Re: Our "publish then filter" future...

At 8:12 AM +1100 3/24/08, Jon Jermey wrote:
>Hi Suzanne,
>
>Excellent idea! But this is unlikely to happen soon, unfortunately,
>because freedom of choice is what traditional publishers want to avoid.


I'm not sure what your definition of "freedom of choice" is here.

I assume by this you think that traditional publishers are somehow conspiring against small and ebook publishers in order to limit competition?

Personally, I don't see it. The market in the US is well developed and has lots of competition. And, since the power in the market is really concentrated in the major distributors, Ingram and Baker & Taylor (if not in the retailers), both of which take practically ANY publisher regardless of size or age or discount offered.

So, if you are going to throw out claims like this, I think you need to back it up.


>Just as the big beer companies like to tie bars and pubs to their
>particular brand of beer, so publishers would love to lock their
>distributors and customers into their own books,


Certainly. Anyone who wants to make money would love to do that. The question is whether or not it is possible in a particular environment.

IMO, in the US, it is not really possible for any individual publisher to do so -- and I don't see any evidence for a conspiracy either.


>and especially those
>recent issues over which they have monopoly control and into which they
>are putting all their money in the form of promotion and publicity.
>Nobody knows what will sell best when customers are given a free choice
>of all the books that have ever been published, but it's a good bet that
>it won't be the latest Harry Potter knock-off.


Having perfect information would be nice, but it isn't possible, and the lack of it doesn't mean that there is a conspiracy to limit freedom of choice.

The problem lies more in how to provide enough information to the end customer without overwhelming the customer so that no decision can be made. With upwards of 5 million books available in the US alone, perfect information is overwhelming no matter who you are.

>
>Only when a universal site has demonstrated that it can sell books will
>economic pressure force publishers to list their books there. Even then
>they will go kicking and screaming all the way.
>
>Jon.
>

IMO, Amazon and a few other online bookstores are rather close. Amazon offers nearly everything available, has quite a lot of information about the vast majority of the titles it carries, and even allows users to improve the information available on every title it lists.

It is true that it doesn't do this with ebooks (you must use Kindle format to get on Amazon.com as I understand it), but for traditional books, I think its close to universal. And most publishers are under economic pressure to sell there.

I'm not claiming that Amazon is perfect, just that its near universal for pbooks.


I would love to see something like that for ebooks. It would be a vast improvement for the market, and I believe it will remove one of the major barriers to wide use of ebooks.

Kent


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