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We are on the verge of a New Publishing Model that could Democratize Publishing. At the same time, we are in danger of losing the script and letting certain forces destroy Publishing.

I’ll just walk us through the two scenarios and you can draw your own conclusions.

Democratizing Publishing

The best case outcome is that power passes out of the hands of a few publishers (the big 6) and a few distributors and a few big retailers.

We end up with something like this -

1. Authors can write books with or without the help of Publishers. 
2. There are one or more main retail channels that are very benevolent in their attitude i.e. give everyone a fair chance, take only 5 to 10%, and so forth.  
3. Customers have easy access to reasonably priced books through a variety of channels.

There’s not that much to write because it’s a really straightforward situation.

The key criteria for whether we are in this ideal state are ->

Not more than 10% of the book’s price is going to middle men i.e. everyone except author, publisher, and reader.

There is no pollution in the channels (or in books) i.e. no advertising, no collecting user information, no trying to ‘target’ individual book readers.

Almost no one connected with the Internet is going to like these two criteria.

The reason?

We tend to over-value what we do

This essay on Publishing by Paul Graham is an exceptional example of biased perspective -

In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. 

If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more?

The super simple answer to the question is – Better content sold more and made more money – it was smarter to sell in large volumes at lower prices.

Mr. Graham thinks the only type of content that can be sold is software.

Instead of trying to argue against him, let’s look at his background -

1. Software Engineer. 
2. Sold a tech company.
3. Funded tech companies, including Scribd.

It’s no wonder he thinks content is subsidiary to the medium – because with technology and code he’s creating mediums for sharing and distributing content (such as Scribd). It serves his interests to convince people content is worthless.

Even more interesting is that the only type of content he thinks has value is software - what software engineer would ever think software is worthless?

Yet, he thinks every other type of content i.e. books, movies, news are worthless.

Why would someone think every type of content (except what they themselves create) is worthless?  

Evolution has taught us to delude ourselves about ourselves and our motives

 Let’s step away from the ‘everyone is good’ and ‘humans as noble savages’ arguments and look at the situation as game theory.

What’s best for people who own the medium (we’ll call it the pipeline)?

To move all the profits to the pipeline and treat content as worthless.

Of course, content creators aren’t yet convinced of this (thankfully).

So what would help the owners of the pipeline the most? One or more of -

1. Trick the content creators into believing their content is worthless.
2. Cater to the content creator’s greed. Example: App Store and the top few developers making millions.
3. Cater to the content creator’s hope/desire/need for publicity and fame.  Example: Hungry authors feeling they finally have a shot and giving away books for free.
4. Set content creators off against each other.

The most convincing way to trick content creators that their content is worthless is for pipeline owners to believe it themselves.

Mr. Graham’s essay is the perfect example. He really has tricked himself into thinking content is worthless and the medium has value.

Look at Scribd which runs ads against pirated content and has grown off of piracy into the YouTube for Pirated Books  YouTube of Documents. It makes sense that Mr. Graham would be the first investor in it, doesn’t it. He probably thinks it’s publicity, not piracy.

Which brings us to the alternate future for publishing – the one all the pipeline owners will not really talk about.

Publishing in Ruins

If we go in the direction the Internet has taken news and blog content, we will get -

1. Pipeline companies making billions while content creators make next to nothing. 
2. Content creators hoping and waiting for the promise of ‘advertising revenue’. 
3. Quality suffering as it becomes harder and harder to make a decent living off of content.

For the last 10-15 years we’ve been hearing about how the Internet is some technological el dorado where individuals and huge companies alike can make billions with little to no effort.

All you have to do is give stuff away for free, lose a ton of money, and at some unspecified point of time in the future, you’ll make a ton of money.

1. Any book publisher who buys this is making a huge mistake.
2. The Internet and ebooks have been around for a long, long time. It’s only now with the non-Internet channels of the Kindle Store and the App Store that ebooks are taking off.
3. If book publishers really buy the hype and start giving away their content they are hoping to be the first content creators - EVER – to figure out how to make billions off of advertising.

Facebook and YouTube are struggling to profit off of content their users create for free.

What makes Book publishers think they can profit in the same medium, the Internet, with content that it costs them a lot to make?

Apple and Amazon want their 30% or so cut (note that Amazon has to pay for bandwidth). However, they’re not trying to trick content creators into giving away their content for free. They’re happy to be the platform for a viable new publishing eco-system.

That won’t destroy publishing. Apple and Amazon are the good guys. Ditto Sony.

However, a lot of Internet start-ups and companies are setting the stage to destroy Publishing with their unrealistic business models and beliefs.

They might not realize it – they might have tricked themselves into believing that they’re doing ‘the right thing’. However, the only thing that matter is whether Publishing survives or not.

The Things to be wary of

There are a few big things authors and publishers ought to keep in mind -

1. Don’t transfer over Publishing to a medium you have no control over.
2. Don’t give up the starting point i.e. DO NOT let any company become the search engine equivalent for books. 
3. Don’t give up the pipeline i.e. DO NOT let any company own distribution and retailing of books.  
4. Keep the value perception of ebooks intact and improve it.  
5. Don’t be greedy.

The fifth is the toughest to do because Publishing companies are companies and want to maximize profits.

They should be very wary of -

1. Any company that paints a very idealistic vision. For example, Scribd say they are ‘breaking down barriers to the publishing process …’ .
2. Any company that claims that content is worthless. 
3. Any company that promises them they can increase publisher’s share of the publishing pie without any effort on the publisher’s part. 
4. Companies that promise delayed gratification i.e. give away books and 50 years down the line advertising will cover your costs.

The best questions to ask are -

What share of the pie is the new, helpful company going to get?

What amount of control (and possible share) will that company get down the line?

For example, Scribd wants ‘just 20%’. Plus it would become the Google of Books and Book Search. Way too much power.  

Thinking of the Internet as anything more than a profit-sucking, dangerously out of control pipeline is suicide for publishers. Especially, when there are other viable channels available.

There is definitely a pot of gold at the end of the Internet rainbow – it’s just that it’s the Internet companies that will get it. And the Internet companies might very well get all of Publishing too.

And when they do, they will destroy it – because these are not people who live for books. If they were, they’d already be in publishing. These are people who see books as nothing more than an item that someone else produces and gifts to them so they can profit off of it.

Filed under: publishing, thoughts Tagged: | darkness, future of publishing