The Publishing Revolution Is Here

I was going to wait until our manifesto was available online (PEN said it’d be up by last Monday . . . maybe I’m missing something?), but I’ll just jump ahead and tell a quick story or two about this panel that took place last Thursday.

As part of PEN World Voice’s first “Working Day,” Anna Moschovakis of Ugly Duckling Presse, DW Gibson of Mischief + Mayhem, David-Dephy Gogibedashvili, Sergio Chejfec, Eugene Ostashevsky, Jon Fine from Amazon.com, and myself all got together to talk about the forthcoming/ongoing “publishing revolution.” Our conversation was expertly guided by Joshua Furst, who can’t be praised enough for mostly keeping us on track and helping create our manifesto.

Just to provide a bit of background, the “Working Day” panels were limited to only PEN Members and were designed to address a particular issue and issue a Manifesto/Plan of Action.

So, our charge was to write the manifesto for the publishing revolution. Which is as quixotic as it gets.

Nevertheless, the panel was really interesting and evolved into a conversation about who owns the Internet the role of publishers now and in the future. I’m oversimplifying here (it was a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation that could’ve gone on for an additional 3 hours), but we ended up focusing on the role of the publisher as curator and as entity that helps connect readers with the right book out of the infinite number of books that will soon be available. (Very oversimplified.)

We talked a lot about the role of the Internet, not just as a conduit for distribution and publication, but as a place for developing communities of authors and readers. Richard Nash was quoted and alluded to.

What’s funny-awesome is that upon leaving, Sergio Chejfec (whose My Two Worlds is coming out in August) wandered over to the Housing Works Bookshop. He was browsing around, heard some guy talking to a woman about this book, this really cool book, this book he’s been carrying around all week, this book that she has to read, this book called My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec . . . Sergio walked over, introduced himself, and they ended up talking for a while. And to continue the series of circular circumstances, as it turns out, this reader is one of Josh Furst’s students . . . Such a nice ending to our mostly digital conversation. Something things happen in meatspace. Sometimes readers find writers in a totally coincidental fashion . . .