Businessweek has a good feature called "Book Publishers: Learn From Digg, Yelp—Even Gawker: Book publishing could keep itself vital by taking a page from Web 2.0 technologies, but it has a long way to go..."
The first amazing thing they mention is this:
"Amazon (AMZN)
is laughing now. The Kindle, a device that lets people download, store,
and of course read books in a digital format, could become a $1.1
billion business for the company next year, accounting for 4% of sales,
according to a widely read Aug. 11 note by Citigroup..."
So Amazon has succeeded of building a nice new business by making something that was fixed, physical and controlled by scarcity into something that is LIQUID and can flow easily. Once the Kindle's display technology improves, some of the (no doubt publisher-mandated) security provisions are loosened, the design is improved, various little bugs are ironed out, and it works worldwide (3G/4G, Wifi, Wimax?), it will be huge, no doubt. Yes, of course, that's quite a list, but Bezos will do it!
And then, what's next: maybe a flat rate for digital books (ha: books like water..?), both paid-for in cash and paid-for in attention (i.e. next- generation advertising) - and there will be many variations of such a flatrate depending on location, culture, legal frameworks. But just imagine a digital book flat rate in China - just like Google is making music 'free' in China, as you read this, maybe Amazon will make books 'feel-like-free' in Asia, as well.
Sarah Lacy at Business Week offers some more good input for publishers to stay relevant:
- Make it social
- Take book tours out of the stores
- Create stars—don't just exploit existing ones
- Go digital from the get-go
