Ev Bogue"...the gatekeepers were there for a reason -- to keep out the dross." - T.C.
T.C. is the editor of In Treehouses, an online magazine with a focus on publishing online. I decided to interview T.C. because of his focus on clean, curated, and well produced content on the Internet -- this has led to his publishing platform quickly outpacing the rest.
As with everyone in this series on the future of publishing, T.C. and I have worked together before -- I was interviewed about my Letter.ly in the latest issue of his magazine.
T.C. and I spoke about the value of curation in the modern publishing space, how MP3s and Ebooks are different, and how he feels publishers will survive until 2012.
Ev Bogue: Publishing is changing rapidly, how has your approach shifted in the first few months of 2011?
T.C.: I've been involved in books and publishing for a while -- I worked in a bookshop in London for 2 years and studied English Literature at university -- and have been a publisher myself since June of last year when I started In Treehouses.
There are dozens of developments about which I could talk here, but for me the real interest is in the potential for writers to step up and lead. A phrase I often use is that you're not a blogger who publishes, you're a publisher who blogs. The emphasis has switched. Over the last few months I've been working on an idea that will embrace this change: the digital publishing house. For writers who want to lead, this is the natural destination.
Unlike large publishing houses that create mass printed content, digital publishing houses can be run by one or two people, creating content dedicated to their particular niche and promoting the work of other relevant writers. When you're dealing in pixels, you can apply online business principles to a lot of what a publishing house does. No overhead, no staff, no marginal cost.
The place of the individual in digital publishing -- as opposed to the technology or the industry as a whole -- is what fascinates me. If writers step up to the plate and start taking advantage of the opportunities around them then the state of the big, traditional publishing industry becomes irrelevant. Let the chips fall where they may for the big boys -- we'll already be playing a completely different game, one in which they can't compete.
To help pioneer this shift, at the end of April I'm leaving my job to start and run a digital publishing house that will have In Treehouses as its flagship publication. I haven't announced this news anywhere in public yet, so you can consider that an exclusive!
Ev: Where is your income coming from? (No need to be specific unless you want to about figures, just point.)
T.C.: I sell an ebook called The Almanac, which is a collection of the first few editions of In Treehouses that are no longer available anywhere else. And from the end of March this is joined by another ebook on how to create remarkable free content. All the sales from ebooks come from fans of the magazine, which is free -- so it's a fairly basic freemium setup. I also offer consulting services to a select few, but intend to limit this number more and more over time.
When you create remarkable free content there are so many ways to monetize that I want to experiment more with that side of things, though. The balance between free and premium information is delicate and shifting all the time, so it's an exciting time to be in that world.
Ev: I always read In Treehouses is because of your ability to deliberately curate amazing content. How important is curation in publishing now?
T.C.: It's becoming more vital by the day. If you could pause the internet now and read everything on it, it would take you over 20 million days -- or 57,000 years -- to do so. Rather than adding to the noise, there's increasing value in helping people to find what's important and what's valuable in your niche.
Ev: Who is responsible for curating content now?
Everyone's. In an interview with Ebookling, I talked about the responsibility we all have to share what's remarkable; to stop sharing stuff just because we can and to start sharing stuff that's so incredible that it needs to be shared.
Otherwise, what's left? In a world where it takes a second to tweet a post or to Like something on Facebook, it makes it easier for the average stuff to get around. It's like the boy who cried wolf: if you're sharing all this average stuff, why should we listen to you when you say you've found something remarkable?
You have a voice online -- cherish it, don't make your readers tune you out.
Ev: How do you decide what is important enough to make it past your high filter?
T.C.: The lack of gatekeepers online means that we're living in the age of the amateur. It's great that you don't need anyone's permission to create or to publish anymore, but the unspoken consequence of this is that there's a lot of low quality stuff out there.
That's not necessarily the creator's fault, either -- now you need to be your own writer, editor, designer, publisher, marketer, promoter, customer services department, PR department, and all the rest. It's rare for anyone to be capable at all those things.
That said, the gatekeepers were there for a reason -- to keep out the dross.
For every J.K. Rowling who was foolishly turned away by a dozen publishers, there are a thousand correct calls about authors who simply aren't up to scratch.
The way I choose who gets through? Professionalism. There's a bit of a craft stall mentality at the moment online -- "I'll set up a store and try and sell some stuff if I can, it's not particularly pretty or grammatically correct or anything, but I'm only one person so that's okay. As long as I'm 'myself' then people will forgive me."
But there are others who set up with a boutique mentality -- "I'm small now, sure, but I'm high quality and I take pride in every aspect of what I do and anyone who visits can see that I'm going places." Both are small, niche people trying to make an impact but the mentality is poles apart. Within a few seconds of visiting someone's site or reading their work, you can see which attitude they have and whether they've actually got a future and are worth your attention.
Ev: How will publishers/authors need to adapt to survive until 2012?
T.C.: Work with the technology, not against it. Books will not become redundant, that I promise you. It's easy to make the comparison with the way MP3s and the iPod killed the CD, but there are crucial differences.
One, CDs and vinyl always needed hardware to play them. The iPod made music portable by shrinking that hardware. With books, the hardware is built in -- you don't need a reader to make a book more portable.
Secondly, while the Kindle puts a thousand books in your pocket, that's less important than it was for the iPod. Whilst it's really useful to have access to all my songs on a train journey, I don't need access to all my books at once. We don't jump from book to book in the same way we do songs -- we get stuck in to one at a time.
So while the Kindle makes reading a bit more convenient, it doesn't blow the existing technology of paper and ink out of the water in the way that the MP3 player did with music. I was glad when I never had to buy another CD. But I don't look on going to a bookshop as a chore, a means to and end; it's an enjoyable experience in itself. Same goes for the physicality factor. CDs were plastic clutter. Books are pleasing aesthetically and as furniture in a room, plus people enjoy the feel and the smell and the experience of reading a book.
But of course the Kindle is the future. For articles, for travel, for cost, for sharing, for ease of use -- it's undeniable. Fighting against it will make fools out of publishers and authors -- but the idea of a purely digital reading experience is, to my mind, still a distant one.