TOC 2011: Keynoter Margaret Atwood Highlights Author Role
By David Rapp February 16, 2011Technology conferences in the publishing industry often focus more on content delivery—via ereaders or smartphones, for example—than on the authors who write what everyone is reading. The organizers of the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference (TOC) 2011, being held in New York City February 14-16, gave award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood the stage on Tuesday to share her perspective on the sweeping shift from print to electronic publishing.
Atwood, best known for her 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale, provided a welcome corrective to the sometimes overheated rhetoric of tech conferences, with their emphasis on world-changing paradigms. "Forgive me for not being quite as hopped up about it all as some people," she began.
At its core, publishing is simply about making information public, a "mode of transmission... from one brain to another brain," Atwood said. The Internet, she pointed out, is merely the latest in a long line of publishing mediums.
It is a tool, and like all tools, she said—illustrating the point with a line-drawing of a knife—it has a "sharp side," a "dull side," and a "stupid side...the part you cut yourself with without intending to."
She warned publishers not to make a key mistake with new technologies: "Never eliminate your primary source"—that is, authors. Only ten percent of authors make their living by writing full-time, she said, and lower royalties for ebook sales—which appears to be the trend—make this a more difficult proposition.
Social networking for marketing purposes also presents difficulties, according to Atwood, by taking up authors' time that they could spend writing. If publishers want authors to make use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social technologies to promote their books, authors may want more of a share of the profits. "If I'm expected to do all this other work," Atwood said, "shouldn't I get more of the pie?"
LJ book review editor Heather McCormack is moderating a panel at TOC today, "Solving the Digital Loan Problem: Can Library Lending of eBooks be a Win-win for Publishers AND Libraries?" It features Random House's Ruth Liebmann, Bluefire's Micah Bowers, and East Central Library Services' Katie Dunneback. Watch for more LJ coverage of TOC.
[Library Journal is a media partner for the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2011.]
