TOUCHY SUBJECT TUESDAYS: the times, they are a-changin'

If you're an aspiring or midlist writer, it's not easy to welcome the nine zillion changes occurring in publishing in this, our digital age. Few of them seem to be to our benefit, and even fewer seem clear or easy to comprehend. Yet like it or not, the digital future is here, changing much of what's familiar (at least to those of us of twentieth-century "vintage") about book content, book publication, book distribution, and book marketing. To reprise the Bob Dylan quote I used for the title of this post, the times, they are indeed a-changin.'

As authors, I think we ignore these changes at our peril. That's the bad news: that sticking our heads in the sand isn't going to help us build careers or force all of this scary, messy, technologically intimidating change to go away. The good news is that some of the new media now evolving do help us as writers trying to promote books. Blogs are one excellent example; for another, check back on this blog this week, when Friday's "film-ette" is a wonderful little book-promotion piece done by an author herself with a webcam, a budget of maybe ten bucks, and without even putting on her makeup. Lest all that sound unimpressive, I should add that this little book trailer has amassed over two hundred thousand hits on YouTube. Yep, that's 200,000. Name an earlier form of author book promotion that could reach an audience even a tenth that large, especially on virtually no money at all.

Another piece of good news is that we don't have to become techno-experts to survive in the "new" publishing. We do need to learn basic new skills, and/or find a kid, grandkidd, nephew, niece, intern, or unemployed twentysomething to deploy them on our behalf. And I think we also need to cultivate at least a nodding acquaintance with new technologies and trends. Otherwise, among other problems, we're submitting to agents or editors without partaking at all of the world in which they must function.

Here's an easy place to start. I've spoken about the always thought-provoking work of speaker and writer Seth Godin before (see my May 22 post, "Big Pictures and Piddlling Little Points.") He's someone who's really worth reading if you're interested either in the impact of evolving media or the way marketing really works, or really doesn't work, in the twenty-first century. He's also very generous with his work, making lots of interesting material available free. This link gives you a free listen to most of his talk on the "new dynamics of publishing," given this May to the Independent Book Publishers Association. Part of what's helpful about it is precisely the fact that it's oriented toward publishers, giving you a glimpse of their world; another useful aspect of his points is that they are created by technology, but not about it per se. (For the record, being a former Manhattanite used to folks who talk brilliantly but fast, I happen to like Seth's rapid-fire idea-rich style, but you can also take him in rather more serene style via his books; two of my favorites are Permission Marketing, a classic by now, and Tribes.) You can also visit IBPA's Publishing University 2010 site and hear two interesting talks from their gathering.

Okay. Now we can all go back to writing those beautiful things, those actual, physical books, perhaps with those beautiful things called pens.

That wasn't so bad, was it?