Ya know, I really don't see why consolidation is such a bad thing.
RH is increasing its efficiency and eliminating redundancies. Yes, it sucks for the individuals who will lose their jobs. But if their labor is unnecessary or duplicated, why keep that person on the payroll?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
<yawn> Sorry Dennis, you are stuck in the present. Yes books are currently published in paper but not for long....
|
That depends on what you view as a "long" period of time.
It's unlikely that ebooks will hit 50% of the market for at least 5 years. For all the attention put on digital music, CD sales still constitute the majority of sales and a huge amount of revenues.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by kennyc
The music business is in shambles at the moment, the publishing industry will be in another five years. It is already going down hill and has been since before TV took over as the primary home entertainment venue.
|
It is, and I do think there are parallels, but there are also numerous differences.
The most critical difference is that the music industry was borne aloft for many years with consumers replacing vinyl and tape recordings with CD's. When music went digital, the ability to rip tracks largely eliminated that aspect of the format shift.
This will not happen for ebooks, since paper books are much more difficult to "rip" into a digital form. Even if someone puts out a $50 paper book scanner, it will still take hours to scan, OCR, edit and format a book. Ergo publishers may gain some sales from people replacing P with E -- or at least aren't likely to have that undercut sales.
Next, most music buyers were interested primarily in 1 or 2 songs rather than a full album. CD singles weren't very popular, and were a fairly expensive way to get those 1 or 2 tracks; so music buyers went from dropping $15 for a full CD, to $2 for the tracks they wanted. Since book readers want more than a handful of selected chapters, this will not be replicated with ebooks.
Third, musicians have the option to sell performance tickets and merchandise. Only a handful of authors can actually charge for a book signing, lecture or similar event. Some musicians can be sustained by other revenue streams related to their art; writers and publishers, however, cannot. Thus it will be vital for publishers and writers to maintain a similar schema as the current system (namely, "getting paid for content").
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by kennyc
P.S. You seem to be stuck in the Independent publisher vs the mega publisher mindset. That's not necessarily what I'm saying at all. The publishers are more likely to be replaced by something like Amazon than a bunch of ants.
|
This is not particularly likely, for a few reasons.
• Retailers are not likely to want to absorb the costs offered by a traditional publisher, e.g. editing, marketing and so forth.
• Retailers tend to do best when acting relatively neutral towards their suppliers. E.g. if Amazon starts seriously pushing its own publishing house, the other publishers may get ticked off and punish Amazon in a variety of ways.
• If your retailer does take those roles, this may well lead to a conflict of interest. Not only would B&N be competing with its main vendors, but authors signed to B&N's publishing wing will start to demand equal time in terms of B&N pushing their products.
• Distribution is about more than just tossing your product up on the Web and hoping someone shows up. You need a variety of content -- or a specific niche with a brand identity, and modest goals to match -- as well as marketing resources to draw a decent audience in.
• Not enough has changed about the business to truly abolish the need for publishers, large or small. People enjoy blockbusters and they will always be around; even with books, managing a blockbuster requires significant resources and expertise. Books still need to be edited to be at their best; marketed to find, capture and maintain an audience. These type of requirements still demand more resources than most individuals can amass on their own, for example.
Last but not least, while it is entirely plausible that the book industry will look very different 20 years from now than today, or that today's players are enveloped, I fully expect that the overall makeup will be similar to the way it has been for a few decades: a few large consolidated powerhouses, a variety of smaller publishers and retailers, and a massive sea of unreadable texts in the slush piles. All that is happening now is that one specific aspect of the business (distribution) is falling in price, and the reality is that this is only a small portion of the total cost of publishing and selling a book.