Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
wow just wow. This only demonstrates to me how clueless this guy (industry?) is about technology.
It is "comparable" cost to set up a physical warehouse as it is to set up a digital infrastructure? Did he mean "equivalent"? Because if he did there is no way you can tell me building (or renting) a 10,000SqFt warehouse (for example) and staffing and maintenance costs the same as renting a Virtual Server at GoDaddy.
BOb
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I think that the root of a lot of the problem here: Bloat. They don't get how to run lean. They don't seem to even consider that you don't necessarily need your own web store, let alone that there are very inexpensive ways to do it if you decide you really do. That web division probably has an overpaid executive, a couple directors and a few midlevels before you even get to the direct producers. I think some of the genre publishers can do well with their own web stores, like Baen and Harlequin. They have more brand visibility with the customers. I couldn't tell you who publishes most of the books I read. I'm sure there are quite a few different houses involved. I'm not going to buy books from them unless I can't find them at a bookstore. They should just focus on distribution rather than trying to build and market their own store.
As for producing books, if they mandate the style in which manuscripts are submitted and released from the editing process that will fix a lot of the problem. I was in a liberal arts field in university and we had style guides. I'm a programmer now and we have style guides. This is not rocket science. We also have versioning control. It's free. They need to simplify.