Clueless Publishers June 7, 2006
Posted by rajAT in blog, book, books, google, media, media2.0, publishing, technology, web2.0.7 comments
The business of publishing books is going to get disintermediated. Even if publishers start publishing books online they cannot save their empires. It is like arranging the deck chairs on Titanic.
An author goes to a famous publishing house because a publisher has got a network already that is necessary for a mega success of the book. A publisher
1) Buys reputation , an example.
2) Provide a platform for getting into international markets.
3) And most importantly prints the book.
But things on internet work a bit differently, isn't it.
At the moment you cannot buy reputation online, thank god. You publish your book on internet and blogs take it in all the corners of the world.
So why in future an author will go to a publisher to get his book published. That is the question to be answered?
An author should ask I am the one who is creating the content. I am one who is advertising the book through blogs so why I need this guy called publisher. Note that royalties are not that big.
Publishers have lost half of their battle when Amazon started reviews on its website. Over the years book lovers all round the world have contributed significant amout of data on its website. And now Amazon has got that valuable data and not the publishers.
And now Amazon has started allowing the authors to blog from Amazon.com itself. It is a good idea. But Amazon is not the edge.
Authors will prefer their own blog sites. But amazon still have a fighting chance over the publishers as an internet book publishing platfrom. Simple reason is Amazon has built network goods.
How to make money by publishing books online will be figured out by someone who is more enteprising. Scott has got some ideas though.
Publishers are just unnecessarily fretting with Google; they should be spending their time thinking the next platform, if there is one.
Surely, very interesting times lie ahead of us.
