This news has been picked up and passed on by a number of sites I’ve come across in the past two days: within 24 hours of the release of the latest Harry Potter books, e-book and audio versions were circulating on the net. Pirated, of course. This AP story from June reports a distinct lack of interest in putting any of the Potter books into e-formats, citing such reasons as the lack of an effective e-book reader, piracy concerns and an under-developed market for e-versions of kid’s books.
Mark Federman at the blog What is the (Next) Message? points to the rapid development of the illegal online versions of the Potter tale as a missed opportunity for the publishers.
The suggestion is that, were the newest addition to the Hogwarts collection available to be bought in other formats than merely a hardcover book, they would have sold, and likely sold big time.
Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig (check out Free Culture and Code V.2), among others know this to be true. A hotly anticipated title, made available in electronic format, even for free download, still becomes a bestseller. Indeed, making titles available electronically can be used for promotion, as extra revenue channels, or as a courtesy to loyal, paying customers who recognize that the same content as different media have different messages, or effects.
One other observation: We are increasingly learning that, with the changes resulting from ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity, the most sustainable sources of revenue will become increasingly indirect – with sometimes two or three levels of indirection from the nominal product or service. That’s a bit of magic that will take our industrial-age-borne corporate mentalities a while to understand.
The message appears to be that people will get what they want, if the demand as high enough, and increasingly they will go after it in the format that suits them best. That’s a lesson the music industry is painfully learning, that the movie industry is in the throes of trying to cope with and that the book industry is clearly going to have to eventually acknowledge. New times need new business models, and the old model from the book world — hardcover to trade paperback to paperback and audio — will be overcome by fans who take the matter into their own hands.
TECHNORATI TAGS: BOOKS, PUBLISHING, HARRY POTTER
