There are signs that some publishers are starting to see new ways to think about digital publishing.
On The Bookseller’s “FuturEBook” blog, David Miller talks about an epiphany he had during the London Book Fair Digital Conference. Miller says that everywhere he went, he heard people discussing digital publishing as if it were an entirely different animal than “traditional” publishing, and this needs to stop.
One of my frustrations is that many publishers seem to keep editors away from digital discussions, leaving contracts and "digital" departments to take things on. I met a writer at the Book Fair who had talked to a corporate digital supremo. The hint had come that "digital" publishing would be better without editors. Many of the editors I’ve worked with in the last twenty years roll their eyes at the digital bollocks they now have to consider. From an agent’s perspective, I want a publisher to have a view as to how to publish a book, and the editor should be intrinsic to those discussions.
He then offers three statements about digital publishing he has heard recently as talking points to start a conversation. They mostly have to do with the idea that it is possible to self-publish without support from a publisher—or an editor. Miller doesn’t think much of that idea.
