![]() ![]() And, in the process, you sidestep messy DRM issues. Sell access to books stored in the cloud, and you own your customer for life. ![]() In the dark ages, Irish monks tethered bibles by book chains to make them harder for the Viking marauders to make off with them. If you don't own your customer data, you don't own very much today. It's about customer data, so you can sell them more stuff. It's no longer about the number of copies available. Publishers need to collect data on who is buying their books. A key reason for giving away an eBook with a pbook during the "first sale" window is to tether the reader to the publisher - not Amazon or Apple. Publishers need to get to know their customers better. Ignoring that fact can be fatal to the publishing industry. Currently, Amazon and Apple, who are unwilling to share customer data with you, know your customer better than you do. While consumers are reading your eBooks, you can be reading them, since you will have established a digital relationship with them. Then hold back the digital only version for 60 or 90 days. It will encourage the sale of the pbook and stimulate word of mouth. How do you compete with digital behemoths? With each pbook purchased at a local bookstore, or purchased online, include a free content access code that lets the consumer register that book and access the digital version online. When will the alarm sound? Amazon and Apple are not your customers, they are your competitors. I don't think the publishing industry is doing a very good job of balancing the interests of bookstores on the one hand, and Amazon and Apple on the other hand. The motion picture industry understands that they have to balance the interests of theater owners and the home video market if they are to maintain both a healthy home video and theatrical market for their wares. When a studio considers shortening the time between theatrical release and home video release, they take into consideration the fact that they may be weakening ticket sales, as the audience for the movie may simply wait for the convenience of the less expensive home video release. In the movie business, a 'window' is the time between when a movie ends its run in movie theaters and begins its release on home video, television or elsewhere. Leonard Shatzkin (i.e., Shatzkin the Elder) said it best, "The retail price of any commodity should depend more on the value the buyer places on the product than on the cost to the producer." So, how does the industry create the appearance of value? That's what the remarkable - and successful - campaign to adopt agency pricing was about. That seems destructive to both traditional book retailers and overhead-burdened book publishers.Ĭheap prices devalues literature. With eBooks you don't have to negotiate with retailers to get them into stores, and consumers don't have to leave their homes. However, traditional publishers have elected to publish print books and eBooks at the same time. It is my contention that anything that weakens the sale of bound books sold through traditional brick and mortar stores, threatens the traditional publishing model.
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