Living in Nashville it was impossible to avoid hearing about the evils of down-loadable music and the demise of the music industry altogether with itunes sucking the life out of the traditional businesses on Music Row.
Well, a strange thing happened. The producers, publishers and other gate keepers of music who had turned their backs on new acts coming along, suddenly couldn’t control the appetite of the music-loving public. With MySpace, Facebook and itunes, musicians were suddenly able to take back contol of their destiny. If they really did have music worth listening to, then they could stick it on itunes and cut out the middle man (and affiliated cut that the music guys would take).
I know musicians who are doing just fine now, thank you. Singers that wouldn’t have gotten a look five years ago by the “pros” but who have connected directly with their audiences. The “pros” are all into the social networking now, of course, that it is established.
What does this have to do with the book publishing industry? I’m wondering if ultimately writers who haven’t been able to find a home in the publishing industry and have relied on print-on-demand will find that the new model of downloading books to electronic devices will be as good to them as itunes was for independent musicians.
Of course, we won’t know this year or probably next and the argument goes, “it won’t be edited, it won’t be professional” — and that will be true for a bunch of them. But with the free market of itunes, if the music isn’t good, it won’t be bought — pure free market values. But if song can get buzz, then there are no filters to keep it out of the hands of buyers.
Same with books. There will be some good books that will get published and will get buzz and will give authors more control over the careers.
Am I advocating this move to electronic downloads of books? Absolutely not, if there is any question, I am staunchly in the corner with the independent book stores. But, as the mainstream media has begun to practically hyperventilate over Kindle, the Sony e-book and Barnes & Nobles new acquisition as of this week,
Slate had this to say on March 8, 2009
And that’s what scares me. Amazon’s reader is a brilliant device that shanghais book buyers and the book industry into accepting a radically diminished marketplace for published works. If the Kindle succeeds on its current terms, and all signs suggest it’ll be a blockbuster (thanks Oprah!), Amazon will make a bundle. But everyone else with a stake in a vibrant book industry—authors, publishers, libraries, chain bookstores, indie bookstores, and, not least, readers—stands to lose out.
To understand why, consider how simple it is to buy books on your Kindle. You press a button to take you to Amazon’s store, type in a title or author, and press Buy. In 10 seconds, the book’s yours. Everything is automated: When you buy the Kindle, Amazon pre-syncs your reader with your account info, so there’s no need to type in a credit card number or billing address. There’s no need to connect the Kindle to your computer, either—it comes with free, built-in cellular Internet access that lets you buy books from just about anywhere. In addition, Kindle books are cheap, the majority selling for $9.99 or less. Consequently, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told investors last month, Kindle owners are voracious book buyers. According to the company’s stats, when people get a Kindle, they keep buying the same number of physical books as they did before—and they buy nearly twice as many e-books as paper books.
The Washington Post weighed in earlier with this:
Thursday, March 5, 2009; 5:07 PM
The e-Book market may have just hit its tipping point: Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller, has acquired indie e-book seller Fictionwise for $15.7 million in cash. It’s part of the company’s plan to launch an e-Bookstore later this year. Fictionwise, which runs a trio of sites?Fictionwise, eReader and eBookwise?will operate as a standalone business unit under founders Scott and Steve Pendergrast.
there are literally hundreds of articles in the past month published about the wonders of the new tool. So, it caused me to pause and consider…could authors turn this lemon into lemonade for themselves? Maybe rather than signing away their opportunity for future royalties, maybe they’ll actually get a bigger chunk of the profits. Who knows.
