Hello New Publishing World

Joshua Fields Millburn

The thing about sacred cows is that they don’t stay sacred forever.

If you look at the state of publishing just a few years ago, you can barely recognize the landscape, so different is that world from today. And from just a few years even earlier.

There’s a shakeup taking place, and it’s occurring at the center of a few somewhat diverse fields and industries.

Large book publishers find themselves competing with independent imprints, rogue authors, and even upstart no-names who climb to the tops of charts they don’t make that measure sales on platforms they don’t operate.

Traditional journalism vehicles like newspapers and magazines are falling left and right, unifying under larger (but leaner) management in some cases, and joining the ranks of the online periodicals and free agents that are the cause of their concerns.

Antiquated educational systems are being seriously challenged for the first time as students skip what’s become a pre-requisite step in their professional careers to self-educate online, or to make use of one of the myriad alternatives cropping up each month.

And traditional media producers and distributors of all flavors — music, movies, television, radio — are fending off  barbarians at their gates, continuously under siege by newer, smaller, more agile competitors who are making use of technologies that are available to all, but only manageable by those who are willing to take a few risks.

For some, this changing of the guard seems like a catastrophe, but to those who see opportunity in the carnage, there’s never been a better time to be a creator. A maker. A publisher.

My co-founders and I are of the latter opinion, that the shake-up going down as we watch is the best thing to happen to publishing since paperback novels. Rather than being the downfall of everything good, this combination of circumstances is the headwind that will knock down many dilapidated and under-performing older structures to make way for new growth. It’s a chance for pioneering folk to step in an claim some territory.

That doesn’t mean we want the Big Six, or any of the older players, to collapse. But we do think it’s best for them as well if their outdated business models change, and the only way that happens within corporations that size is through outside influence.

I think there is a huge opportunity here for anyone who is willing to try new things, play well with others, and see the publishing world as a new world. One in which old business models, formats, media, restrictions, gatekeepers, marketing tactics, and everything else can be gracefully forgotten, allowing us all to start fresh and try something new.

I’m looking forward to what happens next. Hopefully that will prove to be more than just optimism.