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The obvious semi-problem with a site like Scribd, with self-published books generally, and with a world where people are releasing their books directly to Amazon, is that it's hard to sort through thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of books to figure out what's worth reading.  Mainstream publishers absolutely release many, many more books each year than anybody can read, but at least it's a small enough universe that someone who tries to know what's out there can feel reasonably informed and reasonably able to trust he'll stumble across a mention or a review or an article about (or an Amazon recommendations link to) most of the big mainstream books he might be interested in.

(Sort of like television -- there's absolutely too many channels and too many shows for anyone to watch everything, but there's not so many that I feel like if there's something awesome out there I'm not eventually going to hear about it somewhere, or at least have some passing notion of what it is and feel like even if I haven't seen it, I've made some kind of fake-uninformed decision that it's not for me and I'm not interested.  On the other hand, when it comes to web series, or any sort of web-based videos, the universe is much too large and there's the same problem I'm talking about with self-published books -- I have no idea what's out there, what's worth watching, what anyone I know is watching, whether any of it is worth my time, and whether even if I watched something and loved it, I could get anyone else to watch it and then have someone to talk about it with, or at least some message board to read where other people have watched it and are talking about it.  I think I've posted about relevance before, and the satisfaction of not just watching or reading something, but of having a community of people to talk to about it and feel like it's not just you.  I mean, it's sort of disappointing to stumble onto some web series or something on, say, YouTube, and see that there's been 84 total views.  Is it really worth anyone's time to watch something with 84 views?  Then again, everything starts with zero views and if it's good enough, will people find it?  It's not a problem to be viewer #84 if eventually there's going to be three million.  But to be viewer #84 when there's only going be 86 is not so awesome.)

So traditionally, mainstream publishers (and TV networks / movie studios, if we're not just talking about books) have had 4 major roles.  

(1) They're the filters -- selecting (and creating) what's worth our attention.  And there's an implicit trust there -- the expectation that what a publisher puts out in the marketplace will at least rise above some minimum bar of competency.  Of course not every book every publisher publishes is something I have any interest in reading.  Of course there are entire genres, entire categories of books that I have no interest in, and a book could be the #1 seller in the universe and I still don't really want to read it (Harry Potter, for example.  Most celebrity-related things, another example.  Diet books. Mysteries. Et cetera.).  But I do have a baseline expectation that if it's a book about something, the author must know something about that topic and isn't writing lies.  (Hence the outrage over something like the James Frey non-fiction is really fiction.)  And that there will be some competence of writing -- it won't be riddled with typos, or written by someone who's absolutely incompetent to be writing a book.  

(2) They're the editors -- presumably making books better than the raw manuscripts that come in, presumably working with authors to create products that are tighter, more polished, better to read than something some random person posts on Scribd.  And I do think there's absolutely a value-add here, in most cases.  Editors make things better, I think.  Outside voices, with experience and knowledge about books, make things better.  Not in every case, not for every author and not every editor, but I think it would be inaccurate to say that publishing companies add no value here.

(3) They're the distributors.  They get books printed and into bookstores.  Traditionally the piece of the business that really made publishers valuable.  If no one can buy your book, no one is going to read your book.

(4) They're the marketers.  They try to get reviews, they try to get your book on TV, they take out ads in newspapers, they get Barnes & Noble to move it up to the front table so people notice it.

So what's happening now?  Scribd and Lulu and the Kindle and thirty other self-publishing sites I haven't named are taking #3 out of the picture, of course.  Traditional distribution is a lot less important.  Even if a book never sees a bookstore, people can still buy it and read it, authors can make money off of it, there is a business model there.  Bookstores aren't going away, but it's no longer impossible to imagine a successful book existing without bookstore distribution.  At the same time, if there were to be a successful book sold through the online and e-book sources, it's completely reasonable that Barnes and Noble or Borders could decide to stock the book after the fact.  Even in the current model, independent publishers (like McSweeney's, for example), use third-party distributors to distribute their books (see an article about McSweeney's distributor going bankrupt a couple of years ago, here).  Distribution has already been disaggregated from the publishing model for all but the biggest publishers.  Even better, earlier this month, Amazon launched a program called Amazon Encore which will identify overlooked books that are selling lots of copies and relaunch them, not only on Amazon but in actual brick-and-mortar bookstores.  So distribution is out there.  There are models outside of traditional publishing that can handle it.

#4 is falling out of the hands of publishing companies as well.  More and more promotion is online, there are fewer and fewer print publications reviewing books, and the fewer books they review, the less relevant and necessary they become.  Lots of books succeed without a powerful (and expensive) marketing campaign behind them, and, even more important, lots of books with a powerful and expensive marketing campaign behind them fail.  Books not published by a major publisher are probably not going to get reviewed by the New York Times anytime soon, they're probably not going to get on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, or Today or Good Morning America, or be able to afford an ad in The New Yorker.  But over time those barriers are falling.  And with blogs and with Facebook and all sorts of opportunities to reach audiences across Internet channels, the marketing end of things becomes a creative challenge more than an impossibility.  Marketing opportunities are out there.  Traditional publishing is not the only path.

Which leaves us with #1 and #2.  Filtering and editing.  Especially the filtering piece.  Traditional publishers still exist, and will continue to exist for the time being, not only because they can afford to pay authors up front and therefore enable them to make a living, but (even putting money completely aside) if an author has the choice between a "real" publisher and self-publishing, not only does the legitimacy conferred by a real publisher make it worthwhile, but also the chances anyone will notice or pay attention to the book are exponentially higher.  Of course.  

And the filters on a site like Scribd or a site like Amazon aren't really enough to make a difference. User reviews aren't really enough to make me care, in the vast majority of cases.  Seeing something high up in a sales rank aren't going to make me care, in the vast majority of cases.  Reading a chapter for free isn't going to make me care, in the vast majority of cases.  Someone needs to make a book seem relevant, someone needs to confer legitimacy on it.

But, see, without the need to really worry so much about distribution and marketing, why should filtering and editing be such a roadblock?  Why can't we disaggregate the pieces completely?

So, finally, getting to my point: Here's the model we haven't yet seen, and that I think we should and expect we will, since I haven't said anything here that isn't already being said by other people:

Right now, pretty much no one confers legitimacy on a book better than Oprah.  Because she's a celebrity and because she has an audience and because her audience trusts her.  Heck, if Oprah needed money and was interested, why couldn't she start her own publishing company?  (Same model, in fact, as O Magazine, just in the book space)  Instead of selecting books for her book club that have already been published by traditional publishers, hire some editors and create her own imprint, have them commission books from writers they want to work with, and launch them directly.  Oprah has the guest on her show, the books are available online through all channels, they use a third-party distributor... and then she makes the money instead of HarperCollins, or whoever publishes whatever books Oprah chooses.

Of course, there's nothing about this model that has anything to do with self-publishing or e-books.  Oprah could have done this ten years ago.  And if Oprah wanted to do this, she could have had it even easier and just done it within a mainstream publisher -- if she went to HarperCollins, ten years ago or today, it doesn't make a difference, and said she wanted her own imprint, I'd imagine they would jump for joy and happily give it to her.

But that's Oprah. How many other celebrities have the reach and the influence that a mainstream publisher would gladly give them their own imprint if they wanted it?  Probably Jon Stewart, I would guess.  Maybe Katie Couric.  I don't think it's a big list though.  It's a big risk for a traditional publisher, under the traditional models, to put so much money and energy behind a new imprint and try to launch a whole series of new books.

I think the self-publishing model changes that.  If I were a well-known person interested in books and publishing, with some credibility behind my name and a fan base, in any number of areas -- say, Charlie Rose, or James Carville, or Mario Batali, or Tina Fey, or Dr. Ruth, or Alice Waters, or Derek Jeter -- why not start my own publishing company?  Hire a couple of editors to acquire and edit the books, a marketing guy to deal with the (mostly online) promotion, and use print-on-demand and release a slate of books related to my broad area of expertise?  The celebrity name confers legitimacy, and helps enable mainstream promotion.  Without books to print or expensive marketing campaigns, the money involved is small -- do small advances / bigger royalty splits (like, say, HarperStudio), keep, say, one full-time editor and one business/marketing person on the payroll, so that cost is pretty small... and the potential upside is pretty big, not just to sell a bunch of books but also to enhance your own thought leader credentials, get your name more out there, and expand your personal brand.

Anyway, if I were a minor celebrity, this is what I would really think about doing.  And if I knew of any minor celebrities who were doing this, I'd have a resume and cover letter in their inboxes by morning, because this, more than anything, is the job I would love to have -- helping to build a publishing brand from the ground, finding new voices, editing and figuring out how to market their books, online and offline -- and then how to expand that platform into TV and film.  Having seen the publishing industry from both sides, and having played on the TV side a little bit, I think there's a lot of room right now for experimentation, a lot of content being created that hasn't yet figured out how to break out of the traditional models and effectively take advantage of the new technologies, and a lot of opportunities to get ahead of the curve and be the first one to find new business models that will actually work.

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