Digital publishing: the experts' view of what's next

Industry luminaries scry the spins ahead in the helter skelter revolution at the centre of their business

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• • Alison Flood - theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014 11.

Publishing in a spin … man in a digital vortex. Photograph: Carol and Mike Werner/Alamy

Anna Rafferty, Penguin digital managing director

"I predict more digital for publishers in 2014.  I'm not being (completely) facetious, I mean more digitalness in all parts of the industry, not just in ebook product output.  We're going to be using all of the creepy/fun/incredibly clever targeted and personalised marketing opportunities that our connected lives now afford to the smart marketer to reach, and then truly delight, relevant readers.


"I'm fascinated by the explosion of the Quantified Self, enabled by digital technology, and love the idea of a personal Quantified Self reading-tracker-and-recommendation app – like a cross between Fitbit and Foursquare but with books.  That would be fun.  I'm also obsessed with Tumblr and the way it acts as a co-creation, self-publishing platform.  Thousands of people are, usually collaboratively, producing a lot of short-form, episodic fiction and hundreds of thousands more are reading it.  Is this the start of a new storytelling format? Actually, no – I used to write fan fiction consequences in school by passing notebooks around – but Tumblr allows this creativity to explode, making it very easy for readers and publishers to discover real talent and energy there; very interesting.


"In terms of massive digital bestsellers for 2014, look no further than Elizabeth Is Missing.  It's got everything lined up to be an enormous e (and p) smash; a thriller, on the literary side but with tremendous mass appeal and incredible word-of-mouth potential.  It's the kind of book you'll want to talk about while you're reading in a 'share the gasps', Sherlock-on, second-screen kind of way. Obviously these kinds of titles do incredibly well digitally as there's no latency between receiving a breathless recommendation and your eager fingers turning (do we still say 'turning' on an ereader? I think so) the first page. It's going to spread like its pixels are on fire."

Dan Franklin, Random House UK digital publisher

"I just read that you have to do something six times before you start knowing what it is (point three of this post), which is useful because I'm going into my sixth year working in digital publishing. The key question of 2014 is: what do we do when digital publishing starts reaching maturity? And the answer must be, more of it: more experimenting, more risk-taking, and doing what we know works well again and again. Ebooks work well, as does short-form fiction and non-fiction, so let's do more of that. 
What's been challenging? Anything involving location-based storytelling, intrinsic and overt gamelike interactivity, augmented reality, and 'born digital' fiction. Although there are encouraging signs that when published well these experiments can be successful commercially – apps like DEVICE 6 and The Walk showed this at the end of last year. As such, 2014 has already seen the notion of 'wearable technology' creep into publishing conversations – expect it to remain at least talked-about for the remaining 12 months. 

"This year I'm focusing on taking things away rather than adding them, stripped-down reading experiences: pure reading. We keep being told discoverability is a publisher problem, not a reader problem, but great publishing is predicated on the inner belief that no one knows what they really want until they're introduced to it, so more than ever we need to develop strategies to do that. We're on it. The pressures of a generation coming up who don't care about owning 'things' will continue to be exerted on the industry, as we grapple with the question of access over ownership. But the future of reading itself belongs with one peer group: writers. 2014 must see digital publishers returning again and again to writers to inform them of creative possibilities and work with them and their agents to execute their ideas. It's that simple, it's that challenging and it's that exciting!"
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