Why can't we dominate the whole book publishing industry by implementing
the books that we write as ebooks (format undefined) and giving them
away for free?
After all, books are "software". They aren't programming, but they are
software. So why can't we implement an open source model for our books.
Of course, we might have to give up making any money on authorship (or
so it appears). But the publishing companies are taking that away from
us anyway. And, if we are accusing the publishers of greed, then we
should be willing to step up and shed ours too. At least this could put
authors on at least the same power footing as publishers. Perhaps this
could lead to a takeover of the publishing industry by an open source
movement - and the disruption could produce some emergent phenomenon
that is unforeseen at this point.
Obviously, this is naive and I'm just dreaming... but what else is our
alias for anyway!O:-)
Another wrinkle to an open source play is a reflection of what has
happened in the software world. Institutional customers (corporations,
companies, schools) do NOT want a free version of software, for a number
of reasons. (They want, support, guarantees, etc.) Thus, the free
versions of open source software end up playing the role of going to
individuals, some of whom are "recommenders" to their institutional
bosses, but the institutions end up paying for a priced version. Thus,
open source ends up "driving adoption" for paid versions, to
institutions, while individuals end up with free stuff. These dynamics
end up satisfying almost all stakeholder.
...Something to think about.
Grant
On 4/20/12 12:13 PM, Pamela McCorduck wrote:
It would be difficult for me, after having published ten books, to be
completely impartial when I review the business model of book
publishing, but perhaps I could summarize by saying these people
figured out 1% - 99% long before Wall Street. Information technologies
only exacerbated what was already unsustainable.
On Apr 20, 2012, at 1:55 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
I think the fundamental problem is that the economies of scale are
collapsing. And I (tin foil hat in hand) tend to think it's a function
of population growth, resource depletion, and non-local homogenization
brought about by information technologies.
Music is a good example. The recent surge we've seen in homogenized
musicians (pop stars and reality shows like American Idol) is the last
dying gasp of cultural economies of scale. Sure, we _might_ fall into
some pattern where very rapid waves of fame ripple over the globe. But
my prediction is the opposite. Movements like slow food and buy local
will show up in more and more cultural domains. Pirated IP and
micro-payments for copyrighted materials are symptoms of the collapse.
Not only does it no longer make sense for me to pay $15 for a CD (or
$100 for a book), but it also doesn't make sense for me to buy, say, a
band saw when I can walk over to the neighborhood shared tool shed and
use that one. Similarly, why pay a bunch of money for a fossilized form
of knowledge from, say, an English cosmologist when I can chat with my
local cosmologist over a pint?
Because the US is still sparsely populated and places like Lubbock, TX
exhibit a long transient between information waves, an interested
consumer there must still buy published books. But anyone who lives in
a densely populated area has no need for those hub-based services.
Rather, what they need is some[one|thing] _local_ they can turn to for
high quality information. (Think BitTorrent.) The process then becomes
one of triage, a graph walk from local to distant, in pursuit of the
type and quality of the information of interest. There is a dearth of
heavy metal music in Portland, so I often have to walk the graph to find
it. But you can't throw a rock without hitting a folk singer here. ;-)
peggy miller wrote at 04/20/2012 09:47 AM:
At the risk of taking the side of the greedy publishers, I still wonder
where enough profits will exist to cover costs of updates and
writing new
books if everyone wants free books. I wrote a book that I think is
good. I
am still trying to find an agent to go the publisher route because
it would
be useful to get some payback. Sure I can put it on the web for
free, and
maybe I will end up doing that, but where do costs get covered?
Textbooks
require time, thought, =costs. Somebody has to pay. If it is the
universities, then it comes out of federal grants and/or tuition = taxes
and students covering costs anyway.
So I don't get the views being expressed here.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
"She instructed me as if out of bitter personal experience; she
brooded along the edges of my childhood like someone living out a long
Tennysonian regret."
Wallace Stegner, "Angle of Repose"
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
