Report from the PageBreak Conference, October 2022
PageBreak bills itself as “a next-generation publishing conference,” dedicated to exploring “what publishing is and can be.” Over the course of two days, I heard speakers from a wide array of communities—publishers, yes, but also librarians, researchers, software developers, and nonprofits. What everyone in the room had in common was an interest in delivering a fresher, better experience to all kinds of readers.
I found the ideas being discussed fascinating, but I also saw them through the lens of an editor working with self-publishing authors every day. So my round-up here is focused on ideas that will be of interest to indie authors. This audience didn’t feature often in discussions, but I think they are better positioned than traditional publishers to take advantage of some of the opportunities ahead of us.
Past expectations and future possibilities for ebooks
Let’s start with the keynote talk from Michael Tamblyn, CEO of Kobo, who did speak a bit about self-publishing. You may have seen references to his comments about the size of the self-publishing market during an interview at the Frankfurt Book Fair a couple weeks ago:
“In each of the markets that we are in as Kobo, self-publishing … is the first, second, or third largest publisher in that market for us. Just to put this in a context that people can get their heads around, one in four books that we sell in English is a self-published title, which means that effectively for us self-publishing is like having a whole other Penguin Random House sitting out in the market that no one sees. It’s like the dark matter of publishing.”
(Read Jane Freidman’s helpful context for the quote in her Hot Sheet newsletter.) Because we have no solid numbers for the size of the self-publishing ecosystem, stray revelations like this one from someone in a position to see the breadth of the market take on outsize importance. (The Alliance of Independent Authors is working on a study that will hopefully go some ways toward addressing the lack of numbers, so stay tuned for that next year.)
Tamblyn expanded on those comments at PageBreak, repeating the one-in-four books figure after noting that “self-publishing is the only digital creator class that has a middle class,” with plenty of authors making $50,000 to $60,000 a year. He noted also that the vast majority of self-published books sold through Kobo were priced between $0.99 and $4.99, a market window self-publishers were able to “flood into” when traditional publishers began ratcheting up prices.
The overall trajectory of his talk, however, was about the broader history and landscape for ebooks. Using a chart illustrating the Gartner hype cycle for new technologies, he outlined a variety of reasons why the market share for digital books has never reached the 50 percent that was widely predicted. These ranged from the limitations of e-ink to pricing to the continued importance of print books as part of the gift economy.
Tamblyn argued that, according to your view on the market, we might now be in the “slope of enlightenment” or the “plateau of productivity,” where 20–30 percent of the potential audience has adopted ebooks. According to him, some categories of genre fiction—including romance, sci fi, and fantasy—have hit that expected 50 percent digital sales figure in recent years.
Tamblyn pointed to two ways the US and/or European regulators could shake up the market for ebooks. The first is for Apple to “no longer be able to charge 30 percent for goods they are also selling themselves.” He noted that “this is a legislative remedy that’s being actively contemplated right now.” Second would be for Amazon to be forced to spin off all of their publishing-related businesses into a separate company. As Tamblyn put it, what if a regulator were to say, “You can own the store, you can be in payments, you can do ad sales, you can run the servers, but you don’t get to own the factory and the workers too, and specifically you can’t have a chokehold on independent authors, audiobooks, book rights, translation rights, and your own publishers.” He said it was “crazy but not crazy crazy” to dream that regulators could take this kind of anti-trust action against Amazon.
Gen Z and Millennial media behaviors
The second talk that had me scribbling furiously was one from Kathi Inman Berens and Rachel Chase Noorda, both of them professors at Portland State University, reporting results from a 2022 survey of Gen Z and Millennial media behaviors.
This survey confirmed some findings from their 2020 study, including that readers who pirate books are also “super consumers.” According to their findings, 52 percent of free downloaders go on to buy the very book they downloaded after reading it. They also pointed to the profitability of Webtoon—a comics platform that offers lots of free content, often requiring payment only for early access—to support their point that “robust free sampling does drive sales.”
Gen Z, in particular, are comfortable reading in apps, which might be an argument for making a book look as much like a screen as possible. (See my discussion below of a beautiful new digital reading app, Immer.) Survey respondents also subscribed to a lot of digital content: 63 percent had paid for Webtoon content and 86 percent had paid for a Substack.
One interesting thread in their presentation was the strong relationship between consuming and creating, in which readers can become fans who then go on to create books and other works inspired by their reading. Among the survey respondents, 57 percent considered themselves readers, 52 percent considered themselves fans, and 25 percent are writers.
One statistic that startled me: 59 percent of respondents said they’d prefer the graphic novel or manga version of a story rather than text-only. (Note, however, that the survey included respondents who described themselves as “non-readers.”) I’ll be curious to see how this plays out in the self-publishing space. Will we see more partnerships between writers and artists on platforms like Webtoon? Will we see writers using the new AI illustration tools to develop graphic novel versions of their own stories?
Watching the behavior of my own Gen Z teens, I’ve noticed that they don’t care at all about what entity might be producing the content they read or watch. They watch big-budget shows like Andor and solo-produced YouTuber content with equal fervor. In a conversation after their talk, Berens agreed with that impression, which I think is excellent news for self-publishers. An imprint like Knopf might have less cachet for younger readers, who are more likely to discover new books from influencers and fan communities.
AI and other new developments
As you would expect from a conference focused on the future of publishing, and bringing that future into being, there was a lot of discussion of cutting-edge technologies—some of it not entirely relevant to self-publishers. For example, there were many discussions of “single-source publishing”—essentially cutting out Adobe InDesign and going straight from a Word docx file to a html-based tool that can then produce all formats needed for a book. Many self-publishers who do their own formatting already use such a workflow, with software like Vellum or Atticus.
The web-based book design app Hederis is aimed at larger publishers and much more expensive than Vellum or Atticus, but could be a good option for a self-publishing author who wants access to more advanced design tools. (Your first project is free, if you want to check it out. New speculative fiction publisher Erewhon uses Hederis, if you want to see what is possible—many of their titles look alluring!) Folks who have the appetite and skills to play around with a free, open-source html to publication tool might also check out paged.js.
Brewster Kahle, of the Internet Archive, framed his discussion of a proposed digital book repository called BookServer as a solution to a problem identified by author Cory Doctorow, who sells his own books directly from his website. However, as many of you know, self-publishers who wish to do the same already have access to easy-to-use tools like Shopify, Payhip, and BookFunnel to sell and deliver ebook files directly to readers. That said, BookServer is intended to be a broader solution—“a protocol, not a platform,” according to Kahle—open to more players, including libraries, library patrons, publishers, readers, and authors. It would also be open source and, if widely adopted, could be one answer to the maddening lack of data about digital book sales (and borrows), especially from self-publishers. As a repository, it would also work to preserve digital works that are at high risk of being lost when file formats change or works are “orphaned” by their creators.
Amy Spencer’s talk on “amplified publishing” was more academic and theoretical, but the work she and colleagues are doing at Bath Spa University may be worth following for authors eager to experiment with new ways of adapting their works or engaging readers. In particular, she talked about the promise of experiments like the research group’s Stormjar project, which will create hybrid live and digital experiences, including game demos and short films.
Micah Bowers of Bluefire Productions discussed the potential of a new tool they are creating called Cloudshelf, which would allow readers to read an ebook directly from a browser, without needing to download a file or install special software.
Nonfiction authors working on highly searchable topics might consider working with digital-first publisher Holloway. The company’s co-founder, Joshua Levy, told me that their SEO-focused model makes their authors’ material searchable by Google. Readers who discover it can read a single chapter from a book for free and then buy the complete book, which is a very interesting model.
One tool I am very eager to play with is a new digital reading app called Immer. One of the developers, Niels ’t Hooft, showed off a thoughtfully designed reading experience that looked so immersive and enjoyable it might succeed in pulling me away from my e-ink ereader. The app is currently in beta development; you can sign up to get early access on their website. To get a taste of some of the features, check out the gorgeous app-based novella Lotus, produced by the same team as a test project. (Though ’t Hooft noted that this project was hand-coded and some of these features are not yet scalable.) One intriguing idea ’t Hooft floated during his demo was the ability to have chapters from different point-of-view characters appear with different background colors.
Thad McIlroy gave a presentation on companies involved in bringing NFTs to books—at his last count, there were 36. The clear front-runner, Book.io, began operations only this past July, has financial backing from Ingram and Bertelsmann (parent company of Penguin Random House), and is already profitable. McIlroy noted the “breathtaking amount of innovation” in this space, but also the very real potential for it to collapse, as we’ve seen with other NFT and crypto marketplaces. McIlroy’s thorough analysis of US book publishing startups is featured in Publisher’s Weekly (subscription required) and includes a database of companies, along with their funding.
Tim O’Reilly demonstrated some of the most compelling use cases for AI technology I’ve seen thus far, showing how O’Reilly Media is using the GPT-3 language model to help them classify their large library of books as beginner, intermediate, or advanced. He also demonstrated the tool chain they used to translate a video presentation from English to Spanish, using Google translate and AI-based tools to strip the original audio, record new natural-sounding audio, and stitch it back to the video, along with lip-syncing. His overall message: “Machine learning is not a future thing anymore—it’s happening now. It’s a transformative moment for the entire technological landscape.”
Random points of delight
My notebook from the conference is littered with stars and exclamation points—a result of being in a room full of people who care deeply about books and writers and readers and creating an ecosystem that serves and benefits all of them.
I’ll leave you with a few random moments of delight:
Jafreen Uddin, Executive Director of the Asian American Writers Workshop, called for “narrative plenitude” for BIPOC writers—a phrase and concept I loved. Only a multitude of books from writers can capture the full breadth of experience of any one group. A single book from a single writer cannot possibly be representative, nor should it bear that weight of responsibility.
Pete Mulvihill, one of the owners of beloved San Francisco bookseller Green Apple Books sometimes goes surfing with Andy Bellows, manager of equally beloved City Lights Books. (Less delightful but still important: a “successful” indie bookstore has a profit margin of about 1.4 percent.)
New publisher Row House is exploring a community-supported publishing model, which has allowed them to give their authors $40,000 advances and 40 percent of royalties.
Adobe is working hard to make PDFs accessible. As is usually the case, better accessibility for specific groups also results in a better product for all: their Adobe Reader app now has a “Liquid mode” that gives PDFs responsive design, making them far easier to use on a smartphone. (Try it out—it really works!)
Google docs has an option to export as an EPUB, which is a much more adaptable and accessible format with the same fixed-content advantages of PDF.
Final conclusions
As you can surely tell from this write-up, I thought PageBreak was a stimulating, engaging conference, and I hope it will continue. It was a small conference, and all attendees and speakers were open to making new connections and hearing new ideas. There was a very appealing orientation toward action: each day there was an “unconference” session devoted to tackling problems submitted by conference attendees, not the organizers. I admit to being surprised (once again!) at how little the self-publishing communities and traditional-publishing communities share ideas or talk to one another. Almost all attendees I spoke with were completely unaware of well-established tools and platforms like Vellum, BookFunnel, and Draft2Digital that indie authors rely on.
If you are interested in learning more about any of these topics, check the conference website to see if slide decks or recordings are made available. I’ll update this post with additional information and links as they become available.
originally published October 29, 2022 | updated January 1, 2023
Check out our Resources page for more in-depth articles on writing, revising, polishing, and publishing your novel. Sign up for our weekly newsletter for fresh content!