Books, there must be another way
The internet has been a revolution in the media world and one which has caused numerous problems for the publishers of media. The internet is a brilliant opportunity to sell digital media. A golden opportunity for publishers. No more printing or making physical cds and dvds etc. Costs fall, profits grow. But it is a well understood double edged sword. The easier it is to distribute to your customers, the easier it is for them to distribute to their friends. Nobody has cracked this yet, especially for music it seems for a number of reasons.
1) Any attempt to encrypt files will be defeated. By definition a file that is encrypted is decryptable and so unless you don't want anybody to decrypt it then this just won't work.
2) Restrict the format. Make it so that only your player (hardware and software) will run the music. Proprietary formats never work because somebody inevitable creates a converter or a good chunk of your customer base cannot read the files (so won't buy the music).
3) Charge enough to cover the copying. I.e. put the price of music up so that the losses due to the copying are already taken into account. This makes the legitimate customer base pay for the crime rather than the publisher. This is not an attractive model.
Its a tough nut to crack. Books are about to go the same way. How does the publisher protect the rights for ebooks? Its a similar problem and one that will have no more success than the music industry.
What is needed is a change in thinking. The issue can be boiled down to how does an author (music or books) get paid for the work in an electronic world when the connection between the physical (paper, vinyl, cd etc) and the content is broken.
It is worth looking at the role of the publisher at this stage. I suspect that the reason we have publishers is that before electronic media came along, the costs of making and distributing content (music or books) was quite high and beyond the purse of the average writer or singer (band). This led to a selection process where a judgment is made by the publishers on whether to invest the money or not.
This seems a superfluous process now. Let the audience do the selecting. I am already, when I want to listen to music, or want to read a book capable of selecting from millions of titles. I have no major issue finding a book I can enjoy or that is useful (and I do not believe that argument that this is because publishers have already thinned out the bad). I have seen lots of terrible books all with publishers who have 'selected' them. Existence does not equate to quality today.
We are already seeing various self publishing sites for music and will start to see the same for books. This can only be a step forward.
The question remains then on how to get people to pay for the content they appreciate. One way of achieving this is to make the content so cheap balanced with mechanisms to make catching of fraud high with big penalties.
Crime will follow where something that has value can be sold. The criminals will simply balance the money they make with the likelihood of being caught and the penalty when they have been caught. Make the value of the item so small that the crime does not pay. But how will this help the authors. Simple, you sell more. As costs of books go up I am more discerning about what I buy.
I go onto Amazon looking for books on a particular philosophical topic. Normally there are lots of books, some good, some bad but it is hard to tell. If the book is available second hand for a pound or two I would take the chance and purchase it. If the book is 10 pounds then I would want to read it first to see if it was useful. We are prepared to take a lot more risks and lower our standards if the consequence of a bad choice is low.
So the model has to be to move the cost of music down to 10p a track and books down below the 1 pound mark. Books that sell for 10 or more may panic over the losses but I suspect that people would buy far more books than they normally would do if the costs were low.
What evidence do I have for this? Only personal unfortunately. Anecdotally when I was younger I was into music (records at the time). I could buy a new album for 10-15 pounds or so at the time or I could go to my second hand music store where I could buy records for 50p or 1 pound each. I had a huge music collection as instead of just buying my favorite band that had just been on TV I would buy a far wider range of bands. Some I liked and some I did not. But my music horizons were widened.
Google itself has done a great thing in digitizing a stack of books. But given the issues they have faced which is that they have upset a lot of publishers and authors over IPR issues they have locked up the content and face the same problem as the authors themselves. They have to protect the value invested in digitization and so strangely you can only view the books online. Which is no good at all to anyone.
It has to be the only viable model. Take away the value of the goods, you take away the crime.
1) Any attempt to encrypt files will be defeated. By definition a file that is encrypted is decryptable and so unless you don't want anybody to decrypt it then this just won't work.
2) Restrict the format. Make it so that only your player (hardware and software) will run the music. Proprietary formats never work because somebody inevitable creates a converter or a good chunk of your customer base cannot read the files (so won't buy the music).
3) Charge enough to cover the copying. I.e. put the price of music up so that the losses due to the copying are already taken into account. This makes the legitimate customer base pay for the crime rather than the publisher. This is not an attractive model.
Its a tough nut to crack. Books are about to go the same way. How does the publisher protect the rights for ebooks? Its a similar problem and one that will have no more success than the music industry.
What is needed is a change in thinking. The issue can be boiled down to how does an author (music or books) get paid for the work in an electronic world when the connection between the physical (paper, vinyl, cd etc) and the content is broken.
It is worth looking at the role of the publisher at this stage. I suspect that the reason we have publishers is that before electronic media came along, the costs of making and distributing content (music or books) was quite high and beyond the purse of the average writer or singer (band). This led to a selection process where a judgment is made by the publishers on whether to invest the money or not.
This seems a superfluous process now. Let the audience do the selecting. I am already, when I want to listen to music, or want to read a book capable of selecting from millions of titles. I have no major issue finding a book I can enjoy or that is useful (and I do not believe that argument that this is because publishers have already thinned out the bad). I have seen lots of terrible books all with publishers who have 'selected' them. Existence does not equate to quality today.
We are already seeing various self publishing sites for music and will start to see the same for books. This can only be a step forward.
The question remains then on how to get people to pay for the content they appreciate. One way of achieving this is to make the content so cheap balanced with mechanisms to make catching of fraud high with big penalties.
Crime will follow where something that has value can be sold. The criminals will simply balance the money they make with the likelihood of being caught and the penalty when they have been caught. Make the value of the item so small that the crime does not pay. But how will this help the authors. Simple, you sell more. As costs of books go up I am more discerning about what I buy.
I go onto Amazon looking for books on a particular philosophical topic. Normally there are lots of books, some good, some bad but it is hard to tell. If the book is available second hand for a pound or two I would take the chance and purchase it. If the book is 10 pounds then I would want to read it first to see if it was useful. We are prepared to take a lot more risks and lower our standards if the consequence of a bad choice is low.
So the model has to be to move the cost of music down to 10p a track and books down below the 1 pound mark. Books that sell for 10 or more may panic over the losses but I suspect that people would buy far more books than they normally would do if the costs were low.
What evidence do I have for this? Only personal unfortunately. Anecdotally when I was younger I was into music (records at the time). I could buy a new album for 10-15 pounds or so at the time or I could go to my second hand music store where I could buy records for 50p or 1 pound each. I had a huge music collection as instead of just buying my favorite band that had just been on TV I would buy a far wider range of bands. Some I liked and some I did not. But my music horizons were widened.
Google itself has done a great thing in digitizing a stack of books. But given the issues they have faced which is that they have upset a lot of publishers and authors over IPR issues they have locked up the content and face the same problem as the authors themselves. They have to protect the value invested in digitization and so strangely you can only view the books online. Which is no good at all to anyone.
It has to be the only viable model. Take away the value of the goods, you take away the crime.
posted by So long and thanks for all the fish at
4:35 pm
2 Comments:
Excellent observations, a pleasure to read. My only concern is the writers - who believe that getting published will finally make them rich.
How is it going to happen, in your model?
Regards,
One of the Creatives
Some writers do get rich but it distorts the market. In a fair market the book that sells the most makes the most. But with marketing and tv etc then the market is not fair. It appears to be influenced by a few publishers who decide which books and music will hit the market at all.
Under a more direct model then the successful would not make as much money but more writers would make money.
Interestingly this weekend I purchased 2 books that I would not normally buy on art simply because the price of the book meant I would take the risk and read something I would not normally read. These writers will get their % purely on the back of the low price of the books.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home