05-23-2011, 04:56 PM | #16 | |
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05-23-2011, 05:25 PM | #17 | |
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Cisco, Intel, MS, Apple, Goggle, Amazon, and Nokia (cause Facebook isn't that powerful. Yet.). (Obviously, only western companies in that list.) Their asian counterparts (Samsung, Sony, etc) would be The Seven Samurai. |
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05-24-2011, 09:10 AM | #18 | |
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So the Kindle Store will eventually be seen as even more of a slush pile than it is considered now. |
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05-24-2011, 05:16 PM | #19 | |
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And there is no reason why *readers* can't be the gatekeepers in the post-treeware era. Let them vote with their wallets. They can hardly do worse than the lords of print have done over the past few decades. It won't be just the Kindle store hosting a flood of new content; it'll be everybody in the biz. Remember that ebooks don't go out of print so new releases will be competing for attention side by side with every book ever published. Back in the day, Borders made hay off a 30,000 book catalog while today Amazon stocks over 900000, plus another milion-plus pd titles and Google claims over 3 million. Even applying Sturgeon's law, the supply of quality content is running a couple orders of magnitude higher than in the traditional gatekeeper era. No amount of bottlenecking, filtering, or gatekeeping is going to change that. What is going to change--what has already started to change--is how people find and buy books and just as the production and distribution of books is changing, so to is the way consumers look at books. Over in the baseball world, there are stories of cuban defectos, newly-minted millionaires, walking into north american supermarkets and retail shops and literally becoming paralized at having to choose what to buy, overwhelmed by the range of choices and unable to discriminate. But, not surprisingly, they quickly adapt and over a period of a few months learn the required skills to survive in an economy of abundance. So too will post-treeware book buyers adapt; the human brain is nothing if not adaptive. And, even in the unlikely event that the current breed of reader isn't up to the task, the newer generations will. Think of it as evolution in action. (With apologies to Niven and Pournelle.) |
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05-24-2011, 10:07 PM | #20 | |||||
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The plain fact is that gatekeepers *add value*. They are extremely important for normal readers who don't want to take on the full time job of acting as their own gatekeeper and wasting their time reading crap. And that's what's out there - stuff much worse than crap that is actually published. For a decade, musicians have been able to publish their own material online without needing a music publisher. Has this changed the face of music? No. People are still buying music from big publishers because they provide value. |
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05-24-2011, 10:12 PM | #21 |
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Hey, that's right!!! They are giving us great new blockbuster authors, like say... Sarah Palin! Talk about weeding out the crap, those big 6 are very important.
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05-24-2011, 11:09 PM | #22 |
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Let's see now: gatekeeping is about weeding out the "unfit" and making sure readers only see properly annointed content. Trouble is, we also hear that the market is filling up with "slush".
Now that sounds a wee bit contradictory. If gatekeeping is still real, how is the "slush" getting to market? Sorry, but the world we live in is the one where if somebody writes a book they don't need the blessing of a glass house priesthood of print to put it before readers and, maybe, get it to sell. A world where the choice whether that book sells or not is up to the buyer. Now, that doesn't mean that the self-proclaimed gatekeepers don't add value; only that what they are doing that adds value (if they are--another debate entirely) is not gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is about control and any publisher that thinks it can control what readers see and buy is deluded and wasting effort. There is no control anymore. The power is moving to the buyers. Its their money and they choose what to spend it on. Wise publishers--and they do exist--realize that their chief role in this new world is *promotion* of their clients' product; helping the creators sell more with their aid than they would without it. In the new world publishers can be consultants, marketers, even--if they're really good--kingmakers. If they're not, they can just as easily be irrelevant. In the new world publishers work for the creators, not the other way around. Quite a few publishers--and judging by author testimonials, Amazon is one of them--get it, that times have changed irrevocably. But it does seem like some haven't gotten the message yet or they actually think that guarding a gate while the fence around it has vanished still serves a purpose. There is no gatekeeping. No filtering, no weeding. Marketing, yes; promotion, yes; editing, packaging design, and even printing services still add value. But publishers can no longer control what gets to market. That power now belongs to the writers, just as the power to decide what sells lies with buyers. Publishers are hired help not overlords. |
05-25-2011, 05:11 AM | #23 | |||
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Undoubtedly some new gems will appear that might have been missed by traditional publishing. Also undoubtedly a whole load of trash that just isn't ready to be published will also appear. Quote:
Hence the utility of filtering services, whether publishers, book reviewers, book clubs, etc... to highlight the ones that are worth reading. Quote:
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05-25-2011, 07:12 AM | #24 | |||
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05-25-2011, 07:14 AM | #25 |
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As much as I wish Amazon to come big in publishing, I would still want the bphs in the business competing with each other. Amazon may have started the trend of $9.99 but who is to say they will keep the trend when they are big enough in publishing, especially with their demand of exclusivity deals from some authors.
The bphs and Amazon could keep a tab on each other in terms of pricing, content and way readers can access the books. But again it's a wishful thinking (DRM free world, global access to e-books ) it’s still too early to say how far Amazon is willing to go in publishing. Maybe they just want to scare the publishers to loosen their control in terms of pricing and other conditions. din |
05-25-2011, 09:02 AM | #26 |
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Terrific post FjTorres!
I prefer to be my own gatekeeper. I know the kinds of books that I like to read, if they have a blurb I will read that, and it will tell me if I want to buy the book. So far out of the 150+ books that I have bought I have only come up with maybe 5 duds. And even those duds serve a use of refining my preferences in reading matter. So the BPH's can go take a flying leap. |
05-25-2011, 09:42 AM | #27 | ||
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Amazon is moving into the publisher's territory, and the publishers are moving into Amazon's territory in setting up their own online book stores. Competition is a wonderful thing. Lee |
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05-25-2011, 09:48 AM | #28 |
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05-25-2011, 09:52 AM | #29 |
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05-25-2011, 10:55 AM | #30 |
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I get what you are saying Leebase - Amazon makes more money per book on the Big 6 book Agency sales and since Kindle sales are increasing dramatically they probably are making more money overall. That doesn't mean that they are overall maximizing their revenue however if sales growth isn't what it used to be under lower pricing structures. Amazon isn't very forthcoming with their numbers but every once in awhile they leak a hint that a large chunk of their Kindle Revenue is coming from low priced books and not those $12.99 and up big releases.
I also strongly suspect Amazon has gone into publishing in order to get pricing control over a chunk of new release material. The only thing that shocks me is that they've taken this long to become serious about it. Many industry experts were predicting it would happen within months after the Agency Pricing blow-ups. As for Gatekeeping, I think it is probably the big Publishing houses strongest value in the future marketplace - finding new authors and telling us what reading is the best use of our time. Unfortunately, the big Publishing houses in recent years have largely abandoned that role and "gatekeeping" in terms of combing through author submissions to find the gems is mostly now done by author agents. They need to get back to it. |
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