SXSW and the direction of digital self-publishing

Last week thousands of digital pioneers made their way to Austin, Texas as part of the pilgrimage that South by Southwest (SXSW) has become. I did not go, relegated instead to watching from afar and listening to as many podcasts and videos as I could and reading live-tweeting summaries with #hashtags when I could find them. Yes, I was using social media to follow a group of real people gathered in a real city to discuss, well, social media and related online innovations.

My goal? To hear what they were saying about publishing. In February I was at the Tools of Change conference in NYC where every single panel was about the revolution going on in the publishing industry. It was a form of paradise. SXSW, though, seems to have less panels and speakers about publishing than they have in the past.

The best summary I read of a panel that seems to speak to the overall debate was in Publisher's Weekly. My summary of their summary is this:

1. Self-publishing is gaining in popularity, and there are a growing number of people who are making a decent living with digital publishing, a few who are break-out stars, and the vast majority who are still trying to figure it out.

2. Those who come from the traditional publishing industry caution against having too much faith in it and still recommend the traditional route, while those who have found success in digital self-publishing say it's a great route that empowers writers and puts more money in their pockets.

In short, the camps seem to stick to their own. Which, in its own way, is an argument for self-publishing as a main driver of future publishing. Both traditional publishing and self-publishing have their merits, but if people tend to advocate for the method they are most familiar with, self-publishing will become the dominant digital paradigm in short order. If that happens, it will also give rise to a new paradigm of what "self-publishing" means. I hope to be hearing that discussion at the next SXSW.

Image courtesy of nan palermo via flickr