I teach document design to our writing majors. Historically, this course has focused on visual design and principles for generating print documents. However, I think it's time for the exclusive focus on print to change.  John Paton of the Journal Registry Company of 150 newspapers, explained in a presentation this week that their company has achieved a 15% profit margin this year by putting digital first. (Incidentally, the transcript of the presentation would be a good read in an undergraduate class.)

Now I don't want to imply that the entire print publishing industry is in the same downward decline as print journalism. But I did co-op part of GigaOM's title about John Paton's presentation because it seems time to put digital forward in our thinking of how to train students. All publishing is shifting. For instance, Amazon reported this summer that sales of Kindle ebooks out sold hard covers over a three month period.

 
From Vooks to ebooks, from the iPad to the Google settlement, and from print-on-demand to new styles of writing, this article attempts to analyse the effects of the digital revolution on the publishing industry, and to make some educated guesses about how things may develop in the next few years.

There's a story on CNET about how an agent has published 20 novels from Mailer, Roth, Bellow, Updike, and others directly to Kindle--bypassing big publishers. The end result is a much higher royalty for the authors, though the author of the piece (Carnoy) points out that these ebooks are too expensive ($10) and quite spartan. Another downside (or perhaps upside if Amazon markets them heavily) is that they're exclusive to the Kindle for 2 years.

English:

Seton Hill University seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in English, MFA considered. Background in journalism, publishing, and/or editing a plus. Teaching experience/potential at undergraduate level desirable.

Composition: