Book Publishing and the Amanda Congdon Effect
Congdon and Baron
I had coffee the other day with an online magazine editor who has a budget for five freelance stories a month. That is not enough. I was also chattering with some people on twitter recently about large book publishers branding their star performers. Those top editors don’t have enough time. Somewhere in the delta between these circumstances is the future of the publishing industry. How do you diversify but remain small? How do go vertical without tipping over? It is a problem of scale and a problem with talent. I am calling it the Amanda Congdon effect. ¶ Amanda Congdon is the former host of the webshow Rocket Boom. She was the host. Andrew Baron was the producer. Differences. She left the show. For a time the audience and the show’s momentum left with her. The lesson is the same lesson every small publisher that has had a writer poached from them knows, building a business on other people’s talent — in small numbers — makes you vulnerable. The new twist in the attention economy, where value is ephemeral anyways, is departing talent doesn’t leave a perennial selling backlist title behind. ¶ If the online magazine’s writers had equity, the mag would get page views and more advertising. If a book publisher was more like a co-op — where new writers were admitted after a peer evaluation and the royalty relationship was inverted — then the publisher’s brand would become the asset. Bring on more imprints, not less. Just make them mean something.
cc licensed photo by laughing squid
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