Following on from the earlier post about Borders new approach to selling books it occurred to me that there is a way around the lower inventory that they are able to stock and therefore a way to compete with the massive (almost infinite) selection that Amazon offers.
Consider this, what if you could walk into your local bookshop and browse a selection of books (just as you can today) and if none seem just right, browse a selection of similar books in a catalogue (probably using a computer and a really good search) then. Actually that’s what I do now, browse a bookshop and then come home and use Amazon’s search if I didn’t find anything relevant. But what if I could search while in the shop and the shop could then immediately let me have a copy even if it wasn’t in stock?
Not something you can do now, but there’s two options for the near future a) sell me the PDF delivered over the air to a device like the Kindle or b) use print on demand to print a copy of the book there and then. How cool would that be?
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Actually you can aready print on demand
It’s called the Espresso Book Machine.
New York Public Library has one.
But the economics and speed isn’t quite there yet.
I know that the technology exists, but I didn’t know that any libraries have started using them - cool!
Now we just need the publishers to make their catalog available - which should be tempting as it has the potential to reduce their printing, distribution and inventory costs.
While it may seem counter intuitive, I don’t think that publishers want to reduce their costs.
When you can cheaply print books one copy at a time, authors may not need publishers.
For proof look at what’s happening in the music industry. Does an artist still need a record label?
A good point, but I’m not sure I agree. You can already print books cheaply one at a time (that’s how my book is printed), but I don’t see many authors doing it nor a mass uptake anytime soon because the authors would still need to market their books, arrange for distribution of them and convince bookstores to carry them. Not skills most authors have.
Plus you need an editor and without a publisher the author will be picking up the bill and most authors aren’t getting rich, whereas many bands are quite well off by the time they get to the point where they can choose to pass on a record label. At least that’s my perception.
If you have a printing machine in a bookshop as you advocated in your article, there would be not distribution cost, it’s ‘printed on demand’.
And you don’t have to convince the bookshop to stock your book, the printer just downloads the content from the internet and it’s ‘printed on demand’.
As for editors, you have a point.
Editors could go freelance.
Authors would then either pay the upfront cost of editing or transfer risk and reduce reward by paying the editor a percentage of sales.
True there’s no distribution costs or convincing bookshops once the model is widely adopted. What I meant was the first authors to try and make the transition will find many barriers.
I believe most editors are freelance, the only difference is who takes the risk and pays them.
I think that the first authors to try will be those who are already facing an insurmountable barrier: they can’t get a publisher.
Continuing my earlier point, most of the musicians distributing music without a record label are people who couldn’t get a record deal. Artists such as Radiohead, Madonna and Nine Inch Nails have just read the writing on the wall and are trying benefit from first mover advantage.
The revolution normally starts from the bottom: the disenfranchised.
This will be a greap thing for Authors directly dealing with bookshops who in effect will become the publishers. So publishers are not really out of the equation. Its still nice to pick up a book and browser in a shop.