Re: Paul Krugman holds forth on the future of publishing

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Mary E Tyler <[email protected]> wrote:
> So NYT columnist/economist Paul Krugman held forth on the Kindle and
> the future of publishing today...
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/opinion/06krugman.html
>
> My response to him:
>
> Re: the Kindle and information wanting to be free...

<snip>


> Intellectual property does not want to be free. Books take money to
> produce: writers have to be paid, copyeditors have to be paid,
> interior and cover designers have to be paid. No money = no making a
> living = no creating. It's supply and demand. If the demand is big,
> but only at a very, very low price, it almost guarantees that shortage
> will be a constant reality.
>
> dej

I think Mr. Krugman hit a nerve in the creative community with this
column. I got three different citations links from it in the space of
an hour this morning including one from an author friend of mine who
talked about having become a writer because she was not good at
performing/public speaking and, having read the Krugman piece, come to
understand what the primate felt when it saw the giant comet about to
impact Earth. I've decided to share with you folks my comments to her
which were intended to be as reassuring as possible while also
addressing the ever-present challenge of change.
----------
The trick will be for the creator (that's you) to become the direct
source, or at least very close to the direct source, of the digital
product, even if it only sells at a nominal price. Sell it for $5.00
(or maybe even only $3.00) and make more than half of that as profit
on the sale because you're avoiding all that disintermediation and
cutting out the retailer, the distributor, the publisher, etc. Most,
or at least a sufficiently high percentage of, consumers can be
bullied and/or shamed into recognizing that the creator (who probably
doesn't fill concert halls with live performances) deserves some
direct recompense for their efforts and that "free" for everything is
not an equitable arrangement.

FWIW, I think E-Reads is a step down that road and, possibly, the tool
that many writers need to save themselves the drudgery and learning
curve of dealing with all the necessary digitalization, coding,
formatting, etc. Some, like Cory Doctorow, can and will do it on their
own. Others will find someone who doesn't take the lion's share of the
income (like publishers now do) but works on a shared-effort basis and
splits the proceeds fairly.

The trick for E-Reads is to figure out how to start doing direct
retailing economically and we're a good few steps away from that at
the moment, which is why we surrender half of our potential income to
the folks who are doing it right now. But the future beckons...

The other thing, of course, is that e-book publishing has not yet
completely become the way to "originate" a selling book property. Not
enough mind-share and not enough general market penetration to "break"
a product into the wider public consciousness. But that, too, will
come with time.

Note that this is not (entirely) a plug for E-Reads and the e-book
business, but a quick summary of my thoughts on why trade publishing
is a slowly dwindling dead-end in terms of the way the future of
content creation and dissemination will evolve. They're a lot like the
record business in trying desperately to hold onto a past model in a
world which is rapidly abandoning any interest in using the model
they're wedded to. Some of them are trying to have it both ways and
might survive but I'd say it's going to look like a very different
business in 10 years and probably an unrecognizable business in 20
years. I might even live to see it.

My thoughts for the day.
----------

Some information, but not all, is going to be free, because it's
inevitable and because it makes good business sense. As other people
have been discussing here of late, everything free is a terrible
business model for content providers. I'm working for a company that I
expect to keep paying me for my labor and they're not going to be able
to afford to do that if they give everything away, but they also
choose regularly to give away free samples and to tease to the
paid-for product with occasional giveaways. It's a time-honored
selling tool in the hard goods business and in the paper book business
so it makes sense to employ the tool judiciously in the e-book
business as well. Emphasis on judiciously.

And, by the way, you might all want to go to the E-Reads site and
scroll down the last couple of blog entries to see what Richard Curtis
has to say lately about Amazon.com, among other fascinating
publishing-related subjects.

Have a good weekend.

John Douglas
-- 
John R. Douglas
johnd16555_at_gmail.com
New York, NY
--
Acquisitions Editor
E-Reads
171 E. 74th Street, Ste. 2
New York, NY 10021
Phone 212.772.7363
Fax 212.772.7393
www.ereads.com
[email protected]

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