The economies of scale and reach provided within the physical supply chain do not apply in the digital world. We all need to recognise that digitisation will impact the value chain within publishing.
We have seen the emergence of the blog, the social community sites, the music artists who have gained fame and following outside the traditional music. We have heard many predictions about self publishing and authors going direct and to date this threat has largely been ignored and regarded as small and not ‘publishing’.
The New Times tells us about one author, Scott Silger who now has four books that have not experienced many readers but that he has captured many listeners. Sigler took the initiative, applied his enthusiasm and recorded his first novel himself in his home. He signed up to www.Podiobooks.com, which was founded in 2005 and now has some 96 titles and over 2,000 episodes and 5,600 members.
He generated 22 podcast episodes of his novel, each approximately 45 minutes long and placed them on Podiobooks. He soon had 5,000 listeners and by the time he released his second novel this had grown to 30,000.
Podcasting audio books make sense. Producing digital works in instalments also make sense.
Whilst the trade market continues to search for the silver bullet the Authors are potentially now doing it themselves. This is obviously only viable if the author has the enthusiasm, ability and technical capability to do it but Silger and Podiobooks are proof it can be done. Social networks, blogs and podcasts are real and here today. That they will they themselves will impact publishing is certain. That publishers will need to experiment with them is reality.
