I live in “Music City,” aka Nashville. For many of my friends who work in music it’s also known as Ground Zero. Over the past few years they’ve had a front row seat to the greatest distribution shift of our time. It was a little thing called the mp3. Thanks to the advent of digital files, and the industry’s unwillingness to deal with change, my friends have watched record label after record label disappear, iconic empires crumble, and the entire landscape of the music business leveled and reshaped. We now live in a world that they couldn’t even conceive of twenty years ago.

When I talk with my friends, usually after they’ve told me about how so-so label went under yesterday after 40 years, they look at me and say, “I hope you publishing guys learn from our mistakes because, well, you’re next. So good luck with that.”

I think they’re right. Mostly. The publishing industry is next in line because a distribution shift is coming to our business, too. We’ve been talking about it since the Sony e-reader and Amazon Kindle hit the market. Our mp3 just has a different name: ebooks. The difference this time is the industry, I believe, is trying to innovate and stay ahead of the wave. But will it be enough? Will the majority of publishers go the way of the record labels? Will tomorrow’s authors even need publishers?  (Note: a great read on that question is a recent post by literary agent Nathan Bransford.).

Here’s what I think, for what it’s worth, and what you should be doing now as an author if you want to thrive in the coming shift: [READ MORE] Continue Reading

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media lately. I think about how it has set the barriers of entry effectively to zero (a good thing if you’re trying to break into the market), how we use it or don’t use it and why, how it impacts the business of publishing and is reshaping it in some drastic ways. We rely on it, use it to connect and build brands faster than ever before, and when the machine’s wheels grind slow, well, just look what happened with the recent Twitter outages.

Social network building has become a big part of what I do. And on a bigger scale it has become the primary medium through which business is evolving and through which we connect on a personal level. It’s all about friends, tweets, blogs, DM’s, unique visitors and whether or not you’re focused on SEO and you community influence. But for all the upside–and there is a lot, mind you–there is also downside. There always is. Single-sided coins are a myth.

As I have been going through my week I’ve found myself fixated on this corner of my life and wondered, “Why is having more Twitter followers or Facebook friends really important? Is it important at all? And why do I obsess (let’s call it what it is) about having other people like me and care about what I have to say?” These are tough questions because if I answer them honestly, which I’ve tried to do, the answers may uncover some pretty twisted priorities or worse…a crooked soul in need of straightening.

As I’ve thought about it, two things have become clear in my own experience: Continue Reading