Slashdot Mirror
Cory Doctorow Calls Death To Music, Movies, Print
An anonymous reader writes "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow depicts an unfortunate near-future for a handful of media industries being transformed or killed by the Internet. Predicting a large-scale transformation of the music, movie, book, and newspaper industry, Doctorow says, 'The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.' While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry, for example, Doctorow predicts the 'imminent collapse' of the American newspaper industry because advertisers are uninterested in spending money on the remaining offline readership, such as senior citizens, who prove less valuable."
There is a place for a whole multitude of media. Television news didn't eliminate the newspaper, and neither will the internet. Change it, of course, eliminate, no way !
This is actually quite obvious. Does he enlighten us about how those media are going to evolve? Tthis part isn't obvious.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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People have been claiming newspapers will die for years and will be replaced by blogs. Not going to happen. When is the last time you saw any blog doing real reporting? When did they ever put facts together or do any level of investigation? Never. What do they do instead? They link to an article on someone else's blog and add some commentary. Where did the eventual first link in the chain end up coming from? A newspaper.
You will eventually see more papers going online only, and you'll definitely see more effort put into the web editions vs the print ones. But you won't see the death of the local paper, just a change in how its delivered.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
promotion.
Do you know that he's a famous sci-fi writer? He's been nominated for several awards. I didn't realize this until I actually read his blog for a few days. Now I know all about it!!!
all I can think is: "Doctrow... I should have known."
Do you know that he's a famous sci-fi writer?
Only to him and his handful of dancing Chihuahuas.
To adapt or die.
This is our evolution.
Cry me a river.
What pisses me off about these blogs (techdirt is another), is how doggone smug they seem about the whole thing, with the implication that they (the bloggers) have found a business model that works for writers and creative artists; everyone else needs to get with it and adopt a similar approach.
But the bloggers' business model depends on linking to other people's content, which is usually produced by non-blogging professionals. Almost anyone with a college degree and a few years' background in an industry can spend 15 minutes writing a provocative summary about some story in the news, or someone else's work. Nobody is going to pay to read these blogs, since similar quality posts on the same subjects can be easily found by googling. Frankly, what these industry bloggers do has little to do with either creativity or journalism (or economics, in the case of techdirt).
Who is going to pay for the original piece of investigative journalism, specialized analysis, or original creative work? Should everyone under 35 in one of these businesses start applying to law school?
That's because ads in television are directed to the mass market, while newspapers carry classified ads. With the internet full of advertisements which are easier to search and read than newspaper classified ads, there's that much less motivation to buy printed papers.
Then why does steampunk still exist?
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
Obviously, certain aspects of the internet threaten newspapers(Hi Craigslist!) chiefly through hitting their ad and classifieds revenue, and in siphoning off some readers.
Beyond that, though, I fear that the papers' response to this will, in many cases, be what ends up killing(or at least mutilating beyond recognition) them. Essentially, the problem is this: High quality news reporting is more expensive than printed trash reporting, vapid gossip, and opinion. On the internet, vapid gossip and opinion are free. So, the newspapers' costs are always going to be higher than the internet's costs. However, if the newspapers move to cut costs by cutting back on good reporting, the quality of their product will go down, and the value proposition of paper will become even weaker in comparison to web.
I hope that at least some paper news sources will be able to swim upstream, instead of trying to out-cut the internet(which they'll never be able to do) and differentiate themselves by providing high quality reporting that classic internet sources don't. If, though, the papers just keep cutting quality in order to attempt to match price with the web, they will deserve their own inevitable deaths.
Is that the downturn in newspapers is coming at the same time as a massive recession. Under normal circumstances, newspapers might have been able to weather the transition to on-line reporting but right now, a lot of them are simply going to die.
For example, the much-speculated on-line edition of the Seattle PI looks like it'll be less an on-line newspaper and more a web portal that'll disappear within a year of the print edition dying.
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Internet is not only source of news not from far left. Liberal paper editors & owners refuse to consider lack of readers may be same as lack of watchers for Liberal TV news. My small town paper loses 8% of subscribers each year and responds with more articles from NY Times. Most remaining readers read only obituaries, grocery ads & county news.
While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry
As far as I can tell the book industry is very very healthy and the internet hasn't had much impact on that one way or the other (outside of very limited areas, the only one that springs to mind being general encyclopedias). Is there any reason to suppose otherwise?
I've often wondered, why can't online newspapers be community funded like wikipedia. they could still sell ads, and still be free to read, but people would be allowed to anonymously donate to newspapers they support.
at least he's not calling death to all infidels
Amen, brother.
He saves that for DRM proponents.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
FTA:
for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for a cheap and easy-to-buy codex...
Me thinks the author is being a bit biased since this is what he writes. I hate to break it to you Cory but long-form narratives are EXACTLY what an e-book reader is good for. They are not good for reference material because random access is too slow. (at this stage, they just can't compete with thumbing through a printed text-book, programming manual or travel guide) They might be ok for newspapers & magazines if anyone ever decides to format them properly. BUT, they are absolutely perfect for novels and anything else that you'd care to read from cover to cover.
I don't know that e-book readers are for everyone but if you love to read and you travel a lot, it's great to be able to lug an entire library of books with you in one very small package. On any given trip, I can bring, on my reader, more than enough reading material for myself, a bunch of children's books to read to my daughter, and maybe an audio-book and some music for good measure.
After a year with it, I can't say that I miss the printed page at all... and don't get me started on what I can find to read on the internet for free....
Finally, they cost about $270 now and dropping. Be afraid.
All that we're seeing is *big* media having trouble. There's still interest in and value in the underlying techniques. People are still going to read newspapers on their daily train commute because right now e-readers are still expensive and glitchy. We're only seeing problems with monopolistic, high capacity mass media, not media in general.
I predict that slashdot.com (org) will be around forever....
>>All my favorite websites from the late 90s are long gone, the ones that are left I barely use anymore.
>>Discuss. /. seems to be holding on pretty well, eh?
Huh?
I've seen local ad campaigns financed by the music industry predicting "the end of music" before. Nevermind the fact that music may be as old, or perhaps even older than spoken language...
What's needed is simply a paradigm shift. The music industry, before records, cassettes and CDs became relatively inexpensive and commonplace, was mostly about selling live shows. Live shows are something people will probably always be willing to pay for. Perhaps artists simply need to do more of that, and count less on pre-recorded music sales?
Surely there's a way for musical artists to keep making money, if money is the reason they make music, although I suspect some people do it for other reasons too! Music will never die. It's as old as mankind, if not older (if you exclude older humanoid species from "mankind").
Yeah I mean look at what 'talkies' did to movies! Now we have to sit and LISTEN to these so called "actors." It damn near put the piano player out of existence. Thank goodness someone made a piano bar.
Television news didn't eliminate the newspaper, and neither will the internet. Change it, of course, eliminate, no way !
Don't forget radio, the second-oldest medium. Still alive, kicking, and well. Why, we even have a huge radio system supported in large part by private donations...gasp! Shows like Lake Woebegone and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me live and indeed embrace new media; I listen to WWDTM all the time via my my iPod, downloaded via podcasts.
This latest is just the gasp of a flunkie, uneducated has-been science fiction author whose work is so spectacularly bad that he had never had a commercially successful work.
Cory Doctorow learned that people didn't like having to pay to watch movies, TV, and movies. A simpleton pundit who appeals to naivete; at the end of the day, nobody's forcing you to pay to listen to music. While Doctorow has bitched and moaned about copyright, the rest of the world keeps right on truckin', same as always, writing and performing in all media without much care towards copyright. I can go right now to three local bars and listen to bands perform songs, and a fair number of 'em will probably be covers, copyrighted work by someone else.
Please help metamoderate.
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There's a reason the New York Times' stock sells
for less than the price of its Sunday paper
.
..to death!!! by snu snu.
I learn new things the hard way.
Peter F Hamilton already predicted this in 2002 with Misspent Youth. He went further though to predict that not only would revenue-generating media die off, it would pull with it media quality. As such the only good stuff would be the classics :)
I hate to be blunt but this is the real reason modern media will have problems. Basically to start with there's an uneducated public when it comes to the process of content creation and profit. Throw in unrealistic expectations. Add in a public armed with the technological tools to bypass any means to recuperate costs. Shake well and you have no one really getting what they want.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Yes, they have to adapt. They need an online presence. They need a different approach, to marketing and advertising.
But there are a few things that people seem to forget when making the argument that the internet will kill media as we know it.
1. Local news. Sorry, but unless a plane drops out of the sky, CNN isn't remotely interested in in Ballarat, Australia - nor do most CNN readers care about the local government elections, or which local VIP has just been arrested for DUI, or who won the district football on the weekend - but I do, and so does our local newspaper.
While they don't have the circulations of the major world newspapers...the bulk of print news is still regionally based.
2. Local Advertising. The local plumber doesn't need to or want to advertise to the entire state, country or to the world writ large. He wants to target the people in his immediate area, and the larger newspapers, and TV, are cost prohibitive, and online sites (mostly) don't meet that need. Local businesses and small businesses need a
centralised local vehicle to push their message.
2. Content. Someone, somewhere has to generate it. Someone has to follow up on leads and stories, and get the word out. Sure, once the word IS OUT, there is no limit to the number of places online where you can find out about it, but someone had to go out and get the story in the first place, check the facts, and filter it down to a piece that most people can digest. THIS is where newspapers must head if they want to survive.
They need to be going out and getting the in-depth investigations and stories that their competitors don't have, and stop relying on regurgitating the same stories that everyone else has.
If a plane drops into the Hudson, or a bushfire kills hundreds in Australia, its covered.. by everyone.. and I can find information on it everywhere. Its the local impact or other local events IN ADDITION TO the major news items, that push me to select one news organisation over another, and one medium over another, for day to day consumption.
As long as people still want to sit down with a coffee to read through the week's news, local, national, international, and do the crosswords, read the comics etc., newspapers will be around. People enjoy sitting down and flicking through a paper at their leisure, and you can't do that online. Having said that, one does not preclude the other - they're different beasts.
Does anyone really give a shit what "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow" has to say?
SO you mean like how /. has been tanking hard? The I could go sleding on the alexa results,
I wondered about the same thing, all the people who started reading /. in their 20's in 99 are now in their thirties, middle managers, who's entry pay was far higher than now, and it really shows. /. is becoming the website your boss reads and the users are becoming more old, grumpy, and greedy. perhaps news will become more like coffee shops? and will be open for a few decades but become unhip and fade away as the only people who still hang around are 35 year olds smoking cigarettes you can't afford.
The most successful recent example in terms of subscribers is probably The Economist newsmagazine, which has had about a 5x increase in subscribers over the past decade.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
From an author-making-money perspective, e-books are pretty similar to printed books, because people still buy them on places like Amazon. For a variety of reasons, they haven't developed the same way as newspapers, where the online edition is free. It's easier to grab them free off torrent sites, of course, but I'm not sure that alone will kill the book industry, especially as it seems to be less widespread than unauthorized music copying. The fact that ebook readers like the Kindle make it much easier to buy books from Amazon than load them from some downloaded source will probably only strengthen that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry,
What dying book industry? Sure, quality books might be dying and in the economy not many people want to pay ~$16 for something they can get at a library for free, but in the last 10 years, literature, especially children to teen books have been exploding with growth, you only need to look at the Harry Potter craze and now the Twilight craze to understand that.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
applause, clap, clap, clap hoot hoot and etc. You got it exactly. The *main* job of the big names in broadcast journalism is to push the party line indoctrination propaganda of the so called "elite" folks at the top of the economic globalist heap, they take orders from the bailed out billionaires once you get down to it. What is it, something like half a dozen or so owners cover the bulk of the alleged news out there now? Times change! The world is awash in decent cellphones with camera and video capabilities, man on the street, on the spot blogging is taking over.
Yes, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff looking at blogs and smaller independent news sites, etc, but it gets easier once a blog has been established and builds some netcred, and at least you *can*, the opportunity is there. Whereas if you restrict yourself to reading much of the big talking heads or even worse listening to them spew their tired 20th century propaganda they developed when talking to their "subjects", it gives you *no choice at all*, zero. Big name news is the equivalent of clear channel top 40 in music. Here's another one, a bakery analogy. Listening to those alleged journalists is like walking into a bakery and all they have for sale is 20 different types of cheap sliced white bread, all the same, just in different bags with different names.
Independent music, movies, and "news" are thriving on the internet. Unfortunately only a few people have figured out a way to turn that into real money, but I'm sure that will change as the traditional revenue strategies die off.
I have to agree. The only thing that's keeping ebook readers from taking the world is their closed nature.
Now an open device with an e-ink display that can run for a couple of days on a charge (99.9% on standby of course) and can read the usual formats... that would be something I'd buy in a heartbeat. Right now I still read e-books on my laptop (tried the phone but it doesn't have enough resolution for comfortable reading.)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
... with custom papers. I go to my news stand and order up a paper, AP, NYT, Nature, NBA, Premiership, brassiere ads, lots of cartoons and comic strips (that's what I want). The size allows for bigger pretty pictures than my laptop. It's paper so I don't worry about spilling coffee on it or reading it in a crowd or leaving it in a restaurant. I do the puzzles and drop the paper off at a news stand where a magic process strips the ink with a minimum of energy and water foot print. The paper is recycled.
Sci Fi I know, so flame away.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Just out of interest, how many (western) newspaper journalists were embedded in Falujah?
I don't know, but many people in the military blog. Of course, they're biased towards a US victory. And they won't blog until the fighting is done and they have spare time to do it.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
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HEY!
Lameness filter override: Mairzy dotes and dozy dotes and little lamsy divey,
A kiddly divey, too -- wouldn't you?
What?
It's hard to see how your criticism is correct. Doctorow hedges a lot in this essay (one's "favorite medium" will be "devoured, transformed, or destroyed". That covers a lot of possibilities). But even if he's wrong in this essay, your criticism is unjustified and overly harsh: Doctorow is a writer making his money from selling books one can download free, something long thought impossible in the 'why pay for what you can get for free' philosophy. He is walking the talk showing us through his example how one can license liberally, make a living with a huge online component to one's work, and sustain this for years on end. Perhaps there's a message in there for the proprietors of movies, newspapers, TV, and music.
One hopes the lecturer didn't conflate such different things as you just did. There's nothing categorically improper about the reporting going on online, and there's nothing categorically proper about reporting in print. Newspapers can switch to online publication and offer the same caliber of reporting they offer now. It's not the quality of reporting that prevents newspaper publishers from losing their print publications. The New York Times, for instance, can continue to lie about the most important issue of the day while punishing authors of far less important articles in ridiculous public displays (Judith Miller versus Jayson Blair) whether they do it in print or online. The medium can change and the reportage can remain the same.
That doesn't strike me as nearly important as asking: How many reporters are independent? How many are not embedded with the military? How many are failing to present a "difficult public face for [their media organization] in a time of war" or judging their effectiveness by comparing to competitors who are "waving the flag at every opportunity"? Phil Donahue's CNBC show was cancelled for the reasons quoted in these last two quotes, according to a leaked internal memo. I don't recall most of the major news outlets telling us much about the millions on the streets of the world protesting the US invasion of Iraq before it began. I recall them getting head counts wrong and ignoring well-spoken war critics lest their contrary views gain mainstream exposure and thus legitimizing them in the views of those who consume nothing but corporate news. I don't recall good corporate news analysis of the run-up to the war before or after Col. Powell's lies to the UN. Instead, I recall seeing a strong imbalance of views on-air favoring pro-war voices. Some of the most valuable journalism about this war has come from unembedded independent journalists on far less-widely seen shows like "Democracy Now!". It seems to me that the medium isn't the critical factor here, what the news organization says is.
Digital Citizen
Well, thank you Captain Obvious for saving us from things we all figured out ten years ago. We were all waiting for a real shit disturber to come slap us out of our complacent torpor.
It is not a matter of "if" or "when" but "who". Which dirty media cartel will be the first to shake off their old-world vestiges and take a real step into the world of post-internet media ? Right now, they don't get it. We're waiting for a revolution, but the bigwigs aren't thinking outside the box. Their current strategy of taking an old-world product, slathering it in DRM goo, and then trying to sell it ten times to the same person, is clearly not working. Something else will work, but they need to start looking for a solution if they ever hope to find it.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
... and that's why Internet will die first. Electricity for running a Computer will be the point, a fall back to writing in stones is more likely for the masses than doing electric communication. The little minority of those who can afford will keep reading and writing here and there, they will only avoid the stones -- accept for their police-forces, who will read every stone to control the legality of thoughts. Or something like that.
...People still care what Doctorow has to say? He's still around?
For real?
The death of the newspaper is getting close. As the article says, is that "newspapers are fundamentally an advertising-supported medium", and they're not a very good advertising-delivery medium. They're not targeted, and they're not searchable. Classified advertising is dying.
But nobody is taking over general news reporting. Blogs don't have real reporters, just pundits. TV covers the big stories, but there's no depth.
Only a few services aimed at the investment community do real reporting and make money by selling their content. The Wall Street Journal makes most of its money from subscriptions, not ads. Dow Jones (the WSJ's parent) makes more revenue on line than from the print edition. The future of news reporting is Bloomberg. Bloomberg is entirely on line, has more reporters than any newspaper in the US, and to get the good stuff in real time, hundreds of thousands of traders pay serious money. After some delay, Bloomberg puts out summaries for free.
There's still noise about "micropayments", but having watched everybody from Digicash to Cybercoin to Beenz go down, I doubt micropayments on the Internet will ever catch on. Phone-based systems, though...
Also, "crowdsourcing" a movie is a fantasy. Every once in a great while, somebody produces a good movie on a low budget, but that's rare. Roger Corman could do it, but nobody else seems to be able to bring it off.
I submit that the old question "Qui bono?" ("Who benefits [from this arrangement]?") applies here if it applies anywhere.
Who benefits? Sonny benefits.
Of the six members of the Motion Picture Association of America, only Sony doesn't share a parent company with a North American TV and web news outlet. Disney owns ABC, Universal owns NBC/CNBC/MSNBC, CBS owns CBS News and used to own Paramount until recently, News Corp owns Fox News and 20th Century Fox, and Time Warner owns CNN, HLN, and Warner Bros. Pictures. And a lot of these companies own newspapers as well, especially News Corp. Because the MPAA lives on expansion of copyright. So any member of Congress that supports expansion of copyright gets better press from news organizations affiliated with MPAA studios and therefore a better chance of being reelected. This is how we get apparently unanimous bipartisan support for shit like the No Electronic Theft Act, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
ever heard of an e-book reader?
with the benefits of digital text there's no reason for 'paper' for-profit news papers to stick around... sure the tech to make newspapers should be maintained, and surely they will be by local niche papers; but even those ought to focus mainly on internet/digital readers, while letting people and businesses 'subscribe' to receive their paper versions.
and then occasionally they could dole out a healthy helping of free randomly distributed paper copies of their paper versions to gain readers (paper the town).
digital books and newspapers allow for more control over the content by the user, easier access to materials, higher mobility, they are also far more environmentally friendly and profitable.
there's really only two reasons for a reader not to transfer to digital media, those being favorability of the reader for paper material and inaccessible prices for the necessary technology.
i wonder if anyone in the Government has considered granting subsidies to the impoverished so they can purchase e-book readers or simple computers for the main purpose of obtaining the status of an informed and educated citizenry. and then also providing free Gov funded access to both social and political news (like free adaptable RSS feeds on amazon's Kindle).
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
Grandpa, do you remember when music existed?
Why sure I do, but it was a long time ago... back when there was a whole industry to support it... before the dark times... before the... the... internet... came along AND DESTROYED MUSIC.
What was it like, gramps? this... music.
*but the old man could not remember, so long lost were the days when people could make and listen to music. stupid internet*
I guess you like your news predigested and anything disturbing of your world view filtered out. I only read the embedded reporters when I wanted to know which world view direction the Pentagon was currently touting.
In war, truth is the first casualty, and is missing in action for years to come.
maybe ... just maybe he knows ssomething we dont know:
* 2012 (do i have to elaborate?)
* all ice melts, everything is under water and we need to think of new ways anyway
* To the melody of Peter Garrett's "beds are burning" we will sing now "... how do we read while our books are burning"
* Gutenberg came back to this world as annother person and invented something completely new
to code or not to code, that is the question.
There's a rash of hyperbolic commentary lately about the "death of newspapers" from people who have no idea what they're talking about. Doctorow's post is just one more float in the parade.
In the United States, the typical newspaper is fundamentally a local-regional advertising business. Local and regional advertising is changing, but it's not going away.
The typical American newspaper produces a portfolio of print (daily, weekly, monthly) and online products. These include both mass and targeted media. It turns an annual profit (not a loss) ranging from 10 to 20 percent. The ad revenues alone -- not counting print circulation --roll up to a $45 billion annual total nationwide.
Some newspapers are losing money and will close this year. But the more common situation is a publisher cutting staff, pagecount and sometimes even frequency in order to maintain profit margins so that corporate finance requirements can be maintained.
Corporate finance is the real problem. Over the last 20 years, newspaper owners borrowed heavily to buy more newspapers (and take over other chains), assuming that historically aberrant profit margins -- sometimes in the 35 to 45 percent range or even higher -- would continue forever.
The current business recession has suddenly placed those debt-laden companies in peril. Lee Enterprises, which recently narrowly avoided bankruptcy by renegotiating some loans, actually turned an operating profit of over 20 percent last year.
I'm not in denial about the effects of the Internet. They are real and serious, but they are longterm, and they are not the cause of the crisis currently facing newspapers, regardless of the self-serving BS being spread by various media pundits.
The irony is that the financial crisis has awakened slumbering newsrooms and sales forces, while robbing them of the resources they need to respond to those longterm challenges.
Ever since I left print and moved to the online side of journalism in 1994, I've been battling people who had their head in the sand about the importance of the changes in media caused by the Internet.
No more. Confusion and bewilderment, yes. Denial, no.
I fully expect to see some big bankruptcies in the next several months. Journal Register Co. declared bankruptcy Saturday, following the overleveraged (Chicago) Tribune Co. and the Minneapolis Star Tribune in seeking protection from creditors. Some big dailies, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, will close, along with a lot of weeklies.
But hundreds of other papers will continue to operate profitably.
Among them, some will be smart enough to invest in creating new products that are more aligned with our net-connected and increasingly mobile lives.
[Note: Worrying about this stuff is my day job. You can follow me on twitter or at my blog.]
I think Doctorow's opinion is not "news." He takes a very interesting gadget and geek site and for some reason puts a hugely left spin on it.
But I do think he is right on this one. Newspapers will cease to publish print editions and become web-only. Every year they are hemorrhaging circulation and ad dollars. Every year. The NY Times is about as fiscally sound as General Motors.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Internet Advertising blog feeds. The blog feed I source that I'm least proud of of. Skim to see what i mean. I want the internet to be a mass of SEO reciprocal links with no care for the readers, slightly less than another war. Yet it somehow needs to exist to run and fund the internet. I think I managed to promote my company without going off topic there. At least that's my hope.
"Most people can tell the difference in spin between Fox News and CNN."
Did you say "MOST" people?
BWAHHAHAHAHA.
Do most people know that the places these news organizations, namely Reuters and AP, get most of there news, are majority-owned by the same interest?
If you're a mass circulation paper, your number's up.
Your demographic base may be too broad, so an ads' ROI may be only a fraction of what it is on the web.
If you're a niche advertiser you ship may have just come in.
You'll never see mass media and mass media advertising work for stuff that only interests less than 25% of the general populace. (Everybody gets colds, everybody gets thirsty, everybody gets sore [only 50% of the population gets PMS while the other 50% gets prostate problems.])
But if your product doesn't have that kind of broad demographic appeal, you ad ROI falls off like a stock broker on a windy ledge.
If you're a small circulation paper, you costs are going through the roof while your revenues are deflating like a tire that just driven over a bunch of nails.
But if you run a web site for a niche readership/audience and you're promoting niche products, you're golden.
Then Google is your ONLY competition for advertising. (And there's ways to cooperate, rather than fight for the ad revenue.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Mares eat oats and does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy.
A kid'll eat ivy, too. Wouldn't you?
Cory Doctorow has a Crystal Ball into the present - big woop. He's 'predicting' what is happening now. This looks like someone just trying to get clicks to that site which I ignore. Nothing cool or interesting there and there's nothing like some pronouncements into the future that are just rehashing the headlines of today.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Isn't Cory's brilliant insight coming about 10 years late?
sadly, the "man in the street" may only be able to tell us that "Somebody just shot somebody else while I ducked! You want me to stick my head up? Screw you. I got a spouse and kids to support."
It takes some training (and journalism school provides only some of that training,) to dig around doing research, interviewing relevant people, doing some things of dubious morals and ethics in the pursuit of a story, writing and editing the story until its clear, concise, unbiased and relevant.
We'd better up the quality of the bloggers because they're going to be the citizen journalists and sorry but the average blogger, myself included, is not up to the task.
We all have opinions AFTER the fact.
The journalist is the rat terrier who digs up the facts.
If he cant make a living doing what he is the most qualified at doing, you can dig up your own facts.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This from someone who works for a website that believes they can actually "unpublish" something. Can I "unpublish" this comment after submitting it? No.
Yes, it's their website. Yes, they can do what they want with it. That's not the point. Anyone who believes they can just "unpublish" something after they've already put it out on the Internet for all to see isn't someone I would listen to about things like this.
It's a very dark ride.
The media businesses will stay in business as long as they learn to adapt to new trends like the Internet.
Hulu was developed when too many TV shows got captured and posted on Youtube for free and hosted via file sharing networks. The videos got pulled from Youtube and Hulu.com hosts the old TV shows and some movies for free, with limited interruption advertising.
Hulu.com makes money off of advertising added to the videos, plus advertising on the web site to view the videos, all while providing free videos to its users. There is no need to pirate those TV Shows or host them on Youtube and violate copyrights.
The same with music, one can create a music station like last.fm or Yahoo Launchcast Music that plays free Internet music via a radio-like broadcast system catered to the listener's likes and dislikes. Inbetween songs can be put in commercials.
The same with books, after so many pages of reading, there are a few advertising spots before the next few pages are displayed, the same with newspapers. Along with advertising on those web sites that have the electronic version of books and newspapers and magazines.
Plus it allows people to get into the media business by themselves by starting up their own web site or use free resources to start their own media site for free. Then pay for putting in Google AdSense or some other advertising system on their paid or free web site to bring in the revenue.
Of course there will always be free and open source web sites for free and open source media. Be it Wikis, or CMS forums like Slashdot or CNet, blogs, other forums, or just web site with content on it.
Print is dead, but ePrint replaced it.
Newspapers are dead, but eNewspapers, Blogs, Forums, Wiki sites, etc replaced them.
The Music industry is dead, but the eMusic industry that sells songs via files or pays for them via advertising have replaced them.
The movie industry is dead, but Hulu.com, Netflicks, Blockbuster, etc replaced them.
Learn to adapt to changes in technology or die like the dinosaurs did. Grow, evolve, change, whatever it takes to modify your business model and technology to take advantage of new trends and new technology and new media containers.
I don't really see it as all that different from when we went from Color TV, to VHS video tapes, to DVD video, to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Video, to Video files over the Internet. It is the same product, just different technology. In the case of the media file it is a pattern of bits which can be easily duplicated for pennies on the dollar instead of being a physical media container which costs more. So in theory, a media company putting their content on files, instead of a physical container, would save a lot of money by just selling files instead of audio CDs, Video DVDs, Paper Books, Paper Newspapers, etc.
The only issue is how to combat piracy when the media is in a format that is easier to copy than the physical matter format. One way to do that is keep prices low, another way is to offer it for free with advertsing ala Hulu.com and other web sites.
This is not brain surgery, this is really really simple. Ask any of us Computer Geeks how to create a file of information and host it on a web site with advertising, etc. Most of us are out of work and need jobs creating the new web sites for the media companies anyway, it is a win-win situation.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Hate searching and printing them from online. I'll go nuts without my weekly coupons, and my supermarket fliers to plan my shopping.
It doesn't really sound like any thing really unfortunate was predicted.Some Darwinian natural selection applied to industry. News both printed and broadcast has more dis-information which is more to be feared than mis-information from bloggers.
The music industry? Good riddance to an unnecessary parasite.
Hollywood? Aside from modern special effects to detract attention from endlessly recycled storylines I don't see any contributions made by Gomorrah since the 60's. Any interesting filmmakers lurking there are capable of independent filmmaking with crap they have laying around the house and still make excellent movies.
As for all the jobs lost if Hollywood folds, I quote a movie" The world needs ditchdiggers too Danny" I figure someone can fill Californias need to repopulate jobs vacated by ejected aliens.
Hopefully Hollywood will fold before the music industry so they can get the jobs and we can watch music industry swine cannibalize their own before perishing a slow starving death.
Books don't really seem to take a hit here.
The cream will rise and the vanity books will stay small printings.Theres no replacing the experience of reading a good pulp book.(unless of course you find an actual paper edition)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Only he's not. He makes his money on the talk circuit, which he can do because he's a self-aggrandizing blowhard.
It's had multiple print runs, been published in both the US and the UK, where they've sold well, and has been nominated for and granted a range of literary awards.
For chrissakes, sales volume is not about quality; Lynne Spears' (no doubt ghostwritten) crap go on there higher than he did. Little Brother went on at #14, then #9, then barely crawled up to #8, probably in sole part because every boingboing reader with spawn anywhere within 2-3 degrees of themselves (ie, the neighbor's kid, their coworker's sister's kid, etc) bought a copy and forced it on the poor kid's parents, who most likely said "a book about a kid who gets interrogated by DHS? And starts hacking stuff?" and chucked it in the can and thankfully gave their kid some quality YA literature. His work is such a piece of shit, he had to get boingboing readers to buy copies and GIVE THEM to libraries because they wouldn't buy/print copies of their own:
My sincere thanks to all of you who talked about the book, gave it to your friends, sent it to teachers and librarians, and downloaded it -- you all helped make this the first-ever Creative Commons-licensed novel to get on the NYT list!
How fucking sad is that? If he wasn't editor of boingboing, nobody would have given the book even a first glance. Same as if Cmdr Taco wrote a book- it'd only have a prayer because of slashdot readers.
Also: FOUR HUNDRED PAGES. Jesus christ!
Checking the Boston Public Library catalog, all but one of the NINE copies in the system are sitting on the shelves.
Please help metamoderate.
Sorry to disappoint you, but it really started going downhill once they registered uid 547042...
against a brick wall and predicting it'll splatter after it leaves your hand.
Doctorow is hardly the first person to notice that the traditional content business models are breaking down. The difference between him and a newspaper CFO who's finding this out from the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet showing P&L is that Doctorow believes he's come up with a business model that works for him as a content provider and that CFO has a sinking feeling.
The difference between you and either Doctorow or a newspaper CFO? You haven't the remotest clue about how content providers make or lose money.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Did you think boing-boing appeared from nowhere? Or slashdot? The reasons why either site can be used as a commercial promotion tool is because handfuls of people built each site, and people came. In boing-boing's case, Cory was one of the handful.
You think slashdot useless? Why are you here?
Perhaps if you had anything worthwhile to say, you might be able to build a site around your own content with enough traffic to build a marketable community around. I expect hell to freeze over first.
The only real fail in that article is that Doctorow didn't project the impact of low-cost high-quality e-book readers on what he personally does for a living. I expect to see print books as a mass medium a decade from now just as much as I expect the horse and buggy to replace the auto for long-distance commuting.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Is that some new try at epaper I haven't heard of yet? Kind of like Kindle for current events? I hope they get their business model figred out up front. It costs a lot of money to gather and collect current events, for a product that's so ephemeral it might as well be radioactive.
I can't imagine trying to raise any venture capital for a startup with that goal.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What you ask for exists on the market today. The Sony Reader supports the latest open e-book format (EPUB), as well as TXT, RTF, and HTML, and syncs via USB as a Mass Storage device.
Runs for months on standby, and about a week or two of hour-a-day on-the-bus reading, in my personal unscientific experience.
Would not travel without it.
I don't want to worry about a penny for each article, post, or item I access.
I will pay one or two bucks for a year of access to website I like. If I really like the website that amount, divided by the number of articles, becomes a micropayment system.
I think that what people object to is to the idea of constantly checking the bill. Make people pay a small fee (very small) in a one off fashion (yearly I think is the one that would be more acceptable) and I think people would not object much.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There's a rash of hyperbolic commentary lately about the "death of newspapers" from people who have no idea what they're talking about.
snip...
snip...
snip...
I fully expect to see some big bankruptcies in the next several months. Journal Register Co. declared bankruptcy Saturday, following the overleveraged (Chicago) Tribune Co. and the Minneapolis Star Tribune in seeking protection from creditors. Some big dailies, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News, will close, along with a lot of weeklies.
But hundreds of other papers will continue to operate profitably.
snip...
snip...
snip...
Talk about split personality disorder. Contradict yourself in the same post...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
punching them in the face with useless WEB 2.0 to boot
I see you're a fan of the new comment system too.
In the city of Melbourne, (Victoria, Australia), a newspaper called MX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_(newspaper)) is available - for free - to all of the city communters from late afternoon as they start to leave the office and head home. Many people grab one as the enter the train/metro/subway station and read it on the train/tram as they travel home. Or if you're not interested in reading, there are crosswords, etc.
The quanitities in which they're printed mean that after hitting the streets at 3pm-ish, by sometime between 7pm and 8pm, you need to hunt around inside trains that come back into the city for copies that people have read but left on the train.
It has always been about the same size and has been through one life threatening moment. But for all those that say "print media is dead" (or dying), I look at this and wonder if that's really true.
I read it every day, do the sudoku, crossword and other puzzles that I have time for between when I get on and get off the train. I do this even though I carry a laptop because after 8 hours at work, when it is time to go home, I just don't want to stare at that screen any more. They have a captive audience, all looking for something else to do than stare at the person opposite them.
Would this work in the morning? No. The distribution of newspapers would need to be quite spread out to cover enough entry points into the rail network (vs the city "hub" for afternoon people going home.)
Doctorow makes his money from very large speaker fees. His "free" books are just advertising for the man himself. The more outspoken and controversial he is, the more young people will tune into him to reinforce their pirating ideals. Thus he becomes a more valuable property when trying to advertise to a young IT literate audience.
That's not to say he's talking 100% crap. But you do need to be realistic about what he is doing, and more importantly, why.
Well, that was an oversight on my part. In large markets independent weeklies are the only ones profiting or growing.
If anything, though, the success of small-circulation papers validates the strategy of "hyperlocalization"
Also, hyperlocalization might include catering to abstract communities rather than geophysical ones. Such media outlets will cater to the specific information needs of a given community. This is what magazines have done so successfully but they don't provide much in the way of news, or at least not immediate news, so there's a niche to be filled.
maybe if you had posted a link to that last one you wouldn't have been modded flaimbait...
Take a $40 handheld computer, add a free eBook software package. Handhelds don't have enough screen space to display more than one application at a time, so they're not distracting. I've been reading eBooks on my PDA since 2000... including yours, Cory.
The only problem is that the people making PDAs haven't twigged to the fact that they really CAN sell PDAs so they're cost-competitive with high school calculators, for a profit, and get the kind of early-adopter lock-in from high-school sales that Apple used to have. Palm was heading that way with the Zire but got confused about the business they were in and decided they had to compete head-to-head with Microsoft. That's not how they beat Microsoft in the '90s, so why they thought switching to a losing business model was a good idea, I can't imagine.
with this article is that it was kind of minimalist. Cory has been talking about this exact thing for a long time--so I'm not totally sure why it's news now, but I feel like he's done it better in the past. For those who disagree with his assessment based on this article; I advise you to read "Content", a collection of speeches that he's given where he talks about just this type of thing (it's free to download just like all of his other work).
The one thing that I think puts traditional print newspapers in danger of going under that I did not see mentioned in this specific article is that the internet puts them further behind the curve. Television news made "Breaking News" stories possible. The internet made "Breaking News" universal. Where television news can't afford to interrupt their programming every time a new story breaks it's on the internet immediately. Where traditional print media had an advantage over television news (which allowed them to co-exist) is that it allowed for more information, a five-page story in the times contains more data that is relevant to the story than a 5 minute television spot (which would actually be a pretty long spot--not that I've ever seen a five-page story in the times). The ease with which stories can be found on the internet actually allows for even more information than is available in print media. With the internet, I have the option to drill-down on the story, I can read stories about: the author of the story; the city that it took place in; the culture of that city; historic events that may have lead to this; etc.
So internet news does everything that print AND television news media does -- only better. I can get my information faster, on my own time, with more depth and the freedom to research and discover the story in the ways that I think are relevant. It's not like those traditional companies are going away -- there will still be a "New York Times" 20yrs from now--hell there'll probably still be a printed version of it--but most of the content will be online and since it'll still be coming from the "New York Times" you'll still have the same amount of trust (or dis-trust) for that information as you had before.
Cory's article was not about telling everyone that he has the answers; that he is culturally relevant and they are not. It was a warning to traditional media outlets about possible pitfalls in a future economy. As a science-fiction writer, one of Cory's job titles is "futurist", and just like Robert Heinlein before him, it's not a question of whether or not he's one-hundred percent accurate. What's more important is that he speaks with the voice of the present day. I'm sure that he won't be totally correct in his assumptions--because who ever is(?)--and I don't believe that he expects to be completely accurate either (and I say this as an admitted fan of his) but at least he said his piece.
p.s. Just before I wrote this, a representative of Amazon.com was on the today show talking about their e-book reader and how it's one of the main reasons that they're not slowing down in the weak economy. (print media what?)
The cost needs to come down quite a bit (to take the world). The Kindle looks like it is doing well enough that Amazon can justify the online side of it, but the market will be quite a bit bigger for a device that costs $200, more so at $100. Below that, and people will buy them on a whim. Hopefully it is achievable (the decrease in cost/square inch for lcds suggests that it will happen).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Let's enforce their business-models by law, like the RIAA and the MPAA managed to do with great success.
"Finally, they cost about $270 now and dropping. Be afraid."
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. Not only am I a writer, author, editor, and small publisher, but I was also there for either the start of the e-book revolution, or the first e-book revolution, depending on how you look at it. The e-book as it stands doesn't have a chance against the printed page.
And that has nothing to do with price, or even the often-cited emotion. If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that technology markets are not sentimental. If something better than the printed book showed up, the printed book would disappear close to overnight - mark my words. But something better hasn't yet shown up.
You're right that e-books are wonderful for travelling, but they have a lot of what you could call "barriers to entry" that are not related to price. Look at it this way - all you need to use a printed book is a light source, a pair of eyes, and a pair of hands. You don't need electricity; sunlight will do. When it comes to an e-book, though, you need a lot more.
No matter what, you need a power source - if you're travelling from one continent to another, you have to get adapter plugs for it just like you would any other type of appliance. You also need to worry about file formats - technology is always a moving target, and so you can't assume that the file format of today will be the same used thirty years from now. You have to worry about downloads, which means that you usually have to worry about DRM of some sort. And moving an e-book file is not necessarily possible because of that DRM; rather than being able to just move an e-book from one device to another, you may have to download a new copy; upgrading your e-book reader could result in you having to re-buy your entire library.
Compare that to a printed book, which is completely self-contained, will last for around thirty years or so before it might need repairs, and those repairs are probably going to be as simple as the light application of glue. They're easy to move around, you can loan them to friends or family without worrying about restrictions, and to top it all off, most of them are cheap. Price is just the icing on the cake.
So, considering that, you can see what Doctorow means when he says that an e-book is a poor substitute for the printed book.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Devices currently on the market including the Sony offerings and the Bookeen Cybook Gen3, currently support a variety of the usual formats, though I agree that the platforms aren't as open as I'd prefer. Mobile PDF and EPUB support will be available on the Bookeen in the 1st quarter of 2009.
PDF support has problematic in general because many PDFs are formatted for larger screen displays. Even though pdf is "supported", they are not very readable on the current low end readers. That said, Mobipocket provides free software (http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsCreator.asp) that does a fine job of converting text .pdfs to mobipocket format which is supported on most readers.
These things can last for months on a charge. I've read 7 or 8 full length novels on my Cybook without recharging.
for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for a cheap and easy-to-buy codex...
Me thinks the author is being a bit biased since this is what he writes. I hate to break it to you Cory but long-form narratives are EXACTLY what an e-book reader is good for.
I think Cory's talking about computer monitors and smart phone displays rather than things like the Kindle or (to a greater extent) e-Ink Readers which are designed to be easy on the eyes.
I've never had the luxury of doing it because e-Book Readers are too expensive for me, but if I can curl up in bed and comfortably digest books on them, I'd imagine Cory would agree this is a fine way to read.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Sure, daily newspapers are already suffering, not only from the Internet but also from free newspapers and TV.
Then again, nowadays their specialty is repackaged news from the likes of Reuters and AFP, sports news and celebrity gossip: all of which can be found on the Net where it is much more really time and even has more in-depth commenting (in the form of user comments, most of which are bad but some are good).
Worse, dailies have been cutting up in personnel and costs so they're much less likely to have hard-core investigative journalism articles and you rarely come across articles which have insightful views on the news of the moment.
At the moment, the only competitive advantage dailies have over TV and the Internet is that good old paper printed articles can be read anywhere anytime and even that is under attack by eBooks.
Now weeklies, on the other hand are a whole different breed: they can't compete with dailies in "real-time reporting" of news so they go for investigative journalism, in-depth coverage and in-depth analysis of news. Real journalism like that (as opposed to just reporting) is medium independent and not something that can be replaced by user-produced content (a million clueless amateurs can never replace a journalist with years of experience in a specific domain).
Weeklies are not likely to go down anytime soon.
"... could only afford to embed reporters in dusty warzones..."
The problem is that this is the only war reporting we get these days.
They can't even take pictures of bodies or caskets. You may think
pictures like that are too gruesome to be shown, but pictures of that
kind shown on the home front are exactly what led to the end of the
War in Vietnam.
Censored news of any kind is worthless. People eventually just tune it out.
From here on out, a "doctorow" is slang for someone who brazenly predicts the past.
The one thing newspapers still have that is hard to beat with the web: coupons. Many stores have stopped taking printed-out online coupons due to forgery. Don't laugh - I know many women who are into hardcore "couponing:" they buy several Sunday papers each week, usually one per family member, and carefully organize and annotate their coupons, knowing exactly which stores will double or triple what and when. They often manage to get their family's groceries for nearly-free, plus the cost of the papers and the massive time spent (which is why this tends to be a hobby for stay-at-home-moms).
No, it likely won't be enough to save newspapers in the long run, nor does it really help beyond Sundays, but it's one small advantage they do have over the web... maybe one that they should think harder about leveraging?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
As more and more bloggers and online news sources lower themselves and write in the inflammatory trolling style of FOX or the SUN in order to get advertising pennies from community participation, punching them in the face with useless WEB 2.0 to boot, loyal readers enter their thirties and stop caring about the circle jerk because the have to prioritize their time better, like having and raising kids
The problem with this that it assumes:
1. There are no more people who are going to be in the age range from 20-30.
2. And that a large part of the 30 sometimes choose to have kids.
As seen in Europe, more and more people are choosing just to not have kids. The same thing is happening in US (just on a smaller scale).
Either way, there are always going to be more 20somethings to fill the game so I don't see why this is a valid point.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
One question I want to raise here is price. Doctorow mentions the difficulties that a $300 million movie would have in breaking even. I want to know why that movie would have to cost $300 million in the first place.
I know everybody isn't a fan of this series, but take the Underworld movies for a moment. They may not be high art, but they look great, the acting is decent, the stories are generally well-written, and they are stylish as hell. The budgets (from the IMDB) are as follows:
Underworld: $22 million (approx)
Underworld Evolution: $50 million
Underworld Rise of the Lycans: $35 million
Compare this to a movie picked at random out of a hat, the Steve Martin 2006 Pink Panther movie, which was NOT an FX movie. Its budget was $80 million. Anybody else think it could probably have been done for $30 million?
Frankly, Underworld itself looked better than a few movies I've seen with budgets three-to-five times as large. It also broke even a lot easier than a more expensive FX movie that would have looked just as good.
There are two-parters from Doctor Who (such as Impossible Planet/Satan Pit) that look movie-quality, and cost a fraction of what a big budget movie would cost right now. So, I think the question is a serious one for the survival of the industry - assuming that a movie has to make two dollars for every dollar spent to be in the black, how can it afford to be making movies that require a gross take of $600 million in order to succeed? And how can $300 million be justified as a starting budget on any movie?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
...People will ever care what ral8158 has to say? He'll ever be around?
No. Not for real.
Have you looked at the Sony PRS-505? Both my fiancee and I own one (I bought one for her as a present, and borrowed it so often that I ended up buying my own), and it satisfies most of what you're asking for. It's not technically "open", but there are examples of people modifying it anyway, and it doesn't require any proprietary software to be installed on your PC. You plug it in, and it shows up as a drive, same as a USB key would. Put the books in the right folder and you're done.
It supports quite a few formats natively, and there's a wonderful open-source program named calibre that will convert/format many other things to the best formats for it. Battery life is great, reading 3-4 hours a day it'll easily last over a week without charging. I'd at least give it a look, I don't really have any complaints about mine.
One thing to note is that Sony has put out a new model, the PRS-700, but it's generally considered to be inferior to the 505. They modified the screen to add touch capabilities and a backlight, and it's not nearly as nice to read on.
Sturgeon was an optimist.
BoingBoing is also primarily just advertising for the man himself. And stuff about crocheted robots. And porn.
And what is boing boing?
.
Hence,
Answer: media in print, movies, musics will be around for a long time. Where as Mr. Doctorow will be here for what another 75years?
You claimed his work lacked commercial success. You were shown to be conclusively wrong.
Concede the point, or sit down, shut up and let the grown ups talk.
And that has nothing to do with price
I think price is the sole reason right now e-readers aren't replacing the printed page.
Look at it this way - all you need to use a printed book is a light source, a pair of eyes, and a pair of hands. You don't need electricity; sunlight will do. When it comes to an e-book, though, you need a lot more.
Actually that's all you need with the Kindle too, except for the occasional charge. They last a long time because of their passive display.
No matter what, you need a power source - if you're travelling from one continent to another, you have to get adapter plugs for it just like you would any other type of appliance.
I don't think trans-continental travel will be a deciding factor :)
You also need to worry about file formats - technology is always a moving target, and so you can't assume that the file format of today will be the same used thirty years from now. You have to worry about downloads, which means that you usually have to worry about DRM of some sort.
All this can be said for movies and music too. Cory takes the stance that the Internet will just copy around DRM. And it's true, you can find DRM-free formats of just about anything you want. People won't be so concerned about having a printed book 30 years from now as having a free, instant access book on their e-reader.
When ebook readers get cheap enough (so cheap that they will GIVE THEM AWAY when you buy a few ebooks) and they have the same format as real books (similar size, type setting, and just as easy on the eyes and weigh no more than a typical hard cover novel) then they will become common. Maybe they would be able to let you select the print size so as to emulate large print books and even show two pages at once and hinge in the middle (like a real book), just to make readers feel more comfortable.
"All this can be said for movies and music too. Cory takes the stance that the Internet will just copy around DRM. And it's true, you can find DRM-free formats of just about anything you want. People won't be so concerned about having a printed book 30 years from now as having a free, instant access book on their e-reader."
At the current growth rate, 30 years from now the e-book MIGHT have gotten up to 10% of the market share, making it competitive with audiobooks. As it stands, in the last nine years, the e-book has yet to break 1% of the total book market. I know - I've been following e-book sales recently.
Two things you have to keep in mind here - first, I've had a long time to think about it. My first book sale was supposed to be a major e-book that would break open the market. It had everything it needed except for me not being Stephen King. It flopped instead...and so did every other e-book released alongside it. I've had a long time to try to figure out why, and I have never bought the "sentimental attachment to paper" that a lot of people bring out.
Second, I run a publishing company. I don't get bonus points for making decisions based on ideology - I have to go with what the market is actually doing. The Association of American Publishers tracks book sales for the entire domestic American market every month. As I said, in 9 years, the e-book hasn't managed to creep past 1% of book sales. Why?
Requiring new technology is not a major barrier. DVD overtook VHS with ease, but you can't play a DVD on a VCR - you need a separate player. Even as the price was going down, the DVD offered far more than VHS could. It was a more robust format, it lasted longer, and it could just do more. Regardless of having to buy a new player, it made watching movies easier - no rewinding required, no magnetic degradation, and a smaller physical product.
If DVDs can overtake the VHS while a good DVD player costs around $300 at the time (I know, that's the time when I got my first DVD player), then surely if the e-book was better, more robust, and easier to use, it would be able to do the same to the printed book. And yet, it hasn't. Around a decade in, and the market has pretty much rejected it as anything other than a handy way to read a book or two while travelling. Why?
Put simply, the e-book fails to improve on the printed book on just about every level. Rather than making it simpler, it adds complications. Let's look at it point for point:
1. Robustness. If you buy a printed book, so long as you treat it properly, it can last for over a century. I have books on my shelf that are around 50 years old, and all I have to do to read them is to open them up (I also have a couple that are over 100 years old, although those are treated with far more care). With the e-book, however, you have to worry about data corruption, and file format changes. An e-book reader is technology, and technology advances - it also breaks down. The number of things that can go wrong with a printed book are fairly few and far between - the number of things that can go wrong with an e-book are considerably higher in number.
2. Ease of use. Here the e-book and the printed book are a bit closer, but which is better depends on consumption. When it comes to a novel or history book, a printed book is far more accessible and easy to use - all you have to do is open it to the page you want and read. Something like a technical manual does better as an electronic file - search functions will make it easier to use than a printed index. So, here they are about even, but even does not make the e-book better. Again, the e-book fails to improve across the board.
3. Just plain better: the printed book takes it easily. It is completely self-contained, and easy to use. Any part of it can be referenced at any time, and you don't need any equipment to use it. The e-book adds an equipment requirement that was not there before, which makes it a harder sell. When you look at VHS vs. DVD, both r
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I've got an iRex iLiad - only gives me a day on a charge if left on, but it is Linux based and some of the bundled software is open source too. Reads PDFs like a charm - I now become annoyed on paper books for their inherent wish to close themselves if I don't hold them open...
I can also write on it, making it useful for work (reading and noting on papers) and of course for solving puzzles like Sudoku. :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At the current growth rate, 30 years from now the e-book MIGHT have gotten up to 10% of the market share, making it competitive with audiobooks. As it stands, in the last nine years, the e-book has yet to break 1% of the total book market. I know - I've been following e-book sales recently.
Has a modern, viable e-reader been available at a reasonable price for the last 9 years? The Kindle was only introduced a little over a year ago. It's still a luxury item when you consider that you can buy a netbook for the same price. But as these things do, the technology will improve and the price will come down.
3. Just plain better: the printed book takes it easily. It is completely self-contained, and easy to use. Any part of it can be referenced at any time, and you don't need any equipment to use it.
Alternatively, an e-book can be downloaded instantly and for free instead of having to go out and buy it or wait for it to be shipped. I don't have to dedicate space to store each book. I can copy them around and thus preserve perfect working copies instead of having them worn down over time. No heavy books. Easy search. So instead of keeping track of many books I have one device to keep track of, that's self-contained and easy to use.
E-readers just need to come down in price. People are willing to pay a fair amount for a quality movie experience in their home. An e-reader will have to be considerably cheaper for mass adoption. Personally I would love one at $100, but with a screen the size of a magazine. I expect within 5 years that should be available. These guys are on the right track.
"If productivity meant anything, a worker would earn the same living standard as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week."
Now back to your regularly scheduled MSM bashing which I happen to agree with, I just hope investigative reporting doesn't become a causality of this. And no investigative reporting doesn't have to be U.S. or even western based as Al Jareeza shows but it does require some major money to keep reporters on the ground, etc.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
"Has a modern, viable e-reader been available at a reasonable price for the last 9 years?"
In a word, yes. There have been several. On a very basic level, there's the PC, the laptop, and quite a number of readers from quite a few companies. There's also the Palm Pilot, cell phones, and variations.
"Alternatively, an e-book can be downloaded instantly and for free instead of having to go out and buy it or wait for it to be shipped."
Except for the up-front cost of e-book reader, and the price of the book if it's a new one. Aside from which, availability is a side issue - we're talking about technical merits.
"I don't have to dedicate space to store each book."
Yes you do - you're just dedicating space on the reader, which requires electricity and maintenance. And if your reader goes down, you run the risk of losing the contents of it.
"I can copy them around and thus preserve perfect working copies instead of having them worn down over time."
Until your reader breaks down or needs to be upgraded, and suddenly you find out that the format has changed, so you have to get all of your book files again.
"No heavy books."
That is the one merit on this list that is objectively true.
"Easy search."
Apples and oranges - certain books are searched in certain ways, and others are searched in other ways. A dictionary would be easier to use electronically, yes, but a novel isn't consumed that way.
"So instead of keeping track of many books I have one device to keep track of, that's self-contained and easy to use."
And if it ever gets stolen, your entire library goes with it.
Understand something - I was there at the beginning of this entire thing. I've heard all of these arguments before. In 2000, they might have been convincing. Today, history has already spoken. For ten years, they haven't made a difference. E-books were made easier to read on home computers and laptops - the market still wouldn't buy them. Just about every handheld device out there was rigged to be able to handle e-books, from phones to palm pilots. Lots of little phone games sold, but not too many e-books.
You're looking for this magic bullet that will make the printed book disappear. I'm not sure why - frankly, you're treating the printed book and the e-book as mutually exclusive. They're not. The e-book has a lot of strengths, which you have listed. That makes it a wonderful complement to the printed book. But it does NOT make it a replacement. The printed book has one thing that the e-book doesn't, and simply cannot complete with: simplicity.
Let me put it to you this way - take the screwdriver. There are lots of electric drills out there, and have been for years. But there are a lot more good, old fashioned screwdrivers. Both can do the same job, and the power drill has all sorts of features that add value, but the screwdriver is just simpler and easier. So it's still around - one did not replace the other.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Besides, why give up all the job's benefits!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
On a very basic level, there's the PC, the laptop, and quite a number of readers from quite a few companies. There's also the Palm Pilot, cell phones, and variations.
None of those devices make good e-readers. Sitting in front of your PC is not the same as curling up with a book. Laptops are hot, heavy, and have an awkward form factor compared to a book. Palm pilots and cell phones are too small and take too much battery. E Ink devices are still very new and it's only been in the past couple of years where you can say there is a reader comparable to a book.
Except for the up-front cost of e-book reader, and the price of the book if it's a new one. Aside from which, availability is a side issue - we're talking about technical merits.
We've been talking about price and convenience. You can't ignore instant downloading, and in the context of the article where the Internet eats your business, downloading for free. As I said, the up-front price for e-readers need to come way down, but it seems quite likely that they will, as display technology keeps on getting better and cheaper all the time.
And if it ever gets stolen, your entire library goes with it.
You really aren't getting the whole digital thing and Internet thing, where everything can be copied cheaply and can be downloaded for free from the Internet.
I've heard all of these arguments before. In 2000, they might have been convincing. Today, history has already spoken. For ten years, they haven't made a difference.
You have an early industry mindset. Up until a couple of years ago, there hasn't been a device that could replace a book. This thing is just getting started.
The printed book has one thing that the e-book doesn't, and simply cannot complete with: simplicity.
An e-reader will be simple enough that people aren't going to buy the media in print form when they are comfortable with using an e-reader. There's just far too much overlap to be worth it.
"An e-reader will be simple enough that people aren't going to buy the media in print form when they are comfortable with using an e-reader. There's just far too much overlap to be worth it."
I'll believe it when I see it.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Neither you nor the other objectors in this thread have pointed out exactly why making money from speaking fees is bad. "Being realistic" about the man requires analysis of his message, which I'm not seeing anyone in this thread actually do. Please do cite your sources, provide cogent arguments countering what Doctorow is saying, and be specific. I have done this in my grandparent response to one of the responses to Doctorow.
Digital Citizen
Link to teenagers getting it in the butt.
Thz!
Actually, I will add one thing...
"You have an early industry mindset. Up until a couple of years ago, there hasn't been a device that could replace a book. This thing is just getting started."
No, I don't have an early industry mindset. I have a present-day industry mindset. And, funnily enough, you're repeating pretty much exactly what people were saying back in 2000.
I right now use e-books for free advertising. If you go onto my website, you'll find an e-book sample of the opening of every new book I've published, and a full e-book of each reprint (there's one right now, but more are coming). So, I don't ignore e-books at all - I make active use of them.
However, the e-book market share is too small for it to be worth my time as a small publisher to take the considerable effort required to reformat these books for the Kindle. And I check up on the market share every couple of months. If the e-book gets up to 10% or higher of the market share, it will become worthwhile for me to start producing commercial e-books.
There's nothing backwards about doing stuff this way. You're talking in sweeping terms about massive changes to a market that not only have not happened, but have been predicted before and failed to happen. And there are indicators that can be used to track this - in the time that the Kindle was available, the e-book market grew steadily (it has actually been doing that since they were brought out), but very slowly in comparison to the rest of the book market.
Now, let's look at some actual stats here. Doing a search, I've been able to pull e-book net sales figures from 2002 to 2008. Please note, the Kindle was released at the end of 2007:
http://www.openebook.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm
Okay, so the release of the Kindle may have an impact on the sales - there is certainly a change in the sales rate as of the beginning of 2008 (of course, correlation is not causation, and there are other e-book readers that were released at the same time). The sales rate increased over the course of 2008. So, consumption certainly increased. All this means that the e-book is a growing market.
The question lies in what will happen now. The release of the Kindle 2 may help push sales further, but I want to point out a trend in the sales figures - after each growth spurt, there has been a flattening out and sometimes a drop - this happens in 2005, and it happens in 2007. So, past history suggests that sometime in 2009 or 2010 there will be another flattening out and possible drop.
Let's do some number crunching. What were the actual growth rates between these quarters for 2008? Doing the math, we get:
Q1: 23%
Q2: 15%
Q3: 20%
Q4: 21%
So, the highest growth in the past 5 quarters has been between Q4 2007 and Q1 2008. Otherwise, the growth is hovering at between 15-21%. That's nothing to sneeze at, but that's far from taking over the industry in the next ten years. And, as I said, we've seen a 4 month period of growth followed by a flattening out before.
Now, the point I'm trying to make in my long-winded, statistics-laden way is that this is far from a settled matter. You're predicting the death of the printed book based on a growing market representing less than 1% of the total book market, a market that is seeing steady growth, but also having an established pattern of growth followed by a flattening out. All of the evidence suggests that the e-book is going to become like the audiobook - a strong complement to the printed book, but not a replacement. The indicators that you would expect to see at this point in time for a dramatic change - a substantial and sustained drop in print book sales followed by an equal and sustained rise in e-book sales, along with the expected growth rate, simply isn't present.
Compare with DVD sales, for a moment - this is a case where there was a replacement of one product with another - the DVD was introdu
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
However, the e-book market share is too small for it to be worth my time as a small publisher to take the considerable effort required to reformat these books for the Kindle. And I check up on the market share every couple of months. If the e-book gets up to 10% or higher of the market share, it will become worthwhile for me to start producing commercial e-books.
I've seen a claim that when both formats (printed and ebook) are available, 10% of sales are ebook. Beats me if that's accurate or not.
The scary proposition for publishers, and in the context of the Cory's article, is that people use e-readers but don't buy books. They go straight for illegal downloads. That is, after all, what Cory is claiming for movies and music. He thinks only the lack of a cheap e-reader will save print books.
I think for sure a good e-reader will be available within 5 years. On the other hand, I'm very uncertain how the ultimate battle for copyright on the Internet will turn out. Anyways, I'm done pontificating. We'll see what happens.
"I've seen a claim [kindleboards.com] that when both formats (printed and ebook) are available, 10% of sales are ebook. Beats me if that's accurate or not."
Thank you for posting that - it's interesting, although I have to admit, it's damned difficult to decipher. I imagine it is accurate, but what does it mean? The actual quote is:
"In 14 months, for the 230,000 titles that we have Kindle additions, Kindle unit sales already represent more than 10 percent of Amazonâ(TM)s total sales in those 230,000 titles. We spent 14 years building our physical books business. And in just 14 months, this is already 10 percent. So we are all very surprised that it is being adopted so quickly."
But 10% of what? Money sales, or units moved? If it's money sales, what is the spread across the books - is it an even spread? If it is units moved, the number becomes meaningless very quickly - a quick look at the Kindle Store bestseller list shows that the #1 bestseller is being sold for free, same with #3, 12, 15, 17, and 25. That completely skews the numbers - and to this day, Amazon still won't tell anybody how many Kindle units have sold.
I'm sorry, but I do find this suspicious - at least with the AAP I've got some solid numbers to play with...this is too much along the "just trust us" line to be trustworthy...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive