“The publishing industry was drooling over the Apple iPad long before the product was actually announced. What it saw in the rumored device was the potential for a powerful delivery platform for a new generation of books, magazines, and newspapers,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine.. “Publishers hoped the color screen, speedy processor, and intuitive interface would help them innovate content and create new business models.”
“Now that the iPad is a reality, the publishing industry has begun to gear up to create publications that integrate images, video, and audio into text, dramatically enhancing the storytelling process,” Bajarin writes. “In this sense, the iPad is a blessing. It gives publishers a new palette to work with, and, if they’re smart, new methods for charging directly for that content. They could, for example, offer new subscription models or position individual publications as standalone apps.”
Bajarin writes, “But here lies the curse of the publishing industry. The iPad could give rise to a new creative self-publishing crowd that could, in turn, become competition for the established publishing industry. Today’s creative writers could bypass the industry altogether. The opportunity is already there to a degree, via a number of self-publishing programs, but Apple’s iBookstore would give them a power partner with a unique technology and powerful distribution.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We see nothing wrong with eliminating redundancy and inefficiency by replacing outmoded business constructs with new ones. We suspect the same sort of thing will happen for more and more musicians over time, too. Obviously, the authors and musicians who can effectively utilize technology to go straight to their audiences will reap the greatest rewards.
Apple again levels the playing fields.
Though you still need some sort of company to market your product. Like on iTunes, most people can get their music on it, but you really need some entity to promote it, push it, get it into people who can review it and give it light over all the other stuff on iTunes.
Technically speaking, iBookstore could make the middleman irrelevant.
But in reality it won’t be the case. Sure you’ll have more self-published authors.
However a publishing house gives author credibility and good marketing.
How in the world your name will stand out among the 1,000,000 books available?
ericdano:
There’s an idea…promotion
@ ericdano,
100% agreed!
It would make more sense that apple will become the middleman then in the long term if anyone is eliminated it would be the publishers. Apple isn’t eliminating the middleman they are the middleman for now.
We were told that something similar would happen with music production, in that authors/performers would deal with the iTunes store directly.
Can anybody confirm that this is happening?
IN MUSIC:
Before Apple:
Record Companies -> Record Stores – >Consumer
After Apple:
Record Companies -> Consumer (via iTunes)
IN PUBLISHING:
Before Apple:
Publishing Houses->Bookstores->Consumer
After Apple:
Record Companies -> Consumer (via iBooks)
—-
Now yes, the book as a medium has been a tried and true format for a few hudred years, while music in the last 100 years has been sold over several mediums. So, I’m not saying that bookstores will be impacted by this nearly as much as record stores. But lots of people are now very comfortable hopping mediums to get their information, and adoption of a bookless reading medium will certainly be well-received (if done right; sorry Amazon). And so, the middleman will be impacted.
Books and bookstores won’t go away, but like music, it will be forced to co-exist with a newer, more flexible medium.
As I have said, the iPad will threaten the establishment. Maybe more so when you look at the news papers. They often omit, change, or enhance the subject to appeal to their target market.
However, with easy publishing of a small independent sites updated from anywhere could, and I believe it will, upset the large media corporations that now own the news papers and television news.
This little iPad will, again my opinion, change the course of social interaction.
No publishers, no editors.
No editors, no good books.
It’s just that simple.
I stopped drooling at the introduction! They should have added a parallel printer port to go with the 1980s 4×3 screen!
@ ericdano and Mac+,
This is the same dilemna that thousands of bands face as self-publishing music becomes easier and easier to do. But looking at the effect of the “ipod/itunes effect” on the music industry, we might have a glimpse at how the ipad will begin to effect book publishers, as well as how self-published authors can compete with major publishers.
I can confirm this from professional experience. There are thousands of independent musicians, bands and indie labels that are selling their product directly to the public through iTunes and that have signed distribution deal with Apple. That coupled with promotion through their websites and concert sales is indeed a viable alternative to the labels. What they make is a lot more per song or album than they ever had a chance of making under label agreements.
@ Big Als MBP
“No publishers, no editors.
No editors, no good books.
It’s just that simple.”
Perhaps Editors will just replace the publishers. In reality – it is the editors that make the works readable & enjoyable. Publishers promote and distribute. Apple will now distribute and the authors would need to promote themselves. That’s what I see could happen. There would probably new scores of promoters as well – who will have to make arrangements that favor authors more if they want to find work. Or perhaps publishers are going to have to change their business models. Who knows? I don’t – but I am excited to find out!
vanfruniken:
I can confirm this from professional experience. There are thousands of independent musicians, bands and indie labels that are selling their product directly to the public through iTunes and that have signed distribution deal with Apple. That coupled with promotion through their websites and concert sales is indeed a viable alternative to the labels. What they make is a lot more per song or album than they ever had a chance of making under label agreements.
“Publishers hoped the color screen, speedy processor, and intuitive interface would help them innovate content and create new business models.”
Uh, “innovate content”? Perhaps it should have read: Innovate content distribution, delivery.
They are after all the content producers, iPad is just the delivery tool and the virtual paper. Sure they can make it interactive, but that will likely come in the form of embedded video and things like that, all forms of content they were able to produce pre-ipad.
Industry Buzz words are used all to often and used incorrectly just as much..
iMaki:
Repeating the same failed argument is starting to anger me.
I won’t deprive you from developing some intelligence by explaining point by point why your argument is stupid. I will give you a starting clue:
If there wasn’t a good reason for Apple to use 4:3, why would they?
In the publishing business, there’s a stigma attached to “self published”. It means that it’s so bad that no publisher/editor wants to work with you to get the piece ready for print . . . so you have to do it your self.
There will always be book publishing companies, because books need editing, promotion, marketing, etc. However, the iPad and iBookstore will open up the publishing markets to independents much more so than they have been to date. While that may be some additional competition to the established publishing houses, I don’t see a huge exodus from their ranks. Plus, just because any Tom, Dick or Harry could write something and submit it to iBookstore for publication doesn’t mean it’s any good or that people will even find it.
After reading many of these articles (on MDN and elsewhere) and reader commentaries, something Shakespeare wrote comes to mind…
“Much ado about nothing.”
Really.
Many of the publishing “problems” or “issues” that so many perceive, are simply that… perceptions and not reality. Others are minor issues that will resolve themselves as a new model of publishing develops and progresses.
And there’s another aspect of all this that hasn’t been addressed anywhere (AFAIK).
Lazy writers, and by that I’m not talking about inept or bad writers, or writers who turn out dreck. I’m talking about writers who (for whatever reasons) don’t want to sully their hands with the “dirty” business part of publishing. They just want to write and let someone else (regardless of how much it will cost the writer) do the “dirty” work.
In the long-term future of publishing, I see smart and non-lazy, successful writers self-publishing. A good example can be found here (http://www.johntreed.com), and this guy doesn’t even do ebooks.. at least not at this time. He doesn’t sell in bookstores, either. Check out his pages for his self-publishing book for some interesting info.
Smart but lazy, successful writers will switch to smaller, tighter run publishers who will contract to furnish a variety of services to authors for small royalty fees rather than the current lions share model.
Getting tired of iMaki’s silly comments. Go hate on your grandma.
marketing: this is still largely true today. As with searching for anything on the internet, finding a way filter for quality in a sea of product is the trick. However, I suspect that social networking sites will get much better at allowing people to filter for the most popular artist of a given genre. Since “most popular” overall does not coincide with best for all demographics, they just have to figure out a way to filter for your particular bent. Facebook already targets ads – they should be able to target in music searches (maybe they do already). I’d trust that just as much as an ad for a band/book selected by some tool in a suit.
subscription: I don’t like it for music, but for books it matches will with how many already consume books, but instead of going to the library and putting up with late fees, you just download to your device and it goes away on its own. That would be sweet.
That would also fix the problem that is going to be presented by higher prices. The publishers are doing their best to imitate the music labels and price the public into piracy. Of course, unlike ripping CDs, people will have to willfully strip the DRM, so the barrier for the regular folks is higher. That just means people will be buying from pirates online. It is amazing to me how the publishers did not learn from the music industry. You need to make it easy and affordable or people will circumvent you.
This is a great discussion
The music analogy appropriate. Pro Tools recording systems are now really inexpensive, but musicians are finding out there is more to making a great recording than buying equipment. Small studio’s are all reporting business increases in the form of track files to be mixed down and finalized into high quality tracks as are CD duplicating faciliites. Some musicians are even having multiple versions created for different purposes (AM radio, 5-1 surround, etc.) which was never possible unless the record label saw a profit in it.
The large print publishers will likely suffer the same fate where the publisher model gives way to numerous smaller contractors that edit, illustrate, format, etc.. all based on which skills the author feels he or she needs help with. Hopefully we will see multiple book versions at varying price points too (plain b/w, full color illustrated, multimedia, author commented, audio, etc.)
Anyone remember the “desktop publishing” revolution? It was supposed to do the same thing – democratize publishing. Didn’t exactly happen. It made it somewhat easier and somewhat cheaper to print one’s own flyers, ‘zines, whatever, but the big companies all had access to the same publishing software and laser printers and not much really changed.
The ‘net has been the most democratizing publishing tool in history, in my opinion, and it’s been great to see new ideas appear, new means of accessing information, but eye-opening to learn how poorly some people write, and think.
Anyway, cutting middlemen out of publishing may be a great thing for the industry, but I don’t see it opening publishing to the masses.
I agree with Big Al’s MBP, too. Editors are as underrated in publishing as prep cooks are in restaurants.
Publishers in the old days published books because they believe the books deserved to be published, because the writing was excellent or the content of the book was important. Things have changed, however. If JRR Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings today, no one would publish it, period. It would be too many pages and too dicey. Tolkien and his publisher originally doubted they would make a dime on the book, but the publisher got behind it because LOTR was a unique and an astounding creative work of storytelling art.
Most publishing houses are owned by toothpaste companies or other corporations who owe nothing to taste, cultural significance, civilization or tradition…it’s all about the bottom line. They take few chances. With the iPad, the bottom line becomes an easier end to reach. And I’d still want really great books on my shelf because books last beyond this morning’s technology, and I’d pay a premium price for a handsomely bound edition of a great book.
So, hopefully, the iPad will allow publishers and their editors to have more freedom to take chances with authors to the eventual benefit of everyone. Maybe we’ll return a little to the time when editors and publishers could push something…like Moby Dick…that would not be so popular in its day but is now considered one of the greatest books in western literature. If that happens, we’ll all be better for it whether we know it now or not.