Times Academic

The internet has made a big impact on the publishing business. Before writers had to get published in hard copy – namely on paper. Whether it be a newspaper, a novel or a comic the writer needed to run the gamut of finding an agent and submitting typed manuscripts. The only other option was vanity publishing. The problem with vanity publishing is that it hardly ever pays. If a publisher doesn’t think your manuscript is any good then why should a reader?

There has been a big change. The printed word is in decline. People have caught on to the fact that they can get the same information for free on the internet. A good case in point are newspapers. I never buy newspapers now – I simply skim the headlines on the web.

Another factor has been the great popularity of electronic reading devices such as Kindle. Instead of collecting books that take up a lot of space why not store all the books that you want to read on a digital format? The Kindle allows you to download hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright books for free. I have a Kindle for this very reason. It is packed with the classics, many of which I never been able to find in charity shops.

Recently, I went on holiday to Koh Samui. I stayed at a beautiful beach called Maenam on the north coast of the island. In the resort swimming pool I met a woman who told me her self-styled job was writing travel guides. She didn’t work for the Lonely Planet or any of the other big publishers. Instead she wrote her own guides on her laptop and then turned them into a PDF format. These she then promoted on Amazon. She also did some SEO to make her titles rank highly in the search engines. She told me that she made enough from this to not have a regular job. Her job was simply traveling and writing about it. It seemed like a very enviable job to me as I sat in a pool looking at the white sands and calm sea of Maenam.

Travel Guides have to be relevant. Finding a niche – such as backpackers, wine enthusiasts, surfers etc. will lead to revenue. These people want more up-to-date information than is provided by Lonely Planet that often doesn’t update for 5 years. This is where electronic publishing has the advantage  – it can be updated immediately for no cost.