As the year draws to an end, people look to turn a page. Resolutions are being prepared. Summations of 2018 are being written. I am preparing my Trends for 2019 video. Here is my video on my predictions for 2018. Let me know if I hit the nail on the head or missed the mark.
I started to think about the evolving nature of publishing and thinking beyond 2019. What will 2025 or 2030 look like, let alone 2040 or 2050?
If we had tried to envision publishing in 1990 (pre-Internet), how accurate could we have been? Or if we had tried to envision book and journal publishing in 1998 (pre-Google and prior to Amazon’s dominance), would we have been able to see clearly?
Maybe this is a commentary on the nature of being able to control anything beyond the next year or so. I love the quote about writing by E. L. Doctrow. He said, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
Perhaps in publishing you can control the next six months or one year (if that). But beyond that external forces and unseen turns in the road make it all but impossible.
Let me know what you think publishing will be like, if you dare, in 2028; a scant 10 years away. Or simply worry about the turns in the road 2019 holds.
Happy new year!