It's still good to have gatekeepers

By E.G. | AUSTIN

THE rise of e-readers has already introduced big changes for both publishers and readers. Electronic publications can be turned out faster than the paper kind, and the devices allow for more flexible formatting and pricing. We have already seen, for example, a rise in short books and free-standing articles presented as one-off downloads, as in Amazon's Kindle Singles. One contemporaneous example is Sasha Issenberg's "Rick Perry and his Eggheads". Originally part of a longer book about the science and analytics of political campaigns—called "The Victory Lab" and due next year—the chapter about the Texas governor was brought forward and published electronically just days after Mr Perry announced that he is running for president.

What will this mean for traditional books and magazines? Gabe Habash, writing at Publisher's Weekly, is worried. He notes that Amazon has just published a one-off short story from Tom Rachman, author of the novel "The Imperfectionists":

[W]hat's stopping Amazon from gathering a store of “more literary” short stories from respected writers and releasing them every week, putting them directly in competition with The New Yorker? They've already challenged every publisher, Apple, Barnes & Noble (not to mention killed Borders), Wal-Mart, and basically every other retailer in America. So why not start the siege on the old guard of literary journals and magazines? If Amazon decided, could they succeed?

He offers some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the relative money an author could make by publishing via Amazon rather than the New Yorker—an exercise complicated by the fact that the magazine's pay-scale is a bit mysterious. The risks of the New Yorker losing its fiction to Amazon, however, seem small. The supply of worthwhile stories available well exceeds the space to publish them, particularly as many publications have scaled back their fiction offerings due to revenue concerns that predate the widespread use of e-readers. In 2005, when the Atlantic stopped publishing short fiction as part of its regular issues, the executive editor explained that it was partly because the stories were drawing fewer readers than the print magazine's other content: "Numbers shouldn't dictate your plans, but they can be helpful when you're trying to make tough choices,” he said.

The more general question, however, is whether publishers like Amazon (and particularly Amazon) represent a threat to the older magazine model, in which a variety of articles are bundled together and sold for a price that, even on the newsstand, is lower than what a reader would expect to pay if buying everything piecemeal. Part of the reason readers buy magazines is because they are comfortable outsourcing some of the decision-making about content delivery, and welcome the fact that magazines curate the news. The last issue of the New Yorker, for example, included articles about Mr Perry, the gold standard, tarot cards, Wikipedia, Syria, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, and Rin Tin Tin.

Few readers are interested in every article, but most will enjoy several of them. And magazine buyers tend to enjoy the serendipity of stumbling upon something that turns out to be fascinating. I don't think I've read anything serious about tarot cards, for example, but I am more likely to read about it the New Yorker than I am to buy something a la carte, given that the subject never interested me before. It may be that e-publications will eat up part of the magazine market, but brands with a strong editorial line and loyal readers should fair pretty well.

Picture credit: mccun934 (via Flickr)