Traditional Publishing vs. New Technology
How can the world of traditional publishing and the world of tech learn from each other?
Bestselling author and technologist Robin Sloan has one foot in the world of literature and another in technology, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Sloan, a former Twitter employee and more recently the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, discussed the intersection of technology and publishing in an interview with Reinvent’s founder and CEO Peter Leyden.
The Internet, Sloan said, is “a quick burn. It’s all sugar.” The average tweet reaches 95% of the audience it will ever reach in the first 4 minutes after it’s posted. The “burn” is slower for books – traditionally published books take longer to produce and to consume, but the shelf-lives are much longer than for something written on the Internet. From a technical standpoint, according to Sloan, “There’s no reason to expect that anything published on the Internet today, in 2015, will be accessible or viewable in even 10 years, to say nothing of 30 years or 50 years.”
Sloan, whose book was first published as a Kindle single, says he has no interest in choosing between tech and books. While tech has disrupted many industries, including traditional publishing, adopting a curmudgeonly attitude towards it isn’t the best way forward.
“We can harness this for good,” Sloan said. “We can use these tools, these really powerful digital tools, to support the values that we care about and the things we want to do in the world. Digital technology can be more than a storm that sweeps the landscape clear.”
