INFOWORLD GRIPE LINE BY ED FOSTER Bookmark this page

  
Replying To:
A Word From The Author (none / 0) (#4)
by Anonymous User on Thu Feb 19, 2004 at 01:04:09 PM PDT

I'm not a habitue of this site so I posted as Anonymous Luser, but my name is John ("Hi John!")and I have a problem: I write books. Specifically I write books for Baen and have both included CDs in my books and have books in the Free Library. The "Warning" that was quoted (ahem, with several misspellings...ahem) was from the back of one of _my_ books. So I'm a proponent of "open source" on e-books, de facto and de jure. However, it doesn't mean I'm a fanatic. Publishers, in the end, are in business to make money. Jim Baen didn't have a single joke in that warning. If e-books were killing his bottomline, he'd be all over DRM like white on rice. His company is small enough, however, that he can actually track performance and tell when small items are having an effect on his bottomline. But "market research" in the publishing industry is hard. Think for example about the number of genres out there and the differences between readers. Not to mention their relative paucity. A telephone survey will go through FIFTEEN households before finding one that says that members are "regular readers". And even then they'll break down by genre, each with its own habits. (Nearly _one hundred_, by the way, for "a regular reader of science fiction.") Publishing marketing, therefore, is far more of an art than a science. There is no way to test market other than pay the money to distribute and hope for the best. And most publishers (and distributors, and bookstores) run on very small margins. Any flicker in their bottomline and they are history. So the smart ones are conservative. They'll take a chance here and there but most of the time they find themselves being burned when they do. So they went the conservative route on e-books. They were conservative in their marketing, only a limited number of books, and in their distribution model, encrypted, and they lost their proverbial shirt. Now e-books are "of the devil" as the Amish would say and they don't really _care_ if a microscopic fraction of their market is put out by their encryption schemes. The bottomline is protected. The problem was that in this case, the only thing that "works" is the bold move. To get more people reading _their_ ebooks they have to have them easy to use which will make more people read ebooks in-toto which will sell more of _their_ ebooks, etc. But it's like evolution. You'll keep the veriform appendix around for a _long_ time because it's essentially evolutionary neutral. Ebook readers are, for now, a relative minority (about 5% of the total "reader" population and recall how small _that_ was) and therefore have no market push. And as long as it's a bear to read ebooks...they're not going to tend to increase. (People who point out "increases in PDA use" etc ignore that VERY FEW OF THOSE USERS ARE READERS! The only way to increase the ebook readership is through the _publishers'_ actions.) So. Publishers protect bottomline. Total ebook readers increase fractionally because of lack of supply. Publishers' bottomline remains protected. It's a win/win situation for them. Sucks if you're an ebook reader, but in that case...Come to the Dark Side. Baen Books Is Your Friennnnd... /hypnotic voice. I'm pleased that Ed found it in his heart to mention us. Now, I'd suggest that he heigh himself over to the Free Library and check out the books _themselves_. :-) John Ringo


Post Comment

You are not logged in. If you don't have a user account yet, by all means go make one! If you do have one, you can post as "yourself" by filling in your nickname and password below. Otherwise, your comment will be posted as Anonymous User.

Create Account
Nickname:
Password:

Post Comment: Post your comment below and then please answer the security question. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it does help deter spammers. -- Ed Foster
Subject:
Comment:

To post your comment, please answer the following security question:
 Which of the following is a color?
Currant, Hound, Fig, Aqua, Iowa, Setter
Allowed HTML: <A [HREF] [NAME]> <DT> <TT></TT> <OL></OL> <CITE></CITE> <CODE></CODE> <I></I> <UL></UL> <BR> <STRONG></STRONG> <BLOCKQUOTE [TYPE]></BLOCKQUOTE> <DD> <EM></EM> <P> <B></B> <LI> <DL></DL>
Menu
· create account
· faq
· search

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:

 HOME  NEWS  COLUMNS  BLOGS  PODCASTS  TECHNOLOGIES  TEST CENTER  EVENTS  CAREERS  IT EXEC-CONNECT   About Awards Contact Us 

Copyright © 2006, Reprints, Permissions, Licensing, IDG Network, Privacy Policy.
All Rights reserved. InfoWorld is a leading publisher of technology information and product reviews on topics including viruses,
phishing, worms, firewalls, security, servers, storage, networking, wireless, databases, and web services.

 ComputerWorld :: LinuxWorld :: Network World :: CIO :: PC World :: Darwin :: CMO :: CSO
IT Careers :: JavaWorld :: Macworld :: Mac Central :: Playlist :: GamePro :: GameStar :: Gamerhelp
ITWorld Canada :: Computerwoche :: Techworld UK :: tecChannel :: IDG.se :: IDG.no :: IDG.pl

create account | faq | search