How has publishing changed in the last decade?
I first entered the world of publishing in 2015, and a lot (and so little) has changed since then.
It’s been over ten years since I put on a suede brown skirt, Kate Moss Rimmel lipstick and carried a stack of books, like a wannabe Rory Gilmore, on my way to an interview that got me my first job in publishing.
I documented the whole experience in a long-sit deleted YouTube video — this was during the height of Zoella and YouTube’s Brit Crew, and I was undertaking the very new career path of ‘influencer’.
And in that time, so much has changed within the industry. And at the same time, so little.
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Kindle was all the rage
And I mean rage. My first full-time job as a Marketing professional came in 2017, when I joined the team at the start-up Canelo, a digital publisher. The term ‘digital publisher’ was growing in use, similarly to ‘influencer’ in 2015-2017, and so many people told me that digital books (which first entered the mainstream in 2007) were the biggest threat to publishing since the dawn of television.
But look what’s happened in the last decade? Digital bestsellers have become as impactful as the Sunday Times bestsellers. They last a lot longer, too! Yes, the pricing is much lower in comparison, but so are the overheads for publishers.