Donald Lamm Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

The Changing World of Publishing: Conversation with Donald S. Lamm, Chair, W.W.Norton Publishing Co., by Harry Kreisler, 2/5/98

Photo by L. Carper

Page 7 of 10

The New Technologies

What with the new technologies we hear that the book is threatened, it's outlived its usefulness. Often it's technology geeks who are articulating this position. What is your response to that kind of argument? What do you see as the evolving relationship between the new technologies (the internet, the worldwide web), and traditional book publishing?

There's no question that we all feel threatened, as book publishers, by the internet and especially by the ability of some lone character out there in the world taking a copyrighted work, setting up a web site, and providing it free of charge for downloading. Publishers cannot be the policemen of the vast worldwide web; we hear of these acts taking place and we do our best to defend against them. But there's a more positive relationship and I think maybe we ought to dwell on that a bit. I'd say that first of all, the internet is a wonderful medium for getting worldwide attention, but particularly attention of readers, to a book. It tends to sort out people who are book readers and will go to a publisher's web site. I think a wonderful case of unexpected promotion came last fall for a book we published called Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. Chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft decided to review this book on his own web page and the impact on sales was immediate and traceable to the Gates review.

So the new technology is offering a way to sell books. Are things like Barnes & Noble Online and Amazon.com good for publishers like you?

I think they are, and they are particularly good for publishers such as Norton with a list that often veers into academic areas, because it is the professoriate that is particularly likely to order via the internet. And there are plenty of cases I could give you right on this campus of that happening.

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