[FM Discuss] reading about publishing

[adam hyde]

hey

On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 12:34 -0500, Anne Gentle wrote:
> Hi all -
> I'm enjoying this article titled "Post-Medium Publishing" because it
> discusses the question, do people value better content? Since that's
> part of FM's value proposition (better content), I'm fascinated.
> http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html

thanks for this Anne. I just got some time today to read it...great
article. I liked Paul Grahams position that publishers have not been in
the business of selling content, they have been in the business of
selling paper. His point that paper no longer sells and hence publishing
is entering a post-medium era seems spot on.

However his attempts to suggest what comes next didn't hold much water
for me. I was wondering what your thoughts are on, for example, his
belief that either advertising or devices (ie the kindle) will become
the new model...

...to me these conclusions seem rather shallow given his very
stimulating lead in...I guess he does excuse himself from these
concluding musings with the rather nice statement :

"...though I can't predict specific winners, I can offer a recipe for
recognizing them. When you see something that's taking advantage of new
technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have
before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something
that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some
existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser."

nice nice...

 adam


> 
> There's one part that sticks out to me as well as FM seeks different
> physical publishing mediums for our content.
> 
> "Clearly at some point in the 1960s the big publishing houses started
> to ask: how cheaply can we make books before people refuse to buy
> them? The answer turned out to be one step short of phonebooks. As
> long as it isn't floppy, consumers still perceive it as a book."
> 
> I like the idea of newspaper-style printings to drive costs down and
> perhaps give us a distribution model that we don't currently have -
> something like printing a pile and placing them in a collage student
> common area or handing them out between sessions at conferences and so
> forth.
> 
> The idea of putting a one-page ad on a printing to support costs is a
> good one as well - and something that zinepal.com seems to be after.
> You can gather content from different RSS feeds and create your own
> two-column "zine" then add ads on pages as you see fit. We could
> certainly offer something like zinepal.com for FM content, it seems
> feasible just like a remix, and might be a way to generate funds too
> to cover printing costs or content generation costs.
> 
> I also think that using Lulu as our print and distribution helper is
> costing us more than it's worth. I think we should buy a 10-pack of
> ISBNs and pick a handful of books to sell through Lightning Source as
> our print and distribution helper. I'll keep pursuing this option.
> 
> Thanks,
> Anne
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Adam Hyde
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