SXSW 3 - It's the taking part that counts

A six-hour layover in delightful Dallas-Fort Worth airport gives plenty of time to ruminate on four hectic days at South by SouthWest. I've once been to the Frankfurt Book Fair - the world's largest gathering of publishing types - and there is a marked difference between the two events. The SXSWers are much younger, far scruffier and drink much less alcohol but the strange thing is that a constant theme at both events is the quest to find new storytellers. At Frankfurt publishers vie with each other to sign up the hot new novels, but at SXSW it is the games designers looking for people who will craft the story that will give their game the edge. An American publisher I met wandering the aisles of the convention centre was in Texas to scout for new authors - and bemoaning the fact that few seemed interested in being published in print. (Presumably because the computer games industry pays considerably better.)

This ambivalence towards old fashioned books was typified by the sparse attendance at the 'Do Books Have a Future?' panel (Answer, yes, probably) where Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive talked up the prospects for digital books and engaged in a little skirmish with a representative of Google Booksearch. Self-publishing outfits lulu and blurb were both in attendance at the conference, showing that books, like music, film and journalism are not immune from the swelling numbers of people who are becoming media producers as well as media consumers. 74% of American teenagers now produce some sort of online content, and more than 30% of them share this content beyond their immediate friends and family - a generation is growing up who want to actively participate in the culture and have the tools to do so.

So old-media companies, like Penguin, are having to change their ways and move with the times, encourage participation, look at how people want to use the books we publish and how they want to share them and talk about them. It's not always going to be a smooth transition, and we might stumble on the way, but as four days in Austin have shown me, there are a lot of great storytellers out there and plenty of people who want to hear those stories and, importantly, some great ways of connecting the two groups.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS - looks like the twitter novel idea is already under way.