Quote:
Originally Posted by cjr72
We've seen this movie before in other industries, most recently Kodak in the face of digital photography. When there's technological upheaval in an industry the established players would rather dig in their heels and close their eyes to reality (and try to get laws passed to stop what's inevitable). When it comes to adapting, very few established players are willing to gore their own ox in time before new companies that understand the new landscape do it for them.
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Sorry, but this is hopelessly naive.
It's *easy* to see change coming. It's really hard to actually do something about it. Not because you don't see it coming, but because it's really hard to actually execute the change successfully. "Change" means switching to something you are probably not good at. And if you are not good at it, you won't succeed.
Livery stables and horse breeders saw the automobile revolution coming. But they had zero institutional knowledge of mechanical engineering and so there was really nothing they could do about it.
Kodak was basically a chemical company that focused on selling and processing film, with a small (by the 70's) sideline in lower end cameras. When 90% of your business becomes obsolete - even if you can see it coming - there's not much you can do to suddenly change your business because you have no expertise in the new field. Kodak did make digital cameras, but they weren't able to leverage their expertise in chemistry to make the cameras any better - and so their cameras didn't offer anything that cameras from existing camera companies couldn't offer(Canon, Olympus), or that companies leveraging electronics expertise could bring (Sony, Panasonic). It is notable that the predigital top-of-of-the-line 35mm camera manufacturers (Canon and Nikon) are still the top DSLR manufacturers. But that's because digital cameras didn't replace lenses (what Canon and Nikon really produce) or cameras. They replaced film...and I don't think that there was anything film companies could have done about it, no matter how long they knew the train was coming.
WRT e-books, I don't think that publishers are going to necessarily go the way of Kodak. IMO, we will still need people to find good authors and produce and edit their books...and publishers have this expertise. (But there's nothing that paper producers, like film producers, can do - they can't suddenly become e-ink manufacturerers).
But if we did move to a world in which authors do all of the work and sell their books themselves, well...then there's nothing that publishers can really do. But music didn't move to that model, and movies haven't either. So I'm not convinced that books will in general. Although there will be *some* people who are able to succeed without publishers.