Why Is This Hill So Steep? Page 18

  There is practicality as a marketing point. E-books have a unique economy of scale that is hard to deny, similar to that which has already proven popular with digital music; surely this would prove to be a popular selling point.

  But e-books' economy of scale flies in the face of one of the most established conventions of book ownership: Displaying one's collection. Showing off a collection of cherished or carefully-selected books, on shelves, in studies, or in libraries, has always been considered an integral part of the book-owning experience. To remove this highly-demonstrative convention is practically anathema to modern book owners.

  Finally, we are left with sensibility. As described in Chapter 20, the green movement has promoted e-books as being more ecological sensible than printed books. Surely appealing to consumers' desires to be environmentally sound would be a major selling point.

  Unfortunately, marketers have not been able to package environmental concerns into an attractive and effective package, much as images of clubbing baby seals managed to turn a major segment of the public against fur. In fact, environmental sensibility is indelibly linked to expectations of hardship and sacrifice; a hard-sell at any time, but especially during difficult economic times. Add to that the higher personal cost, even for environmental sensibility, and you have a doubly-hard product to sell.

  So, marketers seem to have none of the usually-effective marketing tools at their disposal—except, perhaps, sex. And considering the product, even that would be a stretch.

  ~

  Marketing had another potential role to play in the e-book arena: Finding ways to augment the profits gained by e-books. As consumers invariably felt e-books were too expensive (and, of course, the Anarchists who insisted they should be free), the marketers had an opening to step in and find another revenue source for e-books, through advertisements… marketing other products through the e-books.

  Interestingly, instead of potentially embracing, or at least accepting, ad subsidies for e-books, the consumers screamed their disapproval. Many of them cited the most annoying and invasive of web-based advertisements, pop-ups, animated ads, and flash-based interactive ads, plus the latest television ads that appear on the lower edge of a program while in progress, assuming that the same type of ads would eventually creep their way into e-books’ every page and ruin the reading experience. Although there was little to suggest this would actually happen, there were no suggestions forthcoming from publishers and marketers that it wouldn’t, which only served to justify consumers’ fears.

  It might have been expected that some brave publisher would try the ad subsidy idea anyway, trying to place simple and not-so-invasive ads into an e-book, lowering the price (possibly even to zero), and waiting for the public response. But apparently no publisher has been that brave. To date, the only ads generally seen in e-books are those advertising other books by the same publisher, the publisher itself, or possibly the print version of the book just read.

  So, with few decent advertising options, and faced with an ad-hostile public, the marketers decided to punt away. As a result, the only e-book related advertisements seen by the public are for the reading devices themselves, with little or no indication as to exactly what can be read on it other than images of the latest bestsellers. What e-book advertisements there are, are generally kept separate from ads for the print versions of a book, and where print versions are advertised, e-book versions are seldom mentioned. You will find them wherever other e-books are sold, however… sometimes so numerous that it is hard to navigate around the ads to find the e-books.

  Once upon a time, paperback books were similarly ignored by publishers, until they were established in the publishing stream. It can be inferred that, eventually, e-books will be effectively marketed alongside hardback and paperback books… it is even possible that e-books could become the primary product, largely replacing paperbacks, and with hardbacks being relegated to special gift status. But that day is still far down the road for e-books, and in the meantime, they remain products that, as far as the publishers and their marketers were concerned, they’d rather you didn’t buy.

  23: The literature—Prisoner (casualty?) of war

  Once literature began being mass-produced in printed form, they were capable of being commoditized. Publishers embraced that idea, and used it as a guideline to transform “literature” into “books.” Printed volumes were what the publishing industry was actually selling: Paper and covers, logged, milled and printed, shipped and handed over for cash, were the products they were dedicated to. The entire money trail was designed and perfected over decades, around the processing and selling of bound paper containers.

  When consumers gripe that most publishers aren’t in it for the art, they’re in it for the money and money alone… they are absolutely right. And though most publishers will not say so in public, they are well aware of that fact. Publishers largely did not care about the quality or value of the content, only its raw desirability. The literature certainly had a place in the publisher’s world… but as a mere detail. Titles were treated as extraneous filler, and authors were used as figureheads. It is telling when the publishing industry, and those following it, use authors’ names more often than their actual book titles. They were superstars, box office draws, used to garner sales by name recognition alone.

  So, when e-books arrived on the scene, and threatened to bring an end to the “paper trail” that publishers had painstakingly built up and functioned by for so long, they had no idea what to do. Without the paper product, what else was there? How could an industry devoted to selling a physical product deal with an effectively non-physical product? The answer, of course, was that the industry as-is could not transform itself into a seller of a non-physical product. And despite the writing on the wall, the publishing industry wanted to maintain itself as long as humanly possible, just as it was.

  The steps the publishing industry has taken to-date, to deal with e-books, have all been oriented towards minimizing e-books’ impact on the existing business model and the physical products they already sold… printed books. And as for the e-books themselves, the publishers concentrated on concepts like DRM that would, in theory, bind the e-books to a physical device, and thereby create a sort of hybrid electronic and physical product that the publishers could still wrap their heads around.

  Editors and publishers liked to insist that their efforts were what made a book sellable. Yet, their efforts weren’t devoted to making a story a better story; rather, their efforts were devoted to making a story more sensational, more exciting, more sexy, more sellable. “It’s a good love story, but a sex scene here will make it great!” “What about changing this argument into a chase scene… that will really sell it.” “That villain was good, but the audience will cheer if you kill him off at the end.” Shock and awe was their real motto, because that brought more people in to buy books, just as it sold movies and enjoyed high television ratings.

  The authors were well aware of this. They knew how the process worked: All but the most famous of them would write a story, then let the editors tell them how to punch it up so that John or Jane Doe—hopefully all the John and Jane Does—would pick it up at the supermarket. They did not question the editors’ directions; after all, the editors knew the market, that’s why they were the successful Big Pub editors; and that’s how the authors would make more money.

  But as e-books slipped into the market, the editors did not come to the writers to tell them how to write their material for the new medium. In fact, they continued to tell them how to write for printed books, and ignore the new medium. And as e-books developed, and the writing styles and voices began evolving to fit the new medium, established Big Pub authors were still churning out print material not at all suited for the new digital formats.

  Some authors made it clear that they wanted to embrace the e-book format. Most of them, however, were bound by contract with the publishers, and oft-times, e-book rights had been written into the contract and
placed outside of the author’s hands. The author could write e-books anyway… but they would risk losing their contract, and their access to the Big Pub world (and paycheck). As most authors did not want to risk their insider status, or their income, they would back down and turn away from the e-book world to please their publishers.

  In the meantime, authors who were unencumbered by contracts began writing for e-books. But even the best of them ran up against that perceptual brick wall, erected by Big Pub, that suggested e-book material was by definition inferior. Then they would face the reality that publishers treated them as “damaged goods” for self-publishing, thereby labeling themselves as inferior. Superior works that might have gone on to be well-publicized bestsellers, with Big Pub assistance, instead languished in an indie book limbo.

  This strategy kept best-selling books out of the limelight if they were published in e-book formats. It also continued to keep good e-books down by artificially labeling them and acting to reinforce the stereotype, and effectively maintained e-books’ status as being inferior work.

  ~

  As stated earlier, books were commodities. They were priced according to author popularity, and according to book size (the amount of paper used to print it). They were not priced according to the perceived quality of the story itself; the value of the story was entirely inconsequential to the paper trail and the bottom line.

  With e-books’ emergence, the paper trail was suddenly whisked away, leaving nothing to quantify except the work itself, the direct contributions of the author, editors and proofers. It seemed the perfect opportunity to redefine the real worth of literature, based on the literature itself and not its packaging. Such a redefinition could serve to justify e-book pricing to an extent that would satisfy creators and consumers alike, and be the basis for an evolution of an industry to a digital standard.

  Yet, the redefinition never quite happened. Publishers and authors were afraid a redefinition would result in smaller salaries and lesser profits for them, while consumers had no confidence that publishers would not overly pad their new financial models and overcharge for e-books. Consumers tried to rough up numbers, but without a real understanding of the industry to go on, their optimistic numbers were meaningless to those in the industry. Further, the Anarchists still insisted that without a physical package, an e-book essentially had zero real value, and should be priced accordingly. Attitudes like this continued to dismay publishers, who were beginning to see no way to satisfy such public perceptions.

  Authors also needed this redefinition. They were feeling increasingly marginalized, as discussions continued around them, over them, but never with them. Publishers insisted they were what put the value into books… consumers argued that an e-book without a publisher, therefore, should cost nothing… and no one asked the author what they deserved to get for their work in writing the story. Their efforts to place a value that they considered “fair” on their own e-books inevitably resulted in disagreements with consumers who felt they knew better what profits a writer deserved, and who argued that the “nearly infinite” replication potential of an e-book meant that an author could theoretically make millions off of an e-book, and so had no right to charge beyond a few pennies for it.

  And still the story itself, the quality or quantity involved, did not figure into costs. Everything came down to electronic files and the people who revolved around them.

  It’s no wonder, therefore, that authors felt a growing disassociation with e-books, a sense that they were being devalued, underappreciated, not a part of the equation… and began to see less and less earning potential from the e-book. And feeling so disassociated, it’s no wonder that so many authors said they’d rather retire than become part of the e-book world. The industry was threatening their livelihood and robbing them of their very spirit to create, at just the time when the industry was set to transform itself and open new opportunities to them.

  24: The gurus—When you can snatch the e-book from my hand…

  All of the head-butting and arguing of the last 23 chapters was not going on in a vacuum: It was being duly observed by interested authors, editors, programmers, hackers, readers and other e-book enthusiasts around the world.

  Unlike many of the participants of the e-book saga, these enthusiasts were truly interested in finding ways to advance e-books in the marketplace, and develop viable financial models for their sale and profitability. Instead of merely arguing, they made a concerted effort to examine the sides, analyze the positions, seek answers to these issues that had been applied to other markets, support positive efforts, and make reasonable and compelling suggestions as to how the market should proceed.

  These enthusiasts began to rise to the top of the e-book world, as leaders rise to the top of a mob. Congregating in online forums and blogs, they would join in discussions about various aspects and concerns about e-books, and often dispensed good suggestions for ways around a problem, as opposed to joining in pointless commiserating and finger-pointing. When questions were posed, they would often be the first to provide sensible answers as opposed to snide or sarcastic remarks or opining. When people had complaints, they often tried to mitigate disagreements with observations designed to clarify a problem for both sides.

  Some of these enthusiasts were attempting to enter the e-book field themselves, as they saw some advantage it held for them, or the potential for growth. Studying the concerns voiced by others, they made a point of using those concerns to develop business models designed to address those concerns. Bypassing the traditional aspects of publishing business models, they accepted the need for new guidelines and behaviors that were more in-line with the new medium. They became the commercial trailblazers of the e-book field, the e-book gurus.

  Individual authors, many without a foothold in the traditional publishing industry, struck out on their own and tailored their literature to the e-book formats. Either working alone or banding together with a few other authors, they created online presences and developed sales models that consumers largely found very reasonable. They also made themselves accessible to their audiences, replicating the “friendly neighborhood shopkeeper” ambiance that customers responded positively to, thereby reducing the desire to take advantage of them.

  Other publishers experimented with new selling methods, following the comments made by their prospective customers. Reasoning that a satisfied customer is a return customer (and one that helps drive new business their way), they optimized the e-book buying experience according to what customers had said they wanted, wherever possible.

  Fortunately, there were many web-based tools out there that allowed independents and small publishers to customize their experiences as they needed. From elaborate e-commerce setups, to simpler payment gateways through PayPal or Ebay, e-book sellers could choose for themselves how to set up their business, spend a little or a lot, contract out their web setup or do it themselves. This resulted in website designs and functionality that were all across the board, but overall satisfying to the customers, if for no other reason because the customers knew the vendors were trying to please them.

  As the gurus developed practical and workable e-book production and selling methods, other authors and vendors took note. Not all of them have followed the examples of the gurus, but those who did enjoyed an almost instant acceptance from the e-book consumers, whereas those who followed more traditional paths were generally treated as luddites, their old-fashioned ways hampering the progress of e-books. Vendors’ concern about their image in the market varied, especially depending on whether they felt it impacted their bottom line or not—and in the case of particularly large vendors, such as Amazon and Sony, much less concern was given to the guidelines of gurus than to the advice of their own staff and the desires of stockholders. They were established corporations, and the opinions of individual outsiders had never been part of their business strategy. Even so, they often paid attention to the voice of the gurus, because very often they were the only voices in
some discussions that were clear and impartial, and provided a usable perspective on an issue that a publisher could understand and address.

  ~

  The gurus began to garner a respectable following, and were seen as industry leaders, but only with the small groups that followed them. The number of casual e-book customers, drawn in by Amazon, Sony, Barnes & Noble and the big publishers that were entering the e-book field, were slowly overtaking the gurus and their enthusiasts, until it was unsure whether or not their “wisdom” would continue to have an impact, or whether it would be overshadowed by the corporate giants. It was also unsure whether the plans of the corporate giants would prove to be sustainable over the long haul, raising the possibility that the gurus’ teachings might one day resurface and guide the industry in a new direction.

  Presently the industry is dominated by the two factions: The big corporations that go their own, largely traditional, way; and the smaller publishers and individuals, who listen to the gurus for advice and guidance and follow a more modern, progressive path. Consumers are also similarly divided, between the early-adopters, small pubs and indies, who listen to the gurus for advice and guidance; and the casual e-book customers following the commercial successes of the Big Pubs, and who largely are not aware of the public history or support base of the e-book industry.

  There seems to be room in the market for both factions, but the ultimate impact the gurus will have is uncertain: It may be that the gurus will still be able to steer indie and small publisher planning, or at least provide a source of opinion to guide it; or the gurus could find themselves pushed out of the picture if the large corporations come to dominate the e-book market and dictate even how the small publishers and indies have to function within the larger market. But even if their influence turns out to be temporary, it is to be hoped that their early influence helped to provide some order to the chaos, and got the e-book market off to the best start it could have hoped for under the circumstances.