Subscribe to RSS 2.0As music, so books?
As you know, I'm one of those people who think you can discern occasional omens about the future of books by pawing through the entrails of the music and movie industries. I found this Businessweek article about the rise of Spotify very interesting on that score. Because Spotify (Wikipedia entry) lets people listen to lots of different music, often for free, it was a struggle to get the big music companies on board with it. But one of the juicier carrots the Spotify folks could dangle in front of sceptical music-biz execs was the banquet of data their service could offer about who is listening to which songs, where and when. Moreover, their data allows them to look at what effect promotional efforts are having in real time, while their artist is on that talk show or their Super Bowl ad is running. Imagine the possibilities.
Now, perhaps I'm being doing them an injustice, but 'data hungry' isn't a term I would apply to most of the publishing industry. I'm probably being unfair, but I often meet publishing folk who want less analysis, innovation and clever marketing. They want the world of books to calm down (and ideally go backwards a bit), not whizz off into the future. And (again, I'm probably being unfair) I think many publishing folk would rather exercise their own personal judgement about which titles to commission and promote rather than be led around by what the 'usage data' from their books might tell them they should be doing. But, be that as it may, what has happened with Spotify is possible (and probably already happens to a limited extent) with e-books. When enough readers buy their books electronically, we'll be able to watch their reading whims in real-time. In theory you could get so granular that you could buy ad-space on a single bus-stop in Reading and watch to see what that does to local sales (at different times of the day, even!). And you could look at charts showing you the point in a book when the maximum number of readers abandoned it. Or who stayed up until 3am to finish it - and then downloaded the sequel. If that data were at least partially anonymised obtaining info of that sort might not even seem overly voyeuristic.
Publishing is not alone in treating each sale as a success - even if the reader later regretted their purchase - because gathering usable feedback has been so difficult. It'll be interesting, once we're in a position to know a great deal more about what our readers like, want and genuinely enjoy to see what we do with that information.
Comments: 6
More and more I'm starting to think that print books are the LPs of the future, to be stacked at the back of a store specialising in e-readers, with collectors alone gathered around their dusty old shelves.
But, from what I've seen so far, e-readers are still not for me. Shall I too become a relic, getting my pulp horror fix from second hand bookshops?
Posted by: WayneSimmons on July 20, 2011 10:55 AM
I was once a published author who then got all my rights back, e-published my entire backlist and then stood back to see what would happen. I was at that time totally against e-books, couldn't see that they would take off and loved reading 'real books' (I still do). I never thought I'd get readers in the e-book market or- if I did there wouldn't be that many.
A year and a half later, I'm looking at more than 20000 sales (10000 of those for my romantic comedy 'Fresh Powder) and lately, when I offered my co-written detective story for free for a week, got 30000 downloads and great sales once it was back to the regular price.
I'm astonished at both my own success and the explosion in the e-book market. I know publishers feel a little negative and even quite angry at the success of indie authors. But you can't stop progress so isn't it better to embrace it , rather than complain?
What we want are more people reading and enjoying books and e-book readers have made that possible.
Posted by: Susanne O'Leary on July 20, 2011 11:46 AM
I have a suspicion that publishers kind of know how disappointed they'd be in that data if they could get it. If they learned how many people wanted to read Stieg Larsson instead of Michael Ondaatje. If they discovered how often Booker Prize winners were being traded back and forth as gifts but never actually cracked open and read. I think they'd prefer to jam their fingers in their ears and squeeze their eyes shut and "la la la" about the actual data that would result from such mining.
In Hollywood, sometimes art gets made and mostly populist stuff gets made. It's not a model that artists like (makes it a lot harder for your art to get seen), and it's a model that aficionados lament, but it's what you do if you want to make fistfuls of money. I think publishers are too close to artists/aficionados in mindset to really accept it as a workable model.
Posted by: KatharineC on July 20, 2011 01:04 PM
Thanks for your brainy thoughts, Wayne and Kat. And hearty congratulations, Susanne! That's a great story. In all industries, if the producers (=artists/authors) and the consumers (fans/readers) are happy, who are the middlemen to complain.
Posted by: Rob on July 20, 2011 04:02 PM
Thank you Rob. Im delighted myself, after some of my being rejected by publishers because 'it wouldn't sell'. But hey, they were wrong they are selling big time. And I have now a good platform, direct contact with my readers and no one else sharing my considerable profits. It's a win-win for self-published authors.
Posted by: Susanne O'Leary on July 20, 2011 07:51 PM
I love Spotify. I use it all the time but I have the free version and currently do not download, only stream music when working on my PC. I'm sure this will change in time however the truth as it stands is that I used to spend over £100 a month on music cds and these days I probably don't even spend that in a year. It might be because I was a bachelor then and now I'm married with kids. But it's also because of Spotify. The only time I listen to music away from my pc (I can crank up the speakers on it when I'm moving around the house - my poor stereo is largely ignored) is in the car, where I'm still using the CD player and this is where I still need that rack of CDs I amassed in my twenties...
Posted by: Danny Rhodes on August 12, 2011 11:39 AM