Can digital fundamentally change and save book publishing at the same time??
The ebook vs. print book...
Can digital fundamentally change and save book publishing at the same time??
The ebook vs. print book debate is largely one of replacement. To me, it's a dumb and short-sighted conversation. If books follow the path of movies and music, the business that powers the industry will be the thing that gets replaced.
Take movies or TV. Shows are still made pretty much the way they've been made since I've been alive. Sure, there are better cameras, film was swapped out for memory, editing and SFX have improved by leaps and bounds, and normal people are getting into the mix.
But the biggest change is how we -- the viewing public -- are funding the industry. We're not buying one-offs like we used to. We're watching on Hulu or Netflix, or even through our cable provider. We're not pirating (as much). We're streaming. And those streams cost us each a small amount, and those small amounts add up to a big amount. How big? Orange is the New Black big.
It's the same for music. Sure, technology has changed the game for creating music. Look behind that giant speaker stack next time you're at a concert. It's probably an empty box. Here again, the funding source has changed. Hipsters aside, CDs are out and streaming is in. Hear an old Peter Gabriel song on the radio? Run to Spotify, and add that -- and a whole lot more -- to your account. And for less than $10, you can listen even when you're not connected to the internet. And that money flows back to the industry.
So... books. Will they be streamed, too? Maybe. Wattpad is already experimenting in that area. Major marketplaces have cloud players. But what we really need to see is a third party, ala Netflix or Spotify, that's less about selling actual copies and more about delivering content in novel ways. Through your TV? Maybe. Car audio? Of course (for audio books). And your phone, and you tablet... and everything.
No, I don't have the answers. But I have some ideas. Do you?
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This post was inspired by this article on The Economist: http://goo.gl/UekLmX
And I was looking for an image of a robot made of books on Flickr. Not so easy to find, as it turns out there are lots of pictures of covers of books about robots. But this is CC licensed and cool enough on it's own: http://goo.gl/6KGy3l
The ebook vs. print book debate is largely one of replacement. To me, it's a dumb and short-sighted conversation. If books follow the path of movies and music, the business that powers the industry will be the thing that gets replaced.
Take movies or TV. Shows are still made pretty much the way they've been made since I've been alive. Sure, there are better cameras, film was swapped out for memory, editing and SFX have improved by leaps and bounds, and normal people are getting into the mix.
But the biggest change is how we -- the viewing public -- are funding the industry. We're not buying one-offs like we used to. We're watching on Hulu or Netflix, or even through our cable provider. We're not pirating (as much). We're streaming. And those streams cost us each a small amount, and those small amounts add up to a big amount. How big? Orange is the New Black big.
It's the same for music. Sure, technology has changed the game for creating music. Look behind that giant speaker stack next time you're at a concert. It's probably an empty box. Here again, the funding source has changed. Hipsters aside, CDs are out and streaming is in. Hear an old Peter Gabriel song on the radio? Run to Spotify, and add that -- and a whole lot more -- to your account. And for less than $10, you can listen even when you're not connected to the internet. And that money flows back to the industry.
So... books. Will they be streamed, too? Maybe. Wattpad is already experimenting in that area. Major marketplaces have cloud players. But what we really need to see is a third party, ala Netflix or Spotify, that's less about selling actual copies and more about delivering content in novel ways. Through your TV? Maybe. Car audio? Of course (for audio books). And your phone, and you tablet... and everything.
No, I don't have the answers. But I have some ideas. Do you?
---
This post was inspired by this article on The Economist: http://goo.gl/UekLmX
And I was looking for an image of a robot made of books on Flickr. Not so easy to find, as it turns out there are lots of pictures of covers of books about robots. But this is CC licensed and cool enough on it's own: http://goo.gl/6KGy3l
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