Around the Word: Major Publishing Trends for 2013

With explosive developments in technology, readers and writers are struggling to re-construct an understanding of how to “be” readers and writers as the industry moves away from traditional publishing formats.

Here are some snapshots of major publishing industry trends of 2013 that are forecasted to continue:

 • The Multimedia Wave. Book publishers are investing more time, energy, and resources in designing applications for e-books, given the dramatically increased use of tablets for reading. Conventional publishing protocols—designing book covers, re-printing new editions, choosing bookstores and other channels of distribution—have been neglected in favor of making online readability more interactive with music, pictures, search features, and other multimedia tools.

In a Guardian article, Victoria Barnsley of HarperCollins UK says, “We can’t think of ourselves as book publishers anymore. We have to see ourselves as multimedia content producers.”

 • The Return of the Subscription Model. With growth in piracy arising from free-floating creative content in the Internet universe, many magazine publications are looking to protect their content by reviving the subscription model. Readers will have to subscribe to the magazine and select an option for "digital issues"—at an additional cost—before they can access content on their tablet or smartphone.

In May 2011, the New York Times published an article about the digital birth of the New Yorker on the iPad. New Yorker editor David Remnick excitedly explained, “If you are going to get thousands of readers that you didn’t have before, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of readers, you’d be foolish to complain about the work that went into coming up with something they found compelling on the iPad. It is a very big opportunity for a magazine like the New Yorker to find whole new audiences.”

 • The Rise of Self-Powered Curation. Social media presence and prowess is one of the key features of the modern man’s (and modern company's) identity. The integration of Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter into our digital behavior suggests that users are interested in personalizing the presentation and experience of content online.

Many apps (like Pocket, InstaPaper, Readability, Read It Later, etc.) allow users to find, download, and save online content to read later, offline. While such online-bookmarking tools, the idea of self-powered curation is sure to change reading habits and expectations.