Page 186 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet186all, it has made the traditional distribution channels for stories very costly and outdated. The result is that nowadays we publish a large amount of stories – at very little or no cost – that was unimaginable only a few years ago and consequently there are loads of stories, often free of charge, that vie with stories in traditional format (newspapers, films, books, etc.) for our attention. In our opinion, this is the main cause of the decline in the traditional media.The use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram as publishing platforms on whichto experiment with formats and languages is increasing; the quality of some posts and videos would appear to indicate that we are witnessing the emergence of the telling of real stories based on these platforms.Other platforms, such as Tumblr and particular- ly Medium,2 seem to be turning into spaces for publishing slower, longer and more thought out stories that differ from the publication of imme- diate moods or moments that seem special tous; and above all they have the aim of creating a web context suitable for immersive reading. Medium has affirmed its status of “publisher” several times.3We are witnessing the emergence of the telling of real stories posted on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.In contrast to the platforms that invite everyone to publish, there are professional service platforms such as Atavist,4 Aerbook5 andPressBooks,6 which provide several publishing instruments in exchange for a fee.The potential of these platforms is actually greater and there is still scope for taking fuller advantage of it. At the beginning of 2015 Aerbook entered into important agreements with Simon&Schuster and Harper Collinsto become the technological platform for a “direct-to-consumers” model.7Self-publishing platforms are very numerous and different in nature. Smashwords,8 estab- lished in 2008 (that is, shortly after the launch of Kindle in the United States and before iPads existed), has been one of the first to offer a space to “Indie” writers who are unwilling or unable to access the official channels. Kindle Direct Publishing9 (KDP) is the Amazon programme aimed chiefly at authors in the middle to high range, offering them much higher earnings than traditional publishers (70% compared to 10%–15%); therefore, by lowering prices, authors can sell more, maxim- ising their revenues; this is, to all intents and purposes, a plan for cutting out the middlemen of traditional publishing. At the end of 2014, Amazon launched WriteOn,10 a platform aimed at communities of authors-readers for creating, publishing and correcting among themselves; it is a response to Wattpad,11 a highly successful platform that started out as an app in 2006 and now has more than 35 million users who publish more than 100,000 units of content daily (in other words, more titles than Penguin Random House publishes in a year). Wattpad also has a crowdfunding system that authors with a large following can activate to fund their work.The digital age is transforming storytelling