The Future of Publishing

For today’s podcast I’m using my “future goggles” – as you can see – to make some predictions about the publishing business. Or, rather, to give you a perspective on how you might forecast the future of publishing.

I got the general idea from a Bo Sacks email titled “Publishing 2033.” I’ll provide the link below.

The key to imagining the future of publishing is to forget about publishers and think about readers, and how technology will change our habits.

Right now, most of us have several types of customized feeds. That might be the news feed on your phone, what you see on X, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok, or wherever you choose to waste your time on such things.

In addition to that, you might have some specialized publications, like a magazine or a newsletter. And wending its way through all of these things, you might have some personalities you follow.

It’s a bit of a jumbled mess. AI is going to help us organize all that.

But I think it’s a mistake to imagine any particular kind of organization – as if everyone will do it the same way. AI agents will make it possible for me to collect and organize the information I care about exactly the way I want it, and you’ll do it differently.

At the same time, somebody needs to pay for all this. To date, the internet has largely run on the assumption that all content should be free, supported by ads. That’s the bias of most tech companies, and a lot of content will continue to follow that model.

But imagine this. Let’s say that part of the setup of your personalized AI agent was to decide how much you’re willing to spend a month on information. Of course it would get more granular than that, but let’s leave it simple for the time being.

Most people would opt to pay nothing, so their daily feed would be full of ad-supported content.

Now let’s say your AI agent noticed that you had a particular interest in archeology, and it said for five bucks a month I can get you much better archeology content from these sources. That might be a good deal for you.

Think about how that changes the equation for the publisher. It’s no longer a question of an individual coming to a website with a special offer for a discreet collection of content. It might be that in some cases, but in other cases the publisher will be interacting with the AI agent. The AI agent will ask the publisher if it can get all the articles on Middle East archeology for a buck a month, or something like that.

The AI agent is going to find me the best deals on precisely the content I prefer.

Such a system would transform marketing and pricing decisions for content because the publisher won’t be making the offer directly to the consumer.

Think about that, and imagine what you’d have to change to live in that sort of an environment.

Also, the whole concept of an audience will change. The brand won’t control or own the audience. The audience – or the community, or whatever you want to call it – will be created as AI agents find people with common interests and connect them.

Of course the most likely scenario is that I’m completely wrong about all this. Things will develop organically, and no expert is going to be able to predict or control the trajectory. Something will evolve out of the individual choices of billions of consumers.

So what’s a publisher to do?

First, think creatively about what might happen.

Second, imagine how your operations would have to change to survive in these different scenarios.

Third, don’t build for any of them specifically, but try to create a platform that’s flexible enough to adjust when the new thing comes along.

Resources
Publishing 2033
https://www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/publishing-2033-22340