Internet Authors are the new King Kong

Who's that ape on the top of the Empire State building? Oh yeah, him. That's an Internet Author, the latest person to tear up the planet and make things new. It's changed, all this publishing business. Books don't come out of skyscraper offices anymore. They're written in garrets and basements and they get posted round the world using that most modern device, the computer. King Kong has torn up the contract. It's all different now.

No, not in the sense that Internet Authors are some wild animal, on the rampage and tearing up the big city. That's a job reserved for rapacious developers, Town Planners and Local Authority officials. No, the modern world is seeing a new phenomenon, and that's authors who can take old stories and give them a new twist, by not only changing the plot but also changing the audience and changing the delivery mechanism. It's a revolution, but the reason this quiet overturning of norms has largely gone unnoticed is simply this: from the reader's point of view, nothing has changed. For instance, I might mention here that I've written a book or two. A reader of this piece might then be browsing around their local bookshop tomorrow, remember my name and ask the establishment if they have any of my books on the shelves. The shop assistant will consult his computer and reply that No, there are no Mike Scantlebury books 'in stock', but, without hesitation, will then advise the customer, 'I can order it for you'. The person can review the books available on the shop computer, pick the one they want, and next time they visit the shop, the requested volume will be there, ripe for purchase. Hang on, you say: you're 'Mike Scantlebury, Internet Author'? How did you get into bookshops? You don't even have a publisher!

That's the revolution. That's the new plot device. Yes, 'King Kong' isn't really a giant ape. It's a movie that was originally made in the 1930s, revived and tried again in the 1970s, then definitively rewritten with computer graphics in the noughties. It's an old story, given a new twist or two. The bugs and creepy-crawlies that now threaten the explorers weren't in the original, but hey, we live in a more threatening age. Besides, nobody who could imagine giant insects in the '30s had any way of putting them on screen. Now we do. Similarly, no struggling author in the 1930s, scrimping away and tapping on a borrowed typewriter in an attic, could imagine any other way of getting their work into print than attracting the attention of a commercial publisher. Times have changed, and the device that makes all things new is the same thing that brought the giant ape to life so recently: the computer. The computer has made it possible for any author, any creator of a novel-length story, to bring it to the world as a fully printed book. Strictly speaking, the revolution is in printing rather than publishing, and it's as big a change as the invention of movable metal type in Guttenburg in the 1480s. It's very simply this: with a computer and the right kind of printer, you can print, cut and bind a copy of a book, or two. One or two? That's going to sound ridiculous to every printer from Caxton down to the men who make money out of Jeffrey Archer. But it's true. It's called 'print on demand' and it's exactly what it says. The point, of course, is how many you want to 'demand'. You can demand one, or you can demand five. You can demand fifty or you can demand five hundred. That's no problem. The difference, between now and say, ooh, ten years ago, is that no printer, or no publisher, would ever consider handling an author who couldn't sell fifty thousand copies of a paperback book. The idea that you might ever make the effort of putting a book into print in order to see five copies, or even five hundred, was laughable. The thing that makes publishers tear their hair out now, scream and laugh, shout and cry, is that not only is the plan achievable, but worse, far worse from their point of view, the deed can be done as a transaction between author and computer company. No 'publisher' is required.

Make no mistake, we live in a world where thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, make their living from the publishing industry. Not one of them, not a single soul, is going to be able to admit to you that they are no longer needed. Or, given a taste for compromise, that their world might have contracted to include the Jeffrey Archers of the world, the unimaginably huge bestsellers, but as far as most authors are concerned, they are redundant. They are no longer needed. Anybody who can put a book together, and then type or get it typed onto a computer, is now able to arrange with an on-line publishing company to put their text onto paper, glue the pages together and wrap a cardboard cover around it. From our point of view, each one of us readers, it looks like a book, it smells like a book and it reads like a book. The fact that there's no well-known and multi-national Publishing House behind the process that gave birth to it is not going to ruin your day, or you enjoyment of the story. Publishers? Who needs them. I've written a book, or two, and you can read them. And I'm NOT talking about bits of paper, hastily clipped together, or words on a computer screen. I'm talking paperback books. Thinking about it last night, I tally up that I've come up with fifteen fully-finished novels in the last few years. Every last one of them will be available soon, ready for you to order on your computer at an on-line bookstore, or in person, at a bricks-and-mortar bookshop, and the whole thing, the process that puts stories into print, has happened without the intervention of one single person who makes a living as a self-styled 'Publisher'.

Come to think of it, maybe King Kong is rampaging around the city after all, smashing down buildings, tearing up tram tracks and sweeping away motor cars. It's a monster, and the title of the newly-arrived giant on the scene, is Internet Publishing. Old theories, old certainties, are being swept away by a heavy paw, and Traditional Publishers are running for their lives, pursued by a new way of doing things. Of course, nobody knows the ending to this little story. We all know what happened to Kong, pursued up the Empire State Building and brought down by guns and helicopters. It was a climactic battle and the new ape on the block got smashed by the forces of tradition. What's going to happen in the world of Internet Authoring? If I was a betting man, I'd say the ape is going to triumph, this time.

Article Tags: Internet Authors, King Kong, Into Print