Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Yes, standing still can sweep up almost any company these days.
But the fact is that 9 times out of 10, a company simply cannot afford to sacrifice existing revenue streams or dump expensive infrastructure overnight.
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And who said it is a question of one or the other?
It isn't.
It is just a matter of *managing* the transition from one platform and business model to the other. And there are dozens of publishers that are doing just that. Mostly they are small, like Amazon Publishing, but not all are small.
Look to Harlequin and Carina; Harlequin is part of one of the BPHs but they have enough autonomy to call their own shots.
And the way they call them is by going aggressively after ebook business under both the traditional model and the New Publishing model. As Harlequin they sell from Amazon, from Nook, *and* from their own website.As Carina, they run an ebook-first operation. Kinda covers all the bases, no?
There's that old business chestnut that says; "It is better to obsolete your own product (or business model) than to wait for your competitors to do it for you."
Cannibalizing your own business is usually better than sitting around doing nothing. And that is simply the worst-case scenario; the best case scenario is what Microsoft has done three times so far and is preping to do a fourth time; migrate its customer base seamlessly from one platform to another: first, from the DOS CLI to the GUI, then to the NT object-oriented code Base, more recently to 64-bit computing, and now to HTML5-driven coding. You don't survive technology-driven disruptions by ignoring them; you survive them by jumping on the bandwagon.
Smart publishers today are the ones looking to leverage low-overhead ebook-first publishing to go after the market share of the stupid publishers who insist on doing things the 19th century way. And whining.
Musn't forget the whining and recriminations.
Fat lot of good either will do them, but that's easier than actually doing something. In the end it is easier to be a victim than a survivor.
