VUE Magazine, March 2012 Special Feature

F E ATURE

Interview with Hugh McGuire

The founder of LibriVox, PressBooks and Book Oven talks about the rise of digital books and how they are changing not only the way we read, but also the way books are published and distributed, the nature of self-publication, and the place of bookstores and libraries.

David Hamburg

14

vue March 2012

S P ECIAL F EATUR E

Hugh McGuire, how about starting off by introducing yourself to our readers.

I’ve done a lot of book experimenting with what publishing will look like in the future. My most successful project is LibriVox, which is an open-source endeavour where volunteers make audio recordings of public domain books. We give the recordings away for free. The website [http://librivox.org] gets something like 650,000 visits per month, and our catalogue is now getting close to 5,000 books in 29 languages from around the world. This is a non-commercial project run by volunteers with a tiny budget to keep things running; we’ve been running this for about six years now.

I’ve also been experimenting with other kinds of things around podcasting aggregation. I recently started a commercial audio publishing company called Iambic, which tries to take some of the same approach as LibriVox but applies it, in partnership with publishers, to working with books that are in copy.

long-form books on digital devices. We went from one per cent digital device readers in 2008 (in the U.S.) to twenty per cent now. This colossal growth will only continue.

Soon it will be mainstream.

Exactly. They used to question how much time people wanted to spend in front of their screens, but we’ve seen a great evolution in technology. I think it really kicked in with the iPad, which was designed to accommodate long-form writing, and it turned out that people love these tablets.

You’ve written a lot about the new role of libraries.

Why will we even need libraries anymore?

I think that space will remain very relevant, although the idea of a library as a place that houses lots of books will change. As people do more reading on digital devices and prices drop, it will change the complexion of the kind of services that libraries provide. In fact, it already has. Libraries will always be a place where people can interact and

These ventures are about democratizing digital publishing and about who gets to be a producer, making publishing a lot easier.

I had another company called Book Oven, out of which came PressBooks, which is a really easy platform to allow book publishers to be more efficient about how they distribute their books in the digital marketplace. It’s focused on the production side, where people can get a print-ready book that they can print on demand or send to a printer.

These ventures are about democratizing digital publishing and about who gets to be a producer, making publishing a lot easier. I think what’s interesting is that digital publishing allows producers of content to focus on making that content and getting it to the people who want it, and to spend less time worrying about the details and the expense of producing media, the way we used to.

exchange information. If that’s the case, their role will be helping our society navigate through all this change and perhaps be preservers of information as well. At least they can curate local historical information. I think it’s a difficult time for libraries, because everything is changing so quickly.

They have built such a valuable long-term service for society, but that value is changing.

Kind of like a glorified hub.

Libraries have to figure out how to deliver to people and how to engage them, things that many are already doing, but there’s still a lot of hesitation in figuring that out.

Your ventures could best be described as Publishing: The Next Generation.

What about bookstores? They’re facing even bigger challenges. It seems that the ones still in business are becoming kind of lifestyle stores where they sell much more than just books, while the book offerings shrink.

That’s it. I say that I do research and development on Internet publishing. That seems to be my tagline these days. It’s really about trying to figure out what book publishing will look like in this digital age. Since I’ve had a long-time interest in books, this is where my focus has been. Since 2007, with the introduction of the Kindle and the iPhone, it has been demonstrated that people are very much willing to read

That’s interesting. I always wondered if there was a big enough market to support the explosion of the superbookstores that emerged during the ‘90s. They put most of the independents out of business, but now it’s their time to struggle. We’ve already seen massive closures in the U.S., and I think we’ll see more. We’ll probably end up with small boutique bookstores that cater to different kinds of vue March 2012

15

S PECIAL FEATURE

booklovers. The middle-of-the-road bookstore will have a hard time in the future. I look at my buying habits and see that I buy only the occasional paper book; the rest are digital. A lot of bookstores will probably become literary salons.

age to secure big funding. Companies like mine are trying to figure out where the really big opportunity lies. You have the monsters like Google, Apple and Amazon; but where are the opportunities for players like us?

How will all this great proliferation of books, not to mention free online reading, affect small titles in the

What’s the song and dance that you have to do to attract a venture capitalist to invest in an Internet

future? Will we see fewer new writers?

start-up? What are they looking for?

Actually, people are reading more than ever. There’s a flowering of Internet sites and great blogs dedicated to reviewing books and talking about literary culture. People are also writing more than ever. The self-publishing boom is absolutely phenomenal. We’ve gone from about 200,000 self-published titles on the shelves to something like a million; and that will just keep on growing.

There are a few key things they want: They often say that they back people first – someone who either has experience or has done interesting enough work that the investor wants to back it. They want to back an entrepreneur who can figure out a winning opportunity; it’s a hard road in the startup world. Then they want to know that the market you’re in is changing and will be big enough to make some money in a number of years. This is huge. You need a market of some significance. The third but probably least important point is that the idea makes sense.

Of course, these businesses often evolve into something totally different than what they set out to do. The start-up entrepreneur needs to figure out what the idea is that excites the market. And it can happen from the pivot, like it did with Twitter, which started out as a podcasting aggregator tool, but they built this little tool inside that was interesting.

The venture capitalists made their investment based on that, and Twitter as we know it eventually emerged.

Then again, how do you make money on that? If you can get the kind of adoption rate, the way Twitter has done, then you can afford to worry about that later. In the meantime, you try to invest as little money as possible and try to get the money later.

True, but hardly any of those authors are making money.

But that’s always been the case. Very few writers make a living writing novels, and I think it will get harder. They will have to become more engaged as marketers and selfpromoters. You can lament that shift, but nothing can be done about it. The cat’s out of the bag, and the question remains: How will we all adapt to the new digital world of publishing?

Meanwhile, the opportunities are there for authors to connect with readers and get their writing out in the world, but they’ve got to figure it out. The money will be made on places like Amazon and the Apple world. The money just gets spread out much thinner, with just a handful of distributors dominating.

And speaking of money, Hugh, you are also an Internet entrepreneur. How do you explain all the venture capital being poured into these niche

Easier said than done.

You bet.

start-ups that don’t make a dime?

You might get a success rate of one in ten, and that makes for weird economics. But every once in a while there’s a big slam-dunk that makes it all pay off. Still, I find it strange the way the money flows in the start-up world. There are a lot of people making bets on companies that they hope will revolutionize a particular sector.

Hugh, it’s been an education talking with you about the brave new world of digital publishing and venture capital. Thanks for your time, and good luck in your

What’s been your experience with venture capitalists?

Hugh McGuire works at the intersection of book publishing and the web, building tools and communities that bring digital and books together. He is the founder of PressBooks.com and LibriVox. He be contacted at (514) 464-2047, hughmcguire@gmail.com or @hughmcguire

Understand that I have only raised a modest amount compared to some of the staggering funding that happens all the time. But there will be a few companies in the digital book business that do something so extraordinary that they man16

vue March 2012

ventures.