News Interesting ESQUIRE Article About the Future of Book Publishing and Reading

[CarolMS]

ESQUIRE Magazine Nov 9 2023

 

[Pamela Jo]

ESQUIRE Magazine Nov 9 2023

This. As Pete has reiterated. If Litopia expands to a webring where writers can digitally publish and readers can come looking for both raw and polished writing-it can become this kind of brand. The model being something like Royal Road or an online digital zine like APEX publishing.

And word-of-mouth recommendations will be more powerful than ever. ​

Perhaps because they’re overwhelmed by the plethora of online platforms, “people are moving towards only word-of-mouth discovery where the peer-to-peer suggestion has become more important than ever,” Fredman says (though according to Taeckens, peer-to-peer suggestion has always been the bedrock of spreading buzz). Cindy Spiegel (co-publisher of Spiegel & Grau) argues that influencers are a form of word-of-mouth, too, because there is trust built into the parasocial relationship.

Meanwhile, imprints are starting to function more like brands—and they’re hoping to cultivate brand loyalty. The next step at One World, Counts says, is “building trust” between readers and the imprint, so folks who might not read poetry feel confident trying a poetry book simply because One World published it.

But at the end of the day, the trust will come back to the book itself. “The book has to be a book that people actually want to read,” Spiegel says. “And no one can make someone like a book.”