January 16, 2005
books vs web
A well-known fellow in the blogosphere published a book a wee while ago. You will probably have heard of it. It’s an important book, he’s got an important job etc etc.
OK, so far he’s sold 25 thousand copies. One of my spies found out for me.
It doesn’t sound like a lot, considering the tens of thousands who visit his website every week.
Another thing. You know how when you go into a large bookshop– Waterstones, Borders, Barnes & Noble etc.?
You know all those tables in the front, with all those lovely books being displayed, right where you can see them?
Guess what? The publisher (i.e. the author) has to pay extra for that space. It’s budgeted under “promotion”. It’s not the bookseller trying to make his shop look prettier.
When you publish a book, the list of people who need to get paid is rather long:
The agent.
The editor.
The editor’s secretary.
The guy in the bookstore.
The other guy in the bookstore.
The guy on TV plugging your book.
The cab driver who took you from the airport to the TV studio so the guy on TV could plug your book.
The guy who drove the truck from the printer’s to the bookstore’s warehouse…
And so on.
Compare that with a blog: I pay for the bandwidth, that’s about it.
Ah, the joys of the paper economy…
Hey Hugh,
Consonance from yonder! Quite my feelings. Had made a short post on the same a while back. it’s here to catch on this permalink:
http://consumercy.typepad.com/consumercy/2004/10/strongso_much_f.html
Got routed to your blog for the first time today. Was great reading you.
Finest New year Wishes.
Stay pink,
Sarthak
The problem is that you don’t receive a set royalty for each visitor to the blog. There are benefits at the end of the day, for real, but getting 25,000 visitors a blog just isn’t as exciting as selling 25,000 books.
Even better is if you can self publish and sell those 25,000 copies yourself.. kill the middle-man
Peter, point taken, but perhaps I don’t need a royalty from my readers?
Perhaps if I had the choice, I’d rather see the ideas spread further, and forsake the money bit?
Perhaps not?
Shirky has some interesting things to say about this topic. Here’s a sample:
“Weblogs destroy this extrinsic value as well. Print publishing acts as a filter, weblogs do not. Whatever you want to offer the world — a draft of your novel, your thoughts on the war, your shopping list — you get to do it, and any filtering happens after the fact, through mechanisms like blogdex and Google. Publishing your writing in a weblog creates none of the imprimatur of having it published in print.”