Steve Osgoode, Director of Digital Marketing and Business Development at HarperCollins Canada, pointed me (and everyone else on Twitter) to an interesting post on e-books at An American Editor by Rich Adin. It’s a nice coda to the Guy LeCharles Gonzalez post I mentioned yesterday:
No industry changes overnight, so it is certain that publishers aren’t going to change their business model tomorrow just because a handful of people demand it… But the anger of the devotees, as few as they may be in number, continues and becomes increasingly strident, with neither side willing to “hear” the other.
Adin goes on to raise some interesting points. I do, however, have problems with his argument that the internet has fostered a sense of entitlement:
The Age of the Internet has birthed a belief among some consumers that they are entitled to everything they want when they want it at a price they want to pay… Entitlement says I have rights that are more valuable than your rights (or that you have no rights)…
There is certainly some grain of truth to this and, to be fair, Adin’s argument is more nuanced than the quotation suggests. But it is also a dangerously seductive argument for publishers who don’t want to take full responsibility for their actions.
On a basic level, blaming the consumer and/or accusing them of being uppity (or worse, criminals) is not a good business strategy. Figuring out what they will pay for is a much better idea.
Customers don’t necessarily want cheap — they want value. Sure, everyone likes cheap stuff in the short term — free is even better — and yet most people know that in the end you get what you pay for. Quality costs.
Consumers will pay for things when they believe they are worth it, and as publishers, we need to recognise we aren’t always providing real value for money. We publish too many books and (shh… whisper it) a lot of them aren’t very good. We can do better. How many books really do need to be released in hardcover a full year before they’re available as paperbacks (or e-books) for example?
I also don’t think you can ignore that consumer attitudes are being led by businesses — that publishers have been all too willing to oblige — who have an interests in devaluing creative content as much as possible. Cheap content gets people in to stores and sells devices and publishers have benefited from this in the short-term. But we need to realise that cheapening our own content is like pissing in the pool. Not cool and not a good idea — even if it feels good at the time…
That all said, I think Adin recognises that it is not a one way street. He argues that publishers and consumers need to compromise:
The ebookers have thrown down the gauntlet, the publishers need to pick it up and accept the challenge. Simply because some ebookers have decided that publishers have no role to play in the future ebook world doesn’t make it so. Publishers need to redefine themselves in 21st century terms, not rehash 20th century concepts.
This, at least, seems spot on to me…
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