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Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry
VoidEngineer writes "In a surprisingly insightful article entitled Harry Crushes the Hulk, Frank Rich discusses how "Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix" beat out "The Hulk" and goes on to offer some insightfull and interesting comments on demographics, digital media piracy, file sharing and p2p networks, the iTunes store, and more... His conclusion? "[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment -- if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair."
The real Order of the Phoenix has 870 pages, 38 chapters, and starts with the line "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close...". There are a few people with way too much free time who have written their own complete books based on what they think OoP might be. You probably got one of those. But, if you're going to worry about it so much, why not just go buy the real book?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
10 copies * 5 books * 52 weeks = 2600 reads/year
That's just 1 small library. There are 117,418 libraries in the USA. If you figure, on average, they only have 3 copies of each book, that's:
3 * 5 * 52 * 117,418 = 91,586,040 reads/year
File sharing has some serious competition. Libraries are a serious force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry.
And yet, people want to own media they love. Whether it's movies, music or books, if the content touches them they want to have a copy they can call their own. I downloaded and read the fifth Harry Potter myself, before buying a copy. Not because I wanted to steal it, but because I couldn't wait to read it. I'm 47 years old, and fall way outside of the demographic the article is discussing. But I still love the books, I still go see the movies in the theater, and I still buy CDs. If they're good.
In large part, I see the problem being that media is sold as unreturnable. If I go to the movie, and it sucks, I can't get my money back. Likewise, if I buy a CD, DVD, or book.
I don't want to stand in the store for hours to preview, I want to take it home, and enjoy it in the environment that I will be using the media normally. The ability to download and verify the connection with the content prior to sale is the thing that I see the entertainment industry fighting so hard against. They know that the majority of their content can't stand up to that test.
Other industries seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Some car dealerships will even let you take an extended (overnight) "test drive". That's a $30,000 piece of merchandise! Yet for a $20 piece of media, the FBI patrols the net. Does this make sense to anyone with two (functioning) brain cells???
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Funny thing is, as the article itself points out, the hype came after the books, and from the other readers instead of the publishers. It's the literary equivalent of the Slashdot effect.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org