The Cult of the Amateur. Really?

A book review: The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen

I have been reading quite a lot about the current and near future of the new media, most of it predicting massive and on balance positive changes in our world as a result. As I am working on a dissertation on this subject, I have also been on the lookout for a text that would put forward the antithesis of all these other books, to lend a bit of balance to my study, and so when I saw Keen’s book on the shelf at Waterstones, I grabbed it.

After a long day of train travel with nothing but ‘The Cult of the Amateur’ for company I felt let down. I was expecting something that would, as the promotional quotes claimed, be “thought-provoking” “beautifully written” and “witty”. What I found instead was a book that ran on nostalgia, paranoia and a poor understanding of the media industry.

OK, it wasn’t all bad. The part detailing the dangers to society of Wikipedia becoming a serious information source was interesting, if a little sensationalist. There were also some interesting passages towards the end of the book about how our privacy was being threatened, but most of this was supported by anecdotes that did not directly relate to the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

What really got my goat were the lazy, or perhaps dishonest inaccuracies. It is not good enough, in my opinion, for a serious “IT insider” to claim that the world of Web2.0 has brought confusion between the worlds of entertainment and advertising for the first time. This is a blatant falsehood. Product placement has been around in TV shows and movies for as long as I’ve been watching either, probably since the 60’s.

He also doesn’t seem to understand that consumers behave differently when faced with a free product, than they do when asked to pay a fee. He claims that every ad placed for free on Craigslist equals ad revenue lost in the local print media. Really? Does he honestly think I would have paid £20 to advertise the duvet I wanted to give away for free in a newspaper? He makes the same mistake when talking about freely downloaded music, stating that it is logical to see every illegally downloaded track as a theft of 99 cents from the recording company. Absolute nonsense. If I hear a song by an artist I’m unfamiliar with I might download their entire back catalogue for nothing, deleting the tracks I don’t like afterwards, and I know that this sort of behaviour is common amongst my peers. We would be unlikely to buy four albums at full price on a whim and toss them away if we didn’t like them.

He also seems unable to grasp the concept of subjectivity when it comes to musical taste. The Long Tail of music is dismissed by him for this reason, as he states that the few artists that make it to the mainstream do so as the result of their talent, and that for the most part the rest simply aren’t good enough to generate fans. Poppycock. Anyone who has sat next to an ambient trance, black metal, or Mongolian throat-singing fan with an I-pod on a bus will tell you that what one person sees as talent isn’t the same for everyone else. Keen confesses to not being particularly passionate about music, but this is no excuse for this intellectually bereft section of his book.

He goes on to list the negative effects of illegally downloaded films on Hollywood. This admittedly well-researched piece lists how the different production companies are being forced to cut budgets and produce fewer movies, and cinemas are forced to close. Well I say good! Any industry hub that specializes in making me-too, lowest common denominator products should, in a healthy economy, lose ground.

In fact, Keen fully neglects to mention the influence that the decline in quality in both the film and music industries may have had in driving people to illegally download music. Long before the Web2.0 phenomenon, the establishments of film and music were looking to produce products that would simply sell well, and ignored the artistic merits of their output. This lead to people searching out music that was hard to come by through regular distribution channels long before Napster or the Internet came into play. The result is an argument that overstates the case by ignoring clear facts, rather than illuminating a point of view by explaining forces that may have been overlooked.

In Keen’s defence, he was quite obviously making an argument, and it wouldn’t be realistic of us to expect him to list the pros and the cons of Web2.0 in equal measure as a result. However, the possible usefulness of his approach was undone by his inability to support his claims through accurate and rational discourse. I find myself hesitant to quote this text in my dissertation for fear that these inaccuracies would render the entire book academically untenable.

Somewhat ironically, one of his main arguments is that this new media he is attacking is dangerous because there are no editors, no quality control, and no accountability. He states that as a result the population could find themselves misinformed about key issues, which could have a devastating effect on our society. The existence of this error-ridden book, published through traditional old media channels gives some much-needed context to his claims.

If anybody knows of a book dealing with similar subject matter to Keen’s, but with a more sound argument, please let me know of it.

 

Is Shelfari the way for publishers to harness the power of the LT?

In a post I made on June 7th I checked out different publishers’ websites to see if they were targeting niche markets in line with the Long Tail approach. I discovered that they did not seem to be, but that there was a more subtle technique that they’re probably considering using to do just that.

Shelfari is a book-based online community that allows members to set up their own profile page just like MySpace or Facebook, but the difference is that you can build a bookshelf for all to see. Other Shelfari members can browse through the spines on your shelf and decide if you have enough in common with them to be worth chatting to, or members can weigh in on literary debates at the forums.

There are now a staggering 40+ such sites online, and they’re growing in number. The more successful of them have been invested in by different bookselling organisations. www.Shelfari.com itself was invested in by Amazon in Feb 07. ABEbooks bought 40% of www.LibraryThing.com in 06.

The relationships between book community sites and publishers are now so common that www.booktribes.com quotes its independence from publishers as a major advantage over competition.

These sites work in much the same way as book clubs do. Each site allows its many thousands of members to divide themselves into groups based on interest, then hey presto, each individual is reading books not just out of love of literature, but also a desire to connect to his fellow humans. This naturally causes members to read and buy more books than usual. The book selling sites that are linked to these areas benefit from this.

So this is good news for the book industry. How about individual publishers? Whose books will benefit most? This depends on the rating system on each site, and they are overwhelmingly based on peer review, meaning the quality reads get the biggest boost. So should publishers throw up their hands and simply compete on the level of their products?

That’s not what happened when they let their marketing departments think about book clubs. Many publishers bought up book clubs and various mail order networks to try and cement a customer base for their books (See F&W’s ownership of Reader’s Union). They offered extra value to members: early access to books / discounts / author correspondence or appearances; and the book clubs promised to buy a certain number of books before reviews came out. The system worked.

It seems to me that a similar arrangement is possible for these book-based social networking sites. Although their recommendations are based on peer review, there are ways for sites to promote certain imprints or books while maintaining the customers’ input. Amazon have been doing this for years without generating significant user complaints. I expect we’ll see publishers doing the same with their newly acquired social networks affiliates soon. It’s my guess that consumers will allow a little corporate invasion in return for added features. Would you say that an avid Stephen King fan would sacrifice a chance to ask his idol questions in order to chat in a corporate free zone?

Here are a few more sites I looked at while researching this article.
( www.whatsonmybookshelf.com ; www.swaptree.com book exchange networks)
www.connectviabooks.com ; www.douban.net (Chinese site with English version); www.bibliophil.com (links with Amazon)
www.goodreads.com (bought by monster.com) ; www.x-libris.com (for the Russians)

 

Japanese mobile phone novels: On their way or not for us?

Book publishers are now presumably all aware of the Japanese craze of novels being written for, and directly downloaded onto, mobile phones. If they’re not, then they have no excuse, as $82 million is being spent on them in that country alone per year, and it’s not as if publishers can ignore that kind of a market.

So lets presume Random House, Penguin, Hachette and all the other large publishing conglomerates are aware of the trend. The question we have to ask ourselves is: why aren’t they out in the West?

- Technology?: Hardly. The format of the file does not have to change form the Japanese to other phones, and the level of mobile phone market penetration in some European countries rivals that of Japan.

- Distribution?: Nope. All the major networks already sell ringtones, backgrounds, etc very successfully through their websites. We’re used to it and so are the networks.

- Content?: Possibly. It took the Japanese 5 years to come up with the style of writing that became popular: namely bare-bones romantic and relationship based novellas. Up to that point they tried to sell successful authors, and other novel style content unsuccessfully. Perhaps the publishers of the West are having difficulty commissioning such lowest common denominator content from scratch, instead of the gradual literary degradation that happened in Japan. It is also possible that the English alphabet is proving more difficult to read on a small screen than symbol-based Japanese, causing entrepreneurs in the West to shy away from the idea.

-Culture?: Not every trend that does well in Japan does well in the West. It is almost taken for granted that whatever the Americans do the Europeans will be doing in a few years, but Japanese culture is different enough to introduce considerable uncertainty. They are much more tech savvy (or obsessed) in general than the Europeans and Americans, so their rapid takeup of this technology might be giving false optimism to forward thinking Western businesspeople.

I don’t think there is a good reason why this trend hasn’t been offered to European mobile phone subscribers yet. It would be very difficult to not make the first step profitably. It’s not as if the network will have a warehouse full of wasted stock if the first one doesn’t sell. Maybe we’re just waiting for someone to unite a mobile network with the appropriate content provider…

 

How will the LT affect brands?

Branding?

Farmers and ranchers needed a way to be sure that their livestock could be distinguished from those of their neighbours. So, a metal symbol or brand was heated up and pressed against the creature’s hide, searing in a mark that would last for many years.

This term came to be used to describe the process of implanting a logo or other corporate feature into the minds of the public. The theory was that this subconscious influence would then lead them to buy certain products independently of their own rational judgement of the product’s worth. And this method was used to great effect by marketers from the latter half of the 20^th century onwards.

In the LT era, where products and services will be marketed on their uniqueness, how will branding work? Will large corporations that control a vast array of not highly successful products go to the trouble of creating a brand identity for each one? Or will they just keep one master brand? Would this work in a world where consumers are used to and value variety and their feeling of discovery and ownership of a product?

 Will there be subtler brands, e.g. an environmental brand (although a

particular logo is not used everywhere, a company might emphasise the green qualities of one product in order to raise awareness, and drive consumers to make green choices elsewhere, again choosing the same green company’s products) (or a brand could be a certain lifestyle. A company could push a certain attitude towards life that would prejudice the consumer when it makes a buying decision). This is probably already happening to a certain extent.

 We can see personalities being used as brands, where their sponsorship deals all reinforce each other, and even their personality seems to feed into their brand. This will probably become more prevalent in future. I will post more on this topic once I have read the highly recommended ‘Communities Dominate Brands’ and feel less out of my depth!  

 

Are publishers using minisites to target niches?

As part of the long tail theory, Chris Anderson mentioned that consumers will organise themselves into relatively small groups with similar tastes. Companies would then have to address each of these groups individually, rather than trying to create some sort of lowest common denominator product. I would expect publishers as a result to be trying to infiltrate these burgeoning groups to try and get them to integrate their brand as part of their identity. Am I right?

 

On the Penguin UK page, there is a section devoted to reading groups. These groups can submit their details for submission in a directory, and even enter competitions hosted by Penguin. They can also partake in interviews of Penguin published authors. Is all this an effort to market to the Long Tail?

No. The format might lead one to think so, but these reading groups are treated as a mass, and are all recommended the same books. This marketing initiative is almost certainly based on the Oprah/Richard and Judy book club model.

 

Penguin do have some mini-sites based on book categories, but these are still recognisably Penguin and do not differ greatly from each other.

 

All of the publishers I visited online had the same sort of setup, so I started to search by book title, and started with the biggest literary franchise I could think of.

 

The Tolkien minisite is not easy to recognise as a Harper Collins offshoot. It is perfect in its combination of forum, artist b/g info and bookselling, but is very hard to find through either a search engine or the HC site. It also looks great, and is endorsed by Tolkien’s son.

 

I got the impression that this example could be replicated by publishers for any major brand, and that such a website would prove very useful in promoting related products. Especially if it was ranked highly under carefully chosen Google search terms, and imaginatively constructed.

 

Doubleday (RH) did much the same for the Da Vinci Code. They built a sort of computer online treasure hunt based on Da Vinci’s works. This hunt is at all times accompanies by a link to buy the book.

 

I have concluded that the publishers are not yet seeing their market as being fragmented, or at least not fragmented enough to warrant significant marketing outlay for these niches. Will small publishing houses ever have enough of a budget to address niche markets in this way? Probably not. But with the growth in user-generated web content it should prove quick and cheap to recruit a myspace page or fan site to do this job for them…

I will definitely have to follow this up.    

 

Why are book publishers not grabbing the Long Tail with both hands?

After speaking to the D&C Production Manager I have a newfound appreciation for the complexity of the logistics involved in publishing. The cost and timing of everything is precisely calculated and coordinated so that all parties involved are able to do their jobs and make money.  The many blogs and sites that have been commenting on how the media is likely to react to the long tail have at times suggested that the paper publishing trade is too old-fashioned and technophobic to adapt to these developments. The truth is slightly more complicated.

Although the quality of POD digital printing is climbing, it still is not to the standard that litho can deliver, and is not good enough for illustrated full colour volumes. When the quality does reach that level, it is still likely to be a while until the per unit digital printing costs drop sufficiently for publishers to make enough profit on their book printing shorter runs. It is true that under the long tail publishers will save money on storage, distribution and marketing of individual titles, but until the digital printing costs come down “printing less of more” will not be cost effective. 

The other option is for publishers to sell electronic versions of their books through a website. In contrast to POD, the margins on an e-book are much more attractive to a publisher. This side of the issue is sort of ‘chicken and egg’; the publishers have already committed a certain amount of resources into making and promoting ebooks, but the public just haven’t taken to them in the way that they had hoped. Whether it is due to the lack of a familiar distribution channel, poor handheld technology, the discomfort of reading from the screen, the enduring popularity of the book, poor promotion or a combination of these is hard to say, but publishers are being cagey about committing further to it until they understand more about it.  

Experiments in releasing books both in print and in e-formats have shown that there does not seem to be an impact on book sales when free electronic content is released. Nevertheless book publishers are very aware of the impact on CD sales that free music downloads had, and to date have opted to stay out of the race rather than take a risk. At any rate, publishers are right now keeping an eye on developments in new technology with a view to exploiting them if and when they can offer a better solution than what they have.

 There are certain steps that publishers can take right now to make their business more LT friendly, eg S&S’s move towards contracting authors without rights reversions. Some think that this move was on the foolish side of brave. Another LT characteristic to be found in the book trade is Amazon’s extensive customer recommendation system.  Similar models are being adopted by publishers’ websites.

For example, D&C have an affiliate links system, which rewards web masters for displaying links to the D&C online bookshop. This is related to the LT in that it represents a marketing effort aimed at a very narrow band of consumers, namely the traffic of that particular site. The web master chooses a book that he believes his visitors will be interested in (with his expert knowledge of them) for the ad, as his reward is relative to how many books are sold through his link. 

 I’ll develop this topic, and those on earlier posts further over the next couple of weeks when I have time off. Bye for now!        

 

I want electronic text, and I want it now!

Here is my response to Journalist Danuta Kean’s article on e-book technology.

“…I think Danuta hits on a few very good points: one is that it is very hard to say that ereaders will explode along the same lines as the ipod, and secondly that the ebook format offers too much to not catch on.

It’s not just a matter of age that leaves her unsure of the technology’s future. I’m a student in his early 20’s, and I don’t know if a reading device will be able to embody a “mass-market coolness” in the way that the ipod has. Why? Because music is simply different to reading. I find it hard to picture an advertising campaign based on an ereader with the same impact of Apple’s dancing silhouettes in the ipod advert. Literature is something that it’s fans tend to enjoy due to its exclusivity.  Of course I could be proved wrong…

My contemporaries and I are so used to the convenience of researching online that I’m sure a site selling electronic academic texts would make a killing. I’m sick of walking up to the library only to find that it’s closed due to a Bank Holiday, or that I haven’t got time to queue for the photocopier cos it’s nearly 7 pm. Both of these problems: access and distribution would not effect an e-book.” 

 

After some consideration…

Having read some more on the subject, I’ve made a list of possible ramifications of the removal of the rights reversion clause from publishing contracts:  

 

1)     Legal teething problems: If the concern from the online writing community over the S&S move is to be taken seriously, then not all authors will accept such a revision of their contracts. This could cause authors to change publishing house rather than signing new contracts with their existing ones, causing a power shift away from innovators like S&S.

2)     Publishers will publish more: Texts will no longer have to be highly market-oriented. Random House and others know that they will be able to turn a profit on an unpopular, or even a bad book if it’s only sold through POD or as an e-book, providing there is no, or a much smaller advance. If the feeling that aggregators of content are going to profit the most from the LT spreads, then this point may well prove true.  

3)     Self-publishing will grow: The reason publishing houses are holding onto these titles for longer is because they will be profitable for longer. This is true because they are under no compulsion to do anything difficult with them to get them sold. No advertising, bulk printing, or marketing. As a result, the writers will probably be able to do their own LT publishing, and will prove more and more successful as the public gets more used to buying books POD and online due to the large publishers’ activity.

4)     Writers’ Union: As more and more writers with less influence get signed up to publishers, they will need to band together in order to stop being exploited. As was the case back in the old days of publishing, many of these ‘alternative ‘writers will not be able to afford an agent to represent their rights, leaving them open to exploitation like so many writers pre-1980’s. The logic of aggregation under the LT may lead small hobbyist writers to form associations to hire an agent between them, or maybe to use the clout of the more successful ones to gain them respect from publishers.

5)     Personalised books: One of the advantages of POD is that people could in theory be able to ask for a personalised copy. That is to say, as their single copy is being printed for them alone, they might ask for a different cover, or font.

6)     A dip in the quality of writing: If an author can expect to get a deal from a publisher who doesn’t expect to sell more than 2 copies of his book a year, then why would he try to make it successful? Surely instead he would rush on to write another rotten novel and pass it on to the next aggregator.

 

Web 2.0 in book publishing?

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/pressreleases/1142792.html

 This article from the Irish press may (at a pinch perhaps) be considered a sign that publishers are drifting towards user generated content. This blog will touch upon the influence of the co-called web 2.0 phenomenon on book publishing, if I and when I can find any. This was an astute marketing move by Gill & Macmillan, combining an awareness of the current saleability of biography with the continued blurring of boundaries between reader and composer.

As the tastes of readers drift towards the daily lives of their counterparts (as the rise in popularity of blogs, and the bestsellers list has shown), will publishers start to call for more non-fiction from non-writers? 

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2003520,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10

This guardian article would support the above claim.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=457921&in_page_id=1773

And so would this one if it were published by someone other than the Daily Mail… Could be true though.

 

Simon & Schuster prepare to grow a tail.

The buzz about the S&S decision at the moment has been that this move will cause the author’s works to languish in some immense database unseen while the writer him/herself slides into poverty and obscurity. This seems like a lot of alarmism to me. Given the amount of books that are currently either out of print or unpublished, I would predict that this type of move by publishers will lead to a boost in revenue for authors on the whole. Publishers like to make money. They will not allow a text to disappear if they think it has potential for mass market distribution.  

One aspect of this removal of the ‘reversion of rights’ clause that could (and I’m sure soon will) be improved upon is the fact that it seems to give permanent copyright to the publisher. By removing a clause that gives authors an option to change publishers at a point that is mutually beneficial, the publishers are asking authors to take a big risk. I am sure that the agents who  have done such a good job of protecting authors’ rights to date will ensure that their clients receive fair contracts under the long tail.

 Perhaps a ‘buy-out clause’ could be inserted for such works, allowing publishers who believe a book in another publishers’ backlist could be promoted widely to put their money where their mouth is. Or maybe contracts could come up for review every few years once sales have sunk below a certain threshold.

 I will be watching how this issue develops over the next few months, as I’m certain that S&S will soon be joined by other major publishers, none of whom will want to risk scaring their major authors away. 

 Follow up:

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story3266.shtml this article explains why this change to a standard contract may become more common.