From: avatar (avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au)
Date: Sat Jan 18 2003 - 19:40:19 MST
From: "Eugen Leitl" <eugen@leitl.org>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 9:51 AM
Subject: RE: free information
> Who is essential in the publication loop, I wonder? A good author could
> exist solely by word of mouth, or by 'whoever bought this also bought
> these" lists. If you need an editor or a sales agency you could pay them
> in front, or make them get a cut on the issues sold (probably, more
> rewarding).
Who is essential in the production loop under web-based downloadable
digital paperbooks? [I can just see people exceeding their download limits
on cable by being addicted to downloading large format photography.]
Well, the author. Editors will be a matter of choice, but will still exist in larger
organizations. Probably there will be more "fast and good" editors (currently
we have endured a generation of more-work-means-my-job-is-valid editors
combined with trying to upgrade sloppy politically fashionable work - and
these editors took over when the older generation was fired by the new
world of superlarge publishing houses created by ceaseless merging and
takeover, itself driven by cost factors and limited distribution mechanisms).
The website will be a matter of choice, since there will be private and semi
private options, but there will exist website company managers and support
staff. Publicists and reviewers will be huge.
Bookstores and inkpaper books will still exist in boutique old-fashioned form,
in niche newspaper cracks, and possibly in the corner of more social "cruise
our hard drive library and internet catalogue" bookstores.
Credit card companies will benefit (until the government provides free
digital cash as it does free plastic cash).
Internet cable and service providers and computer companies will benefit
servicing increased traffic and meeting new needs.
Flat paper battery producers (currently at least one Israeli company) will benefit,
along with cheap (damn the size) chip manufacturers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who will suffer?
[This process applies first to black and white production.
Colour production is slightly further in the future, so this represents a gradual
changeover outside of novels and newspapers - including Internet newspapers,
of course: it implies newspaper prices will go down, currently half a newsaper's
cost is paper production, maybe $US0.5million per 200,000 circulation or some-
thing like that.]
Forestors.
Some portion of paper production staff will be shed as the need for newspapers
and magazines will be less and digital paper will outlast books if constructed
sturdily.
Printers. These will have to downsize and fill more niche markets. Note that
[I presume} cheap digital paper can be set in large sheets via a single chip
and then cut up once set (saving costs for postcards etc.). Printers currently
consume about 20% of the money you pay for a book, rate depends on print
numbers. Electronic ink printing didn't dent this process much because the
distribution logjam remained in the bookstore and the printing machines were
still expensive. I.e. the benefits of discarding plates vapourized in the real world.
Bookshops. Currently in real terms booshops and their landlords consume
50 to 60% of the money you pay for a book.
Agents. Publicists will subsume their role somewhat. Authors will become their
own agents somewhat. There'll still be a role for them in the upmost echelons
of success, however.
Distributors. The notion of a small clique of prosperous distributors is doomed.
Middling to large publishing houses. Though big players will always exist, we
are going to see a much flatter structure here.
--- As an aside, note there will be the phenomenon of the internet wave: instant millionaires deriving their wealth from word of mouth on their 25cents US a click website. There will be public debate about whether eink and its corporate allies are too powerful, like Windows and Bill Gates. (So far Gyricon is looking like iMac to PC). The race to colour digital ink is the next development, along with cheap printable circuits (eink's co-founder/researcher is now working on this). Avatar
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jan 21 2003 - 17:10:21 MST