The Darwinian Publishing Model

Kansas City Star

Noah Homola at the Kansas City Star has written a nice article about the growth of self publishing that is being fueled by growing acceptance of e-readers.  I found it online yesterday with Factiva.  How a blogger in Richmond, Virginia found this article in Kansas gave rise to these reflections on book publishing.

There are two prominent theories of evolution.  Creationists believe in something called intelligent design, whereby the creatures of the earth seen today have been shaped by the hand of God.  Darwinists believe that the process of natural selection or "survival of the fittest" is the dominant force of biological diversity.  Both sides have their adherents and detractors and the fight between the two generates a surfeit of tenured college professors.

Book publishing is facing a similar conflict today.  (Spoiler alert: the Darwinists are winning.)  For many years, book publishing has been dominated by the publishers, who determine access to book printing and distribution.  Authors labor to write manuscripts, and then struggle even harder to find an agent, a publisher, or a sympathetic editor.  The publisher was the hand of God that shaped the market by granting access to the holy grail of publication and a shelf at your local Barnes and Noble.  This is the intelligent design model of book publishing.  Publishers and editors determine what content will be available and promoted to the reading public.

A much smaller and less respected route was to take your scribblings to a vanity press where a few copies of your book would be produced commensurate with your checkbook and delivered personally to you.  What you did with them afterwards was your own business.  This was the essence of self publishing, and was no threat to the corporate publishing houses.

The ubiquity of computing platforms and the increasing acceptance of e-readers has changed the dynamic of book publishing.  Now, anybody with a computer (which is everybody) can write and publish a book or an article through a growing number of self publishing sites.  Anybody can satisfy a personal desire for knowledge by conducting a search from their computer, reader, or smartphone.  Powerful search engines reveal to an individual the most relevant and intriguing content, and in so doing identify the most popular books and articles to the larger market.  All this without the mediating influence of the mainstream publisher to decide what authors and topics will be admitted to their paper distribution model.

Will the Darwinian selective forces of search engines outperform the intelligent design of mainstream publishers?  Keep searching on book publishing and e-readers and you will find your answer.

T. R. Shannon