That’s the title of an article my Matt Shatz in Paid Content. He was Vice President of Digital for Random House, so he should have some credibility. Currently he is head of Strategic Content Relations for Nokia.
Shatz is talking about retailers such as Amazon, Apple and Google. He feels that publishers can win, but he doesn’t think they will – they won’t be able to figure out their winning strategy on time. He explains what they have to do and what their problem is, and then goes on to discuss a number of assets that retailers have:
The leading digital platforms have a number of assets that will help them win aside from just consumer reach. Their access to what people are actually reading will create a robust set of data that their army of analysts can use effectively. For example, a user who reads Jonathan Franzen’s new tome Freedom all the way through twice is a more likely a buyer for his next book than someone who received the book as a gift and never opened it. In the past nobody knew the difference between the two. In the future, leading retailers will. Similarly, someone who reads all of Walter Mossberg’s columns in their digital edition of the Wall Street Journal bought from Amazon is a likely buyer of a new Steve Jobs biography and a good target for a new mobile phone ad.
Leading retailers will also be able to invest more in robust billing and customer-care systems, two keys for building successful subscription businesses, and they can invest more in brand marketing and direct customer acquisition than publishers or agents. And when and if they want to get really aggressive, they can invest more in talent via advances or higher revenue shares in more than just a handful of isolated examples.
Shatz writes, “a user who reads Jonathan Franzen’s new tome Freedom all the way through twice is a more likely a buyer for his next book than someone who received the book as a gift and never opened it. In the past nobody knew the difference between the two. In the future, leading retailers will.”
At the moment, I believe that Amazon is the only bookseller who’s got their ereaders and apps reporting back on the detailed reading habits of the consumers. Personally, I don’t see B&N going there in the near future. So which other “leading retailers” might Shatz be referring to?
How did we get to the state where buying something from a business gives them the right to analyze every thing we do and then pound their sales pitch into our brains unceasingly, on the grounds that this constitutes ‘customer service?’
Sounds cool to me …
Starbooks: Other businesses have been doing exactly that for decades, gathering info through credit cards, store cards, promotion/surveys, cable boxes, contests, sales, and of course, the web. To answer your question, we “got here” by accepting their tracking processes in order to buy the stuff we wanted now, cheaper and with the cool bluetooth attachment.
There’s little reason why we have to see ebooks going this way. I, for one, buy a book, de-drm it, convert it, and read it on devices that are outside of the bookseller’s control. But most people will simply use the booksellers’ accounts and reading devices, essentially making it easy for their habits to be tracked. And when they’re offered perks, promotions for things they want, and “good customer” deals, most people will be okay with it (ask anyone with a grocery store card).
It sounds like Shatz expects ebooks to go to the cloud, but I still have my doubts about this… if, for no other reason, than the fact that the cloud doesn’t extend everywhere, and books are one of those very personal and portable things that people won’t want to see tethered down.
While I do read Walt Mossberg’s column, I would not buy Jobs’ biography… but I can visualize the point being made, which is something that quite a few folks around here have been universally lamenting for some time: publishers can compete with Amazon, but they don’t. It is as if they can, but won’t. They are however adept at scaring away current and future consumers with unit price hikes, while the majority of unknown indie writers can produce nearly the same quality eBooks (including the addition of errors) at far more reasonable prices and in a variety of formats. If a quasi-educated unknown writer with zero advertising budget and a tiny home office can sell scads of eBooks then why not a massive publishing conglomerate with several decades start time?
I keep hearing that publishers have “experience” and therefore will continue to be viable in the future of ePublishing. If so then they’d better start selling courses on iTunes quick because as the months fly by, more and more indie self-pubs are gaining a larger share of that precious experience.