the world could be unimaginably weird. I certainly hope it will be. But I'm sure I'll still be reading books, even if they don't look much like the books I grew up with.

Q: What will the publishing industry look like after 10 more years of advancing technology? (via Futurismic)

(Image: Government Printing Office Building Number Four Jackson Alley Cast Concrete Presswork Bas Relief (Washington, DC), a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from takomabibelot's photostream)

• [sabik]

  Hmm, two of the authors predict piracy will exist, one that it will be suppressed in a “Rainbows End” scenario. I’m holding out for the future where book piracy is a bizarre concept, like pirating an encyclopaedia or a web browser…

• [tweaked]

  “Complimentary nature and economics of print and electronic publishing,” Cory? Do the nature and economics of print and electronic publishing say lots of nice things about others? If it were anyone else posting, I would’ve said nothing… but for you I have higher standards. Neat article though in any case.

• [Wally Ballou]

  I expect that regardless of how publishing finally shakes out, the “science fiction” section of whatever the marketplace looks like will be

  45% cheesy, derivative swords-and-magic fantasy,

  30% vampires, zombies and vampire/zombie crossovers,

  15% movie and TV spinoffs,

  and if we are lucky, 10% original science fiction.

• [Random Royalty]

  As a small publisher (of non-fiction) I cannot stress enough that the biggest factor is literacy.

  This is more than just an ability to read, but an ability to critically appreciate literature and thus bring that appreciation to others. This also extends to how current technology trends really have no effect on critical literacy, and how this is mainly an anxiety over losing the curator function (publishers are critically literate to a very high degree). If we leave this up to the marketplace it will take a while before this rectifies. But markets abhor vacuums, so no worries there for me.

  If the history of mass media is an indicator, it will be only a matter of time that we become more critically literate of the technology we are so worried about, something that always takes time. It took 50 years of television before it was no longer considered a direct threat to reading…this is because we became more literate about television and as a result stopped blaming it for all of society’s ills.

  We can expect perhaps 10 to 20 years before we fully understand how the new market dynamics will change literature, but the readers will come back, and hopefully fiction writers will be able to earn a living with their writing once again.

• [Cochituate]

  Love the illo- what I have come to call Socialist Art Deco. There are several banks and public buildings in the Twin Cities decorated in this style I’ve come to love since I moved here a generation ago. Not found so much in New England.