Traditional book publishers face a challenging future as authors find they get more value from self-publishing.
It was good to head across to Oakland’s East Bay Social Media Breakfast for Shel Israel’s and Robert Scoble’s discussion about their latest book, The Age Of Context.
While the book itself is an interesting overview of how the internet of things is changing the world, Scoble’s and Israel’s self publishing journey though combination of corporate sponsors, crowdfunding and alternative distribution models is an interesting tale in itself.
“Self publishing gives writers much more power than they’ve ever had before,” says Israel. “In many aspects, the traditional publisher just isn’t there any more.”
“By using the tech community and social media to market the book, I’ve sold more copies of The Age of Context in seven weeks than my previous four books combined,” Israel states.
Israel’s point illustrates the challenge facing traditional publishers, like many other industries the publishing houses have reacted to a changing market by cutting costs such as replacing experienced staff with fewer, less experienced workers.
Failing to add value
That cost cutting has the effect of making the businesses irrelevant; if a publicist has to rely on HARO or Source Bottle to contact journalists rather than a contact book built up over years of experience, then they are doing little the writer can’t do themselves.
One of the biggest advantages book publishers offered authors was rigorous editing — good editors are worth their weight in gold to both a writer and their book and in the past self-published books were notable for their lousy editing.
Today, that function has been almost eliminated by publishers have eliminated most in house editors. If a harassed, time poor contractor only has a few days to spend editing the manuscript, as what happened with my last book, then the publishers hasn’t added much to the product at all.
Similarly with design and layout, historically publishers have been strong on this front with experienced editors knowing what covers will work for certain genres in the bookshops. The cheapest graduate worker in the world can’t replicate that understanding of the marketplace.
Most damaging of all though to publishers was losing the distribution channels; when bookstores were the way most readers bought their books the publishing house’s sales team were essential for getting books on shelves. In an age of Amazon and online shopping, they are no longer the gatekeepers they once were.
Self publishing risks
That’s not say there aren’t risks with self publishing, particularly with having corporate sponsors pay for development costs.
Scoble and Israel overcame the increasingly stingy author advances by raising $105,000 from corporate sponsors to cover the initial researching and writing costs.
“We were scared to death that this was a credibility issue,” said Israel. “However our sponsors were incredibly good with not messing around with editorial credibility. They, like others in the book, got to see what was written to check for technical accuracy but not change the content.”
“An example is that Google was not a sponsor and Bing was, yet we said an awful lot more good things about Google than we did about Bing.”
Adopting the financial risk
The biggest risk of all for self-publishing though is being stuck with a stack of unsold books with a pile of bills for editors, designers and printing. In the past the publisher carried all the financial risk which was probably the greatest service they provided to authors.
Even that risk isn’t as great as it was a few years ago as print runs are cheaper and shorter while outsourcing sites make it cheaper and easier to find professional help.
As Israel and Scoble illustrate, book publishers have made themselves irrelevant to most authors. It’s probably the best case study of an industry reacting to change with cost cuts that ultimately destroy their own competitive advantage.
That’s something that other businesses and industries should consider when looking at how to deal with their own disruption.
Interesting. Somehow, most of your topics seem to be has this industry ended or has that industry ended. Nothing has ended. Business models and industries are changing due to technologies just like it has for centuries.
Tech is shifting each & every industry including the publishing world & that includes via apps, social & search tech where they are integrating as well.
Free sites for textbooks, novels, other books, presentations, etc (all fields and not just tech related). They are http://libraryelf.com/base/Libraries.aspx which includes public libraries and university libraries from all around the world. This, Scribd and 44 other sites are places for getting free books under the site http://www.friedbeef.com/best-places-to-get-free-books-the-ultimate-guide/ . Also, there are Bookboon, BookCrossing, Wiley Online Library, KnowFree.net,SlideShare, Realtime Publishers, FreeComputerBooks.com,OnlineProgrammingBooks.com and Intelligentedu.com (Free novels included too). US and UK books including texts and even other countries’ books,texts (some) can usually be found for free using textbook title name and/or author’s name etc (may also need to add edition as well).
The subscription business model is a failing one with news, videos, etc (ABOUT PRIVACY ISSUES – WELL SOME OF THE ISSUES ARE ALSO DUE TO INDIVIDUALS NOT CHANGING SETTINGS OR USING FEATURES THAT COMPANIES OFFER TO PROTECT PRIVACY LIKE USING GROUPS AND LISTS OR EVEN USING ADBLOCK PLUS OR RIVAL ADBLOCK ON ANY BROWSER TO BLOCK ADS ON ANY SITE INCLUDING FB…..ALL FIRMS HAVE PROVIDED OPT-OUT OPTIONS THOUGH PEOPLE STILL DON’T USE THOSE SETTINGS INCLUDING FOR FB INCLUDING FOR ADVERTISING-SOME OF THESE ARE MENTIONED UNDER THE REPLY TO THIS POST). All social networks are knowledge, information and entertainment platforms. It costs loads to set up & update sites so easiest way to get articles would be through social networks (Twitter is real-time though not interactive, FB is interactive though not real-time, LinkedIN is used mostly by B2B and professional, Google+ is also a good one which integrates Google and Google Search includes Google Scholar). Most of the academic and scientific papers are free online too. The days of subscription are falling. Websites also won’t exist after a couple of years due to social networking service platforms, blogging platforms, search engines, apps etc (they are all integrating also and that’s why Google has gone and integrated with its social networks, apps, etc-same with others….MS-FB,etc are together + FB gets its revenue through advertising and 2nd best for advertising after Google).
http://theconversation.com/world-wide-web-creator-sees-open-access-future-for-academic-publishing-11837 is just 1 article to show the academic/scientific papers are too also free. There are many other articles too including http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2013/08/free-papers-have-reached-tipping-point-study-claims (Free papers have reached a tipping point, study claims (maybe useful to all as they are there on Google, other search engines, social networks and maybe apps too – it came via Facebook under ScienceNow Page and is related to ‘The Future of Libraries’ found under Facebook Page The Next Web – http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/08/22/the-future-of-libraries/) . DOAJ is 1 such free directory for open access journals.
The news firms are integrated + open source has shifted the business model and that includes via apps – http://qz.com/140507/apps-overtook-music-in-less-than-five-years-all-of-big-media-is-next/ + it’s also like apple shifting the o/s model – open sourced – Apple is ratcheting up the competition by making the OS and apps free – http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/10/22/apple-mavericks-free/3151093/ .
FYI (Just taking FB mostly):
Some of the Facebook pages that have academic journal articles and others as well are Journal of Consumer Research, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Advertising Research, IJMS International Journal of Medical Students, Journal of International Business Studies, BioTechniques: The International Journal of Life Science Methods, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, The Journal of Commerce, International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics, Marketing Science, ScienceMagazine, Strategy+business magazine, Scientific American magazine, mumbrella, marketingmag.com.au , bandtmag (B&T Magazine), Pew Research’s various pages and same could be said for few others above, Harvard Health Publications, Health Data Management , Appetite for health, National library of medicine, humansophere, University of California Television (UCTV), SciDev.Net, Mercer Insights, The Earth Institute, Milken Institute, CHOICE (Choice Australia), Consumer Reports, Nielsen, Forrester Research, MarketResearch.com, The Innovation Movement, WPP, Euromonitor International, comScore Inc, Psychology Today, Association for Psychological Science, etc (there are just so many I’ve added in the last few years and there are still way way more that could be used-all social networks/media are way more than just socialising).
Facebook news feeds/homepage doesn’t need to have contacts. It can have news so definitely won’t get disturbed by other’s updates even though changing the update settings for each of them is another way of doing it. Both options can also be done. So where can contacts be put? They can be under lists. By default, Facebook does give default lists for family, close friends and acquaintances while can create more lists. That helps with privacy though Facebook and other apps like GMail, Google+, etc provide various privacy settings (there’s also the Adblock Plus that can be added on any browser to block ads & so on). Lists are used in direct marketing too. To put them into lists, change settings for each individuals-notifications, updates, etc including creating groups which too helps with privacy takes time but once it’s done it’s helpful too. Facebook came up with page lists too (like all Business Pages going in 1 list of Business, same with Science and Technology Pages, Music Pages, etc-how it’s created is an individual’s choice)-it only came up with page lists as the page news feeds wasn’t getting all updates of the pages that the user had chosen. As can be seen above, Harvard Business Review and various other research pages are there. Stitcher Radio also exists as an app which brings about all the news podcasts though Economist Radio from The Economist is also there. There are other Business, News, Entertainment apps that exist on FB. Soundcloud is 1 of them which not only has music but news too though Spotify and Youtube apps are the best for music.
Journalism and public speaking face similar issues as Amazon, Apple, etc has provided publishing tools while Twitter’s a real-time social news network. Facebook like other social networks is an entertainment and knowledge platform. It has its own blogging area called Notes though not as developed as WordPress; pages as well as its own or third party apps -Skype (VOIP service app), Spotify (music app), Soundcloud (music app), Docs app (MS Docs’ reply to Google Docs – cloud computing, which includes PDF), Youtube (music app), Snooth (wine, spirits database and reviews search engine app), NetworkedBlogs (blog directory app that can be used with other social networks though there are cons and pros for the app), Stitcher Radio (internet radio service app that focuses on news and information podcasts), Economist Radio (The Economist app), etc. All the above apps can be standalone too and some of them even have apps within them. For example, Spotify itself has last.fm, pitchfork, soundrop, tunigo and other apps under it. Storify, Scoop.it, etc are curation platforms that’s integrated with various social networks including Facebook (curation simply means select, organise, retrieve items like when using blogging platforms and blogging means writing anything though personal blogging differs from professional blogging….reflective journal at uni is more of personal blogging). Storify is way more than just a curation tool as it can be a blogging tool which is also integrated with other blogging platforms like WordPress, etc. Facebook also has curated pages like Mind Blowing Resources (related to marketing and advertising) (there are other curated pages under Facebook including related to marketing and advertising).
Google Hangout, part of Google+, is more than what Skype is currently though Skype is being modified as Google Hangout can not only do face-to-face or text communications with about 10 different people around the world but can also share and save files, watch videos including movies together as well as watch any site together on each other’s devices whether via tablets, desktops, Macs, notebooks, smart-phones, etc. It can also be used for taking photos or even fooling around with the animated effects as a family.
Twitter provides real-time news though it has flaws as social media and networks are still in their early stages (search engines also had flaws during their early stages). Facebook isn’t good at search and its blogging area still needs to be developed as good blogging platforms are under Google or WordPress but Facebook has so many apps as well as pages under it in comparison to Google. Twitter has pages yet it uses third party blogging platforms or sites for links and articles.
So, social’s still developing and is also integrating with search and other apps.
Tech is revolutionising each and every industry and that includes the blended learning (there are 6 basic types though that’s headed mostly for online) as well as MOOCs which are challenging the traditional way of primary, secondary and tertiary education; self-service revolution that has occurred for more than 100 years via ATMs, retail sector, kiosks at airports and other transportation facilities including mobile payments, etc; robot chefs that exist today in China, Japan, etc; manufacturing sector where assembly jobs have been replaced by robots (3D & 4D will increase that too); driverless vehicles in the future; admin & sales sector where Skype, Google Hangout, Whatsapp, etc would change these jobs & so on.
Thus, once again business models and industries are just changing due to technologies just like it has for centuries.