This part was interesting:
Quote:
Everything they do, their deadlines, their sales force, their printing schedules, their promotion, their warehousing, everything is set to having a book hit suddenly and then vanish, to be replaced by another and another and another.
This is called the “churn” in the publishing business.
It’s this “churn” of one book after another that makes a publisher money in the margin. It is how every single aspect of their companies are set up. Their business model is set on the churn.
Now comes electronic publishing and reading into this mix and churn doesn’t work. Books don’t spoil. But traditional publishers can’t imagine a business model without the churn, so for the longest time, traditional publishers have fought to do one of two things.
1) Keep the books they are publishing out of electronic versions to preserve the value of their more expensive hardbacks.
2) Delay or price very high the electronic books to also not compete against their hardbacks.
In essence, they have been treating electronic books just like their paper produce books. And that thinking is just flat wrong, which is why so many smart people are saying that traditional publishing is in trouble.
|