Dear Friends:

It has been a year since we began discussing the evolving business of publishing with #editorchat on Twitter.  We are very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve these past 52 weeks:

• We’ve had some pivotal conversations led by special guests: John A. Byrne, Julia Angwin, Debbie Stier, and Greg Spielberg.
• We’ve provided a forum for freelance writers and editors to share best practices and network.
• We’ve engaged with and learned from the staff of such organizations as The New York Times, Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Los Angeles Times, Toronto Globe & Mail, PC Magazine, Writer’s Digest, and Harper Studio publishing, among others.

We are indeed grateful … and exhausted, and ready to end our live Wednesday evening chats on FriendFeed. But the project we call Editorchat is not going away. Lydia and Tim will still be on Twitter and the blog will live on. Our FriendFeed room and Delicious feed will remain intact. We’ll continue to post under the #editorchat hashtag when we find news that’s worthy of discussion and debate.

And most important: We want to interview editors for this blog.

We like the spirit that comes with Thinking Big about the publishing industry’s problems. We like challenging the status quo. So while work and family responsibilities might call away us from Wednesday night chats, we’re as engaged with the revolution as ever.

We hope you’ll continue to share your astute observations on our ever-changing business by commenting here.  Or, if you’re feeling especially rebellious, pitch us a guest post by email. This your revolution, too, and we’re glad to be among you.

Thank you for your support,

Tim and Lydia

It’s an issue that keeps coming up. In an age of free digital content and proliferating content mills, how can writers ensure they are being paid fairly for their work.  Tim wrote a terrific post about Helium’s business model, in which he discussed selling one of his own pieces to the content aggregator. One of #editorchat’s regular contributors, Andria Krewson, also wrote a detailed piece about her experience writing for Demand Media (low pay, lots of freedom). And ever since I started blogging and tweeting, I’ve been encouraging (getting preachy at times) freelance writers not to sell themselves short and become the piece workers of the knowledge economy.

Now the venerable Alan Mutter, watchdog of the newspaper industry, is urging journalists not to commit “journicide” and accept low wages for what is highly skilled work.

So let’s discuss this tonight on #editorchat. We are pleased to have another special guest on board, Greg Spielberg. Currently Greg is the community editor for Bundle, a site loaded with helpful data on spending and savings. Greg took a turn at BusinessWeek not too long ago, so he’ll have lots of insight for our discussion.

Greg also came up with the thought-provoking questions we are leading with tonight.

Mutter complains: “I hear from people almost every day who want to commission an article or reprint a post in exchange for the ephemeral compensation known as “exposure.” Writers: When have you felt exposure to be fairly compensated for your work?

Mutter writes: “ … cheap, down-and-dirty ‘journalism’ is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories.”
Editors: Doesn’t all media fulfill an emotional need? How do you determine the best way to fill readers’ desire to connect as well as the need for intellectual stimulation? How much is engaging content worth?

3. Mutter says “If they don’t put a value on what they do, then no one else will, either.”
Publishers (and writers) What is it going to take to up the price on quality content?

Join us tonight at 8:30pm ET on FriendFeed.  www.friendfeed.com/editorchat

Set your DVR, writers and editors, because at around the same time the president addresses Congress and the nation in his State of the Union speech tonight, we’ll be talking about the state of the publishing industry’s union between writers, editors, and technology.

Indeed, tech seems to be the publishing topic of the week. At Digital Book World in New York, Google’s Amanda Edwards talked up Google Editions, its searchable store that will sell both digital and print books. Google plans to make Editions available on any device. “We’d like to make it so that books can be bought anywhere and read anywhere,” mediabistro’s eBookNewser quotes Edwards as saying.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that The New York Times plans to create a whole new business out of charging for electronic editions, including content made available on Amazon’s Kindle an other e-readers. Bloomberg cites an internal memo that says The Times has appointed Yasmin Namini as general manager of the new unit.

Finally, there’s Apple’s tablet — or “iSlate,” as its being called — which is expected to be announced a few hours after this post goes live. It will be full-color and powered by a version of the iPhone operating system, according to comments made by McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw in an interview on CNBC (tablet talk begins at around 2:49):

How much will these and other technologies change the way editors and writers work together? That’s our topic for tonight. Specifically, we’re wondering:

• Writers: Are these highly mobile formats encouraging you to try the shorter form? Are editors asking you to write shorter?
• Editors: Are you experimenting with digital media and HMTL, CSS, and other code as a consequence of these more interactive formats? (We asked writers about this in a recent chat. Now it’s your turn to weigh in.)
• Publishers: Do you agree with McGraw? How important is the iSlate and related technologies to the business of publishing?

Join us tonight at 8:30pm ET to discuss these questions and more on FriendFeed.

[Full disclosure: Tim owns shares of Google.]

“In the annals of history, perhaps only the D-Day invasion required as much meticulous, torturous planning as the New York Times Co.’s decision to begin charging consumers for its online content,” the Wall Street Journal reported today, although the rumors and speculation that fee-based news have been flying for a while.

It’s not surprising that the NYT is bending under pressure to increase revenue as ad dollars dwindle. We agree, it is time for a new business model. But we can’t help think that there has to be a better approach. Especially because a straight charge-for-content works for print, but not necessarily online.

Up for discussion tonight: how might publishers create a hybrid revenue model, perhaps by even restructuring author rights. For example, were the Times to use more freelancers and become a marketplace, it would vastly reduce overhead and increase its coverage capability. Meanwhile, breaking news would come from AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg. Rights to features would be purchased at whatever cost made the most sense to the paper and the independent writer.

Of course, rights and royalties are sticky wickets, ones that have the potential to generate much controversy, as seen with Amazon’s new bid to offer authors a 70 percent royalty on e-Books. We don’t pretend to have the answers, and so we’re asking you:

• Writers: Would amending your current contracts to include different rights and royalty agreements increase your bottom line?

• Editors and Publishers: What are your biggest concerns with a hybrid model? What opportunities are you preparing to exploit?

Join us tonight at 8:30pm ET to discuss these questions and more on FriendFeed.

Creepy fake plastic hands aside, we love this:

Can you image writing for this type of platform? Maybe it’ll be what we get when Apple announces its so-called iSlate later this month. Maybe it’s the future of publishing. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Either way, we believe that the publishing industry as a whole is becoming more interactive, and it makes us wonder whether writers are going to have to teach themselves technical skills that were unimaginable a few years ago.

We’re not just talking about search engine optimization here. We’re talking about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C++, and other tools and technologies for creating interactive content. Is it time writers learned these tools? Tell us what you think. Join us this Wednesday night at 8:30 at Editorchat on FriendFeed.