TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Michael Cairns’ Category

By Michael Cairns, former President, Bowker

The news that Nintendo will add book content to the DS product platform may have publishing executives humming the refrain from The King and I—”Getting to Know You”—as they jet off to Tokyo.

But could this event be ominous for content owners? Will they run the risk that their content won’t be valued adequately by the target users?

While the content will be paid for, it is very cheap. The content in  the package isn’t new (front list) but the aggressive pricing will establish a price expectation in the minds of the consumer. It reminds me of the inclusion of “free” encyclopedia content on early personal computers which destroyed the market for paid versions. Remember, the content at the heart of Encarta didn’t approach that of WorldBook or Brittanica but it didn’t matter to the users.

The deal with the company that bought us DonkeyKong and SuperMario will deliver the Harpercollins 100 classic book collection. The package of titles includes titles from Shakespeare to Jane Austen and will be sold for £20. (As an experiment, I can’t help wondering how successful/indicative this is going to be since the titles are available universally for free download and the target market will know that).

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By Michael Cairns, former President, Bowker

Michael Cairns, our newest contributor, is former president of Bowker and managing partner of Information Media Partners, a strategy firm. Check out his PersonNonData blog. Welcome, Michael! - D.R.

Should readers really miss the book review sections that newspapers are dropping? It was a hot topic last year, with speculation on the future of reading and books generally.

Now we see the demise of several more sections, including the one at the LA. Times, which published its final stand-alone edition on July 27. Should we lament this trend? As I see it, the arguments in favor of the sections remain sentimental. They suggest a Utopian book-centric world where every reader weighs the careful words of the reviewer before making a particular purchase.

Lissa Warren’s dropped jaw

In a Huffington Post blog item, a publicist-editor named Lissa Warren lamented the demise of the Times’ section. She called out those who believe, as I do, that blog reviewers are filling the void left by "official" reviewers.

"…What does make my jaw drop," she wrote, is "the seemingly widely-held notion that these book sections are being adequately replaced by blogs. To be sure, there are some excellent book blogs out there: Mark Sarvas’s The Elegant Variation. The National Book Critics Circle’s Critical Mass. MediaBistro’s Galley Cat. Jessa Crispin’s Bookslut. The Boston Globe’s Off the Shelf. And, of course, the New York Times’ Paper Cuts. They’re all bookmarked on my computer. I read them often for news on new titles (and older ones I missed) and Q&As with authors. Many of them are also good for stories on publishing trends, which as a book publicist and editor I appreciate a great deal. But, for the most part, these blogs don’t actually review books."

Trust networks vs. traditional book reviews

In my view there is a macro point that makes her argument largely irrelevant; that is, we are beginning to see the development of trust networks. As consumers of information we are starting to build our own networks of people and entities we rely on to support everything from our political philosophy to our choice in vacation spot.

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