London
TUESDAY 12 APRIL 2016
VISIT PW AND BOOKBRUNCH AT STAND 6C75 H A
Rebuck: technology ‘cuts two ways’
by terabytes of digital
research and sophisticated
insight tools that enable us to
segment audiences by their
passions and their literary
tastes, to reach readers with
the individuality of an email
message, to constantly
refresh and repackage the
way books and backlists are
managed and marketed,”
she said.
She also observed a
“concerning decline in
authors’ revenues”,
however, noting that only
one in 10 writers today
lived on writing income
alone, and that half of all
self-published authors
earned less than $500 a
year. She cited the
“complexity of the modern
world” facing today’s
publishers and authors:
squeezed margins across the
whole supply chain, the lack
of diversity in ebook
distribution, price deflation,
and competition from other
media for readers’ time.
“The technology that has
made it easier than ever to
tell a story and get it out to
the world cuts two ways,”
In a tone-setting keynote
delivered yesterday at the
London Book Fair’s
Quantum conference, writes
Andrew Richard Albanese,
Penguin Random House UK
Chair Gail Rebuck told
attendees that for all the
“curious incidents” she had
witnessed over her award-winning publishing career–
from setting hot type at the
London College of Printing,
to the emergence of
e-readers–books remained
the “DNA of our
civilisation, an unbroken
line of stories, ideas and
knowledge which essentially
completes our relationship
with all of humanity and
with ourselves.”
In a sweeping, 20-minute
talk, Rebuck–who
tomorrow will receive the
LBF Lifetime Achievement
Award–noted a series of
seismic shifts in the book
business over the last two
decades, and acknowledged
both the potential–and the
pitfalls–of technology.
“Today our job as
publishers is made easier, and
infinitely more sophisticated,
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Rebuck said. “It’s
made it possible
for a handful of
authors to hit a
global jackpot of
unprecedented,
n
h
Himalayan,
proportions,
while at the same
time making it so
much tougher for
many authors to
be seen or heard in the vast
sea of information in which
we now live.”
Gail Rebuck: “tougher for many authors”
e
Rebuck cautioned
publishers against framing
digital and physical as
while at the same time never
allowing “the uniqueness of
the author to degrade into
the bleak functionality of a
mere ‘content provider’.”
Gail Rebuck profile p 24
“enemies”, insisting that
“what matters is that readers
are discovering and buying
books, whatever the form of
delivery”. She also highlighted
the recent trend of You Tubers
writing bestsellers, and the
need to boldly pursue
emerging talents.
in
INSIDE:
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NOURRY AT
THE IPC
“While we champion the
long-form, we should also
have the confidence to
explore the alchemy that
comes from young diverse
writing talent, and explore
collaborating with coders
and technicians,” she said,
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