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Seth Godin sees bare-bones future of books thanks to long tail
December 30, 2011 | 2:15 pm
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By Chris Meadows
Marketing guru Seth Godin has a piece on PaidContent (reposted from his Domino Project blog) responding to an interview with the head of Ingram Books about the future of books and publishing. In the interview, Ingram CEO David “Skip” Prichard trots out some of the usual predictions about the future of the book—multimedia extras, print-on-demand, physical bookstores finding “niches” to adapt to, and print publishers still being necessary.
Godin calls Prichard’s views “economically ridiculous,” basing his argument on Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory. Godin suggests that the broad consumer choice the long tail makes possible will drive down production costs and production values. He notes that for what Michael Jackson’s album Thriller cost to produce, “today’s artists can make and market more than 5,000 songs. You just can’t justify spending millions of dollars to produce a record in the long tail world.”
The same thing that happened to music is going to be true of books. The typical e-book costs about $10 in out of pocket expenses to write (more if you count coffee and not just pencils). But if we add in $50,000 for app coding, $10,000 for a director and another $500,000 for the sort of bespoke work that was featured in Al Gore’s recent “book” , you can see the problem. The publisher will never have a chance to make this money back.
So, far from multimedia and other super-duper costly gee-gaws, Godin sees the future of book production being as bare-bones as possible so that publishers (and self-publishers) are able to make their money back by selling fewer copies—because there will be so many more things in the marketplace for readers to spend that money on.
(He suggests the same thing will happen to movies once everybody’s using Netflix, though I have a little difficulty seeing that happening. There’s a significant difference in the way money is represented on the movie screen to how it shows up on the e-reader screen. People want spectacle in their movies, and spectacle still costs money to put on screen.)
I can see some of this happening in how cheap self-published e-books are, but I’m not sure how much sense Godin’s argument makes in the long (tail) run. We certainly haven’t seen professional publishers rush to lower their prices yet. Will it happen eventually, perhaps as publishers see more and more of their business going to the self-publishing market? It will be interesting to find out.
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I have no idea where Seth got his “$10″ from… and things like “app coding” and “directors?” He’s either being facetious there, or just speaking out of the side of his head. On a more realistic note, he might consider the cost/value of a writer’s time alone–research, drafts, writing and editing that can take up hundreds, even thousands, of man-hours–and get a more accurate figure than that… say, from $20,000 to $100,000 depending on the author’s value of their own time. Add editing, proofing and marketing to a big publisher’s efforts, to get the rest of that more realistic figure.
That’s for an author working through a publisher. For an independent, one has to consider: If they are going to spend $50,000 worth of their time on a book that will not earn them at least $50,000 back… what’s the point of writing? Most independent authors are already deep in the hole for the books they write, as most of them will never see their real initial investment back, long tail or no.
The ebook pricing universe is already so skewed by publishers that haven’t figured out how to price, and indies pricing so far below profit-point, that I’m not sure any serious or logical figuring will predict where the market will end up.
This Godin person seems to me to have completely lost the plot (if he ever had one). His musings are consistently inane in the extreme. His comments on film budgets are brainless.
Agree with the other commentors that this article is silly. It may be true that 5000 music videos can be cut for the cost of Thriller, but I’m betting that Thriller was viewed by more than those 5000 music videos. Long Tail is a wonderful theory, but the reality is, reading tends to be concentrated in a small number of books. Becoming one of those books is worth spending money on… money on editing, money on presentation and layout, money on cover design, and yes, money for the author.
In the early days of software, I, and many others, believed that software would become an industry where millions of programmers would offer their games, their spreadsheets, their utilities, and we’d pick the best of them. It hasn’t worked out that way. Fortunately, books don’t require all of the costs that major software projects do, but they aren’t $10, either.
Rob Preece
Publisher
As an indie author who spends time in author forums, I can say that a great many authors don’t value the time they spend in research, writing, editing, etc. Many post that they “just want to be read.” They invest thousands in editing, covers, etc., and then sell their books for $.99 or give them away. It’s a traditional attitude. The fact is under the traditional publishing scheme that ruled until recently most writers had to have full time jobs. A minority made enough to make minimum wage for what they put into their books.
There’s no way to know what percentage of indie writers feel that way, but it’s at least a sizable minority. There’s also no way to know what percentage are mercenary no-goods like me who wouldn’t continue our indie businesses if we weren’t making enough at it to feel fairly compensated.
And maybe reading is concentrated in a small number of books, but my own experience makes me suspect not. Bestseller level reading is undoubtedly concentrated in a small number, but a lot of us are neither selling nothing or next to nothing nor selling huge numbers but selling modest numbers of several books consistently and quite happy with how things are going according to our own goals.
The theory is utter nonsense. For the best detailed debunking, see Tom Slee’s series of posts:
http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2007/03/the_long_tail_l.html
I have the highest respect for Seth Godin. Read the original Huff Post interview at http://huff.to/txZ5vI and you may see that I did not say that most e-books would be enhanced. Instead, I said that there was a limit to what consumers would pay for. Ultimately, consumers will determine what is valuable. The point I was making was what was now possible. Exciting time to be an author, and most writers I know spend countless hours in research or careful writing.
See my response at http://www.skipprichard.com or http://bit.ly/uyvEBN.
Unfortunately the way the interview is presented and shaped in the HP creates the impression that Skip believes most/all future eBooks will be enhanced or technologically complex.
It is nice to have that clarifies, as it is a really ridiculous idea.
There is no doubt, in my mind, that there is a completely new niche that is emerging in publishing – that of the enhanced eBook. They may be as simple as some that have already been published, with audio, video and/or hyperlinks or as complex as our imaginations allow. But they will always be a niche market limited to education, training, and generally non fiction.
A couple of statements attributed to Mr Prichard that I found ‘challenging’ included:
“We’ve seen some self-published authors break into the bestseller lists. Interestingly, these same authors generally end up accepting lucrative publishing deals when they are approached.”
This is a somewhat self serving statement. Self published authors who have managed to achieve that status via the eBook will always be open to the potential of the opportunity to publish via the paper model. What really matters are the terms being offered.
Mt Prichard also rightly emphasises the importance of how the business model is developing. However from my knowledge of Imgram, though they are adapting to change they are moving very slow compared with what is needed to meet the challenges of the market. In my view the changes happening currently are nothing compared with what will happen in 2013 – 2015 when the mother load of the market takes a leap into eBooks. the bricks’n mortar shops evaporate and decisions by the EU and US competition inquiries take effect.
It would also help the debate a lot if writers of these articles distinguished between eBooks and paper books in their language. Laziness in this regards only confuses the discussion.