Saturday, March 20, 2010

SXSWi 2010

In 2009, Peter Miller did a summary of his experience at SXSWi in the LA Times. He summed his panel up with this:
We were labeled arrogant insiders, but new to the SXSWi scene we felt more like pimply teenagers on a prom date with a surly cheerleader.
Miller is a bookstore owner and has spent many years at midsized to small publishers. He was asked back again this year. Between then and now, he seems to have changed his analysis of last year’s panel.
Flying back to New York from Texas, it dawned on me that devotees of SXSWi never hated publishing or wanted us to roll over and die: They just wanted us to repurpose.
After this year’s experience, he concludes:
… publishing will be put through the media grinder in the next several years…. If, as was suggested, New York publishers become more like L.A. film companies, expanding into an author's intellectual property, then it will happen at the big houses: Bertelsmann, Macmillan, Pearson, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Harper. Random House already has a film division to develop their backlist.
He’s not overjoyed at this idea of repurposing.
Publishing will survive -- in some form. Beware.
What I took from his summary is that publishing is changing. That can’t be stopped. We may not like where it ends up, though.
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17 comments:

  1. Interesting.

    And sorry, dumb question - what does SXSWi stand for?

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  2. I like the idea of re-purposing, if it is given good reasoning. What do the publishers want? Do they want people to buy their books today or today and into the future? We know that people will buy anything today but building readers means putting off immediate gratification for better long term results - coincidentally the definition of maturity!

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  3. It seems as though they either must change, or fade away. My daughter's been subbing in a local middle school, and the things these kids do with technology is amazing ... they embrace it. Too bad publishing's been so slow to incorporate change into their thinking.

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  4. All industries must anticipate trends and jump on them to move forward and publishing is no different. Call me out of touch if you want though, but I can't stand the term, "re-purposing." What ever happened to "evolving" or "changing the agenda" or "moving in a different direction?"

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  5. Sounds just a little ominous! Yikes.

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  6. I'm with Alex - what does the acronym stand. for? Anyhoo - I'm of pretty much the same take as you on this ... change is definitely coming. What it winds up as, who knows what and if I'll like it or not at this point?

    Marvin D Wilson

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  7. I think I'm just planning to grit my teeth and bear it! :)

    Elizabeth
    Mystery Writing is Murder

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  8. I have no doubt publishing will change. In the end, we'll still write the words. People may read them in a book, on an ereader, or watch an enacted version with offscreen narration of the exposition. Go with the flow.

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  9. SXSWi stands for South By Southwest Interactive. It's part of a huge multiweek event that takes place every year here in Austin, TX. It's a film festival, music festival and the "i" part, or Interactive, covers publishing, gaming and some other areas. Hurt Locker premiered here last year and Twitter really took off here two years ago - everyone was tweeting and thus began the twitter craze. The Interactive part is now over and we're into the music part.

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  10. I was in Atlanta last week and SXSW was even covered in the news there! I was surprised. It has now gone international, with people coming from all over the world -- to see or be seen/heard/read!

    Interesting, Peter's comments. Not sure what he meant about author's intellectual property--like movie stars.

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  11. You're right, Sylvia, about SXSW going international. I heard some figure of how many international films were submitted. Forgot the number but it was huge. I remember years ago there was a screenplay competition that went with it (don't know if they still have it). I read for it a couple of years.

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  12. Wish I could attend! Movies, music and book stuff? Sounds like my kind of place.

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  13. Very thing has to move forward with the times. So it makes sense that books will too.

    Thank you for a interesting posting

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  14. I don't know about the big publishing houses, but for small press who use the new technology there will come a surge, something like what happened with the music industry. We'll see a lot more books getting published and distributed via the internet in surprisingly large numbers. I've watched a number of local bands go from playing on local stages to world tours and eleven CD's simply due to the grassroots efforts of the internet. Not every band mind you, but more than the average than when the big companies ran the whole show. I have a feeling publishing's not far behind.
    Pstrick had a good point, there are now more readers with access to more info than any other time in history.
    We're going to have to change our thinking and strategies - consider free downloads and e-books as teasers, and then watch the readers themselves spread the word via the social networks.

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  15. We'll also have to be part of that spreading the word via social networks. More and more, authors have to allot a chunk of their time to Internet marketing.

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  16. Contracts must be a mess right now ;)

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  17. Sometimes I wish I could take a peek 10 years into the future of this industry, get the gist of the situation, then come back and tweak my strategy accordingly. No one really knows where this is headed, which is so frustrating when all you want to do is work, create, and make art. I will gladly change myself and my work - I just don't know what to change!

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