Part 4 (1/2)

Even so, when they think of publis.h.i.+ng, most people still continue to think of books, magazines and newspapers in other words, bits of tree squashed flat and driven around the country in a truck.

In one sense they're quite right to do so, because, despite all the hype, very little book publis.h.i.+ng is actually done online, compared to what most of us might still think of as 'the real thing', magazines still continue to pack the newsstand, and not too many people are happy to pay real money for their online news.

To ill.u.s.trate, in the US e-books still represent less than three-quarters of 1% of the US$25 billion publis.h.i.+ng market.

To judge from these signs, then, this is all a big fuss over nothing. But make no mistake, online publis.h.i.+ng is not only well and truly here to stay, it's only going to get more important, even if it's taking rather longer than many people thought. And here's why. Because, despite what some say, it's not the reluctance of readers to read online and electronically that's holding things back. In fact, it's the twin difficulty of finding a workable business model and a reader-friendly technology that's preventing us going full pelt for an electronic future.

In short, you can't get people to pay as much as they will for a book or magazine or even a newspaper for its electronically delivered equivalent; and even if you could, you can't give it to them in as elegant a form as its physical counterpart.

It's the business of the three Bs bed, bath and beach: find a way of providing people with a good electronic read in those three leisure locations, and you have an official licence to print money on a grand, and perhaps even unprecedented, scale.

Here are three indicators that the digital earthquake really is about to happen, if it hasn't actually started already: * The chief executive of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton, recently predicted that 50% of all fiction sales in 2016 will be digital half! Even if he's wildly out, that's still a ma.s.sive s.h.i.+ft in the mode of delivery.

* In the UK, Random House and HarperCollins are digitising 25, 000 t.i.tles.

* The Chinese government has announced that it will supply all its 165 million students with e-readers.

Think about your own habits for a second. It's probable that you're one of the Digerati, a Millennial (born in 1980 or since), who's grown up interacting with your media, be it videogames, Facebook, Mys.p.a.ce, YouTube, instant messaging, text messaging, your iPod . . . You're used to scanning things fast and being in charge. You get much of your information online, be it news (if you're even interested in news chances are, you're not), reviews or what's on.

If you're a student you know all about Web-based course management systems. You may well access lectures and other materials via MP3. And you know what? Academic publishers and campus booksellers are absolutely petrified. They have no idea or rather, they have 100 ideas and no clue how to address these issues effectively, and simply cannot see what tomorrow's business model is. Yet.

Newspaper publishers have rushed online to deliver news . . . Actually, let's start that again. Newspaper publishers have rushed online to deliver eyeb.a.l.l.s (yours) to advertisers, and in the process discovered that once you've taught people to expect stuff for free, it's mighty hard to re-educate them to pay for it. So while newspaper sales continue to decline like a bike tyre with a slow puncture, the very publishers of those newspapers are busily engaged in teaching their readers to get for free what they used to pay for!

Finally, books. Even if you still only need to sell a few hundred electronically to have a bestseller on your hands, don't think for a moment that the publishers aren't taking it seriously. In fact, they're spending millions and millions on digitising everything they can. (They're doing it in India, which is a whole other story.) And they're also ensuring that they buy the electronic rights to whatever properties they buy these days (including the one you're holding in your hands right now).

So publishers worldwide are ready, poised and eager to take your cash for online delivery. All it takes is a decent e-reader and a workable business model. The sorts of issue they are struggling with are: How much would you pay for the electronic edition of a book? Would you pay the same as you'd pay for the paperback? The costs of circulating an e-book are substantially lower than printing the book version. How much is convenience worth?

Still, it's only a matter of time before the technical and commercial issues get sorted out just as the technical and commercial issues relating to the delivery of online music were sorted out by Apple and when they are, look out for seismic s.h.i.+fts in publis.h.i.+ng that are every bit as dramatic as in the music market. When it happens, you want to be part of it.

So there it is. Books and magazines aren't going away, but they no longer have the place to themselves. Information that can be more efficiently published and consumed online will be so, and books and magazines will keep what's left, whatever that is. That's why we say, if you can get an e-publis.h.i.+ng gig, take it.

But e-publis.h.i.+ng is so much more than replacing one form of publis.h.i.+ng with another. It has created thousands of opportunities that never even existed before. Just a few years ago, for example, hardly any business had a website or could see a need to get one. (By the way, an utterly fascinating way to spend a few minutes is to look at how websites you know have developed over the years, using the wonderful Wayback Machine, pany board.

* Production and Publications, pulling content and design together and making the whole thing happen.

* Editing although the delivery mechanism and the way content is put together have changed, the traditional role of an editor at the helm exists just as it always has.

* Graphic design a whole industry has sprung up creating websites.

* Web-delivered information services such as searching, online directory listings and other interactive electronic services have thrown up new jobs and careers that simply did not exist a decade ago.

* Advertising in particular has warmly embraced all things digital, expanding beyond print and broadcast ads into viral advertising, websites, advergames, the creation of rich media banners, ambient digital content and a thousand and one other ways to attract the attention of the time-poor and media-savvy consumer. In fact, UK online advertising spend now counts for more than 10% of the entire advertising market (globally the figure's about 6%), being worth more than 2 billion. It's worth more than national newspaper advertising, and in early 2007 overtook radio in revenue terms. Opportunities here include wordsmithing (copywriters who become editors who become creative directors) and crayon-wielding (graphic designers who become studio managers who become creative directors), online advertising account and traffic management (the traffic in this case being the mechanical handling of the advertising material itself, rather than looking after the company car park).

Conclusion As someone once said, in a somewhat different context, this is not the end for e-publis.h.i.+ng. It's not even the beginning of the end. It is, however, perhaps the end of the beginning, in the sense that there is no longer any doubt whatsoever that we're living in the future. And this future-present is moving so fast that even to start a paragraph about it condemns you to be out of date by the time you finish it. It's for those reasons that it's so exciting and enticing. You don't have to be an uber-geek to be part of it, though if you find the life of an accountant, with its stability and solidity, even secretly just a little bit attractive then this is not the place for you. If, however, you love change and uncertainty and the thrills and spills of driving at 150 miles an hour blindfold in heavy traffic, then you've found your spiritual home (it's on wheels, naturally).

So, to repeat: faced with two attractive job offers, one of which has an 'e-' attached to it, take that one. It'll be a wild ride.

More reading Anything we put in here will be out of date by the day you read this.

1 Actually it's not at all obvious who said this first. Maybe it was Bill Gates? If you know, do contact us via the publisher.

Part II: About you.

Chapter Seven.

What kind of person are you?

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them. (HENRY DAVID Th.o.r.eAU (18171862), US PHILOSOPHER) Many (too many: maybe even most) people hate what they're doing. They hate their job and they really hate their boss. Yet many (too many: maybe even most) of them never do anything about it, other than complain in the pub and bore everybody to death, again. Cue deep sighs and raised eyes all round.

If you think that's not nearly good enough for you, the best way to avoid this is to make sure you head off in the right direction to start with.

So this chapter is something of an honesty session. It's where you get to take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and work out what you love and what you're good at.

It's hardly a surprise that these two things what you enjoy and what you excel at usually overlap. It's probably something to do with the fact that your apt.i.tudes shape your skills and experience. Some people, in this corner over here, are fascinated by mechanical things right from the moment they can see, and that means they love to spend time taking things to bits and putting them back together again, apart from a mysterious very small spring. Meanwhile, over there you'll find some people who just love language, and reading, and books. That's them, with their noses in a book right now. If you fancy a good belly laugh, get them to swap places with the taker-apart mob over in this corner.

In effect, that's what happens to a lot of people at work. It's not them, and it's not the job: it's the combination. Find a square hole for the square peg and suddenly what used to be a crus.h.i.+ng bore is now the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

The reality is, if you don't find out what you love doing and make a point of doing it, no-one will make you leave and go and find out what you were put onto this earth to do with your life. And ploughing on with a job that you can manage, but which you find soul-destroying, is hardly the route to happiness.

So before you go any further, give some hard thought to what you love to do and the key words here are you and love.

You, because too many people (perhaps nearly all people) live out their lives doing what their Mum and Dad want them to do, or what they think will impress people, or what they stumble into, and never, or perhaps only too late, put themselves first. If not now, when? Someone has to do that job you'd secretly love to be doing: why not you?

And love, because between, 'Yeah, wouldn't mind doing that I s'pose', 'I could see myself doing that', and 'I will not be happy until I'm doing that: that is what I exist to do, so get out of my way', there's all the difference in the world.

Who are you?

So if we're right, and how you're made up determines what you enjoy, and what you enjoy determines what you're going to be really good at, then how do you decide what's the right kind of job for you?

Try this. For each of the ten questions, circle the answer in the column that best matches your own response. There's no simple pattern here, so don't expect that all your answers will be in the same column. In some cases two columns have the same answer: circle both.

WARNING: The following contains gross generalisations, and may lead to elevated blood pressure and fainting. To counteract, take a pinch of salt and a reality check. Of course there are exceptions to all of these rules (including this one), and if you seriously think a five-minute questionnaire is going to sort out your career dilemma, then you should probably not risk exposing yourself to the next page or two. It's just a bit of help, is all, and can't be much more, even if it is based on a lot of self-reflection, experience and observation.

Mostly As? You're the cla.s.sic SALES BEAST As a sales person you're compet.i.tive, driven and career-minded. You're also . . .

* A talker and banterer, the life and soul of the party * Great at putting people at ease and at chatting up and flirting (some editorial people are too, of course) * Shameless and thick-skinned you need it, too: most of your life is spent being rejected. Don't fool yourself about this one. You can toughen up, but only if you're not sensitive to start with * An inveterate haggler, driven by the bargain * A master joke-teller and spinner of tall tales * A cynic, with no illusions about anyone's motives * Clear about why your boss values you, and it's not for personal reasons * Target- and bonus- and performance-related pay-driven * Compet.i.tive and status-driven. That's why you're attracted to a career that measures success by revenue and clearly visible wins/losses On the downside?

You're likely to find detail and paperwork and process less than exciting. You may think of it as a necessary evil at best, and just plain evil and not necessary most of the time.

Mostly Bs? You're the creative MARKETEER You're a people person, creative and bubbly. You're highly organised and a just a teensy weensy bit bossy. You're also . . .