publishing

After reading 'Slates Layoffs signal flaws in web model', I was a bit disappointed in that they really didn't talk that much about flaws in a web model at all. Sure, they talked about Slate's providing of great content and the layoffs. They even spoke a little bit about Salon. They managed to even explain the some of the specifics of Slates troubles, but it boils down to what is in the last paragraph:

..."These are tough economic times, and Slate needs to reassess where to put its resources," Mr. Shafer said.

Well. We kind of knew that already, didn't we? It's not that there are flaws in the web model - it's that the web model is difficult, ever changing and we're (in case you haven't noticed) in a tough economic period where the overwhelming majority of readers are not spending money. And if they aren't spending money, it follows that advertising will become more competitive and perhaps more expensive for quality advertising because of it - but it also means that advertising budgets may eventually get trimmed a bit too. After all, the advertising of any company isn't designed to pay publishers - it's designed to sell products or services. It's not designed to be a big red button that says, "Buy Everything Here".

As Slate is quoted as saying in the article, '...profitability doesn't necessarily require a bigger audience.'¹ That, right there, is something that defies contemporary webvertising logic but is absolutely true. It's about demographics. It's about getting the right eyeballs attached to the right wallets to the right places so that the right advertisers get their revenue. The theory of quality over quantity is one that, personally, I wished more people subscribed to.

Over the last 10 years, I've watched the publishing and book seller industry with interest. The transition or negotiation of those markets, depending on your perspective, has been happening for some time. I've been watching this in 4 different ways:

1. I'm an avid reader. Over my lifetime I've probably spent enough money on books, magazines, internet access and so forth to have become a self made millionaire right now. No regrets.
2. I'm a writer and author. I've been published in the past in magazines and wrote a short eBook on Second Life that didn't do well, but I've been playing with ideas for other eBooks. I enjoy writing. The trick is to get paid while doing it - something that the Internet has made less lucrative but easier to do.
3. I'm an entrepeneur. Since I enjoy reading and writing, I look for opportunities doing what I enjoy. I've worked with a publishing company in the past, doing R&D in 2005 for internet publishing. I presented ideas that largely remain untested because of revenue models of publishing print and internet media.
4. Technology and social media play large parts of the new publishing industry and are also a large part of what I do.

As such, when I read about Borders filing Chapter 11, I wasn't awfully surprised. One part of me is disappointed - the part that enjoys walking through bookstores, maybe having a cup of coffee in the attached coffee shop while going into sensory overload. I've always found the rows of books in bookstores to be appealing, knowledge and entertainment physically represented on dark shelves designed to highlight the colorful covers. The smell reminds me of my youth, when my father had a printing company - the smell of paper, of dried ink. If there were a 'new book smell' form of Febreze, it would replace the 'Clean Linen' I presently use. The feel of a new book in the hand, something that I grew up with, is always appealing to me.

But times have changed. As an aspiring and perspiring entrepeneur, I'm budget conscious - and the attraction of the bookstore experience itself is simply not enough for me to pay a lot for new books. Where once I bought at least 2 books a week - really - I might buy one every few months. It's not that I read less - by all indications, I read more now because of the Internet, particularly Gutenberg.org which populates my Kindle DX despite the best efforts of Amazon.com to make it difficult for me to do so. After moving back to the United States and leaving at least 5,000 books behind, I know the worth of electronic books. And really, how many books does one actually read more than once? Very few. And those books occupy space. That space conflicts with my minimalist nature.

Thus, I have to reiterate what I've written many times in different ways on different evolutions of this same website. It's free advice for Borders, Barnes and Noble and just about any publisher. It should be patently obvious to anyone in the industry, but it apparently hasn't been obvious enough.

The Advice

Put some serious effort into the Affiliate programs. This is what Amazon.com did. As a blogger/web publisher, I can - and do - link to products directly on their site because they make it easier. Over the years, though, they've been making business decisions - small moves - that erode the business model for their affiliates. There is no question, though, that Amazon.com is largely a house that affiliates built.

When you look at Borders.com, they still go through Commission Junction for affiliate links - a messy and indirect way of getting people to their sites while not allowing web publishers to directly get them to products. And Barnes & Noble? Far be it for me to speak adversely of Google's Affiliate Network, but when it comes to giving publishers the ability to get people to the individual product being mentioned... Amazon.com has it beaten soundly. Amazon.com has, hands down, beaten out the competition and continues to.

It isn't as if web publishers are particularly loyal to Amazon.com. Toss up a competing affiliate program, one that actually competes, and things might change. I  won't say that books will be flying off shelves, but - when I can send a tweet about an individual book on Amazon.com and get a commission on it, guess what I'll be tweeting about?

Social media and social networking are largely untapped resources by any of Amazon.com's competitors. That's the elephant in the middle of the room. It's time for that elephant to not only be seen in the boardroom, but properly lubricated and shoved out the double doors into the business model.

Brick and mortar has its purposes - but so does the Internet. Do it now or give up and have Amazon.com build your store.