Changing media: E-books and the smooth highway between amateur and professional

BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours last week had an item about how self-published writers no longer want to be thought of as second division, below writers of books from what they call ‘trade publishers’.

Self-publishing was once called ‘vanity publishing’ because it was mainly for those with money to pay for their own printing and the books were unlikely to interest anyone outside their family circle. The arrival of e-books has changed that. Today, self-publishing is free: you just have to upload your document and it’s available globally as an e-book. You can choose your own cover and set your own price, so there’s a chance to make money too.

The argument on You and Yours was that e-book self-publishing is now often a deliberate choice rather than a consolation prize for those rejected by ‘proper’ publishing.

I came across this debate during the making of a documentary about Amazon this year when I interviewed Nick Spalding (above): a hugely successful self-published author on Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader. His initial success with writing, editing and self-publishing his comic novels led to huge sales on Kindle and offers from traditional publishers, some of which he accepted.

You can now find piles of his books in Waterstones. He is in the happy position of turning down deals offered by publishers when he believes he’ll make more money by self-publishing his latest work as an e-book and not having to give a cut to a publisher.

There’s a familiar ring to these skirmishes on the border between those making a living from their work as professionals and those who don’t need to thanks to other sources on income. (Spalding was working as a press officer for the police when he started publishing his work.)

Journalists also find themselves competing for their audience’s attention with ‘non-professionals’ - whether self-appointed Twitter authorities, the social media offerings of celebs or politicians, or just family postings on Facebook. How many person-minutes have been consumed by watching ice bucket challenges that might otherwise have been spent on content produced by paid professionals?

In both journalism and publishing, some routes to content distribution have become effectively free, where once they were the privilege of well-funded professionals. And in both cases that puts the professionals in the uncomfortable position of having the mystique that has grown up around them unceremoniously blown away by the winds of change. Nick Spalding doesn’t claim to be the next Tolstoy, but he has shown that readers like his work enough to pay for it.

The changes do not lead to the revelation that anyone can write a great novel or produce a first-class piece of journalism. But they reveal a rather smooth and well-appointed highway between amateurs and professionals where once there appeared to be just a rocky road up a steep incline.

If you’re in any doubt about the existence of that smooth continuum, look no further than YouTube - the home of one-off talent who can gain audiences whose size puts any broadcaster to shame. The video games commentator PewDiePie, in reality a Swedish gamer called Felix Kjellberg, had an audience of 438 million in July, and has 30 million subscribers on YouTube. He, and YouTube’s owner, Google, make millions from such attention. And, as with ice bucket, for UK viewers at least, that’s money leaving our media economy and heading for Silicon Valley (and Sweden).

Of course it’s easy to feel defensive in the face of such change. Better perhaps to adopt an ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ approach. I was impressed to see a full-page ad in my copy of the journalism review mag The Week for an e-book called The Scottish Referendum by Professor Murray Pittock, a respected academic from the University of Glasgow. His e-book turns out to be published by The Week itself, and promises a handy guide to all the issues, on sale for Kindle at £1.99.

Since Amazon doesn’t charge for publishing, and authors keep a decent percentage of the sales price, The Week probably only needs to sell a few hundred copies to pay for the professor’s work in pulling together a good backgrounder. And that will be money Amazon is putting into UK journalism and academia.

Journalists need to find more ways to turn the highway between amateurs and professionals - and that other increasingly busy one, between media and tech businesses - into productive two-way streets.