- Feb 3, 2024
- LitBits
- 0
New blog post by AgentPete
Welcome to Publishing Year Zero
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” wrote authors’ rights activist Charles Dickens as A Tale of Two Cities began its epic unfolding. He could easily have been writing about the general state of affairs today, particularly the circumstances in which authors find themselves.
Yes – that’s what I’m calling it.
I’ve been aware of the impending signs for a while now. However, it’s taken a lot of thinking, a lot of private discussions and, not least, many useful conversations in Huddles to really work out how all the pieces fit together to make this an historic inflection point for the “traditional” publishing business.
The year 2025 is when we will see the “traditional” publishing model begin to break down and be reconstructed as something entirely new.
It’s a bold claim.
But it’s going to happen. In fact, it has to happen.
Many in the publishing industry may not yet appreciate this. The business has often been slow to recognise necessary change: I’m thinking about the resistance displayed towards British publisher Allen Lane when he started the paperback revolution nearly a century ago with Penguin Books; or more recently with the advent of e-books and how unprepared many were (a few publishers seized the opportunity and spectacularly succeeded: particularly British publishers Anthony and Nicolas Cheetham).
So yes – “Publishing Year Zero” may sound scary to some.
Truthfully, I’m a bit scared by it.
But in every crisis there are plenty of opportunities. So let’s not lose heart.
Here are some powder-keg challenges we need to face this year:
We Need To Accelerate Author Income It’s now down to scandalously low levels. Everyone’s aware of it; but no-one is doing anything really effective about it. In the absence of a fix, authors will walk, maybe run, from traditional publishing towards something more lucrative. Who could blame them?
We Need To Actively Defend Authors’ IP Why bother paying for an audiobook when they’re freely available on YouTube! Harry Potter? Check. Agatha Christie? Check. Danielle Steel? Check. Stephen King? Check. The list goes on. It appears that the industry currently can’t – or perhaps won’t? – protect authors’ IP. The messaging to consumers is clear: we don’t value authors’ work enough to defend it against piracy. And if we place no value on it – why should consumers?
We Need To Win The Attention War Young people are turning the page on reading. While Big Tech employs psychologists and neurologists to devise sinister new ways to keep us literally addicted to the social media hamster wheel – how is our own industry responding? I see nothing of significance yet. This must be the year we fight back against parasitical media that – wholly unlike books and reading – devours your attention while giving you little nourishment in return.
Now for some advice.
This is very important: no author should be resigned to having their work stolen by ChatGPT or any one of a growing number of alternative AI operations; nor should they willingly agree to a derisory one-off payment for perpetual (i.e. length of copyright) use.
In 2024, we saw HarperCollins achieve a licensing fee of $2,500 per title for LLM usage allegedly from Microsoft’s CoPilot model (details are sketchy) and (again, allegedly) for a duration of three years. Bravo! This by itself is a significant first step, since the rest of the AI crowd are still publicly declaring that they should be entitled to freely pirate your writing to their hearts’ content – hey, it’s “transformative fair use”, right? Wrong. Let me remind you, these are the same folk who are currently jostling to become the world’s first trillionaires. Yet they’re not prepared to toss us a few crumbs from the fine linen napkins on their private starships.
This means war, mes concitoyens! The publishing industry needs to go for the jugular, hard and fast. There is oodles of dosh sloshing into AI at the moment, and authors need a share of it. If we fail to achieve equity on this for authors, then even more terrible things will occur. After all, aren’t translation rights just another “transformative fair use”…? Capisce?
We need to see the rapid development of a sub-rights market in AI usage. Just like syndication, translation, film & tv rights and more. Competition amongst AI owners will ensure a reasonable market fee for such use. Licensing terms should be short and – crucially – there must be effective monitoring to keep the AI owners honest. The technology for this already exists. Let’s get serious about this, people.
It was John Donne who admonished us that “no man is an island” (I assume he included all gender identities else it doesn’t make sense). Writers in particular need to heed Donne’s wisdom.
Consider the persistent trope of the solitary author in a lofty garret, heroically struggling against near-insurmountable odds for creative actualization. Somehow, this has become an accepted metaphor for every writer’s journey: lonely, isolated, friendless and forlorn. What nonsense.
The truth is, you cannot develop the craft of writing without considerable contact with other writers. Sometimes, this is achieved by the magic of writing itself, which allows your mind to connect with another’s across space, time and even mortality. But also, writers need regular and sustaining contact with other writers: for cross-pollination and mutual support.
Writers are rarely, if ever, in direct competition with each other. Those who collaborate with their peers are more likely to thrive in every way, especially in challenging times like these. That’s what Litopia excels at, of course.
Yes, it’s going to be a tumultuous year. But together we will seize every opportunity that presents itself: and have a darn good time doing so.
My best for the year
Peter
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Welcome to Publishing Year Zero
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” wrote authors’ rights activist Charles Dickens as A Tale of Two Cities began its epic unfolding. He could easily have been writing about the general state of affairs today, particularly the circumstances in which authors find themselves.
2025 Is Publishing Year Zero
Yes – that’s what I’m calling it.
I’ve been aware of the impending signs for a while now. However, it’s taken a lot of thinking, a lot of private discussions and, not least, many useful conversations in Huddles to really work out how all the pieces fit together to make this an historic inflection point for the “traditional” publishing business.
The year 2025 is when we will see the “traditional” publishing model begin to break down and be reconstructed as something entirely new.
It’s a bold claim.
But it’s going to happen. In fact, it has to happen.
Many in the publishing industry may not yet appreciate this. The business has often been slow to recognise necessary change: I’m thinking about the resistance displayed towards British publisher Allen Lane when he started the paperback revolution nearly a century ago with Penguin Books; or more recently with the advent of e-books and how unprepared many were (a few publishers seized the opportunity and spectacularly succeeded: particularly British publishers Anthony and Nicolas Cheetham).
So yes – “Publishing Year Zero” may sound scary to some.
Truthfully, I’m a bit scared by it.
But in every crisis there are plenty of opportunities. So let’s not lose heart.
Here are some powder-keg challenges we need to face this year:
We Need To Accelerate Author Income It’s now down to scandalously low levels. Everyone’s aware of it; but no-one is doing anything really effective about it. In the absence of a fix, authors will walk, maybe run, from traditional publishing towards something more lucrative. Who could blame them?
We Need To Actively Defend Authors’ IP Why bother paying for an audiobook when they’re freely available on YouTube! Harry Potter? Check. Agatha Christie? Check. Danielle Steel? Check. Stephen King? Check. The list goes on. It appears that the industry currently can’t – or perhaps won’t? – protect authors’ IP. The messaging to consumers is clear: we don’t value authors’ work enough to defend it against piracy. And if we place no value on it – why should consumers?
We Need To Win The Attention War Young people are turning the page on reading. While Big Tech employs psychologists and neurologists to devise sinister new ways to keep us literally addicted to the social media hamster wheel – how is our own industry responding? I see nothing of significance yet. This must be the year we fight back against parasitical media that – wholly unlike books and reading – devours your attention while giving you little nourishment in return.
Now for some advice.
Warning: Do Not Allow Your Work To Be Used in a Large Language Model (Just Yet)
This is very important: no author should be resigned to having their work stolen by ChatGPT or any one of a growing number of alternative AI operations; nor should they willingly agree to a derisory one-off payment for perpetual (i.e. length of copyright) use.
In 2024, we saw HarperCollins achieve a licensing fee of $2,500 per title for LLM usage allegedly from Microsoft’s CoPilot model (details are sketchy) and (again, allegedly) for a duration of three years. Bravo! This by itself is a significant first step, since the rest of the AI crowd are still publicly declaring that they should be entitled to freely pirate your writing to their hearts’ content – hey, it’s “transformative fair use”, right? Wrong. Let me remind you, these are the same folk who are currently jostling to become the world’s first trillionaires. Yet they’re not prepared to toss us a few crumbs from the fine linen napkins on their private starships.
This means war, mes concitoyens! The publishing industry needs to go for the jugular, hard and fast. There is oodles of dosh sloshing into AI at the moment, and authors need a share of it. If we fail to achieve equity on this for authors, then even more terrible things will occur. After all, aren’t translation rights just another “transformative fair use”…? Capisce?
We need to see the rapid development of a sub-rights market in AI usage. Just like syndication, translation, film & tv rights and more. Competition amongst AI owners will ensure a reasonable market fee for such use. Licensing terms should be short and – crucially – there must be effective monitoring to keep the AI owners honest. The technology for this already exists. Let’s get serious about this, people.
Insight For The Year: No Writer Is An Island
It was John Donne who admonished us that “no man is an island” (I assume he included all gender identities else it doesn’t make sense). Writers in particular need to heed Donne’s wisdom.
Consider the persistent trope of the solitary author in a lofty garret, heroically struggling against near-insurmountable odds for creative actualization. Somehow, this has become an accepted metaphor for every writer’s journey: lonely, isolated, friendless and forlorn. What nonsense.
The truth is, you cannot develop the craft of writing without considerable contact with other writers. Sometimes, this is achieved by the magic of writing itself, which allows your mind to connect with another’s across space, time and even mortality. But also, writers need regular and sustaining contact with other writers: for cross-pollination and mutual support.
Writers are rarely, if ever, in direct competition with each other. Those who collaborate with their peers are more likely to thrive in every way, especially in challenging times like these. That’s what Litopia excels at, of course.
Yes, it’s going to be a tumultuous year. But together we will seize every opportunity that presents itself: and have a darn good time doing so.
My best for the year
Peter
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