The Book Industry And The Music Industry. A Deja’vu?

Antonella Stellacci — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:15:08 +0000

Ancient civilizations believed that time was not linear but circular and postulated the theory of the Eternal Return.

Fast forward to the 21st century: the era of time as progress. Still, sometimes, it feels like ancient philosophers might have been up to something.

Take the history of the Music Industry in last 10 years and compare it against the “evolution” of the Book Industry in most recent months. You look at the facts and then tell me if I am the only one disoriented in time and space. The phenomenon of this displacement is what we today call deja’vu.

-1998 The first Mp3 players are borne.

-2001 The iPod’s birth date.

-2001–2003 Competitors rush to produce better “gadgets”:Dell, Creative, Microsoft, Sony. (They will all fail).

-2003 a closed DRM’ed marketplace for downloading music comes out of Apple’s genius. The war is over.

In the 4 years that lapsed between the first portable Mp3 players and iTunes, the music industry went haywire. The only options users were left with, if they wanted to fill their players, were either the clumsy ripping of CDs or downloading music from Napster and the likes. Which also helped shape the perception that music “should” be free (which you can argue in favor or against, it doesn’t really matter, because it’s what it is).

Then iTunes came with its “reasonable” 99cents/single track marketplace and built a monopoly that still lasts after 5 years (and keeps growing with the latest stats showing Apple as the number 1 US music seller and a whopping 25% market share).

How about the Book Industry?

-2005-2008 the first ebook readers hit the market. But there’s a reason why ebooks only represent 1% or, when lucky, 2% of the book market. Those readers are 1) all but usable (chunky navigation, horrible fonts) and 2) there’s no easy way to fill your ereader with books and 3) ebooks aren’t that widespread.

-2008-2009 Amazon hits the jackpot with its whispernet technology. What that means is that the Kindle is not only a better device in terms of interface, but most importantly it is dead simple to buy a book and in 60 seconds read it on your device. Sounds familiar/itunish? And there’s more. The Kindle just like its godfather iPod, is locked with its own DRM. And let’s not talk about publishers and their fear that the digital books will cannibalize their sales of the pricey hardcovers. So God bless the new monopoly? Maybe not.

-August 2009: The war ain’t over yet this time or so it appears at least reading the news this week. Where do our hopes go this time?

1- Google opened up its 1million ePub archive for free. ePub is the non-DRMed defacto standard for digital books, which all readers can read…well except the Kindle, unless you use some geeky trick.

2- This week Sony attack to Amazon started getting serious with the announcement of its upcoming Daily Reader Edition which will come with a wireless connection similar to the Kindle’s one (but through AT&T) and at a cheaper price. The new ereader might also be slick!!- with a much desired touchscreen interface. On the other hand, Barnes&Noble, which has the advatange of a bookstore, has already a nice mobile app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry and is gearing up for the launch of a wireless ereader sometimes soon in the next few months.

Both Sony and Barnes&Noble are Google partners and have less DRM restrictions than Amazon. There is still some and a lack of interoperability – but you think you could convince publishers to give up on DRM? Another deja’vu?

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-2010 or what’s next? Lessons learned from the Music Industry’s failure with the digital evolution

-One Store and One locked-in pricing policy doesn’t do the trick of convicing the market that they have to pay…

-Free as in digits helps shaping up a whole new industry of added-on services (think TrentReznor and followers, or Coelho). Read Chris Anderson’s Free for more inspiration.

-A new User Experience.

What are those Kindle notes if not primitive and useless? Shouldn’t I be able to share them, post what I’m reading while I’m reading it, recommend it, borrow my ebooks, gift them?
My Library in the Clouds. I want to buy books from multiple sources and store them in a place where I can access them anytime as my mood dictates and with whatever reader I might own at that point of time. I don’t want to be the slave of one reader and one store.
Discovery: build something to beat Amazon recommendations as soon as possible. Make it flexible: sophisticated as the Slacker radio and mass-market as the Billboard charts. To everyone his own…

-A new Generation of e-Writers. With the advent of digital, Music saw an explosion of creativity. Never in history so much music had been produced. Be prepared for the new wannabes of the digital age: give them the tools, the marketing information they’ll need, create the filters to separate the wheat from the chaff. Think TopSpin, ReverbNation, and the likes, only for books.

-New Formats. Remixes, Multi-media, Augmented Reality…digital will usher new forms of creativity and change the same “writing” concept …which has been stuck for …about 500 years, besides some sporadic innovation from Japan where already half of the books are mobile-originated. But are there the tools? Is someone working on it?

-The Dawn of the Empire. Don’t be US-centric. Innovation is spreading at the speed of digits. Think of Baidu for music in China. Be prepared for other languages and cultures to take over, legally or illegaly.

Will the future of ebooks be open, multi-cultural and social? Or will the deja’vu’ take over?

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The Book Industry And The Music Industry. A Deja’vu?

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