A new set of terms have been floating around the publishing world lately – though the ‘core’ term seems to have been invented way back in 2006 (an eternity, I know…) by Scott Karp at his blog Publishing 2.0 – the (r)evolution of media…
Morris Rosenthal appears to have recently coined Self-Publishing 2.0 – and we add both these terms on top of “web 2.0″ … So what? Is there anything really relevent for an author interested in self publishing a book?
You bet -
I like to call ‘publishing 2.0′ the democratization of the published word. Really, “Publishing 2.0″ (with the capital) can refer to anything that is impacting the print media world – and is often used to refer to newspapers and their changing model… (online news sources, fewer print readers, etc). For the book publishing world, I’d expect “Publishing 2.0″ (again with the capital) to focus on the phenom of self publishing – while the traditional world of book publishing was sleeping, tens of thousands of authors took matters into their own hands and brought their books to market all by themselves. Granted, many of these self published books had / have very limited market opportunity – but a striking number seemed to have worked just wonderfully for everyone involved…
So is that it? Is publishing 2.0 just the advent of the self published author? No – nor is self-publishing 2.0 just the advent of blogs, Scribd, or the Espresso Book Machine…
Self Publishing 2.0 is the utilization of technology, by an author, to produce and promote written content across a diverse set of delivery and marketing platforms.
This differs from ‘self publishing 1.0′ in which indie authors simply paid a company (or hired resources) to mimic the traditional publishing industry, right down to the offset printing of large quantities of product.
It doesn’t mean that an author can’t hire resources to still perform some (in open disclosure, I own the author services company, Dog Ear Publishing) It does not matter who performs which task k- or even who holds the ISBN – it’s HOW the tasks are performed that really matters. Utilizing both the best talent for each task and the best technology is very important.
Today, Self Publishing 2.0 represents opportunities in the market for authors at a fraction of the financial risk assumed by indie authors just three or four years ago…
This is an evolving post – would love feedback on creating a more defined list of what self publishing 2.0 happens to be – it seems easier to define the ‘self publishing 1.0′ world…
Here’s my initial categorical thoughts:
- content origin – the origin of written content
- content production – MS Word manuscript, blog scrape, software based audio transcription
- content design – not required, highly designed, both… but all completed digitally and in most cases with the design to be fluid based upon the intended delivery channel
- content delivery – e-book, chapter download, print on demand per order, inventory-based printed product…
- monetization of content – open book (no monetization – perhaps ancillary benefit), chapter based, full book, advertising based (Google BookSearch, etc)
- marketing of content – search marketing, blog marketing, ‘old school’ print / media,
It’s a brave new world!
Filed under: book marketing, book publishing, self publishing, Self Publishing 2.0 Tagged: | book marketing, Dog Ear Publishing, publishing 2.0, self publishing, Self Publishing 2.0
