Comment by cliveowen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cliveowen | Hacker News Reader

A few weeks ago Jon Evans of TechCrunch said this:

"Despite my techie contempt for their business practices, I really do want traditional publishers to survive, because their employees — unlike, I suspect, Amazon’s — tend to genuinely love books in the same way that I do, and because good editors are worth their weight in gold. But it’s hard to see how they can thrive fighting like this. In the long run their only real hope is to disrupt the Kindle ecosystem with a paid subscription model — a “Beats for books,” if you will.

I’m not sure how successful that will be. Books are not like songs. But it’s hard to see where else their future lies. Never mind the current Amazon vs. Hachette skirmish; that’s just a sideshow. Book publishers essentially conceded their long war with Amazon before it ever began, without even knowing what they were doing." [1]

Looks like he was spot on, and it looks like Amazon won the whole war.

EDIT: It looks like he predicted this almost a year ago in another article:

"With luck we’re entering a world in which readers have access to any and every book for a flat fee; authors get paid depending on how much they’re actually read; publishers remain a vital but decreasingly visible part of the process; physical books are still available via online print-on-demand and niche physical stores; and zillions of CC-licensed books are freely available to readers in the poor world who can’t yet afford books or subscription services. Call me Pollyanna, but it seems to me that that’s a win for absolutely everyone." [2]

And I have to agree, this looks like a big win for everyone.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/14/the-only-tragedy-of-this-wa...

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/07/its-almost-time-to-throw-ou...

That's a great quote from Jon Evans, and it fits well with Steve Yegge's perspective on Jeff Bezos:

"I mean, imagine what it would be like to start off as an incredibly smart person, arguably a first-class genius, and then somehow wind up in a situation where you have a general’s view of the industry battlefield for ten years. Not only do you have more time than anyone else, and access to more information than anyone else, you also have this long-term eagle-eye perspective that only a handful of people in the world enjoy."

Jeff Bezos is playing chess simultaneously with a number of industries and so far he seems to be winning.

do you have a link to that quote? i'd like to read more

https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...

via google

He's not winning across the board; Kindle Fire has not significantly impacted the tablet market (I think it has actually lost share recently), and no one expects their phone to do so either.

And while Amazon has a good digital media business, it would be a stretch to say that they are beating Google or Apple in that space. Only in books does Amazon have a strong digital media share.

> Kindle Fire has not significantly impacted the tablet market

I don't think that's the point of it. Tablets and phones are insurance policies for Amazon; so that they can have some minimal leverage with Apple and Google going into any negotiating table. I don't think it's a coincidence that they started working on them when Apple started messing with the Kindle app.

It's only a win to the degree that authors get paid enough for how much they're read. The pricing structure is fine, but the actual constant factors -- how much money authors get -- is critical.

It's not exactly a huge win for authors, but you never know. While the business of selling millions of individual copies of a books might go away, the opportunity to grow an audience and leverage that is a different thing.

The authors who figure out how to leverage more than just selling a book are the ones who will do well. The ones who don't build an audience will likely fail at a higher rate than they did previously.

Do you see someone other than publishers providing risk capital for authors to live while writing?

Personally, I'm not convinced that risk capital is really that beneficial for writers. The vast majority of aspiring writers either don't finish or don't write something people want to read. (I don't mean that to be harsh, it's just that good writing is very hard and since there's so much of it already out there, competition for the reader's time is fierce.)

At the same time, the capital needed to write is virtually nothing. All it takes is time. Editing, proofreading, and cover design are legitimate, important costs, too, but even those aren't that huge. And they only come into play once the book is written, which means most won't reach that threshold.

I, of course, want great writers to be able to devote all of their time to that and not have to work a day job. But I think having to write your first book or two in your "spare" time is an acceptable way to separating the wheat from the chaff.

In other words, write a book or two in your free time. The money you get from those will be your risk capital for your next work.

There's really no need to talk about "enough", "acceptable", etc.

It's very simple - if there's less money available for a first book, less people will do it. This means that there will almost certainly be less authors, therefore almost certainly less great authors (though it's probably not linear).

Not to say you're wrong, just that talking about "I think it's sufficient" masks the fact that it doesn't matter what you think, there will in effect be less great books written.

There's already very little money available for first books, relative to the many many people who give it a shot. I've worked at a number of publishers and trust me, the "slush pile" is always huge, always growing, and always hopeless. The other poster is correct that most writers will never finish, but more than enough still do.

Most of the risk capital in publishing is in the promotion, not the writing.

Angel investors and incubators provide basically the same service, but rarely for books. I wonder why that is? There have been a number of books/series that I can think of that have spawned $100M+ valuations - Harry Potter, Hunger Games, 50 shades of gray, Jurassic Park, Song of Ice and Fire. If you include comics, then the list just goes on: Superman, Spiderman, Batman, X-men, Watchmen, etc.

In the long run their only real hope is to disrupt the Kindle ecosystem with a paid subscription model — a “Beats for books,” if you will.

Not sure what "Beats" means in this context - essentially he's talking about Netflix for Books, yes? I'd also love this, not least because most publishers still adamantly refuse to drop DRM and the paid-subscription all-you-can-eat model is pretty much the only one (aside from rental, which isn't going to happen) where I consider DRM to be morally defensible.

But I just don't see it happening. We'd just end up with a separate subscription service per publisher/imprint; it's the way they think. It's as if the whole concept of convenience isn't even on their radar.

He was referring to Beats Music, a Spotify/Rdio alternative [1].

[1]: https://account.beatsmusic.com/

"essentially he's talking about Netflix for Books, yes? [...] But I just don't see it happening."

already happened: http://www.scribd.com multiple publishers - not all, but neither does any music service provide "all".

Also there is https://www.oysterbooks.com/ which I was using for awhile but didn't have the time....

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