If I were to have an opportunity to speak at some national association of book publishers in the near future, what should I say to them. What does the publishing industry need to be thinking and doing, in order to remain a vibrant part of the information industry?
What are your 2¢?
Technorati Tags: publishing, books, education, newstory, warlick
DRM-free digital content.
That’s really the whole conversation right there. Everything comes back to our having access to information without restrictive digital rights management crap that only allows us to read an e-book on alternate tuesdays from 2:37 until 4:51 in the afternoon unless it is raining or the wingspeed of an African swallow is greater than the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-pop. If we buy the information, we want to use the information. We want to enjoy it on our terms in our spaces using our devices. We want to mix it and re-mix it and re-discover it years later. Not having 25,332,284 different “standards” would be really helpful as well. Any time you have to put the word “different” in front of the word “standard” there is a problem.
If publishers think that this can’t just “work” as described above, then they really need to take a look at Baen. Jim Baen (who passed away earlier this year) took a chance and began publishing e-books without DRM back in 1999. His WebScription.Net service provides a model for other publishers to review. $15, either in a monthly subscription or purchased a’la carte for desired months, gets me four to six full e-books. Each month tends to include two or three new releases and a few digitizations from the back catalog. You can preview the first few chapters online before purchasing as well. Or, you can purchase individual titles for $4.00 to $6.00 each. No DRM, no “must read them on our $83,745 special edition e-book reader, no second tuesday junk. Just 4 e-books that are mine. I can leave them online, download them, put them in a desired format, whatever. They are mine. In fact, just over 80 books are being GIVEN away at the Baen Free Library. The free books are still being released without DRM and in a vareity of formats (which is annoying) including HTML and plain text so you can roll your own format if needed. Baen also gives away CDs in the backs of some of their books. These CDs are released under a license that encourages readers to copy and share the contents as long as they are not sold. And what content it is! Often the CD includes the audiobook of the book (there is another field that needs an intervention in a bad way) as well as additional e-books (like all the earlier books in the series perhaps).
So. DRM-free digital content. After that we can go to work on it =)
I think the publishing industry needs to embrace a more international and alternative market and consider other possibilities apart from the \’book\’ more often. Text books should be available online with regular update material added (depending on the subject this may be relevant or not). They should also be available as audio files and therefore take advantage of the move towards catering for different learning styles. From an international persepective some countries have difficulties importing books and would benefit from more extensive online material. There should also be opportunities for interaction amongst users/readers e.g. Amazon.com initiatives.
Ask them why their business model is based on preventing poor people from accessing information they need, instead of offering some tangible good or service. If they say its not, ask when their books will be available online, especially their back catalogue, which is not available anywhere.
I think they need to be more open to partnering with bloggers who attract readership. LuLu may rapidly become one of the best book publishers because it is so easy to publish there. They need to look at the potential of the “long tail” as both a revenue source and as a potential source of authors who will move to the “profitable hump” of publishing. Authors (myself included) are no longer wanting to fight the process of getting on the desk of publisher, we’re just going the route of focusing on the book, designing the book, and publishing it ourselves.