Peter Cox writing in The Bookseller
Strolling back from a publishing party last week (yes, we still have them) I dropped into Apple’s late-opening Regent Street store to observe the fanbois fondling their iPads. Imagine a petting zoo for adults, with shiny little tablets instead of guinea pigs, and you’ve got the scene. The hushed atmosphere is one of awed devotion: if Jobstown’s next product were the iFlagellate, there would certainly be blood on the floor here.
Apple is, of course, a deeply tribal company, and has adroitly leveraged the faithful to become the world’s largest tech company. Yet publishing has always been the quintessential tribal business. We obsessively organize ourselves into houses, imprints, authors, series, festivals, reading groups, prizes and genres. No other business has had so many opportunities to profit from its inherent tribalism, and no other business has so consistently failed to seize the potential it offers.
The defining quality of a tribe is whether it is inclusionary or exclusionary. Most publishing tribes define themselves by whom (or what) they exclude. “Did you go to Random Penguin’s party?” No? Then you’re clearly not one of us. “Have you read Murakami’s latest?” No? Then you’re patently not my intellectual equal.
Exclusionary tribes rarely thrive. When Mancunian mill worker Ann Lee founded the Shakers, her curious prohibition on procreation sealed their fate from the outset. Awesome furniture, but lousy marketing. From a peak of six thousand believers in their heyday, only three Shakers remain today. Successful tribes flourish by both proselytizing and procreating. Publishing does neither very well.
And yet, the tools exist. When I founded the online community The Clan (www.torak.info) for readers of Michelle Paver’s series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness some six years ago, my aim was to create an inclusionary tribe. I wanted hard-core fans, the sort that would go out on the net and evangelize for us. Even though the series has now come to an end, The Clan goes from strength to strength.
You can’t build a tribe overnight. Litopia, the net’s oldest community for writers, has taken many years to evolve. We’ve certainly taken a few uncertain steps along the way, but here’s another benefit of tribalism: the community will guide you, if you let it. A healthy tribe trusts its members, because without them it is nothing. A tribe is a conversation, not a monologue: the more power and authority you devolve, the stronger you become. That’s deeply counter-intuitive to most of the type-A personalities who currently dominate publishing’s top-down management structure.
But, hey – even if publishing withers – I’m sure we’ll leave behind some awesome intellectual furniture.
This column first appeared in The Bookseller on the 24th June 2010
