A Year of Publishing & Platforms

Technology has become the platform on which we must stand.

In the final weeks of the year, Beyond the Book is looking back at the past twelve months of our programs.

Platforms In this edition of our three-part review for 2019, we see the paradoxical role that technology plays in contemporary publishing. Big tech platforms may dominate to the point of monopoly yet those same platforms also lay out a banquet of new ideas and new voices.

Special guests include legal scholar Lina Khan; author Stephen P. Williams; Trident Media Group literary agent Mark Gottlieb; and poet, scholar, and book artist Amaranth Borsuk.

“The decade now ended has proven a transformative era for publishing,” says CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “2010 opened with the introduction by Steve Jobs of the iPad, and with that innovative device, new hopes for a digital business model more favorable to publishers. As 2019 closes, the prospects for e-books have faded, and audiobooks – as heard on smartphones and in Bluetooth-enabled automobiles – instead shore up many a sagging bottom line.

“Technology has become the platform on which we must stand,” Kenneally observes. “Discovery, creativity and prosperity are all impossible without it.”