Tor/Forge Books Announces DRM-Free E-book Store

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Kirtai

Given how digital music exploded in much the same way, I suspect they did foresee it; they simply stuck their heads in the sand just like the music industry did to protect their business models and deals with distributors. (The latter especially)

Actually, according to one WSJ ARTICLE,, the reviled , stick in mud BPHs did much better than the music industry in reacting to the digital revolution:

The book business is now further into its own digital history than music was when Napster died. Both histories began when digital media became portable. For music, that was 1999, when the record labels ended a failing legal campaign to ban MP3 players. For books, it came with the 2007 launch of the Kindle.

Publishing has gotten off to a much better start. Both industries saw a roughly 20% drop in physical sales four years after their respective digital kickoffs. But e-book sales have largely made up the shortfall in publishing—unlike digital music sales, which stayed stubbornly close to zero for years.

.This doesn't prove that music lovers are crooks. Rather, it shows that actually selling things to early adopters is wise. Publishers did this—unlike the record labels, which essentially insisted that the first digital generation either steal online music or do without it entirely.

[ProfCrash]

Yup we are on the same page. They missed the oppertunity but I can understand how and why they missed the oppertunity.

[stonetools]

Er, they didn't miss the opportunity. They're making money from ebooks every day. Not conducting business according to YOUR idea of what they should do isn't " missing an opportunity" or "ignoring ebooks".

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Actually, according to one WSJ ARTICLE,, the reviled , stick in mud BPHs did much better than the music industry in reacting to the digital revolution:

Well, it's not like they could have done much worse after all. Especially with such a brutal example before them. They were just forced to react faster, that's all. It doesn't change how they wished it would all just go away to begin with

[DiapDealer]

Er, they didn't miss the opportunity. They're making money from ebooks every day. Not conducting business according to YOUR idea of what they should do isn't " missing an opportunity" or "ignoring ebooks".

That was slick. I almost didn't see the goalpost move that time.
But we were talking about foresight and/or the lack thereof.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

See, we're not really that far apart in our thinking when it boils down to it... except maybe semantically. Because I agree with your above statement. I just don't think "never thought it would take off the way that it has" means the same thing as "couldn't possibly foresee it." Which is what stonetools (by way of Shatzkin) is asking me to believe. They're asking me to believe that the people wanting to sell ebooks saw a market that publishers couldn't possibly see. Nope. Sorry. They simply wrote off ebooks as a non-factor. Which is fine... but guessing wrong doesn't absolve you of anything... it's your industry. You were supposed to be on top of it and guess right. Others did after all.

Shatzkin's point is that the course of ebook expansion were driven by moves in a totally different business-the tech industry- that they could not have foreseen and had to react to.
The big one is the introduction of the Kindle. Jeff Bezos introduction of the Kindle was not seen at the time as an obvious move-it was seen , rightly, as an enormous and costly gamble and Bezos is rightly regarded as a business genius for concieving it and carrying it off.

Others (BN and Kobo) would follow.

Another important milestone was the introduction of the iPhone and later, the iPad. Who foresaw the rise of iOS as an important ereading platform? Not Steve Jobs-another bonafide business genius-who initially dismissed ebooks as unimportant. It was third party developers who saw that iPhone and other smartphone owners would want to read ebooks on a device that was always with them, and they prompted Amazon, who originally was uninintersted in developing smartphone apps, into introducing iOS and Andriod apps, with other bookstores soon following Amazon. Steve Jobs realized his mistake and decided to make a bookstore part of his new offering, the iPad, presenting the publishers with an opportunity and a problem-he wanted the agency distribution model. And here we are.
Now could the publishers have foreseen all of this? I don't see how. Nobody else did.Could they have reacted better? That we can argue.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Why would they like it?
What is the advantage to them that would compensate for losing the ability to sell to Kindle users? Why wouldn't they go out of their way to advertise that their books were available on the Kindle, and steal customers from the BPH that went first? That is how competitors behave.

Because the BPH want to have Amazon play by their rules. And since Amazon won't play by their rules, the BPH want to change the rules so Amazon has to play by them. I could easily see them cutting out Amazon in order to get their way.

[plib]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Another important milestone was the introduction of the iPhone and later, the iPad. Who foresaw the rise of iOS as an important ereading platform? Not Steve Jobs-another bonafide business genius-who initially dismissed ebooks as unimportant. It was third party developers who saw that iPhone and other smartphone owners would want to read ebooks on a device that was always with them, and they prompted Amazon, who originally wasuninintersted in developing smartphone apps, into introducing iOS and Andriod apps, with other bookstores soon following Amazon. Steve Jobs realized his mistake and decided to make a bookstore part of his new offering, the iPad, presenting the publishers with an opportunity and a problem-he wanted the agency distribution model. And here we are.
Now could the publishers have foreseen all of this? I don't see how. Nobody else did.Could they have reacted better? That we can argue.

FFS. It might not have been a Kindle or a Kobo but I was reading ebooks on a Palm Zire71 in 2003. It might not have been a game changer at the time, but it certainly should have been an indication to someone whose livelihood depended on predicting the future of his industry. That is if they even knew what a Zire71 was.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Shatzkin's point is that the course of ebook expansion were driven by moves in a totally different business-the tech industry- that they could not have foreseen and had to react to.

Except they'd already seen exactly this happen to the music industry with mp3 players.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by plib

FFS. It might not have been a Kindle or a Kobo but I was reading ebooks on a Palm Zire71 in 2003. It might not have been a game changer at the time, but it certainly should have been an indication to someone whose livelihood depended on predicting the future of his industry. That is if they even knew what a Zire71 was.

That's all I'm trying to say... you said it better (emphasis added by me).

Someone correctly guessed that the "reading public" just might be willing to embrace ebooks. Then Sony & Amazon gambled that the reading public might embrace a dedicated device to read those ebooks on.

Is Shatzkin asking me to believe tech companies had some sort of special insight—or magic eight-ball—that allowed them to ascertain what readers of books might be willing to embrace in the way books are read? More so than the publishers who rely on those same readers for their livelihood? If that's true, then they deserve to be fighting and clawing for relevance right now.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That's all I'm trying to say... you said it better (emphasis added by me).

Someone correctly guessed that the "reading public" just might be willing to embrace ebooks. Then Sony & Amazon gambled that the reading public might embrace a dedicated device to read those ebooks on.

Is Shatzkin asking me to believe tech companies had some sort of special insight—or magic eight-ball—that allowed them to ascertain what readers of books might be willing to embrace in the way books are read? More so than the publishers who rely on those same readers for their livelihood? If that's true, then they deserve to be fighting and clawing for relevance right now.

Only vaguely related, but there's an article here on the signs that the tv industry is about to experience the same collapse as the newspaper industry. The author's point is that established industry participants in general are very reluctant to admit that there's any problem at all, or that upstarts may eat into their business, right up until the point that those upstarts drive the old guard off a cliff.

It's interesting to note that being short-sighted isn't confined to any particular industry.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by plib

FFS. It might not have been a Kindle or a Kobo but I was reading ebooks on a Palm Zire71 in 2003. It might not have been a game changer at the time, but it certainly should have been an indication to someone whose livelihood depended on predicting the future of his industry. That is if they even knew what a Zire71 was.

You know who else was reading on a Palm in 2003? Mike Shatzkin, publishing consultant. And he predicted that the Kindle would fail:

When the Sony Reader arrived and didn’t do much, I wasn’t surprised. Sometime before it debuted, I wrote or said somewhere that if you carried a personal digital assistant, nobody should have to explain the value of ebooks to you. And if you didn’t carry a personal digital assistant, they might not actually have any value for you. At that point, most ebooks purchased were read on laptop and desktop computers.

That’s why I was pretty sure the Kindle wouldn’t work. Who wanted another device to carry around just to read books, I figured? What’s the advantage in that?

I neglected to think through that people do things for lots of different reasons. And I really underestimated the degree to which the book-sized page is a requirement for a lot of people, even though it might be a transitional one. Anyhow, I was really, really, really wrong. And even though I switched back from Kindle to iPhone reading the minute the vast selection available through Kindle (and now through Nook, Kobo, Google, and Apple) was available to me on the device I was always carrying, I fully accept that most people are willing to carry something around to do their reading on a regular-sized page. Lesson learned.

LINK

There were people who were sure that Microsoft would be leading the ebook revolution. Where are they now? Others thought that Rocketbooks would be the dominant bookstore. Remember them? If we were to roll the tape back to 2006, who would have thought Amazon would be king of the ebook hill? Who had even heard of Kobo? Who would have thought that Borders would be no more? Who would have thought that tens of millions of people would be reading ebooks on Apple and Google devices?
I am quite certain that every one of those here who attack the publishers for getting it wrong have missed those too , looking forward from 2003 or even 2006.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I am quite certain that every one of those here who attack the publishers for getting it wrong have missed those too , looking forward from 2003 or even 2006.

So you're claiming that not spotting that particular companies would succeed with particular products is no different from not spotting a major trend spanning multiple industries?

That's... an interesting viewpoint.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

There were people who were sure that Microsoft would be leading the ebook revolution. Where are they now? Others thought that Rocketbooks would be the dominant bookstore. Remember them? If we were to roll the tape back to 2006, who would have thought Amazon would be king of the ebook hill? Who had even heard of Kobo? Who would have thought that Borders would be no more? Who would have thought that tens of millions of people would be reading ebooks on Apple and Google devices?
I am quite certain that every one of those here who attack the publishers for getting it wrong have missed those too , looking forward from 2003 or even 2006.

They may not have been able to predict the specifics, but knowing "ebooks gonna be BIG" didn't take a huge amount of foresight.

Twenty years ago, there was no predicting that everybody would have a cellphone, much less that they'd have games, books, songs and movies on them. However, pagers were common enough that the phone industry could figure out that "device you carry that gets messages" was a solid marketing niche.

Figuring out "people will want to read on the newest techie devices" should've been a no-brainer, right along with "students want to not carry 80 lbs of books" and "people with poor eyesight would love something with variable text size" and "romance readers will churn through as many titles a month as you can deliver to them." None of these are surprising facts, and extrapolating a viable marketing strategy based on them should've been cake.

*Was* cake, to some publishers... Harlequin's doing great. O'Reilly's doing great. Dozens of tiny publishers are doing well; some are doing great. If the BPHs are not increasing income as much as those... they're not paying attention to their market. (They thought they were selling books to distributors. They forgot that the reason distributors buy them, is that readers want to read them. If readers prefer something else, distributors stop buying from publishers.)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stonetools

You know who else was reading on a Palm in 2003? Mike Shatzkin, publishing consultant. And he predicted that the Kindle would fail:

I don't doubt it. And yet this is the guy we're supposed to bow to when it comes to industry knowledge in general?

There were people who were sure that Microsoft would be leading the ebook revolution. Where are they now? Others thought that Rocketbooks would be the dominant bookstore. Remember them? If we were to roll the tape back to 2006, who would have thought Amazon would be king of the ebook hill? Who had even heard of Kobo? Who would have thought that Borders would be no more? Who would have thought that tens of millions of people would be reading ebooks on Apple and Google devices?
I am quite certain that every one of those here who attack the publishers for getting it wrong missed would have missed those too , looking forward from 2003 or even 2006.

Read those first couple of sentences again. Seriously. You've just indicated that there was an "ebook revolution" as far back as Microsoft Reader and the .LIT format. You've even indicated that there was a leading ebook seller before Amazon. I don't care about specific companies. I'm only addressing the fact that there were clear indicators that ebooks were going to be a big deal before Amazon or Apple or Sony ever entered the device/ereader/app picture. You just supplied further evidence of that. So can we drop the pretense that publishers were utterly blindsided by ebooks? Please?

There were harbingers. It was their industry. I don't know if they could have done anything about it—I don't really care. I just know they (or Shatzkin, or you) don't get to claim they got t-boned without warning by the ebook's popularity.