Digital Skills in Publishing

Posted on July 15, 2011 in Uncategorized

So in a world where the Kindle, the iPad and phrases like ‘multi-platform publishing’ are bandied about by those in the know, the age of digital has clearly hit the publishing world – hard. But then how has this resulted in the industry lamenting its lack of digital skills in the workplace?

A report compiled by Skillset has found that employers are finding a shortage of key digital skills amongst their current workforce, so the SYP invited four industry professionals with expertise and lively opinions on the world of digital to fill us in on what’s lacking, why, and what we can do to fill in the gaps.

Suzanne – We need to be experimenting, getting online, making websites, using Smartphones, downloading apps and uploading content, and making ourselves comfortable and equipped for the future.

Suzanne Kavanagh, the Publishing Sector Manager at Skillset, began with a thorough list of figures. You can read Skillset’s findings here, a fascinating combination of government stats and Skillset’s own surveys. Digital permeates everything, and the skills gaps that companies are reporting include skills for software packages, multi-skilling (juggling and product managing a complexity of product types) and being able to develop content for multiple platforms. The results of these skills shortages on a company should not be underestimated. They incur costs, delay products, can lose business and result in outsourcing work.

Suzanne was keen to point out that we are consumers too, so we are as best placed as anyone to discover what works best. We need to be experimenting, getting online, making websites, using Smartphones, downloading apps and uploading content, and making ourselves comfortable and equipped for the future.

Her sure-fire recommendations of exactly what you need to develop your digital know-how are ensuring that you are aware of product, brand management and development; you have some knowledge of multi-media production (apps, streaming videos, creating content); basic skills in IP, metadata and tagging; awareness of digital marketing (building audiences via twitter and email marketing); building customer relationship management (who IS the customer and how to market to them); and some knowledge of  data analysis, insight and research, with the ability to price and sell in digital.

Suzanne culminated her insightful advice by showing us this fantastic clip, The Future of Publishing, by Dorling Kindersley, to highlight changes that are afoot.

Alastair – There is an entrenching digital divide between publishing and ‘techie’ people, but publishing needs both sets of skills as digital and print will co-exist for a long while.

Alastair Horne, Innovations Manager for Cambridge University Press’s New Directions Group, was up next. Working in innovations is fabulous, he said, because it involves a lot of playing around with shiny new products. The idea of publishers being reluctant to embrace digital is over-stated though, particularly in the educational and academic field where publishers are embracing and experimenting with digital opportunities every day.

However, Alistair warned of the significant threat to the publishing industry from people outside of publishing, who get publishing. This includes Apple, self-publishers, you name it. Skills like hard coding are being brought in, because the shortage won’t be simply fixed with training in-house. Soft digital skills can be learned in-house, though, as publishers don’t want to lose out on the talent and publishing skills they already have. Alistair described an entrenching digital divide between publishing and ‘techie’ people, but publishing needs both sets of skills as digital and print will co-exist for a long while.

The fact that publishing is still seen very much as a vocation, not a career, means that such a slow intake into the industry doesn’t help innovation, creativity and thinking outside of the box. There’s also a salary barrier about getting in the experts; those skilled in outside industries don’t take kindly to publishing salaries. We need people who get apps though, which emphasises Suzanne’s point about us being the consumers too. He praised the thrilling Faber & Faber collaboration with Touch Press to create the Wasteland app for the iPad. At the moment his team are working on a medic app and trying to get a sense of what the revenue from it would be before they could commit to doing more apps. Editors will need to understand the worth of digital content.

Sophie – In the past, we were all lunching editors, but now it’s about knowing who does the front of the app store and blackmailing them!

Sophie Rochester worked in publishing for five years before moving to digital industry GT London in 2000. Since 2007 she has worked as an independent literary consultant and in 2010 founded The Literary Platform, a website dedicated to exploring new platforms for literature. In her eyes, we do ourselves down. Most people in publishing are talented and intelligent, (and, I’d like to add, motivated and determined as hell, are we SYP-ers) and it’s about arming yourself with the knowledge in order to set foot in the digital future. She emphasises that it’s down to self-responsibility; you need to make it your mission to get on top of it.

Sophie recommended being engaged with what’s going on at your company, or if you’re looking to get into publishing, keeping an eye on what’s going on in the news around you. Now it’s down to the power of the new retailer. Kindle posts, the shop front of Amazon, and what makes it onto the front of the iStore – these are the new influences on what sells. We need to understand these negotiations.

In the past, we were all lunching editors, but now, she pronounced, it’s about knowing who does the front of the app store and blackmailing them! For Sophie it’s about partnership strategies on every level, about research and development, and getting to know our new reading platforms.

Orna – Digital opportunities create a more indie, creative, symbiotic relationship between the writer and the reader.

Orna Ross came next to illuminate us on what it’s like to be a writer in digital times. After a long career in journalism and publishing in Dublin, most recently founding and running Font Writing School & Literary Agency, she moved to her favourite city, London, in 2008 to write full-time. She is now adapting her most recent novel, A Dance in Time (Penguin 2009) for screen. For Orna, we are in the middle of a revolution. She is pleased and excited about the possibilities.

In her eyes, the invention of three for two was an absolute scandal; it devalues the magic from the content creator. However, now amongst digital possibilities, she is able as a writer to have direct feedback from her readers. It is possible to build a tribe; before you were only as good as your last book. There was a painfully short shelf-live; now there is no such thing, because everything is up for grabs.

She thinks it’s fantastic because now writers have some sort of control back. A lot of writers don’t agree with her because they feel left on the sideline. They feel confused being asked by publishers to tweet and blog. Orna thinks that it creates a more indie, creative, symbiotic relationship between the writer and the reader. Her decisions to go indie were affected by the opportunity to be more connected to her readers, to have more supportive feedback, more control over her material, more power to interact in a partnership with publishers rather than as a resource and – especially – to be more creative!

Alistair’s last words were that ‘twitter is the closest thing we have to a magic formula’. You can follow all of our panellists on twitter, in order of appearance: @sashers @pressfuturist @TheLitPlatform @OrnaRoss