In February of this year the O'Reilly
fiefdom held its second "Tools of Change for Publishers"
conference in New York City. Though the title of the conference suggests that
it was not limited to book publishers, books were indeed the focus. Details
from the conference have been slow to emerge in cogent form.
Steve Paxhia, my colleague at Gilbane, offers a thorough
overview in the May 29, 2008 edition of The Seybold Report, but unfortunately
access is limited only to subscribers ($499 per year for the online version).
The conference site, linked above, now also offers many of the presentations and
other coverage of the event.
I was pleased to find today equally thorough coverage in
the July-August 2008 issue of The
Futurist, fortunately available online
without charge. Senior editor Patrick Tucker perhaps enjoys an advantage in his
coverage not available to Steve Paxhia: he is not intimate with the publishing
industry, and by the nature of his publication is more focused on "the futurist"
perspective than the insider's perspective. As a result he makes an additional
effort to contextualize his coverage of the presentations and highlights of the
event.
The article struggles with the issues of balancing social
media, new technology and the value of content in a very cogent fashion. Some
of the ideas are familiar; others quite fresh and provocative.
My
favorite quote is from Lewis Lapham, until recently the long-time editor of Harper's
magazine, and now the publisher and editor of Lapham's Quarterly.
From Tucker's report, "To Lapham, the crudeness, silliness, and uncultured
quality of today's Web culture is a symptom of the immaturity of the new medium
and the youthfulness of its users. The change will be gradual. 'We're still playing
with it like it's a toy,' he said of the Web. 'We don't yet know how to make
art with it. McLuhan points out that the printing press was (introduced in the
West in) 1468; it (was) a hundred years before you (got) to Cervantes, to
Shakespeare.'"
According to a press
release on Amazon.com's Web site today, the online seller "announced the
acquisition of Fabric.com, a leading online fabric store that offers custom
measured and cut fabrics, as well as patterns, sewing tools and accessories.
"This acquisition will enable Fabric.com to further
expand its selection of fabrics and accessories while enabling Amazon.com to
offer its customers a wider variety of products in the sewing, craft and hobby
segment….Launched in 1999 by Stephen Friedman, Fabric.com has developed a
significant and loyal customer base of sewing enthusiasts, and today offers a
comprehensive line of fabrics in all three major fabric categories, including
apparel, quilting and home decor."
Now
that's more like it, Mr. Bezos. I'm sure your customers will be buying lots of custom
measured and cut fabrics, as well as patterns, sewing tools and accessories in
2012. Perhaps not $2.5 billion worth, but it should be a solid little
performer. It's those e-books that worry me.
If you've read the section
on this site about eBooks and (what I call) eContent, you'll know that I'm not
a big cheerleader for eBooks. I lived through the first eBook "revolution,"
featuring the forgotten standalone eBook readers like the Rocket eBook and the
SoftBook Reader. That revolution never took off, and wound down more-or-less at
the same time as the burst of the Internet bubble. Microsoft used to offer the
Microsoft Reader software for eBooks both for its PocketPC and for don't fit-in-your-pocket
PCs. For some reason this software can still be downloaded from a page on Microsoft's
website that notes "Updated: May 19, 2005." Microsoft is obviously not
currently interested in the eBook phenomena.
But when Jeff Bezos and Amazon caught the eBook fever
last November with the release of the Kindle, he managed to somehow erase
everyone's short-term memory and has re-kindled an explosion of interest in the
eBook format. (Even The Economist
found its short-term memory damaged, stating in a June 5, 2008 article
that "… Kindle and its kind are merely the first
generation [emphasis mine] of a product that is sure to evolve quickly in
the coming years.")
Yesterday I learned of CitiGroup's Mark Mahaney who has
calculated, with very slim data, that Kindle could add $750 million to Amazon's
top line by 2010. This prompted John Paczkowski on AllThingsDigital
to label Mahaney as "an honor student at (the) Strained Credibility Academy."
Well today I learned (once more with credit to Bob Sacks) that another student at The
Strained Credibility Academy is looking for higher marks than Mark. According to
a posting
on paidContent.org, "Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein argues that global
e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by the year 2012," and could
add "as much as $330 million to operating income." Wow!
Go back to my section
on eBooks where you'll see that the highest estimate of all eBook sales last year
was $67 million. Then do the math on the CAGR
through 2012, keeping in mind that Amazon, which was originally built on
selling books online, currently accounts for only 6-8% of all book sales in the U.S.
Why did God give us analysts at investment banks? A
Google search offers only one answer. According to an article
on Innovating Tomorrow, "God gave some people the ability to analyze and
measure situations. These are people who love to do this and have some deep
seeded [I assume they mean "deep-seated"] talent for it. These are people and
gifts God has given us to use in ministry."
I think
not. God gave us analysts so that businesses would have an external
justification for making bad decisions that they have already decided to go
forward with. The eBook gold rush is one of them.
Credit where credit is due: I was first informed of this
fascinating tale about the future of writing and book publishing from David
Pogue's always fun, provocative and illuminating weekly
column in The New York Times. His
May 22nd column
provided his take on whether he should provide free downloads of his (many) books.
After a couple of bad experiences he's now firmly against it, while admitting
that "I realize that it puts me, rather awkwardly, on the same side of the
piracy issue as the record companies and movie companies, who are suing
teenagers for downloading songs, and of whom I've made endless fun."
But a far more intriguing story is referenced in Pogue's
column: the story of author Steven Poole, who took a successful book, "Trigger
Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames," and posted it for download on his blog. The book was
first published in 2000, to favorable reviews, and, according to Poole,
continues to sell well. But last November, as a simple experiment, he offered Trigger Happy as a free download, under
a Creatives Commons license, which
meant, if not in legal terms, but in technical reality, "no strings attached." He
asked only that "if you like the book, you can leave a tip via PayPal," and
provided a link for PayPal donations.
The results were, to say the least, disappointing from a
financial perspective. As Poole reports in an April 2008 blog entry,
"the proportion of [31,697] people who left a tip after downloading Trigger
Happy was 1 in 1,750, or 0.057%," and as he comments later in the responses to
his entry, "the average donation was a (very reasonable) couple of bucks. The
total was a vanishingly minuscule fraction of what I earned from the book's
traditional publication."
What
I found most important here are the nearly 230 comments found in both the original
blog entry offering the book, and in its follow-up. A few of the comments are
of course inane, but the sum of the comments (with a generous series of
responses from Poole) amounts to the most fascinating discussion I've yet
encountered on how writing and publishing are faring in the ongoing struggle to
find an effective new business model that will encourage book-length
publications (rather than articles and blogs) to flourish in the age of the
Internet.
I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little weary of all the Amazon-generated hype about the Kindle, its proprietary eBook reader (described by Amazon as a "revolutionary wireless reading device [emphasis mine]). We're told incessantly how "visionary," "exceptional," and, yes, "revolutionary" this little device is, but we're not told why (with regard to features that differentiate it meaningfully from its nine competitors). The Amazon site states: "Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper." But all of its competitors use ePaper.
We're told that it sold out 5-½ hours after release, but have never been told how many units had been produced. And now, when you go to Amazon's home page, you're greeted not by the usual smorgasbord of new product releases in various genres, but by a somber yet upbeat letter from C.E.O. Bezos himself, advising that this magical Kindle is once more in stock. Hallelujah!
The letter goes on to invite us to read president Bezos' "just released" (April 14th) annual Letter to Shareholders. He goes on to explain that he doesn't ordinarily link to this sort of communication from the Amazon home page (I'd hate to think what would happen to Amazon's sales if he got in the habit of doing so), but, Bezos explains, "this letter is all about the Kindle," as if that would help us form some sort of logical connection in our minds about the appearance of this missive.
On behalf of my readers, and in the interest of Kindle-lovers everywhere, I clicked on the link and a 5-page PDF file slowly overwhelmed my browser window. The last three pages are the shareholder letter; the first page-and-a-half contain Bezos' verbose paean to the Kindle.
It takes until page 2, paragraph 2 to get a sense of why the Kindle has turned Bezos into a born again eBooker. Here are his insights:
1. "We change our tools, and then our tools change us." (A widely-accepted view of the impact of technology.)
2. Writing "changed us dramatically." (Well, yes…)
3. Gutenberg made books cheaper, and "physical books ushered in a new way of collaborating and learning." (Amongst many, many other things, Jeff. See Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, available on Amazon at an 11% discount – or for 25 cents less at Barnes and Noble.)
4. "Lately, networked tools such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones and PDAs have changed us too." (No problem there.)
5. "(Networked tools have) shifted us more toward information snacking (sic), and I would argue toward shorter attention spans." (I recommend reading Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen's famous and prescient 1997 column "How Users Read on the Web," which begins with the memorable line: "They don't." Nielsen continues: "People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences." So is the issue really shorter attention spans, or new techniques for coping with the vastly increased amount of textual information we're asked to consume each day?)
6. "Kindle is purpose-built for long-form reading. We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools."
OK, I've got it. Without quoting any evidence, Bezos warns that new digital tools are inducing a form of ADD in the public at large. I'll look into the research for you, Mr. Bezos, and report my findings shortly on this site in the Literacy section. In the meantime please peruse my updated section on eBooks: I am not without bias towards the supposed wonders of eBook technology.
Though the letter is evangelical in tone, Bezos forgets the apocryphal preacher's advice on a successful sermon: "First, I tell them what I'm going to tell them, then I tell them, then I tell them what I just told them." Perhaps he was information snacking when he wrote the letter.
My current section on e-books (from way back on May 1) expresses many of my misgivings over their genesis and development. I also took note of their apparent impending return. Since then there's a ton of data (mostly press releases of course) to suggest that a more important comeback is afoot, greater than I had previously gleaned. So I will have to update that section, and presumably get past what Cool Hand Luke suffered as some kind of "failure to communicate."
In the meantime, I make note merely of the following: Sony's latest e-book incarnation weighs 9 ounces (up several ounces from its original spec – though I admit I've gained weight in that time also). But I'm on my second Sony VAIO, a svelte and very capable 1.8 lb. computer.
I'd been waiting for a photo like this, recently gleaned from a Sony spammail, showing the two devices side-by-side…
(May 4, 2008)...sadly, the photo disappeared during the last rework of my website architecture. I offer instead a photo of a gentleman on an airplane sitting with the reader...looks about the size of my VAIO...
I'm still waiting for the convincing argument as to why I'd add this e-Book to my existing arsenal of VAIO and (ever-frustrating) TREO. Stay tuned.
© 2007 Arcadia House.
All Rights Reserved
Design and support
Rossul Design
