I got the image here. No idea of the original source.
I've got big to-dos yet to accomplish today, but squirmy thoughts have birthed in my fevered brain during the current WGA strike. I can't help drawing comparisons to the traders in tree-meat, aka the traditional book publishing industry. See what you think. [...snips and editorial asides mine]:
1) Marc Andreeson writes about Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley's Image.
...I think the TV and movie industry is at a turning point where things could go either way -- they could repeat the critical error of the music industry and permanently alienate their customer base; or they could get it together and create viable models for the future that make consumers happy and make money...
The classic Hollywood economic model is built around the existence of a few very large companies -- studios -- that dominate production, marketing, and distribution...Historically, marketing and distribution of entertainment properties [like the once-significant costs of printing books] has been extremely expensive...Because of that, those few very large companies -- studios [publishers]-- have been bottlenecks. If you are talent -- writers, actors, directors -- you have to deal with the studios because otherwise you can never bring anything to market...As a consequence, talent gets paid like hired guns, not owners. [Most book authors do have the promise of royalties, but ask them about the Byzantine, even Iron-Age accounting, and how much that glacier-speed harvesting yields for those other than bestsellers.]
2) From Andreeson's post Suicide by Strike.
...You're faced with a massive, once-in-a-lifetime shift in mainstream consumer behavior from traditional mass media, including film and television, to new activities that you do not control: the Internet, social networking, user-generated content, mobile services, video games. It's been snowballing since the mid 90's, for like 12 years -- 12 years of denial and obfuscation -- but it's really rolling fast now....
...And the consumers you rely upon for revenue are so frustrated with your company's inability to supply them with what they want, when they want it, that digital piracy of your content has become mainstream and socially acceptable behavior practically overnight...And your company's culture is not prepared to deal with the shift.
Your company was founded 50 or 80 or 100 or 150 years ago by different people in a different time, and the overwhelming majority of your people now -- smart and well-meaning managers and bureaucrats, but still managers and bureaucrats -- have to be retrained and reoriented toward entrepreneurial thinking in a viciously dynamic and startlingly fast-changing world not of your, or their, creation....
3) Rob Long, who I've referenced here before, has a post called Rebuild or Disrupt (which tipped me to Andreeson's, tx!) where he breaks down the expense of even participating in television enough to earn failure, a 98% probability. [a percentage as bad as earning out your advance. ]
These are a few among the many relevant analogs to today's book publishing as I understand it.
Traditional publishing has high overheads, low margins, and some self-destructive practices. Despite its collective experience and the seductively august legacy conveyed to most of us by the brands, it's not consistently able to identify what readers will enjoy enough to buy. Instead, it spends ever more time acquiring reprint rights to sales-tested content, sometimes from smaller, more focused and entrepreneurial houses. Having lost faith in its own judgment, steering decisions become activities in consensus, making it less likely to decide in favor of the innovative and what might become black swan megasellers. It is on the trailing (if not the kicking-and-screaming) edge of technology and actively resists new venues. It's poised for someone to eat its expensed lunch while it grouses about the illegitimacy of the upstarts. And now's when I plug in my crystal ball, because I'm optimistic about the opportunities inherent in such chaos.
I love books. LOVE 'EM! That said, I think it likely that the hardcover market as we know it will continue to diminish. However, exquisitely-crafted hardbacks will blossom as specialties, collaborations between authors and illustrators and bookbinding artists. Hardcovers will become ever more precious, limited-edition items with extensive extras (like DVDs offer), made for appreciators of the objects and memorabilia as much as the prose.
Cheap, robust, good-looking paperbacks with some form of rapid-delivery will continue to proliferate on the strength of their content and the easy durability of the form factor. Big publishing controls a lot of content, so it would have made sense that they'd develop some decently-designed electronic reader paving new avenues of profit to their backlists. Well, no. They haven't gotten in front of this challenge any better than the recording industry anticipated the pesky Napster, itself several years behind the popular rips and downloads on usenet boards. Someone-- my bet's on the tech-savvy, entrepreneurial sci-fi crowd or a marketing/self-help guru-- will develop the killer app to connect readers directly to their instant (or almost instant) content that's simple, intuitive, and fun to browse. One might argue that Amazon is this already, and I like the review feature, but it's still a product middleman. With new attacks on the affiliate relationships through taxation, like in blissfully confiscatory New York, it doesn't provide a much better shake for authors' profit-sharing.
With a friendly, solid, trustworthy direct interface, some other nimble entity will partner-up or hit up a venture capitalist to finally make the electronic reader/digital medium that works harmoniously and makes us all go, "Duh! No wonder they never took off before. Of course, that's the best way to design it! I must have one!" Bookstores will continue to exist, I believe and thank heavens for them, but will operate especially in rarities, niche specialties, and/or as friendly, non-bar gathering places and event venues. (One chain location I knew could've colored its P&L black just by charging carpet-rent for its 'after-school program.' See other examples here.)
Writers can become again the proprietors of their own cottage industries. Sure, it's scarier than just passing off your manuscript to someone who's supposed to know better than you and then cut you a check. However, tools and forums will develop as we help each other through it, and I do believe more fiction writers will be able to profit more amply from their work by selling directly to and expanding their unique readerships.
Now, my head hurts. Besides, it's your turn to point out where I'm full of bilgewater.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Delivering a Strike for Futurism
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8 comments:
Marc Andreeson is right that the current Hollywood model is probably on the verge of failure.
But no kudos for coming up with the thought.
Over the past ten years, the music industry and the newspaper industry have both been totaled by the internet and the advent of free intellectual property, or at least creative products people won't pay for.
The only thing protecting books is that it is still too cumbersome to print them at home or, conversely, to carry around a computer. But assuming those obstacles get overcome, the publishing industry will also be totaled.
Where that leaves us is anybody's guess but one obvious outcome is that if you can't be paid for producing something, it probably won';t be produced.
No, as you say, of course Andreeson didn't invent the idea. I've been reading it and thoughts like it around various places for awhile now, but I thought he did a pithy, topical job of covering the issues, so it seemed a good time for linkage.
As a recovering musician, I believe that the recording industry got its smiting because it encouraged the piracy to flourish by being so hidebound, backwards, and hooked on internecine label wars when it came to digital media. When things become technologically possible, people tend to want to do them, even if you tell them- as the labels did- that listening to music on your computer is stupid, much less wanting to pick each song you play.
No model of free music ever had to become widespread and established (and f it hadn't, it would have changed the internet's development for sure.) What if, during the usenet days for example, they'd said "Gee Whiz, the kids with computers might like to do this, make their own mix CDs, and we could probably sell even more music." Instead, they said no, you can't, you won't, and what's the typical young response to them from a tech-savvy generation? The solution would have been to exploit the energy and talents of their listenership, (not just exploiting the musical artists as usual). The answer was not to tell listeners they were criminally-minded for wanting access to their music that way anyway. The old hippies seriously turned into THE MAN...
The record industry hung onto its long-acknowledged and crass practice of jamming albums with dreck and forcing you to buy the whole thing, rather than finding ways to sell the desirable track(s) profitably. And they even had about a decade (based on when I and other friends started ripping and swapping) to get it together before the model collapsed. At any time then I would've used an easier, sanctioned alternative at a decent price. But they were stuck in the past, an unforgivable mistake when you make so much of your money on the youth.
No one guarantees the future for anyone, and industries, like music, movies, and publishing have been- at the leadership level and where technology's concerned- so constipated and regressive as to have earned the hot breath of losses and competition down their necks. I believe that these industries will survive in different forms, but rather than jumping for the challenges, they're being forced into them with much wailing and gnashing, etc.
Also, I do believe there are lots of people who will continue producing for their own satisfaction, but I think you're right if you're indicating a new for-profit model also has to be developed. It does, and I think it will be.
Whew! Someday I'll tell you what I REALLY think about industry Luddites and their disservice to creative artists, kay?
Clare,
Wow! I had to read this post twice to understand completely because you have a much firmer grasp of the issues than I do.
I do think that resistance to change is the number one factor here. Change does come, but industries are often loathe to adapt.
Great, mind expanding post.
Terrie
Today, 11/15, I just read a quote from Edgar Bronfman, head of Warner Music, that was so satisfying, I had to post it somewhere, although I'm lousy at wrapping the links here.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/macuser/news/
138990/music-boss-we-were-wrong-
to-go-to-war-with-consumers.html
Money quote: The boss of Warner Music has made a rare public confession that the music industry has to take some of the blame for the rise of p2p file sharing.
"We used to fool ourselves,' he said. "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won."
In my first comment to Alex, I originally used the word 'glacial'. Wish I'd kept it now. That WOULD have been satisfying. Better still if publishing learns from music's mistakes.
Clare, I regret that I'm replying so late to this.
Your insight into this issue echoes my own far less informed thoughts on the subject, which are based primarily on my involvement with technology companies and having watched the music industry through my 27-year-old son's eyes.
I used to argue with my son, who supported file sharing, that musicians deserved compensation for their labor, and that they were getting ripped off by sharing (granted...they'd been ripped off by THE MAN in the music industry already, but many of them less so). I likened p2p sharing of music to software developers who deserved compensation for their labor...as did he with the software he developed.
His response? Something sort of socialist in nature. Then he set about developing what has become a very popular program and made it available to the world free of charge. He offered open source free ware at a time when he and his wife struggle financially as students. He continues to receive donations, and they're coming in faster as the program increases in popularity. But considering the time and energy he spends on the product (occasionally at the cost of his grad research) one has to conclude that he's taking quite a loss. Why does he do it? Because he loves to do it. Hmm.
I'm curious about your assessment that things didn't have to be this way--that if the the music industry had been less greedy and had more foresight, free music wouldn't have become the norm. Maybe. I agree that a lot of us would be happy to buy our music at lower-than-rip-off prices that fund THE MAN rather than the artist. But people would and will download stuff free because they can. And as the young technically-savvy will ultimately replace THE MAN in charge, I wonder if any model other than free would have ultimately survived.
Seeing all this, believing distribution as we know it is doomed, I feel a bit intolerant of the industry's slow recognition of same. Especially since, at this point, in publishing we've got THE MAN pulling all the strings. It makes me sad because, like you, I love books. As a yet-to-be-published novelist, what's around the corner makes me quake for my financial future. (Just now I'm deserting income from tech clients I can't really afford to leave in the dust, but must desert for sanity's sake.)
These are rambling thoughts. Yet some alternative must arise from the tidal wave about to crash on our shores. I'd like to play a humble role in the creation of that alternative.
-Lois
Lois-
Your son's a pioneer of progress, and I wish him well. I've sent money for shareware I appreciated. Great independent work- whether software or molecules or writing- tends to get sought out by established firms. So licensing or enhanced development options (from a funded entity) are possible. But as in writing, it seems people want to see your kung fu before they hire you as an enforcer.
I am trying not to have to make absolutely every possible mistake from scratch. And, if we use music as a model that made such transition horribly painful for all involved- like taking 10 years to rip off a Band-Aid while yelling loud enough to give the rest of the world migraines- here's a new development worth considering:
The latest Eagles album was produced by them and sold directly from them through Wal- Mart exclusively. The subsequent $12 price for the double album is low enough that other retailers are even buying it from Wal-Mart to offer at small mark-ups in their stores, and the listeners are snapping it up in the millions. The artists are making a bigger share, consumers can afford it, and even resellers are finding a way to get in on it. The WSJ had a great article on it today.
People may play an album or song many times a day after day. Books aren't the same, which could be a wonderful thing in some ways. (Also, I mention that in all my artistic pursuits which include music, I've never found a more generous crowd than the writers. This figures in) When some BIG AUTHOR goes the direct sale route for fiction, with enough swing to make it happen well, it'll only make sense to use that platform for more writers, since our readers need new infusions of content more often. (Remember that summer and Anna Karenina? I read it every day...) Stephen King was one of the first to offer his short story by shareware/donation, and he said most people paid, but it was a high stress endeavor with lots of blowback then- more than 5 years ago. Things have continued moving, and he's never ruled out trying out new delivery again.
Those publishers doing a good job for both their writers and readers will stay around, I believe. People will pay for what they value. Both writers and readers will also have options outside publishers that aren't focused, efficient, and high-quality.
I know it's terrifying, but it's all expansion, too. Ask your son how he'd like his reading content available- even though he may not be your target audience- and make sure with any publisher, your rights agreement is such that you're scalable toward that future. Then, you can have the best of all worlds!
P.S. I've jumped blindfolded off a few of those craggy cliffs myself. May you encounter fair winds and fields of pillowflowers.
Thanks for the well wishes, and that's very cool about the Eagles!
Was thinking about things...do you agree audio books are too pricey? Even when downloaded? You're right about the one-time-only read (except for Anna Karenina of course...I expect that summer you were outside in a hammock smelling the honeysuckle).
My son sent me this link today from newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983/page/1
The Future of Reading
Amazon's Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind's most divine creations: the book itself.
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