3 ms·

I disagree that music and publishing have become more centralised. I have seen the death of the book publishing industry first hand - from the outside it might

I disagree that music and publishing have become more centralised. I have seen the death of the book publishing industry first hand - from the outside it might appear relatively unscathed, from the inside it has been hollowed out and is untenable. Publishers are clinging on but increasingly irrelevant and their margins are non-existent, which pushes their quality down, which undermines their business model further. They will survive another generation though on nostalgia and with steadily declining sales. They simply don’t have a viable business model any more. Sure we’re not living in the utopian future some imagined but that does not mean the transformation was not profound and ongoing. The transformation is far from over in those that were vulnerable to the internet and many industries have only just started being consumed.

dalbasal 6y ago
I see the author is here, so I feel kind of weird defending the position for him. What the heck though (sorry benedict)... The point isn't that technology hasn't had an impact, or that software didn't really "eat the world." Old businesses and industries do have to adjust, and sometimes fail. That's not the point either. The point is "what comes after?" or rather, "how do these industries look now?" The answer to that is closer to "same as it was in 2005" than it is to "what we expected would happen in 2005." IIRCC self publishing is still at 5%-10%. How does book publishing work today, 13 and 30 years after kindle and the wordwideweb were digitised publishing? A writer sits around wondering who they need to shag to get a publishing deal. If they're lucky, they get a publishing deal, like in 1988. Then Amazon sells it. Maybe publishing is going through a technology induced lean years. Maybe a lot of them will go out of business. News publishing has gone through crisis moments, where they beg politicians to make Google and FB share some ad revenue back with them. What has not happened is diffusion, disintermediation or somesuch. Creators or consumers aren't more empowered. From the outside, it's business as usual and the outside view is what counts. I remember Seth Godin's take on the kindle. At first he was excited. New medium, new message. Then he was disappointed. Digital books would cost the same. That meant the goal was to keep everything the same. There would be no penny-per page business model. No nonfiction equivalent of a short story. Amazon would be chasing deals with publishers, not opening up to new people. Jeff was right. Seth was wrong. I share a lot of your sensibilities. But when reality contradicts theory, we need to adapt the theory. The same is true of most large industries touched by digitization. Some (like publishing) had tumultuous transitions. Some (like banking) had pretty cushy transitions. In almost no cases has "economic untenable" logic proved out. Banks have not evolved into lean, mostly software, organisations. They've gotten bigger and hairier. Is this "tenable?" Maybe not, but it is the norm.
- grey-area 6y ago
  OK I see where we disagree I think. You (and the author) think this transformation is over, I think it's just starting. IIRCC self publishing is still at 5%-10%. How does book publishing work today, 13 and 30 years after kindle and the wordwideweb were digitised publishing? A writer sits around wondering who they need to shag to get a publishing deal. If they're lucky, they get a publishing deal, like in 1988. Then Amazon sells it. This is not an accurate summary no. Today an author doesn't need a publishing deal to get in front of millions of readers in a way they most definitely did in 1988. They can set up a web page and sell their book themselves (and many are doing so). Just to pick one example, this book is self-published[1] and has its own website, on Amazon - Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. There are certainly problems, Amazon is a predatory monopoly which will suck the margins out of any successful seller on its platform, but the entire industry is being shaken and self-publishing is growing in importance. Many of the old publishers see this coming but have no idea what to do about it, they're either watching their business slowly die or moving online selling curated content and leaving books behind. To pick another example, video, channels like youtube and twitch have lead to the rise of internet celebrities not chosen by any producer or channel, but who set up their own stall and sell themselves. Gaming channels like steam or mobile have led to a boom in indie game studios and small games. There are certainly excesses and mistakes involved in that, but it is an entirely new mode of production enabled by the internet, and again I think it's in its infancy. It's not a fad which is going away - broadcast TV itself is going away and being replaced by a more interactive mode, it just doesn't know it yet. So I don't agree the information revolution is over, it's only just beginning and will probably take about 50 more years at least to play out fully. We only just started carrying powerful internet connected computers in our pockets about a decade ago; the implications of that alone are far-reaching. [0] http://momtestbook.com http://momtestbook.com
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Maybe we're getting closer but I don't think "You (and the author) think this transformation is over" is accurate. There is no pre/post. Change is continuous. Business is tumultuous. Speaking for myself, I think over/not-over is part illusion to shake. It is part of the theory, which has failed. A pre-digital world and a digital world... where our first principles economics will finally play out. That day is not coming, marginal cost economics is not going to play to the "logical" conclusion. There is a real reality out there. In it, digitisation of content has consistently led to monopoly. Google produce the world's most popular operating system and web browser just to support their search monopoly. They have no intention of being a neutral pipe. To get grandiose... I feel like we are/were misguided by deterministic thinking. We see the possibilities of digitization, and assume they're inevitable. They aren't. They were opportunities, but they were never just going to manifest themselves. The WWW was/is free because TBL made it that way. We believed that openness was an inevitability. Reality has schooled us.
bregma 6y ago
It's true that content publishers (music, books, video, academic papers, news, software, etc) are all being eliminated by the current disruption. The problem is that they added real value to the chain, and that value is also being eliminated. The current trend towards heaping massive quantities of low-value undifferentiated product in a heap at the feet of the consuming masses is wonderful if your metric is quantity. By eliminating discoverability, accessibility, quality, and curation you can massively increase the quantitative choice of consumers. In theory the cost difference is either saved by the consumer or passed on to the creator. In addition, eliminating the idea of capitalizing investment in content creation means far less investment in content creation. The marginal cost of copying is virtually free, but the cost of creating the first instance to be copied has not decreased. I suspect what we're seeing is the first wave of restructuring: tearing down the old to create a vast swamp of crap. I expect a second wave to come in which the vacuum created by tearing down the old will be filled by new publishers and their ilk to provide the services of discoverability, acessibility, quality, and curation and the capitalization of content creation.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  I agree broadly, and I think we both agree with the author's main point... life goes on. But, I think we need to be careful with our expectations. Currently, the biggest factor determining what content gets created is the preferences or MO of a handful of big guys. Netflix is like the old world. Executives. Deals. Do Netflix insiders still like sexposition or do they think it's corny now? It's a lot like selling a show to a cable channel. On Youtube, a minute of news equals a minute of fart jokes and subscribers are important. That's their ethic. The future isn't really about what "content" will do.. it's about what youtube or amazon will do. These companies are not neutral conduits of consumer preferences, whether or not they make decisions algorithmically.
- ric2b 6y ago
  > The current trend towards heaping massive quantities of low-value undifferentiated product in a heap at the feet of the consuming masses is wonderful if your metric is quantity. But filtering for quality should be the job of critics/reviewers, not gatekeepers to the industry.

dalbasal 6y ago

I see the author is here, so I feel kind of weird defending the position for him. What the heck though (sorry benedict)... The point isn't that technology hasn't had an impact, or that software didn't really "eat the world." Old businesses and industries do have to adjust, and sometimes fail. That's not the point either. The point is "what comes after?" or rather, "how do these industries look now?" The answer to that is closer to "same as it was in 2005" than it is to "what we expected would happen in 2005." IIRCC self publishing is still at 5%-10%. How does book publishing work today, 13 and 30 years after kindle and the wordwideweb were digitised publishing? A writer sits around wondering who they need to shag to get a publishing deal. If they're lucky, they get a publishing deal, like in 1988. Then Amazon sells it. Maybe publishing is going through a technology induced lean years. Maybe a lot of them will go out of business. News publishing has gone through crisis moments, where they beg politicians to make Google and FB share some ad revenue back with them. What has not happened is diffusion, disintermediation or somesuch. Creators or consumers aren't more empowered. From the outside, it's business as usual and the outside view is what counts. I remember Seth Godin's take on the kindle. At first he was excited. New medium, new message. Then he was disappointed. Digital books would cost the same. That meant the goal was to keep everything the same. There would be no penny-per page business model. No nonfiction equivalent of a short story. Amazon would be chasing deals with publishers, not opening up to new people. Jeff was right. Seth was wrong. I share a lot of your sensibilities. But when reality contradicts theory, we need to adapt the theory. The same is true of most large industries touched by digitization. Some (like publishing) had tumultuous transitions. Some (like banking) had pretty cushy transitions. In almost no cases has "economic untenable" logic proved out. Banks have not evolved into lean, mostly software, organisations. They've gotten bigger and hairier. Is this "tenable?" Maybe not, but it is the norm.

grey-area 6y ago
OK I see where we disagree I think. You (and the author) think this transformation is over, I think it's just starting. IIRCC self publishing is still at 5%-10%. How does book publishing work today, 13 and 30 years after kindle and the wordwideweb were digitised publishing? A writer sits around wondering who they need to shag to get a publishing deal. If they're lucky, they get a publishing deal, like in 1988. Then Amazon sells it. This is not an accurate summary no. Today an author doesn't need a publishing deal to get in front of millions of readers in a way they most definitely did in 1988. They can set up a web page and sell their book themselves (and many are doing so). Just to pick one example, this book is self-published[1] and has its own website, on Amazon - Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. There are certainly problems, Amazon is a predatory monopoly which will suck the margins out of any successful seller on its platform, but the entire industry is being shaken and self-publishing is growing in importance. Many of the old publishers see this coming but have no idea what to do about it, they're either watching their business slowly die or moving online selling curated content and leaving books behind. To pick another example, video, channels like youtube and twitch have lead to the rise of internet celebrities not chosen by any producer or channel, but who set up their own stall and sell themselves. Gaming channels like steam or mobile have led to a boom in indie game studios and small games. There are certainly excesses and mistakes involved in that, but it is an entirely new mode of production enabled by the internet, and again I think it's in its infancy. It's not a fad which is going away - broadcast TV itself is going away and being replaced by a more interactive mode, it just doesn't know it yet. So I don't agree the information revolution is over, it's only just beginning and will probably take about 50 more years at least to play out fully. We only just started carrying powerful internet connected computers in our pockets about a decade ago; the implications of that alone are far-reaching. [0] http://momtestbook.com http://momtestbook.com
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Maybe we're getting closer but I don't think "You (and the author) think this transformation is over" is accurate. There is no pre/post. Change is continuous. Business is tumultuous. Speaking for myself, I think over/not-over is part illusion to shake. It is part of the theory, which has failed. A pre-digital world and a digital world... where our first principles economics will finally play out. That day is not coming, marginal cost economics is not going to play to the "logical" conclusion. There is a real reality out there. In it, digitisation of content has consistently led to monopoly. Google produce the world's most popular operating system and web browser just to support their search monopoly. They have no intention of being a neutral pipe. To get grandiose... I feel like we are/were misguided by deterministic thinking. We see the possibilities of digitization, and assume they're inevitable. They aren't. They were opportunities, but they were never just going to manifest themselves. The WWW was/is free because TBL made it that way. We believed that openness was an inevitability. Reality has schooled us.

bregma 6y ago

It's true that content publishers (music, books, video, academic papers, news, software, etc) are all being eliminated by the current disruption. The problem is that they added real value to the chain, and that value is also being eliminated. The current trend towards heaping massive quantities of low-value undifferentiated product in a heap at the feet of the consuming masses is wonderful if your metric is quantity. By eliminating discoverability, accessibility, quality, and curation you can massively increase the quantitative choice of consumers. In theory the cost difference is either saved by the consumer or passed on to the creator. In addition, eliminating the idea of capitalizing investment in content creation means far less investment in content creation. The marginal cost of copying is virtually free, but the cost of creating the first instance to be copied has not decreased. I suspect what we're seeing is the first wave of restructuring: tearing down the old to create a vast swamp of crap. I expect a second wave to come in which the vacuum created by tearing down the old will be filled by new publishers and their ilk to provide the services of discoverability, acessibility, quality, and curation and the capitalization of content creation.

dalbasal 6y ago
I agree broadly, and I think we both agree with the author's main point... life goes on. But, I think we need to be careful with our expectations. Currently, the biggest factor determining what content gets created is the preferences or MO of a handful of big guys. Netflix is like the old world. Executives. Deals. Do Netflix insiders still like sexposition or do they think it's corny now? It's a lot like selling a show to a cable channel. On Youtube, a minute of news equals a minute of fart jokes and subscribers are important. That's their ethic. The future isn't really about what "content" will do.. it's about what youtube or amazon will do. These companies are not neutral conduits of consumer preferences, whether or not they make decisions algorithmically.
ric2b 6y ago
> The current trend towards heaping massive quantities of low-value undifferentiated product in a heap at the feet of the consuming masses is wonderful if your metric is quantity. But filtering for quality should be the job of critics/reviewers, not gatekeepers to the industry.