Apple's recent acquisition of Booklamp and its heuristic ebook recommendation engine has sparked some rather interesting thoughts here:
http://blog.williamdrichards.com/201...ters-fray.html
Quote:
A tiny little company has just been acquired by Apple for the “tiny” sum of just $15M. In an age where companies like Google and Amazon have scooped up tiny startups for hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars, $15M is pretty much chump change.
The significance of this has not yet hit the self-publishing community yet. But when it does, executives at both Amazon and the Big-5 might be in dire need of clean underwear.
Here is why this is so important.
Right now, Amazon has an absolute stranglehold on the ebook market, thanks in a very large part to self-publishing writers. And in a small part, to the greed of the Big-5 who demanded on DRM for ebooks, not realizing that by doing so, they would lock customers into one platform. Locking people into one platform for reading ebooks means it is incredibly difficult and expensive for the competition to get a foothold in the market. Lack of competition puts way too much power into the hands of the few, and consumers and writers alike surfer for it.
Amazon didn’t sit back on that. They knew they had to offer more value to make their market share grow. Amazon has sunk millions of dollars into data mining to ensure that they could make good recommendations for new books to their customers.
This is vital for self-published writers!
To have your book recommended to potential readers is the lifeblood of a writer’s career. If people don’t know your book exists, they won’t ever buy it.
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More at the source.
It's an interesting idea.
- The BPH/BWM old-school tradpub model of book promotion relies on professional (paid) reviews (Kirkus, etc) and preferred (paid) placement at B&M store shelves. Some online ebookstores have been going along with this model (Nook and Apple) and giving preferential treatment to tradpub titles.
- Amazon has long been relying on a different model, one more focused on helping customers find books they might like (instead of convincing them to buy what specific publishers are pushing on that given date) through crowd-sourced reviews and algorithmic recommendations from datamining consumer sales data and behavior.
- Now we have the prospect that Apple might be switching from a publisher-driven promotion model to a (more) neutral content driven model, one that seeks to drive sales by matching buyer interests with compatible books. It is an intriguing and not illogical idea. Barred from signing Agency sales agreements for the next few years, Apple is now forced to actually compete for ebook sales and, since they lack both Amazon's big data to mine and reviews, they can't duplicate their promotion system any time soon. A heuristic content system seems like a reasonable alternative. And a cool one. And we all know Apple thrives on cool.
The real issue to be on the lookout for, if and when Apple deploys this heuristic recommendation engine, will be just how neutral will it really be? Will it return a list of likely books sorted alphabetically, by price, or by coop/paid "grease"? Will it be truly driven by heuristics (and hence indie friendly) or will it have an embedded fudge-factor to steer sales to compatible tradpub titles.
The idea of a purely content-driven book/reader matchmaking service sounds appealing for both readers and indie publishers but I doubt it would sit too well with the BPH/BWM crowd. It might just put Apple right beside Amazon on their enemies list.
Definitely need to keep an eye out for what Apple does with booklamp.