Content Wise

Glimpses of the Future of Publishing

Four stories surfaced in the last week or so that suggest some answers to that nagging question in our industry: What is the Future of Publishing?

Squint, and you might see the vague outlines of what magazines and books may turn into in this increasingly multi-platform world.

1. The Industry Standard is back—with an online betting pool.

The magazine that chronicled the Internet explosion and then fizzled along with it in 2001 has been reborn, not in print but on the Web only. Its centerpiece is a prediction market, using ersatz "Standard Dollars," that aims to tap the wisdom of the Standard's crowd of expert readers and commentators.

If the market becomes a reliable trend-spotter for the tech industry, this could be a killer app. True, that's a big "if." Whatever happens, we think it's a creative attempt at an online extension for a brand that many believed had petered out. (Check out PPX, another magazine-related prediction market, at Popular Science's site; it covers "the future of science and technology." Simon & Schuster set up its own market, Media Predict, to spot ideas for books, recordings, and other media products that are likely to succeed; we wrote about it last year.)

More details on the Industry Standard's market and comments from Derek Butcher, vice president and general manager, are at Tech Crunch and the New York Times.

2. Here comes a unified, multi-platform book delivery system.

Writing about Amazon's plans to purchase Audible, Brad Stone at Bits thinks this is a real possibility:

"How about a service that allows you to seamlessly switch from reading a book on your digital device to listening to the same book read aloud as you get in the car, or if your eyes are tired, or if you simply want to hear a crucial scene acted out? And then switch back to the printed page?"

3. Cell phones are reading magazines.

Wired, Billboard, and Car and Driver have all recently published bar codes within the pages of their magazines in an effort to kick start their "mobile initiatives." Why? It's much easier to get cell phone users to tune in to related material if they don't have to manually type in those pesky Web addresses. Car and Driver's efforts are among the most ambitious so far, as Joanna Pettas reports at FolioMag.com:

"Car and Driver published more than 400 barcodes in its annual Buyer’s Guide in late December. Each car in the guide had a corresponding barcode linking to a microsite with pictures, reviews and a link to the full road test..."

4. And now, a platform to publish physical objects.

Three-dimensional printers—something in the neighborhood of Star Trek's transporter or replicator—have been used for a while now by aerospace and race car engineers, doctors, and artists. So reports materials scientist Mark Miodownik in the Independent.

As the technology continues to grow more sophisticated, it's not hard to envision the emergence of companies that enable their customers to "print out" a whole variety of physical objects: call them 3-D publishers. All right, maybe you have to squint a little harder to see it. But that's what they told Gutenberg, isn't it?

S&S Lets the Public Choose the Next Big Book

Simon & Schuster is tapping into the wisdom of the crowd in an attempt to identify book ideas that could turn into blockbusters.

The company has partnered with newly launched Media Predict, an online "prediction market" modeled after similar systems that successfully forecast which candidates will win political elections and which movies will generate the highest box office receipts.

In essence, Media Predict is an online game in which traders use a limited number of virtual dollars to buy shares in book proposals that they believe will be successful. The proposals are submitted by literary agencies as well as individuals.

And who are these traders? Anyone with an interest in media who cares to register on the site.

Let's all head over there, sign up as traders, and take this intriguing tool for a test drive. It looks like a useful way to get first-hand experience in the power of user participation--for anyone who publishes anything on the Web.

Here's how Simon & Schuster plans to use Media Predict. In October, it will choose one proposal from among those that are most highly valued by the "market." Touchstone, an S&S imprint, will then publish the book, assuming, as the company puts it, "the completed manuscript satisfies Touchstone’s publishing criteria."

In addition to books, Media Predict traders currently can bid on musical groups (will they get a record deal?) and television pilots (will the series get produced?). Eventually the site may expand into many more areas of media.

You'll find a fuller explanation, including helpful videos, at How Media Predict Works.

Assignment Zero Launches Pro-Am Journalism Site

An intriguing new species in the world of online collaborative journalism has just been hatched. Assignment Zero is an experiment in "crowdsourcing"--that is, enlisting large groups of contributors to research and report on news and trends. Its organizers describe the project as "pro-am" because it relies on professional as well as citizen journalists.

Here's how one of Assignment Zero's founders, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, explains the idea:

"Can large groups of widely scattered people, working together voluntarily on the net, report on something happening in their world right now, and by dividing the work wisely tell the story more completely, while hitting high standards in truth, accuracy and free expression?"

Last summer Rosen proposed a similar project called NewAssignment.net (which we wrote about here). He also popularized the phrase "the people formerly known as the audience" to describe how Web site users are increasingly in the driver's seat.

For editors and publishers who are trying to convince audiences to participate in their Web sites (and who isn't?), it will be instructive to stay tuned as this project confronts such challenges as:

• How to organize and supervise an enthusiastic but possibly unruly crowd of amateurs in a virtual newsroom.
• How to coach an enthusiastic but possibly unskilled crowd of amateurs to create raw copy of reasonable quality.
• How to assess the credibility of these citizens.
• How to attract enough professional volunteers to turn the crowd's contributions into coherent coverage. (And, incidentally, how to address the backlash from pros who don't appreciate this push toward unpaid labor.)

In fact, Rosen issued a help-wanted call on his blog yesterday: It seems they're getting plenty of "ams," but they could use a lot more "pros." If you'd like to watch the adventure of "open Web publishing" unfold from the front lines, here's how to get involved.

The Audience Contributes (in more ways than one)

The tide of participatory media may be starting to erode the beaches of conventional news reporting. Media critic and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has proposed NewAssignment.net, a Web-based non-profit to fund independent-minded reporters through private contributions from anyone interested in their investigations. The (paying) audience would suggest article ideas; professional journalists would go out and report them.

So far Rosen's scheme is hypothetical, though it has already attracted a $10,000 pledge from Craig Newmark, creator of craigslist, the grass-roots mega-site of community listings and classified ads.

AskQuestions.org, launched by publishing consultant and PC Magazine co-founder Cheryl Woodard,  has been following a similar plan for quite a while. The site invites visitors to nominate and vote on questions, which journalists then investigate.

The Wisconsin State Journal's "Reader's Choice" poll asks its Web audience to decide which of five possible articles should appear on the front page of the following day's print edition. And there are many more instances of Web publishers collaborating with "the people formerly known as the audience," a group we'll be referring to with the handy acronym TPFKATA. (Rosen has some interesting things to say about this group.)

If you publish anything on the Web, you need to explore this trend--which some call "open source publishing"--and find ways to use it to your advantage. We'll keep pointing to notable examples as they surface.