Content Production Markets
A very speculative model which we have yet so see emerge is the development of book production ‘content production markets’. Code development has had this for a long time with sites like freelancer.com where project managers can find freelance programmers. Project managers post specific jobs to freelancer.com and programmers make bids for the work. The project manager then evaluates the bidder’s experience and client feedback against the amount the bidder posted.
It is very easy to imagine that this kind of business could evolve for book production. There are many people in the world with skills relative to book production that can be executed online – editing, writing, illustration, research, fact checking – you name it. Development of a formalised and informal trading of these skills could create significant revenues for participants and could really explode the current book production model and the revenues available for producers.
The long tale
Lastly, The Long Tale. The long tail was popularised in the age of the net by Chris Anderson. It’s the familiar strategy of selling a large number of books to small niche markets. The idea being that a lot of sales of niche items adds up to a good profit or as he put it in the title Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
However there is another possible ‘long tale’ market here – instead of seeing a total inventory as having a ‘long tail,’ each book in itself can be customised for resale over a number of smaller markets. One book distributed over several markets, each with its very own version of the book. We have experimented with this a little in FLOSS Manuals – customising the same book for specific markets. Remixing books can be considered to be exactly this strategy but on a very small scale. Many workshop leaders use the remix feature of FLOSS Manuals to generate workbooks with content taken from several existing books. We have also encouraged consultants to take books from FLOSS Manuals, clone them, and customise the book to speak directly to their potential and existing customers. It is a powerful pre- and post-sales device. The long tale here has a market of 1 – the client. This is the very end of the long tale, but the return can be lucrative for the consultant that secures a sale or return sale because of their valued added services powered by customised documentation.
I believe there is a business here – either customising content as a service or providing the tools for people to customise heir own content. It is also very possible that one book could in itself provide a lucrative ‘long tale’ business if the tale was long enough.
Chapter Sales
Some are putting their money on the sale of book components – selling parts of a book, typically in chapter form. This necessitates closed copyright as a rule. O’Reilly have been experimenting with this for about 5 years and it seems to be their darling, the newest iteration being the Inkling project which is strongly backed by them. Inkling markets educational material in chapter form.
I think this is a very interesting strategy but I don’t like it because the sale of content like this always works against reuse and collaboration. If the bottom line is still in resale of the artefact, this will always work against free culture and movements like the Open Education Resources movement. From this perspective this process is flowing against new forms of education processes. I can’t help but be cynical to think Inkling will make more money from a single book through chapter sales than they would ever make from selling the book as a whole. If you look at some of Inkling’s titles and total up the price per chapter against the total number of chapters then it is apparent the cost to the buyer exceeds the cover price of the entire book. It’s a cynical move. Real innovation in this field would construct markets for chapter production with the contents being free to distribute and reuse as mentioned above. Unfortunately, chapter resale in the form that O’Reilly and Inkling pursue is going to have a successful market but it’s working against more enlightened approaches to education and the future of the book in the long term.
