Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

(1/27) > >>

IainB:
See this post in Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal
I find this extremely interesting - I wondered when it was likely to happen.
In 1996 I carried out a study for EDS (since absorbed into HP around 2008) that looked at the strategic marketing opportunities in the emerging Internet market for B2C (Business to Customer/Consumer).
The principle that potentially could be implemented via the Internet was "Collapsing the Value Chain" by removing links (intermediaries) in the value chain - where such intermediaries added no value to the product.

Amazon and auction sites like eBay were subsequently among the first to effectively implement this in the classic value chain, but did so by improving and automating the chain communication and transaction flow, making them more efficient, and enabling commoditisation of the end product by introducing a relatively more "perfect market", where consumers had relatively good knowledge of the retailers' prices for any given product in the market:
The classic value chain is:
[Manufacturer]-->[Wholesaler]-->[Retailer/Reseller/Distributor]-->[Customer]

Up until now, Amazon's implementation has probably been collaborative and beneficial to all parties (links) in the value chain, with some links in the chain (especially Retailer) being represented "virtually", but no links necessarily being removed/"compressed". The consumer will have benefited from having improved access to products at reduced/minimal product costs.

For books, the value chain would look something like this:
Author-->Publisher-->Retailer-->Customer

However, it looks as though Amazon, having relatively successfully introduced the commoditisation of e-books, is now using its market position and manifesting its latent potential to collapse the value chain. Interestingly, it is not removing Publisher, but assuming that role for itself where e-books are concerned. This could arguably herald the speeding-up of product obsolescence for hardcopy (paper) books, depending on the rate of market acceptance for e-books. Still a bit of risk there.

Reed-Elsevier (now Elsevier) could probably have attempted to do something like this if they had taken early advantage of their position some years back, but they seem to have missed this particular boat by specialising on a niche as a scientific Publisher in the classic model.

mahesh2k:
Amazon, Barnes and Noble and apple are doing great in e-book industry. I think it was really hard for many writers to land a gig with publishers earlier. Now they can simply write and publish at any of these sites. I don't know if we can get yet another JK Rowling with this route as there is so much noise in e-book world. But no writer will feel sad for not being published anymore.

Renegade:
I don't know whether this is good or bad or what. It's something else though.

40hz:
The downside is that despite all the drawbacks publishers brought to the table, they also provided two very valuable services: editorial review and publicity.

Publicity isn't that big a deal any more now that mechanisms and techniques for generating 'buzz' on the web are well established and understood.

But editorial review - having a knowledgeable and literate person sit down and work with an author to make their book the best it can be - that's something that is going to go away. Which brings writing back to what it traditionally used to be: an endeavor for amateurs.

And when it comes to writing, there's a very real chance that the amateurs will drive out the professional writers. Because once "good enough" becomes the norm in books, who needs somebody who's really good? And more to the point:" who's gonna be willing to pay them for it?

Right now, Amazon is playing a very dangerous game. In that they are now setting themselves up as business rivals to existing publishers, Amazon could soon find itself out of the book market if all the big players decided to pull and go exclusively with Nook or Apple.

Which would be a sad state of affairs since that would balkanize the e-book industry, and could well force readers onto a specific device if they want to read something. Imagine a world where you need three different devices in order to read every book you want to read! (Someday soon: "Your daughter wants to read Harry Potter? Sorry, it's only available on Nook. Do you need to buy one? We have them on sale today...")...and here we thought it was bad when VHS and Betamax were competing for movie rights.

Lately, with the release of anything "new & improved," something old & bad often comes along for the ride.
With Amazon's latest move, it looks like incompatible formats and arbitrary restrictions on distribution (in the name of digital rights management) is a very real possibility. That, and the end of professional publishing.

Welcome back amateurs! Come one -come all...

Yoiks! I'm think gonna keep the cork in the champagne bottle for the time being. :o
 ;D

----------
Addendum: Renegade said exactly what I'm saying, but much more elegantly, in the post above this one. :Thmbsup:

IainB:
Yes, whatever it is, it portends change, and change usually has good and bad aspects, and I too dread the corporate potential for control of the market through DRM or similar. That's one of the things that already stops me using a Kindle.
In any event, I think it's unavoidable, though the existing Publishers will clearly "not go gently into that dark night".

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page