Our Founder and Principal of Publisher Relations, Jay Gale, shares his current views on the rapidly evolving publishing industry.

After speaking with many publishers, Inkubate has learned that they are kept up at night worrying about the rapidly shrinking retail marketplace, and though this is good news for the makers of Lunesta, it portends an industry in turmoil.

Inkubate agrees that this marketplace is contracting rapidly and that securing access to markets is fundamentally necessary for traditional publishers to survive; but, securing access to a marketplace when you have little or no product to sell is a waste of time and effort.

The publishing world is in rapid transition and while Amazon is using innovation and proactive ways to directly connect with writers, and in so doing dis-intermediating publishers and agents, traditional publishers seem content to execute discovery like they always have—passively—e.g., waiting for writers or agents to query them. And, while this continues to work for the time being, it is unlikely that five years from now these same publishers will effectively be able to compete in a publishing industry whose evolution is being driven by technology.

Inkubate levels the playing field by providing publishers with the same kind of direct access to writers that Amazon has built for itself through its self-publishing models. But Inkubate does more—it ups the ante—by leveraging the one thing that publishers have in their favor that Amazon still has to achieve: imprint brand value. Publishers who do not seize the opportunity to leverage their brand values in the only place that it really matters—with the writer community—are missing the best opportunity that they have to secure primary access to new and undiscovered writers, and this, of course, is fundamental to the long-term survival of any publishing house.

By taking care of that part of their business, publishers can then begin to build new ways to access retail markets, either through leveraging the quality of their content in their negotiations with third party retailers or by delivering that content themselves; in either case, it starts with sourcing the most compelling works by the best authors.

-Jay D. Gale, Principal & Co-Founder

jdgale@inkubate.com

603-491-1168

Earlier this week, Publishers Weekly ran a feature story about Inkubate’s innovative plans to pair writers with publishers, editors and agents. In “Inkubate Plans to Digitize the Slushpile,” Senior News Editor, Calvin Reid reported that the search tools we’re developing will enable subscribers to quickly identify literary works of interest. Publishing professionals use Inkubate to “Discover” content any number of ways, including by author, genre, literary form and writer-generated tags. Inkubate then helps them make contact with the author in a secure and copyright respectful environment.

At Inkubate we see our technology transforming the proverbial mailroom slushpile into a valuable, minable raw resource and we’re clearly not alone. Bruce Shaw, President and Publisher at the Harvard Common Press commented on Reid’s piece, writing, “I'm willing to give it a chance...if it is really well organized, and simple to see what is there (before delving further, if so desired), it could be very helpful...And I’m looking forward to seeing more and talking with them more about it.”

Many other industry professionals, including acclaimed authors, Dianna Hutts Aston and Betsy James, and literary editor & producer, Jody Feagan have concluded that our model just makes sense. Brendan DeMelle, Executive Director and managing Editor of DeSmogblog.com writes “Inkubate is likely to be a win-win for everyone.”

Consider, too, the growing demand for high quality content to feed the eBook business models of major publishing companies and it becomes clear that Inkubate is undoubtedly timely. After all, there simply are not enough editors or agents working in the industry to engage in the process of traditional “Discovery” while simultaneously managing the volume of new work that will be required to fill this emerging market. To remain competitive and relevant, publishing companies need to be able to differentiate their eBook content from that of the online aggregators like Amazon and Google and self-publishers, otherwise they will not be able to command the premium price points that curated works deserve. The sheer volume of eBook publishing that has publishers salivating (750,000 eBook titles in 2010 on top of the nearly 300,000 traditional books) makes it obvious that the old way of initiating Discovery just won’t be sustainable. Inkubate is the engine that will drive this emerging market.

We are excited to be the only company committed to building solutions for writers, publishers, editors and agents as they transition to meet the challenges (and opportunities) of a rapidly evolving industry.