Andy Hunter of Electric Literature stopped by Melville House recently and talked to us about some of his ideas concerning the future of publishing.

There’s a lot of talk about how new technologies are changing the face of publishing, but there aren’t too many people who really seem to know what they’re talking about or what to do about it. That’s because most people in the publishing industry have no hands-on experience with new technologies; they’re on the outside looking in. Andy is one of the few people who is truly in the trenches of this new reality, and his experiences have already led to some deep and practical insights about what might be the future of literature. In his essay in Publishers Weekly, Andy talks about a number of essential concepts that all independent publishers should pay attention to.

On the finances of e-publishing:

Using digital distribution, we found that we could displace upfront printing and other setup costs, perhaps $5,000 for the average small literary journal, and instead we could put that money where it belongs, paying five writers $1,000 apiece for their stories.

On why the web isn’t conducive to publishing:

[W]e believe that the Web is an environment where free content is abundant, and because it is easier to access free content than paid content on the Web, people don’t pay.

But despite talk of how people expect digital content to be free, people are in fact quite used to paying for it. We pay for apps, ringtones, songs on iTunes, and, yes, books, whether on devices or on our phones….Publishers should attempt to preserve and exploit this precedent.

(I’d like to add that the web is an advertising-based platform, and literature deserves, like film, to be ad-free.)

On how some things never change:

When we started, we thought we’d spend 80% of our time discovering great new writing and discussing literature. Instead, we learned that promotion is a publisher’s biggest challenge. By the end of our first month, we were spending 80% of our time on promotion.

And, perhaps most importantly, why new techniques must be discovered to battle internet hegemony:

The traditional mechanisms that have historically sold books – eye-catching covers, store displays, browsing customers, and knowledgeable clerks – simply don’t exist in the digital space. Few people read book blogs; the Kindle and Apple stores both favor blockbusters over the neglected gem; and most books quickly disappear amid the millions of undifferentiated titles. To find an e-book, readers have to know what they are looking for – and it’s the publisher’s job to help them.

Solving this problem will be critical for publishers in the digital age. The real world systems that, somewhat mysteriously, allow a small book to become a hit must be emulated digitally. Publishers need to build or embrace online systems that create communities around books…our experience suggests that publishers of the future must become trusted curators, hubs for communities, and more effective promoters.

The promise of the internet is that everything is at your fingertips. In reality, through, the Apple Store is a hideous top-ten list of trash, and you can go dozens of pages deep in a Google search before you find something that isn’t owned by a major corporation. We know what independent bookstores and publishers look like in the real world, and we know the tricks of surviving on the fringes of the mainstream. But it’s still not completely clear what independent looks like on the internet.

We’re eager to find out though. Which is why, as The New York Times reported Sunday, “Dennis Johnson of Melville House Publishing says he is working with Electric Literature to introduce an app book before Thanksgiving.”

That’s the easy part. The hard part is figuring out how to let people know that there’s more to the world than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.