It’s upsetting news for anyone working at the intersection of digital media and literature.

We still don’t know what exactly went wrong at Byliner, though speculation points toward a poor engagement strategy and a failure to communicate to users the value of their service. Fair enough. These are common problems for startups. When you’re a new player in the game, messaging is your lifeblood.

But following Byliner’s story got me thinking about this thing we call The New Era of Publishing. 

What if it’s not just messaging that tripped Byliner? What if some of our common beliefs about how to marry digital media and literature, beliefs that form the basis of the Byliner model, are misguided?

When I read and talk about digital publishing, about how innovation and technology can grow and change the business of literature to the benefit of writers and publishers alike, I hear the same few convictions over and over again…

And I’m beginning to think they might all be dead wrong.

Myth #1: Spotify and Netflix are Strong Role Models

I hear this a lot: publishing should look to the music and film business, to platforms like Spotify, Pandora and Netflix, for solutions that can be applied to books and literature.

But maybe these companies are tenuous role models at best. For now, at least. Or forever.

I love Spotify and Netflix as much as the next person. Their success is appealing. Then I remember being thirteen. I remember Napster and Kazaa. I remember Winamp, torrents, Pirate Bay. I remember that Spotify didn’t materialize overnight. It was the result of more than a decade of struggle between powerful music companies, music fans, and artists. And it’s still not perfect. Spotify has been criticized by, among others, Thom Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich.

Just last year, Godrich Tweeted:

The numbers don’t even add up for Spotify yet. But it’s not about that. It’s about establishing the model which will be extremely valuable. Meanwhile small labels and new artists can’t even keep their lights on. It’s just not right.

So the notion that we can take an imperfect model and product that resulted from a protracted struggle and simply lay it on top of the business of literature, a very different business, is simplistic, myopic, and certainly not disruptive.

Napster was disruptive. Spotify is the still flawed evolution of that disruption. The business of literature must have innovation that scares the status quo before it can have innovation that comes even close to working.

It also must have innovation that swells from the ground up — not top-down models imposed on books and readers because it worked for music and film.

Spotify and Netflix are successful because long before they existed legions of people traded and downloaded music and movies on the web, often illegally. They provide all the value of a Napster to the end user with none of the negative consequences, while solving some, but certainly not all, of the problems for musicians/record labels/film companies.

Piracy isn’t a large enough problem in the business of literature for the same model to work now, especially an imperfect one.

And it might never work because the problems faced by both industries are different.

Which leads me to myth #2

Myth #2. We Will Find A Solution

The fact that so many people think a Spotify/Netflix model can work for literature worries me. It’s indicative of a pattern of thinking that goes something like this:

1) Discover a solution that works in another media industry.

2) Try that solution on literature.

This process leaves out an important step: identify the problem.

What problem, really, did Byliner solve? Richard Nash, the VP of Partnerships at Byliner, writes in his essential essay What is The Business of Literature?:

Any experienced entrepreneur or venture capitalist will warn you not to be a solution in search of a problem.

He’s right. But I’m not sure the business of literature, or Nash himself, has followed this advice.

Here, we can look to the music business for guidance.

If we’re to take any advice from what’s happened to music over the past two decades  it should be that innovation begins by solving a problem for a very large group of people: fans (or readers). The second most important group? Mid-List writers. Solve a problem for readers, solve a problem for writers struggling to find exposure, encourage widespread use of those solutions, demonstrate over and over again your value, and then and only then will you have a viable solution for the business of literature.

But I’ll ask again: What’s the problem? Or are our solutions stuck searching for one?

In Byliner’s case, is it that longform journalism isn’t easy enough to access? That’s not true. You can find longform all over the web. Is the problem that Jodi Picoult and Jon Krakauer need another venue to publish longer pieces online? I doubt it, but, even if that were the case, this is only a problem for a small group of elite writers. Do I, the reader, need a place where I can access pieces by these writers? Nope. Especially not if I have to pay for it. I can easily find work by the Atwoods, Picoults, and Krakauers elsewhere on the web, or at my local bookstore, or on my bookshelf at home.

The point is that innovators in digital publishing have to identify and articulate the problem that needs solving before dreaming up solutions, and the recent struggles at Byliner suggest that, maybe, that hasn’t happened.

Myth #3: Longform Journalism Should be The Backbone of Digital Innovation.

No one has really said this, but, for some reason, longform journalism has become the de facto content for digital publishing experimentation, so it’s implied. Byliner, Longform, Longreads, and a number of other emerging platforms focus primarily on narrative journalism.

Most of these services make a case for the value of their back content, too. Byliner boasts that it has more than 30,000 stories. That’s a lot. But journalism has a shelf life. Certainly, seminal pieces exist that retain their value for decades and longer. In general, though, that content stales over time because it is, by nature of its form, dated (a byline, by traditional definition, is one part name of the author, one part date, one part location).

I’m not saying that it isn’t valuable to have access to longform pieces covering events that occurred a decade or more earlier, but they certainly won’t be my top choices if I’m looking to read something topical.

Longform journalism is still journalism. More often than not, its value peaks immediately after publication, and diminishes over time, like a new car. So why do we rely on it so much?

Myth #4: Big Names Matter

The business of digital literature loves name brand writers. Byliner advertises work from Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jon Krakauer, among others. The Atavist made a big splash with Karen Russell’s novella Sleep Donation (which is great, by the way). The implication seems to be: we are a successful venture because we work with established writers that you know. Or: we publish high quality work.

I’m aware of why companies like Byliner and The Atavist are compelled to make this association. It’s a form a validation. It says to your new, skeptical audience: we’re legitimate.

But it’s a risky tactic for two reasons:

1) The company needs the writer more than the writer needs the company. In short, Karen Russell could’ve successfully published Sleep Donation without The Atavist, but the Atavist could not have gotten all that attention from a publication without Karen Russell.

2) It generates an illusion of success and engagement that cannot be separated from the powerful brand of the author. What I mean is: sales for Sleep Donation could be fantastic, engagement in The Atavist’s app could have blown through the roof following its publication, but, at the end of the day, you have to account for the Karen Russell factor.

The funny thing about this is it’s a very conservative approach for so called innovative digital publishing ventures to take. For a long time, we’ve bemoaned the over dependence of traditional print publishing on multi-million dollar writer brands like J.K. Rowling, whose sales make up for the losses publishers take on mid-list titles.

Why risk replicating this trend in the digital space?

There are other, better ways to convince people that the work we make available through our platforms is worth reading than associations with name brands.

Myth #5: We Are Publishers

The New Era of Publishing. Digital Publishing. Publishing on the Web. Whenever we talk about technology and literature it’s assumed that we’re operating as publishers.

There’s just one problem. The web, Kindle, ebooks, everything digital makes publishing, well, not that special. I can publish a book tomorrow. I’m publishing this piece in a few hours. Publishing belongs to everyone, and if everyone can do it themselves, then there’s no strong reason for your service to exist. Not if it’s primarily for publishing.

Medium, a company I like with a beautiful publishing platform, recently issued a statement affirming that they are, in fact, a publisher, with some qualifications.

Why?

Why embrace a label that makes you just like everyone else? I’m not sure that Medium is really a publisher, but they said it, and that alone points to a tension. I’m certain Medium is aware of the limbo state in which their platform resides. They’ve avoided the publisher label in the past, and this recent statement is full of equivocation. We’re a publisher. We’re a platform. Well….

I’m beginning to wonder what it means to publish anymore, and I’m not sure that those of us working to usher literature into the digital space should be so quick to give ourselves that label.

Are our publisher forefathers in the traditional arena really that much to admire?

If we’re to look to the traditional publishing model for services we might provide in the digital space, don’t we serve our causes better by thinking of ourselves as distributors, as publicists, as social lubricators? Aren’t these the functions that not just anyone can provide for themselves?

Between Facebook and Twitter, between all the clickbait and all the quizes and all the lists, the average person reads a ton everyday.

There’s room for literature in that reading.

But it will take a special platform to make it a more visible option in all that clutter — a platform that, maybe, isn’t a publisher at all.

Follow Adam on Twitter @leftonbomb

Called He Liked Thick Word Soup — a name inspired by the phrase from the book,”He liked thick giblet soup [...]” and a nod to the feeling one gets trying to read that story of one day in the life of Leopold Bloom (which employs a total of 30,030 words) — the app uses the text of Ulysses as the foundation for a game.

Your task is simple and appropriate: unravel the words, complete the sentences.

No one keeps score.

The opposite of a speed reading app, He Liked Thick Word Soup demands you participate in a slow, playful experience with the text. We suspect Joyce would approve.

The game begins with the first line of Ulysses and your thick bowl of word soup:

Unravel the sentences with your fingers and drag the correct words into their spots (highlighted in grey):

Even the FAQ page is fun:

Don’t let anyone tell you not to play with your words.

It’s a beautifully designed app…and free.

Launched in 2011, Byliner publishes e-singles — many of which are bestsellers in the Kindle Store — and offers a $5.99 monthly subscription with access to all its content through its website and mobile apps.

That content consists, generally, of long form journalism and fiction. Since its inception, Byliner has been able to acquire titles by big name writers like Margaret Atwood, Jodi Picoult, Chuck Palahniuk, and Jon Krakauer.

Until last week, Byliner had been a darling of the press and frequently recognized as a leader in the new era of publishing.

So…what went wrong?

Byliner has, so far, declined to comment on the particulars of their struggles, but a quick trip through the Byliner universe exposes a number of issues that point to one problem:

Byliner has failed to develop a strong model for engagement.

In other words, Byliner is a beautiful, innovative publisher with high profile contributors, but evidence suggests they do a bad job at encouraging people to visit their site and actually read and share the work they publish.

Exhibit A: My Inbox 

On April 23rd, I created an account on Byliner. With the exception of my welcome email, how many times do you think Byliner has tried to contact me since?

If you said zero, you’d be right. Compared to how many times Buzzfeed Books reaches out (every single day!), that’s pretty poor.

One welcome email from Byliner, then…nothing.

On the other hand, Buzzfeed doesn’t leave me alone.

Typically, companies use what are called “drip campaigns” to bring visitors back to their site. These are automatically generated emails meant to re-engage the recipient. As a non-paying account holder, I was the perfect candidate for follow up. Byliner should’ve been demonstrating their value through email.

Why didn’t they? I have no idea.

But there’s no success in silence.

It’s possible I was never contacted because by April 23rd Byliner was already knee deep in problems, but we’re not talking about a real live human, prone to distraction, sitting at a computer and hitting send. We’re talking about an automatic process run by a machine that should’ve been set up long ago.

Exhibit B: Byliner’s Twitter Feed

Take a look a this recent screenshot of Byliner’s Twitter Feed. What do you notice?

Most of the tweets have only a handful of favorites and retweets. Again, this points to a poor engagement strategy. How is anyone supposed to know about a great piece on Byliner if no one is sharing that article?

To put this in perspective, I get a simlar level of engagement when I tweet about this:

And I have 21,900 fewer followers.

Perhaps more beguiling: the complete absence of hashtags. Byliner bills itself as a place where you can discover stories. Discovery is central to Twitter, and hasthags facilitate that process. Why wouldn’t byliner hashtag its stories in an effort to get them in front of more eyes?

The last time they used one was on April 26th:

Perhaps if they used hashtags more regularly, rather than only during hashtag games, they might achieve Polaroid of Dorian Gray levels of engagement for a tweet that actually drove traffic to their site.

Exhibit C: Two apps too many

Byliner has two apps that they support on Google Play and Apple — the regular Byliner app and a slimmed down version called Byliner Weekly.

I’ve never been able to get the regular Byliner app to work on my iPad or iPhone. It crashes every time I try to sign in, which seems like a common problem based on reviews in the app store:

Two apps means double the maintenance, double the updates, double everything. It’s no wonder there are performance issues. The more code you have to maintain, the more you stretch your resources thin. Not to mention you confuse potential regular readers who now have to ask themselves: which Byliner app do I want/need? Or should I just use the website?

My guess is that Byliner Weekly was created as a sort’ve teaser magazine to a) test the Google Play market (the regular Byliner app is not available on android); and b) provide a free entry point into Byliner for readers.

Fair enough. But one must reconcile ambition with available resources. Do you want a lot of mediocre, somewhat glitchy experiences, or one really amazing one?

Remember, Byliner also has a completely responsive desktop and mobile site to maintain, too.

Exhibit D: Byliner doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be really good at

Trying out new things is essential to the success of a young company, but Byliner seems to have taken a best practice too far, landing them in a no mans land where they are good or okay at many things, but excellent at none. Take, for example, the messaging on their site. Byliner wants to be a platform for discovery, and yet they also want to be recognized for the big, established names they publish — the Atwoods, the Krakauers, the Palahniuks.

The messages are in combat with one another, and, because the big names are more tangible, because they’re known, they win out over the more amorphous discovery message.

For this reason, I’ve always had a hard time believing Byliner will introduce me to someone new. For all I know, they might, but presenting a list of writers I already know does nothing to demonstrate this value. Add to that the poor engagement processes noted above, and it’s unlikely I’ll made aware of something or someone new through Twitter, Facebook or email, either

What reason, then, do I have to sign up? Let alone pay $5.99 a month for a subscription?

Exhibit E: My subscription to Byliner is still free

To add to the mystery of Byliner’s struggles, the 14 day free subscription that came with my account on April 23rd is still free. It’s now June 8th, a whole 46 days later.

Conclusion:

The only statement Byliner issued regarding the matter came in an email to contributors where they wrote:

As for our own story, it’s undergoing some changes. We’ve struggled to reach the level of growth we’d been hoping for the business, and thus we’ve begun conversations with possible partners about the future of Byliner. 

When a company says they’ve struggled to attain a certain level of growth they almost always mean they don’t have enough engaged users.

Given the evidence, that doesn’t come as a huge surprise, and while none of the examples above could sink a company by themselves the problems add up.

One nick here…

Another nick there…

Byliner’s death — should it happen — would be one of a 1000 paper cuts.

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This gives us hope. LeVar Burton aka Geordi La Forge aka Kunta Kinte was able to raise over $1 million dollars in 1 day on Kickstarter to fund a Reading Rainbow reboot on the web. You can still back the project or at least take solace in the fact that Burton is still hard at work trying to teach kids the power of reading.

It was my mother who taught me that, by picking up a book, I could “go anywhere” and “be anything.” Ever since Reading Rainbow began in 1983, I have dedicated myself to fostering a love of reading in children, just as my mother did for me. 

That’s right. Sing it. Weeeee can be anyyyything .

And if you have a spare $400, we highly recommend the LeVar Burton voicemail package.

Now, this:

Share if you love the 80s and books:

Now, he’ll be appearing on The Colbert Report in July to as part of “cOlbert’s book club.”

They’re called “trigger warnings” and they’re part of movement to ensure that everyone, everywhere is safe from offense and trauma. At Oberlin college, a guide circulated by the administration encourages professors to include such warnings in syllabi:

“Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” the guide said. “Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.” For example, it said, while “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe — a novel set in colonial-era Nigeria — is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” it could “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.”

So, yeah, this book is a classic, but it might make you have feelings.

The edges of the world are sharp. Bad things happen. In some countries, you can’t grow up 100% certain that you will, actually, grow up, that a bullet won’t errantly pierce your wall in the night, that you won’t be abducted from you school, that you’ll have enough food to make it to eighteen. And in America, in the heart of the country, at one of our finest liberal institutions, there’s a concern that an 18 year old might be uncomfortable in class and have to deal with the experience of getting out of their seat and leaving the room.

Said Bailey Loverin, a sophomore at Santa Barbara and a supporter of campus wide trigger warnings there, “They are stuck in a classroom where they can’t get out, or if they do try to leave, it is suddenly going to be very public.”

(Where they can’t get out? Have we started chaining students to their desks? My god we are sensitive. It’s called running to the bathroom).

Fortunately, professors have spoken out:

“Any kind of blanket trigger policy is inimical to academic freedom,” said Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor at the university here, who often uses graphic depictions of torture in her courses about war. “Any student can request some sort of individual accommodation, but to say we need some kind of one-size-fits-all approach is totally wrong. The presumption there is that students should not be forced to deal with something that makes them uncomfortable is absurd or even dangerous.”

But we all know what happens when professors speak out…

Jonathan Safran Foer has signed on to curate (edit?) a series of of essays that will appear on the sides of Chipotle bags called “Cultivating Thought.” 

Contributors include: Judd Apatow, Malcolm Gladwell, Toni Morrison and George Saunders.

The pieces will be short, two-minute reads, which can only mean everyone involved is getting an astronomically corporate per word rate for their work.

Or lots of free burritos.

a) Bacon

b) Facebook

c) Winning the Nobel Prize

For $1,000 you can own a silk screen print of Lighght in simple yellow type.

Or you can take a trip to Staples and make one yourself–minus the silk, of course. And the signature.

That’s because beer and its “B” cousin Bacon always make everything better. See Laundromats.