The Issue of Small Developing Nations, and Postage.

When the Caribbean was first discovered by Christopher Columbus, the only way to get information back to Spain was by going back. For better or worse, Columbus did make it back - and thus started a mobile network of ships throughout the Caribbean, carrying people, produce, livestock and a few exotic diseases for good measure. As the Caribbean was settled by Europeans, ships were used increasingly to carry information back and forth - be it to Kings, Queens, Popes or families of people who had made it into the Caribbean. A letter written in Trinidad could be handed over to the earliest ship going to England.

This was happening all the time in that era, all over the world, but nowhere quite as much was affected by the shipping network of that era. The Caribbean's communications with Europe happened through a mobile network, powered by wind. The beauty of this network was that packages that weighed more were considered more valuable back then, and the ones which weighed more while retaining least space were most valuable, though there were exceptions. Still, generally speaking, a chest of gold and a letter to the Pope moved at about the same rate to their destinations despite their obvious weight difference, and at what was probably a comparable cost.

Times have changed.

When at the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum (2005), Jacqueline brought up the fact that the cost of shipping CDs from the Caribbean - specifically Trinidad and Tobago - was prohibitive. I'd never considered that before in that particular context, but I was aware of the cost of shipping heavy things to the Caribbean. So I filed that thought away under, 'things to look at over time'. I have.

On a personal level, weight in mail doesn't affect me too much - directly. I don't buy things that require shipping; I usually get what I need wherever I am - but that's just directly. Quietly, at an indirect level, weight affects myself and others drastically. Yesterday I was at a bookstore, and I saw some new books - a treasure for me, not unlike gold - and picked up John Battelle's, 'The Search'. This prompted an interesting thought about the chain of events which got that particular book into my hands.

The Voyage of 'The Search'

The first thing that happened, of course, was that Mr. Battelle wrote the book - and got it published, which as the cofounding editor of Wired probably wasn't too difficult. From there, the book's publishers got the book printed¹, which requires paper, ink, and other materials.

Paper weighs a lot. One phone book doesn't feel like much, though it is heavy relative to other books. But consider how many phone books were printed, and multiply that weight accordingly. Let's say you have a million phone books, so imagine multiplying the weight of your phone book by a million. Figure 5-20% more weight, because of wastage in the printery (hopefully less), and you have an idea of the raw weight of paper used. The more something weighs, the more difficult it is to ship it. Air shipping is probably out of the question, so if there is continuous land between you and the paper supplier, you'll probably deal with trucks to get the paper to the printery. And if you're on an island, you'll depend on ships. This means that the paper takes a while to get there in a world of 'on demand'. Paper needs care, too - the amount of moisture in the paper affects print quality, and in answer to that, rolls of paper are used a lot so that the majority of the paper is protected from physical damage and humidity. Still, no matter how you pack it, the paper weighs the same.

So the printery combines this paper with ink, and it gets bound. Paperback covers are cheaper because of... weight... and because of the type of binding used.

The finished products - the books themselves - then go to the publisher or someone who handles distribution for the publisher. This might require some transportation as well, though not nearly as much. And from these distribution points, which must logically be near the printery, they get mailed around the world. ² And each shipment costs based on weight. Postage.

For me to get this book, all of this happened - that's the physical reality of the book itself. Yet the particular book was chosen from a list by someone in a bookstore here in Trinidad and Tobago. And they ordered some of these books - I saw one more on the shelf.

Were they available for international ordering before the release date? I do not know, but I would hazard that they were. But a business must also consider if these books will move; as a commodity, it must be understood that bookshelf space at a book store is not owned - it is rented. Each book has to pay it's rent; that's how the bookstore makes it's money (and there's a science/art to laying books out based on that). So at the back of the mind of every book store when ordering books, the question must be asked - 'will this sell?' And not just sell, but sell quickly. When you think about it, entering a book store is like entering an alien ecosystem - the quick sale books are placed in front; the best sellers and the books on sale fight for space. Stephen King and Robert Ludlum vie for attention like puppies waiting to be adopted.³

In the end, bookstores buy from publishers whatever sells. I've noted in South Trinidad, romance novels are dominant. In North Trinidad, I've seen more books along the lines of 'Self Help'. In Panama, I found bookstores with larger English sections than any bookstore in Trinidad. In Nicaragua (Managua), I saw infinitesmall Spanish bookstores. In the Dominican Republic, there were vast bookstores of Spanish books, with small English and German sections. In Guyana, the largest bookstore I saw in Guyana was about the same size as the smallest store in Trinidad. And, aside from Panama, these bookstores could easily fit into a section of a bookstore in the United States. Why? Simple. Market size, or in less business oriented language - population.

But what market size factors in are the people who are transient in a country - tourists and so forth. So while I was travelling through all these countries last year (and more), I was a transient who bought books. Why is it that in a Spanish speaking country like Panama I could consistently purchase 'Scientific American' magazine on the shelves about the same time as it came out in the U.S., while in Trinidad I'm lucky if I find it? Market. In Panama, apparently the English reading market is larger than in Trinidad, and perhaps more interested in reading 'Scientific American'. So to get good English books in a timely fashion, it's better to live in Panama than Trinidad.

Interesting how we got there from here.

Thus, Amazon.com and other online bookstores like it allow more choice, but the shipping - since it's not in volume - is higher for the individual than if a local bookstore has ordered a few copies of the book. Maybe Amazon and other online bookstores get cheaper rates to ship because of the volume that they ship, but it's a question as to whether that savings is passed along to the customer through shipping - or whether it partly explains how Amazon can afford to sell books lower than most competitors.

Magazines also deal with this sort of issue, and is one of the reasons why faint stabs have been made at digital publishing. I'll get back to that, though the business model of a magazine is different in that it involves advertising.

So, Print the Books Locally?

I think that one of the things that the publishing industry would have already explored is 'micropublishing' in regions of the world where they intend to sell the book - but I'm almost 100% certain the costs go up. Let's say that 'The Search' was done this way - and let's say that they printed 10,000 of the books. A printer would need to bring in paper to do this; that cost is higher since they are not dealing in the same volume of the large printers which handle the publishing now. Then you need a separate department or more employees/smarter software/'xyz' to handle the increased logistics of just managing all the micropublishers. And the local publisher isn't guaranteed to be able to sell the book quickly or at a premium profit. Remember, books are rented space on a bookshelf or in a storage area until they find a home where you are. And even then, if you have limited book space, you may find yourself having to make decisions about which books to keep.⁴

Printing books locally might make sense for self-publishing, and other aspects of publishing, but then you can't export them cheaply because of the same reasons.

Local printing/publishing of books doesn't look too smart when one delves into the practicalities.

Digital Books

The internet gave us technology to allow for information to travel around the world faster than sailing ships, steam ships and airplanes. It's amazingly light - electrons have a negligible mass - amazingly easy to format, and it removes printers from the mix. But as Neil Gershenfeld noted in 'When Things Start to Think ', holding a book or magazine has a human tradition. We who read typically like holding a book in our hands, running our finger over the spine and perhaps even tapping an index finger on the cover when we consider a new idea.

The other problem becomes 'piracy', or 'unauthorized copying'. Nothing keeps me from sharing an electronic book with my friends except fear of being prosecuted, or even being accused. Publishers of various media often cry foul - noticeably the RIAA which took to litigating against children. In some ways, it's easy to say that the publishing companies are crying crocodile tears because they haven't figured out a better business model.

I'm largely unsympathetic to publishing companies, but not because I want to have a Jolly Roger flying in the house⁵. It's because I'm not a publishing company, and I believe that I should be able to get a product when I want it, wherever I want it, at a low cost. That's part of globalization, and whoever makes people like myself happy will have the market. In the end, I am unsympathetic with publishing companies who are not sympathetic with my problem. Personally, I like to see authors get paid, so I buy books.

I get books to review from various publishing companies - you have read some of the reviews if you've been here a while - and I appreciate the extra mile that they go through to send me the book. But the time it takes cuts out valuable time for the review itself, and that poses a problem. Robin 'Roblimo' Miller and myself talked about that on the phone while I was in Panama City, Panama last year. While the internet is a great engine for sending information back and forth, we have yet to arrive to an era where a publishing company can email me a book. Why? Because once I get it, I could spawn multiple copies which would kill their market. But in small countries, where physical books are late and of little selection, eBook usage will obviously go up. Why? Postage.

It boils down to postage, and shipping costs. Countries of larger populations, and countries on continents, have less of an apparent problem. It's still there, though.

The technology is there to make eBooks. If you're reading this, it's likely you know that already, and if you don't - well, now you do. One of the suggestions I had made to one publishing company a year ago was adopting an OpenXML format like OpenOffice.org's which had all the formating ability of Postscript, but that wasn't something that they were interested in doing at the time.⁶ It's a simple idea which I'll flesh out in the future for readers, but basically it allows text and image formating as well as present print media technologies - perhaps in future, even better. In that way, someone could print the book out on their printer if they wanted to. But the issue of trust, which publishers call piracy, keep that from happening. In the book industry, one can see that this will be a problem.

A manner of defeating that, of course, is a tracking ID on each eBook which, if it starts showing up all over, a publisher could track back to the initial person who purchased the book. This gets into a Fair Use issue, as well as the ability to 'lend a friend a book', such as a library. This should be allowed, I think, but the problem is again trust. If publishing companies allow an eBook to be read by one person, or 5 people, the net result is the same: The reader has to worry about being prosecuted if the eBook goes 'too far'.

So we will continue to pay high postage because of a lack of trust. And while we talk about ICT and all these other things, perhaps we should spend some time to find ways to make postage and shipping cheaper.⁷

Digital Magazines

Magazines - monthly especially - are affected more directly by postage for subscriptions.

The magazine business is slightly different. Advertising pays for the production of the magazine - from payroll to printing. The subscription fee is, or could be, simply the postage to get it from point A to point B. Knowing this, the obvious answer is to make a digital magazine and give it away on the internet - right?

Wrong. Advertisers pay advertising based on distribution which is audited by independent entities. And so, to charge advertisers, the circulation must be determined. Obviously, circulation would go up if magazines could be downloaded at no cost, but advertising costs could not be supported by present independent audits. You could track the number of downloads, but that only tells you how many people downloaded the magazine - not how many people shared it with others who didn't download it. Still, it would be an interesting experiment to count the downloads from various IP addresses and use that as a measure of circulation... it has to start somewhere.

And then, advertising could be region-specific. By detecting where the downloading IP address is, advertising for that region could be put in. That requires some changes, but a broader base of advertisers could be had. The logistics for this would be a headache, but it wouldn't have to be as bad as magazine publishers think because they simply need to change the way that they think. And in a traditional culture of publishing, this poses a problem.

Online Media

If you factor in the explosion of the internet technologies which enable you to read this - technically speaking, a weblog - what do you have? You have something that fills a niche by allowing people information without postage. This is why things such as Newsforge and Slashdot are valuable. Fast. No postage. and the advertising is keeping them in business.

Niche blogs do the same thing. Will they replace magazines and books? No. But they will eventually drag publishing companies, kicking and screaming, down this path. Why would I buy a book on Linux command line stuff when I can just go to Google and find it? To impress my friends, weigh down my bookshelf so it doesn't float away?

Conclusions

The effect technology, publishing and postage have on small population nations is markedly different than in larger nations: Where the market doesn't make bringing in books viable, publishers are going to have to accept piracy as a fact of life. In larger population countries which have a lower cost of living (and where people have less earning power than in the publishing nation), again - piracy will be a problem. Where people are over a certain distance - measured in postage- piracy will be a problem.

And when you take stock of the entire globe, this could well be a majority issue if it is not already. DRM won't save anything. It will be beaten, again and again and again because people will not accept DRM. If I can't lend my friend a CD I purchased, the value of that CD diminishes - and if the value diminishes, then the cost will have to. Yet DRM raises the cost. Thus defeating DRM becomes an investment for developing nations. Scarey for publishers, and for people who can be prosecuted. Sad.

We have the technology. There is a demand. Things will change. The question is - and will continue to be - when.

¹ Something I am familiar with because I grew up in a printery here in Trinidad during the 80s.
² More so now that individual people around the world can order the books directly.
³ Interestingly, I picked out 'The Search' based on the font style and color - which is the same as that of Google.
⁴ Every few months, I go through my books and decide which ones to keep - or not. If I had a copy of every book I read, I would require a building specifically for the books.
⁵ Oddly enough, I do have one blocking sunlight on one of the windows so that I can sleep late.
⁶ The technology isn't a problem, the problem is really establishing a standard which would require leaders in the publishing industry to accept the idea. It's possible, but not just from some geek who writes a lot.
⁷ Not to mention the infrastructure and policy issues which nobody can make front page news talking about fixing...