Category: Business

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Business & Marketing

What do you need to consider if you’re thinking about self publishing a book?

There was a time when the only way to get a book published was to interest a publisher and sign away your copyright to that publisher. There were definitely benefits to that arrangement, mostly starting with a nice up-front advance on sales!

However, most authors never see anything more than that advance and usually end up owing money (in theory) to the publisher as a consequence of insufficient sales to cover the advance. The per-book return to an author is so low that most authors make more money off the Amazon affiliate link than they do from the book sale!

When you self publish you get a much larger return-per-sale than from a publisher, because you’re taking on more of the work and risk yourself. With print-on-demand technologies and online sellers like Amazon open to all, it’s certainly practical to self-publish, but should you?

Based on my experience with The HD Survival Handbook; Pro Apps Tips collections; Awesome Titling, Simple Encoding Recipes (just rewritten last week for 2009) and most recently The New Now. This exercise started with simple downloadable PDFs and has led to a paperback now in Amazon.

That you will have to write your content and provide most of the illustrations is expected and pretty much the same whether you self publish or have a publisher. One intangible advantage of a publisher is that they are going to keep on your back for the book once they’ve paid you the advance, whereas when you self publish you’re responsible for your own scheduling.

You have to provide your own editor/proofreader

Everyone (whether they like to think it or not) needs a proofreader and someone who reads their material to ensure content accuracy and grammatical clarity. Believe me, my work is much better thanks to Greg Clarke’s careful read throughs and constructive criticism. Even better, he works to improve my work, not take my “voice” out of it.

My experience with publishers (two companies) is that they try to achieve this soulless bland style that could be anyone. I have, as you probably have noticed, a personal style and voice in my writing. I like that and it seems my readers like the style. By self publishing I get to keep my voice in the work – to keep the writing in my style not something generic and dull.

If you must edit your own work, or simply can’t find someone to fill that role, then read it out loud. Reading aloud takes a different path within the brain and you’ll recognize mistakes or lack of clarity much more easily if you read out loud.

You’re responsible for design and layout

Personally I like playing with illustration, layout and design. My font choices are probably boring and The New Now is probably a point-size too large (although my contemporaries like the slightly larger print for aging eyes). I totally enjoyed laying out and creating the illustrations for The HD Survival Handbook so this isn’t daunting for me. But if you’re not comfortable doing design, you’ll need to (probably) pay someone to lay out the book, whether you’re distributing a PDF or going to print.

Likewise cover design and cover copy. It’s all going to come back to you without a publisher, so be prepared to put in even more time, or pay someone to do it. For covers, Amazon’s CreateSpace has templates you can draw on.

You’re responsible for the printing

What once was one of the two primary reasons for having a publisher was to fund the expense of printing (typically) 5,000 books. (Not surprisingly, the advance when I was working with publishers was equivalent to the return from 5,000 copies. Few authors see any additional return.)

These days, with on-demand printing already very reasonable for B&W books and getting more so for color, printing is not an issue any more. (As an aside there’s a new generation of the print-on-demand technologies just announced that are twice as fast and half the cost of the current machines. This will reduce the cost of on-demand printing even further.)

I chose Amazon’s CreateSpace simply because the relationship with Amazon makes it a very simple choice. It solves three problems in one – printing, ISBN number and access to retail distribution. The process is simple enough even for a first time user. I had only one issue that appears to have been more a problem with UPS than with CreateSpace.

You can use CreateSpace as a channel to Amazon, or simply to print copies of the book to sell after presentations or from your own website. (We sell the PDF version from our site, all print copies that are not in-person sales are handled by Amazon.)

Now, when an order is received at Amazon, it’s printed at CreateSpace and shipped without any additional effort on my part.

It is a little more complicated to be listed in Amazon if you use LuLu or other on-demand publisher.

You need to provide an ISBN

While not necessary if you plan to only sell direct, an ISBN number is essential if the book is to go into any distribution channel or to a retail bookshop. Some places want to charge up to $250 for an ISBN to be allocated to your book, but CreateSpace include the ISBN for no additional charge. You simply leave a blank space on the cover design for where the ISBN will be imposed and printed.

Booksellers worldwide can order your book by ISBN.

You need to get access to distribution channels

Unless you plan to only sell in person and through a website, you needed a publisher to get access to the retail book channel. CreateSpace automatically offers listing in Amazon via a simple checkbox and price setting. (You set the price for Amazon, although they will tell you the minimum price you can sell and still get a return!)

Although there are other booksellers – who can order the book via the ISBN – I didn’t think there was value in seeking to be listed at Barnes and Noble or other bookseller. My book can be found on Amazon or ordered by any bookseller and that’s enough. I also figure anyone in our industry (loosely defined as Digital Production, Post Production or Distribution) will likely buy online rather than attempt to find any give book in a walk-in bookshop. Most likely they will go to Amazon where the book is listed.

Open, unmediated access to the Amazon retail site is one of the most significant changes that made self-publishing practical.

You need to do your own publicity and promotion

In theory, your publisher is going to promote and publicize your book. In theory. In practice what mostly happens is that the book is listed among all upcoming books in your category in a publication circulated to bookshops (so they will advance order copies). They’ll send out an email to selected, somewhat appropriate media and bloggers, and that’s about it.

You might get a 30 minute presentation spot on a publisher’s booth during a trade show but by-and-large that’s the publisher’s contribution to promoting your book. Most authors will expend effort to promote the book themselves anyway.

Which is another reason to consider self-publishing. If you’re going to need to promote your book yourself anyway, why not just promote your book yourself and leave the publisher out?

I wrote an article for the 2009 Supermeet Magazine (available shortly for download – check LAFCPUG.org) on growing a market for your independent production. That information would be equally valuable for building a market for a book, using modern PR techniques and (don’t hate me) “social media”. (There is more in The New Now on using the same techniques to build a business – naturally with a lot more depth.)

From my perspective self-publishing has been a positive experience. I get to keep my unique style and voice; I get to control how the book looks (not important to everyone but it is to me) and most importantly, I get to keep a larger portion of the return from my hard work. To date, we have done significantly better on the books than I would have had I gone down the more traditional path. Given the sorts of advances now being offered by publishers (trending toward half what they were five years ago and not enough to cover the time to write a book) I have done very, very much better from fewer sales than I would have had I published via the traditional route.

And here’s a final benefit. Author copies from CreateSpace are at cost. They are much lower, particularly for B&W/Grayscale books than you would think, such that my New Now book is often my new ‘calling card’. It’s a inexpensive way to keep people thinking of you and recognize the value I can add with consulting and other services.

As long as the six “You have to” issues listed here aren’t deal-breakers for you then I recommend you give it a go!  Got questions? That’s what the comments are for.

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Business & Marketing

How to get paid faster!

This is summarized from a small section of the “Work Smarter” chapter in The New Now: How to grow your production or postproduction business in a changed and changing world.

Never feel reluctant to invoice customers. You have done great work for them, helping make them more money (or you don’t have a future) so there’s no reason to feel the slightest bit embarrassed about wanting to be paid, and paid promptly.

Pay Fast

Let’s consider the other side of the equation: if you want to be paid fast, pay fast yourself. Unless you never want to do business with a supplier or subcontractor again, keep the relationship good by paying when due, or ahead of when due. Doing so will keep the business relationship alive and improve your reputation. You’ll become a valued client of theirs and get preferential treatment if it ever comes down to a choice of doing business with you, or with someone else.

You are not a bank – reset your status with customers

If you find yourself getting strung out for payment then you need to reset the relationship. If necessary, go to those customers who are slowing payment and point out that you’re a production company, not a bank, and since you won’t be getting a big bail-out you rely on customers to pay promptly.

Make sure you make it clear you’ll run through hoops for the customer but you expect them to pay in a timely manner.

Tip for the Paranoid: Watermark all preview tapes, DVDs or files before payment has been received.

Talk about payment terms up front

You’re going to have to talk about it sometime and before you’re committed to the work is the best time. Unless payment terms are part of the agreement, customers can always claim they “didn’t know” or “we can’t do that”. If there is a genuine problem that their company cannot pay on your terms, this is the time to negotiate it, not when the job is complete.

Know your profitable customers

Do you know how much each client’s payment cycle costs you?

In a post at Howard Mann’s Business Brickyard, Colleen Barrett – former President of Southwest Airlines – has this story to tell about examining the profitability of each customer based in part on payment history.

Send your invoice promptly

In a small production or postproduction business, it’s the video work that interests most of us. The fact that we have to run a business as well is kind of a drag. One consequence is that invoices don’t get sent out promptly. Realistically you can’t expect anyone to pay until they have the invoice, so get the invoice out the door as quickly after the client accepts the work as possible.

Important: I’m talking about tried and true customers here. If you’re working with a totally new customer stick to the traditional policy of 30% payment of budget when work commences; 30% at the completion of production (or suitable postproduction milestone, like first draft assembly) and the balance of 40% due on completion. For new customers it’s very unwise to let the master out to the customer until payment has been made (and cleared the bank).

Avoid the mail

Once you let the postal system have control over your invoice you don’t know when it was received unless you take out receipt confirmation, which requires a trip to the post office for each invoice. Not fun. Instead, email the invoice and ask the client to confirm receipt. If you don’t hear back within a day or so, follow up with another email or phone call to confirm that the invoice has been received and that there are no problems with it.

Know the client’s payment process

The larger the company, the more complicated getting paid is. Know their system so you can work with it to your advantage, or at least not make payment unnecessarily slow because of a mistake at your end.

Offer a discount

Depending on your jurisdiction many Utilities and Government bodies are legally obliged to take advantage of any discounts offered.

Make your invoices pleasant

Invoices are a fact of life but make them appealing. Get the person who designed your logo and stationary to design the invoice. Make it look attractive and look like your company.

If you have a relatively small number of customers, like we typically do in production and postproduction, then take the time to write a personal message with the invoice (in the email or an accompanying letter). Make it some funny quote, or poignant statement about the industry, or something relevant to the customer’s business. By including something pleasant you can eventually make people look forward to your invoice. It can be the same message on every invoice, although change it at least every month.

Systematically follow up every invoice

Simply sending out a ‘Past Due’ notice and subsequent monthly statements isn’t going to cause a company deliberately delaying payment any stress or pressure. We’re enabling their poor behavior!

Never let copyright pass until you’re paid in full

One of the things I learnt painfully, was to put a clause in the agreement (never a contract, that scares people) such that copyright in the work did not pass to the client until payment was received in full.

It’s a blunt instrument, and only really useful when the relationship has broken down and future work is unlikely, but it ups the ante because willful breach of copyright has penalties attached that inadvertent breaching does not.

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Distribution New Media

Why is fighting piracy a losing battle?

A couple of days ago I talked about why a “three strikes” law is such a bad idea. It’s also a bad idea because it’s pointless and bad for the content creators and/or owners’ businesses.

On the other hand, even the threat of a three strikes law in France (ultimately struck down by their highest court as against human rights) immediately created a business opportunity for encrypted Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Not only that, but the Pirate Bay folks are also setting up an inexpensive VPN service for anyone that wants it. These services disguise the IP address of the downloader, so even if copyright owners tried to get an IP address to sue (not that you can sue an IP address, as many have found out in non-US jurisdictions) everyone using the service has the same IP address, not correlateable to any individual location. 

If that should ever become “broken” as a workaround, something else will be found. In fact there’s a move afoot to update the bittorrent protocol to a new form that resists seeders being identified.

It’s a pointless exercise. Whatever horse there was has long bolted the stable and the only reasonable response from an intelligent business person is to find new business models. Andy Kessler, writing at Forbes.com, discusses The Inevitability of Internet Pirates: 

Hand out as many guilty verdicts as you like, but folks on the Internet will copy away–because, really, who can stop them? Google won’t do it, Internet providers like Comcast ( CMCSA –news - people ) and AT&T ( T - news - people ), who can block a lot of this stuff, can’t do it without Network Neutrality proponents squawking, “Interference!”

Even authoritarian regimes fail. (The Great Firewall of China is quite leaky.) Plus, it is so easy to create a Web service to download copyrighted material that, like that arcade game Whac-A-Mole, if you take one culprit down with your mallet another five pop up in the next few nanoseconds. Sad but true, there is not much anyone can do.

Blocking sites does not work because it’s relatively trivial to find a proxy server to log into the “blocked site”. DRM has been an abject failure inconveniencing those who actually paid for the product without doing anything to reduce “piracy”. 

Piracy is such a daft word for infringement – a civil or business problem, not a criminal one. With theft of property, the original owner is deprived of ownership because the thief has taken it. Not so with a digital copy where millions can be produced without anyone being deprived of anything (other than potential, not actual, income). The copyright industry likes to use the word “theft” or “stealing” but it’s disingenuous at best and an outright lie in all likelihood. (As are the outrageous guesses at “losses” that make the ridiculous assumption that every download is a lost sale at a premium price, none of which is supportable by fact.)

Not only is it inevitable, but it’s not in the best interests of the content industry. As I’ve noted before, those who do pirate music are also the music industry’s best customers. Apparently the pirating is a way of testing new music that otherwise would never have been heard, appreciated and ultimately purchased. 

Not only that but a new Harvard study shows clearly that it’s in societies best interests to have weak copyright. Remembering that the writers of the Constitution of the USA reluctantly granted “limited” exclusive copyright in return for encouraging creative work.

Copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it’s intended to foster creative production in the arts. It seems that goal is fostered by weak copyright and file sharing. 

The idiot copyright industry keeps saying that nothing would be created without ever stronger, and longer, copyright. This is another lie that bears no relationship with any fact or research, but that doesn’t stop the IRAA and MPAA making the claim. (Heck, they simply change their story to suit whatever action they’re currently taking to prop up outdated business models – every action that is, except updating their business models.)

The Harvard Study, analyzed by Michael Geist (the original is a pdf and harder to link to or quote) has found that file sharing has significantly increased cultural production. 

The paper takes on several longstanding myths about the economic effects of file sharing, noting that many downloaded songs do not represent a lost sale, some mashups may increase the market for the original work, and the entertainment industry can still steer consumer attention to particular artists (which results in more sales and downloads).

And this:

The authors’ point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for “complements” increases.  They point to rising income from performances or author speaking tours as obvious examples of income that may be enhanced through file sharing. In particular, they focus on a study that concluded that demands for concerts increased due to file sharing and that concert prices have steadily risen during the file sharing era.  Moreover, the authors’ canvass the literature on the effects of file sharing on music sales, confirming that the “results are decidedly mixed.” 

It’s time the MPAA, RIAA and their international associates, who do NOT really represent artists, simply realized they were flogging a dead horse and the only chance they have for a future is to adapt. Ever more draconian laws that turn almost every citizen into a civil offender (or worse a criminal) is not only stupid, it’s not in the best interests of those who create the content. Something many musicians have realized already.

Any chance of at least one politician understanding the argument? I didn’t think so.

Categories
Distribution Media Consumption

What is the future of broadcast and cable TV?

The catalyst for this post was Henry Blodget’s provocative post Sorry, There’s No Way To Save The TV Business. There’s a lot in the article I agree with, but also a lot of good counterpoints in the comments. Clearly it’s not yet universally agreed upon!

That article alone would probably be worth commenting on, but add it to a whole bunch of other articles I’ve been holding for comment:

TV: The Next to Fall by Jeff Jarvis at Seeking Alpha (i.e. strong/good) Media

We’ve been wringing hands over newspapers and magazines, but TV and radio aren’t far behind. Broadcast is next.

It’s a failure of distribution as a business model. Distribution is a scarcity business: ‘I control the tower/press/wire and you don’t and that’s what makes my business.’ Not long ago, they said that owning these channels was tantamount to owning a mint. No more. The same was said of content. But it’s relationships (read: links) that create value today.

Why Television Needs a Reality Check on Sustainable Business Models by Diane Mermigas

Time for a reality check. You know your business model is in trouble when …

Revenues and free cash flow recede and profits evaporate

The TV Industry Is Terminally Ill by Bruce Everis, also at Seeking Alpha

The demise of TV is because it is old technology. Quite frankly I find it pretty boring these days. They just cannot compete with computing, the internet and gaming. And they cannot compete because they are not interactive (except in a farcically limited way), they do not connect the user with other users and their content is purely linear. Their main market now is the educationally subnormal, geriatrics and babies, because these are the only people left who aren’t online.

Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable in the New York Times by Tim Arango

For decades, the big three, now big four, networks all had the same game plan: spend many millions to develop and produce scripted shows aimed at a mass audience and national advertisers, with a shelf life of years or decades as reruns in syndication.

But that model, based on attracting enough ad dollars to cover the costs of shows like “Lost” and “ER,” no longer appears viable. Network dramas now cost about $3 million an hour.

The future for the networks, it seems, is more low-cost reality shows, more news and talk, and a greater effort to find new revenue streams, whether they be from receiving subscriber fees as cable channels do, or becoming cable networks themselves, an idea that has gained currency.

For Television, It’s a Whole New World again by Diane Mermigas

Anyone expecting television advertising–including network upfront spending that could decline more than 15%–to rebound to former levels is in serious denial of the deep-set economic changes underway.

Systemic shifts in how companies and consumers make and spend money could throw media and other commercial players into a death spiral if they are unwilling to alter behavior and expectations. Advertising is not going away, but its fundamental economics are changing. That makes widespread media market deflation and deterioration (the worst being local media) much more than a cyclical glitch, according to a new Goldman Sachs report.

There are others but it’s too depressing for a Monday evening!  For an industry that’s still making money and still incredibly popular – latest figures show the average American viewing about 310 minutes a day (just over 5 hours) – that’s an awful lot of doom and gloom.

And probably unjustified. New technologies have never wiped out any preceding industry. Film did not destroy stage. Radio did not kill film. Television killed neither radio nor film. It’s unlikely that Internet Video or Internet TV (call it what you will, I still like New Media with the caveat that it’s unmediated) will replace Television.

What has happened is that the role of different media has changed. Radio has few panel or game shows and very few drama programs anymore. These have migrated to Television. A lot of film production is dedicated to Television distribution so, instead of replacing the Film Industry, Television helped it grow.

So, it’s likely that Broadcast Television will remain – the big four networks will have a role. But I think we’ll see it change to feed the few mass markets remaining: sports (definitely); news (although most TV news is pre-recorded and edited before the broadcast); reality television, talk and game shows (because they’re relatively cheap to produce).

Pretty much everything else will migrate to on-demand consumption. There’s little loyalty to a channel, but there is loyalty to the programs. What a lot of TV executives haven’t yet realized is that people don’t care about their network or channel, just the individual programs that they carry. Increasingly – since the Betamax in 1976 – that has been consumed on the viewer’s schedule. The only thing I’ve watched real time in the last three years has been the Superbowl, because I’m at a Superbowl party! (And to be truthful, I’m there for the party and people first, the ads in the broadcast second with little interest in the actual game.)

As the audience for drama and comedy splinter, the advertising supported model is almost certainly unsustainable. Advertising online isn’t going to match broadcast revenues per viewer leaving only subscription or direct pay to support quality programming.

Not that any of this is going to happen overnight. Still, I have to agree with the doomsayers: the traditional advertising supported broadcast model (aped by most cable channels) is unsustainable long term for most programming.

Categories
Distribution Media Consumption New Media

Why is “three strikes” such bad idea?

In case you haven’t heard, The RIAA/MPAA and their international equivalents, are working desperately to make ISPs kick people off the Internet if they are accused of file sharing more than three times. (Three strikes and you’re out.)

There are so many things wrong with this idea it’s hard to know where to begin. Firstly, there’s no current legislative support for file sharing P2P being illegal and the RIAA, despite suing thousands of  people, hasn’t obtained a conviction. (It obtained one conviction but the judge himself overturned it when he discovered that “making available” was not a crime, contrary to his comments to the jury during the trial.)

Then there’s the methodology. These organizations are seeking to implement three strikes merely based on their accusation. No legal due process, no right of appeal. We already know that these same clueless organizations have been very, very wrong in the past, attempting to sue people who had no computer (but may have paid for an account) or other blunder. No other place in law, particularly in a “innocent until proven guilty” legal system, allows – effectively – conviction upon accusation. There is no right of appeal.

Finally, there are already copyright laws in place that provide the protection that the copyright owners feel they need. They have it. It just has this teeny tiny shortcoming that the copyright owner has to prove   that the accused actually committed the “crime”. They’d have to actually prove the case to a suitable legal standard.

Fortunately, although France’s ruling body enacted three strike legislation. That legislation was rendered Unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council (their highest court). This is in line with the European Parliament who also ruled against three strikes laws as has the UK.

The real problem isn’t file sharing because it turns out file sharers are also those industries’ best customers and the piracy can actually help sales, but rather there’s an industry that’s changing in a way that means there is less and less need for the role that the RIAA or MPAA’s members once played.

Instead of doing the hard work of trying to find a new business model they expect governments, ISPs and just about everyone else to help maintain the one that is heading for obsoleteness. Of course it doesn’t help when the make up totally bogus numbers to support their contention as to how much is being lost to “piracy”. (I’d call it free promotion.) 

Even actually studies manage to be spin-doctored beyond control, even exaggerating the number 10x, and yet no reporter or journalist checked them for accuracy, leaving the thorough debunking of the numbers to non-professional journalists. (This is why I don’t care about the news industry as it is; they’re notoriously inaccurate.)

The solution isn’t to try and prevent piracy, because it’s not possible. It’s time to realize that you can sell abundant goods at premium prices. What you have to do is to find where there’s scarcity that can attract premium prices. The role of abundance and scarcity is the subject of another post.

Categories
Apple

Why no ExpressCard34 slot on new MacBook Pro models?

Digital Rebellion blog called it “one step forward, two steps back” and questioned whether or not Apple are in touch with their “pro market”. I’m sure they care about their pro markets. Note the plural? While the pro video market is significant, the pro photography and pro audio markets by comparison are huge.

As for the ExpressCard34 slot. Sure I’m disappointed. I’m ready to upgrade laptop and want to use it for video and now my storage won’t be able to connect. That said, I have to take a step back and look at the business from Apple’s perspective. As Phil Schiller said during the presentation, only “single digit” numbers of their users use the ExpressCard34 slot. At least 90% of people were paying for a feature they didn’t use.

It’s not like the SD card slot is useless. There are a couple of Sony HDV models that optionally record to SD cards; the new JVC FCP-specific camera records XDCAM EX to a SD card and most digital still cameras work with SD cards (including a Canon 5D Mk II).

It won’t be as convenient for SxS users either, but USB adapters, although probably slower, are available as they have been for the old P2 form factor when CardBus was dropped.

I think it’s important to know that, while I’m convinced Apple are serious about Pro Apps long term, that division does not control the hardware direction of the company. There is still a model MacBook Pro that has everything (well except an eSATA connector natively) that a pro video or audio person would need. It’s bigger and more expensive than I’d prefer for most of my needs, but if my primary application for the laptop was digital video, then the 17″ meets the need as well, or better, than the 15″.

Frankly, my experience with the ExpressCard34 slot has hardly been stellar: cards unmount with the slightest bump.

So, I’m personally disappointed that Apple haven’t tailored the perfect laptop for me personally. Boo hoo. Life is full of compromises and I’ll either limit myself to digital ingest via FW or SD card or I’ll compromise and go for the 17″. I’d probably appreciate being able to play 1080 video full screen at last! That’s not possible on either of the other models.

As for QuickTime X – like OS X pronounced “ten” not “x” – we still don’t know anything more than when I wrote about QuickTime X about a year ago after the last WWDC. Sure, we’ve seen a new interface and we’re told it’s “all new” underneath (again – QT 7 was all new also). What we don’t know is if it supports all the non-video features of QT or if it’s an optimized video player targeting the <video> tag in HTML 5. (I’m not a developer and if I was I’d be under NDA on the subject, fwiw.)

It’s clear Apple’s goals for QT are now much more modest than the complete Rich Media Architecture that QT 3 introduced but hasn’t received much development since QT 5. Practically speaking, that also makes sense for Apple (and will annoy many QT-loyal developers) as Flash/Silverlight currently dominate the interactive space. But with faster and faster Javascript (note how much that was mentioned today), HTML 5 and a QT that was open to both and supported the <video> tag, that might be enough to replace most of what QT 3 introduced.

A while back I conjectured that Apple’s answer to Flash was QT/HTML 5 Canvas element/Javascript. Of course, my good friend James Gardiner pushed back, given Flash’s current dominance, how could Apple get traction against Flash?

Well, we now have Apple and Google actively pushing the HTML5/Javascript combination with the <video> element. (While what format the video element must support hasn’t been finalized MP4/H.264 is almost certainly to be one format with support for the significantly inferior quality Ogg codecs, which are open source, included in some browsers.) Two of the biggest companies pushing open standards against another two big companies with their own competing proprietary standards. But still, Flash is very entrenched.

Except there are 40 million active Internet users who see every Flash site as a black blob (iPhone and iTouch users according to figures from today’s keynote). Use Flash and alienate these mobile users (which account for 65% of mobile browser usage). Add in 20-30 million OS X desktop users who have a very poor experience with Flash, but who will get great performance with Javascript/QT X, also hating Flash.

If you were building a site, what would you use? Can you afford to alienate 40 million potential users? If you can, go ahead and use Flash or Silverlight. The rest of us aren’t able to be so arrogant.

Categories
New Media Random Thought

Why don’t I care if newspapers die?

I was once an avid reader of newspapers – a three-paper-a-day man: the local paper for local news; the capital city daily for national and international news and the national Financial Daily for business news. I now read none and think that the whole industry has the stench of death about it – not financially (although it certainly has) but the quality of work was what sent me away.

Newspapers (and television news) is notoriously inaccurate. There are exceptions. Occasionally a paper will do a great job of investigative reporting and team it with great writing, but this is not the “norm”. Most newspaper content is filled with slightly rewritten press releases, information easily found elsewhere (movie start time, tides, weather, TV program guides, etc) and copied from the real source to the newspaper) and some hastily written article about an event that is full of inaccuracies because the reporter hasn’t a clue about the content.

Do you think I’m judging too harshly? Consider this. Have you ever watched the TV news report, or read a newspaper article, of an event you were part of or participated in? Has that report been 100% accurate? I can honestly say that, of the dozen or so appearances I’ve made in newspaper or TV media, or those associated with other family business where I’ve been privy to the facts, not one report was 100% accurate. Not a single one.

So I have to assume that every article is written with the same sloppy adherence to the facts of the story.

The average newspaper adds very little value. Most of the content is not original reporting – between the previously-mentioned press releases and Associated Press and/or Reuters and fact-based content sourced from elsewhere there’s not much original, true news gathering.

The little there is is easily reproduced elsewhere. For example, local news site Pasadena News outsources the writing to Indian writers. If you’re only rewriting a press release, or reporting the outcome of local council meetings, which are placed online anyway, then the desk could be in Pasadena or Mumbai. Fact checking (if anyone actually does that) is an email or phone call away wherever you are in the world (as long as you’re prepared to deal with time zone issues).

Newspapers, in their current dying form, are not adding a whole lot of value. Instead it’s nostalgia that’s keeping them going – the nostalgia of lazy Sunday mornings with paper, family and coffee, not the delivery of well-researched original reporting.

If we have Associated Press – who have a very useful RSS feed to deliver relevant content directly to me – why do I need the LA Times to print it for me? If they added a local angle, maybe.

Journalism won’t die with newspapers. In fact, contrary to the opinion of some journalists, the blogosphere – the sheer number of people fact checking – has led to some real stories breaking. Remember the Dan Rather/George W Bush faked papers scandal? Or how the citizen reporter who videotaped (and shared) George Allen’s “macacca” moment that lost him re-election in 2006? It seems in many, many recent cases, citizen journalists have out-performed (in aggregate) the established media in uncovering stories.

So, I’ve gone from a three-a-day habit to a zero newspaper life and am better informed about news than ever. I keep track of Australian news and am better informed than my Australian-resident mother. I scored very highly ion the Pew Research Test Your News IQ with a better score than my newspaper-reading, TV news watching friends and associates.

I won’t be dancing on the graves of newspapers, but their failure to adapt and their high minded refusal to see the log in their own eye makes me indifferent to the failure of the whole industry. Let it be replaced with new forms of news-gathering where some accuracy might slip in.

See also: We need a Fifth Estate and Will “amateurs” save democracy from the “professionals”?

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution

What is the future of publishing and what does that have to do with production?

On Wednesday I more than doubled the sales of the paperback edition of The New Now. Since the paperback has just gone on sale, that’s not surprising. This is our first foray into publishing via paperback and we’re not certain how it’s going to go. We’ve had great success (for a book) via our PDF publishing efforts, but are only now giving paperbacks a go.

Apparently we’re not alone. Publisher’s Weekly has an article where it notes that there were more books published “on demand” last year than by traditional publishers. On demand is the method we use, via Amazon’s CreateSpace, and is most commonly used by self publishers.

It’s not hard to understand why. The deals being offered by publishers in our space are, frankly, insulting for the amount of work that goes into creating a book. By self publishing – and giving people a choice of an information-only PDF or the same information in a solid book form (well, paperback) – the author gets a larger slice per book. It’s not unusual for an author to make more money from the Amazon Associates commission on the sale than from the publisher. Seriously.

That means that books break even for the author much faster and the author retains the copyright. While in theory the author owns the copyright for a book through a traditional publisher, in practice, while there’s any outstanding balance due to the publisher, the publisher owns the rights.

The way a book deal works is that the author is paid an advance, based on the expected sales of a book. That used to be based on 5,000 units selling at full retail (because author’s don’t get a penny from remaindered and discounted copies). While there have been one or two breakout successes in the space, most books never reach that level of sales so the advance is never fully repaid from sales, and consequently the publisher owns the work. Since the standard contract also allows them to publish new editions with new authors (if the original author declines), effectively the author has lost control of their work.

Self publishing the HD Survival Handbook we reached the level of the currently offered advances with just 375 sales. The book became profitable (i.e. it returned a reasonable return for the amount of time that went into it) at about 600 copies and sales have been way above that.

It’s all possible because new printing technology prints soft-cover books very, very quickly (about 6-8 minutes) and remarkably cheaply, without having to commit to a large pre-order. This technology is going to get twice as fast for half the cost in the generation of printing/binding machines just announced. The cost of printing the book is almost inconsequential.

This is what digital technologies do when they disintermediate an industry. Like the record labels and (to a much lesser degree TV and Movie studios) the role of the publisher – the intermediary who traditionally made the most money – has faded.

An author would have gone to a publisher to: a) fund the printing of the physical books, b) give the book an ISBN, c) get the book into “the channel” – the bookstores where people can buy it, and d) promote the book. Through CreateSpace the paperbacks are printed as they’re ordered (a.k.a on demand) and CreateSpace assigns the ISBN so the book can be found by any reseller. The book is automatically listed in Amazon because Amazon owns CreateSpace. While, in theory, a publisher would promote the book, in practice for most books on production and post-production, that meant sending out a media blast to the usual suspects and from there it was up to the author to promote the book.

CreateSpace gives me all of those. I own the copyright; books are printed on demand inexpensively enough that the return from an Amazon sale is only slightly less than the return from a PDF sale (so the knowledge carries the same value). It’s listed in the only bookstore my customers are likely to use, although it can be ordered in by any bookstore – online or physical. Better still, I directly benefit from new sales, rather than simply promoting the book to recover money I’ve long spent (the advance).

The author is an independent in the disintermediated world. Similarly, digital video technologies allow writer/producer/directors to make their project without needing the backing of a studio. Budgets can be shrunk considerably when you take out the middle man. The most expensive part of an Amazon sale is the Amazon commission, which is more than double  the cost of producing the physical book.

Even using that third party distribution channel, the return per sale is way higher than from a publisher.

Similarly owning the copyright for a reasonably-budgeted production leaves margin to offer producers or allows the creator to go direct to the viewer. (The only thing I call New Media!)

When more money goes back to the producers more production gets done, because shows can be supported by smaller audiences, in the same way that a book can sell many fewer copies but still make a better return for the author than through traditional channels.

Categories
Distribution New Media

Why do people have no sense of perspective?

The article “Original Web Video Still A Bust” by Dan Fromer really made me smile. Web video – not year five years old – has not yet replaced programming from the major networks and studios. Who’d have thought!

It’s not like the early days of cable. Where articles written “Original Cable programming still a bust” in the mid 70’s and the very early days of Community Antenna/Access TV, the precursor to modern cable. It took more than 20 years of cable, and more than 10 years of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is when modern cable really started to take off before we got Mad Men or Breaking Bad or any of the current crop of high quality drama and comedy now available on cable. 

We are much further advanced with Internet TV than we were at an equivalent stage of development for cable. Product equipment is much cheaper and much more accessible compared to limited access to a studio provided by the cable network as a condition of their franchise on a city. One studio that was a limited asset. Nowdays, pretty much anyone with an idea can create it. I’ve interviewed guests who made movies for under $500. Matthew Winer (in the Spring edition of Produced by magazine from the Producer’s Guild) says that he made his first film for $20,000.

But like cable the growth to quality programming will be slow and gradual. It won’t take 10 or 20 years but I do expect that it will be five to ten years before we get million dollar budget for programs specifically for Internet distribution. The numbers do add up if the distribution channels are handled right. (Hint: it won’t be advertising supporting it this time round, at least not in the annoying intrusive formats we’ve seen on television.)

So, it’s a little premature to say that original web video is a “bust” just yet. Get back to me in 2020 and I’ll be very surprised if we don’t have a vibrant new media creating great drama, comedy and other formats we haven’t seen yet for Internet distribution that is viewed primarily on TV screens (however the big set in the corner evolves).

Categories
Item of Interest New Media

What is the future of Internet TV?

In his latest column, The Future of Internet TV (in America) Robert Cringely talks about the success of Hulu and the two dominant modes of distribution: streaming (RTSP) or download (HTTP). Hulu is firmly in the streaming camp while Apple and iTunes are in the download camp. (YouTube acts like streaming in that no download is left that’s easily accessible, but in fact it’s a download mechanism, not streaming.)

Now, I’ve been a long term fan of the download model, being very taken by the efficacy of RSS for this type of distribution. So much so that I helped invent a technology for doing commercial distribution through RSS feeds. Cringely tells of the unsatisfactory experience attempting to stream from Hulu – with rebuffering needed several time, even after they dropped the quality of the stream. RTSP is hard to do well because so much of the delivery channel is beyond the control of the “broadcaster”. But like established business models, they try and shovel their old model into the new channel. Rarely works like that.

By the way, Chris Albrecht has a column on the topic over at NewTeeVee.com with the clever name, Hiccups in the Stream, That Is What They Are.

We love the idea of streaming video over the Internet directly on our television sets. The issue is, when you stream video to your house, you open yourself up to problems you don’t get with progressive download. With streaming you need to get a continuous bandwidth to cover the signal or there are hiccups or temporary freezes in the stream. This can happen on cable systems during peak periods when more people are sharing the neighborhood bandwidth.

Hulu is undoubtedly getting very popular, and will become more so now that Disney are joining the group (with Fox and NBC-U). However Cringely looks at what is a viable business and Hulu, YouTube et al fail. RTSP is expensive, but more importantly, advertising supported media on the Internet has no possibility in covering the cost of production any time soon.

In other words, the model that has sustained television for its life is probably not going to sustain whatever we’re going to call the same thing delivered via the Internet. Funding will have to change. Personally I’d prefer to pay the equivalent to advertising-revenue-per-viewer for a show (because it’s a relatively low 25-75c per viewer per show) and skip the advertising.

Cringely’s suggestion is that Apple, or Google, could easily chip in say $3 billion or so a year for programming production and commission the same shows as are broadcast now (or, in Fox tradition, the same shows with different names) from the same producers that produce the best entertainment now.

This is something I’ve hypothesized on myself so when Cringely is on the same page, I have to go re-examine my thinking. It worries me to agree when so often I don’t.  

Let’s say a 13 episode half season costs from  $32.5 milliion (Friday Night Lights or Mad Men) to say$ 60 million per 12 episodes. There can be some substantial saving if these series were made outside the Hollywood Studio system – probably halving the real cost, but let’s not go there right now.  After all Cringely’s problem is that we can’t pay all those folk in the value chain from non-existent advertising revenue, while they do all get a small, slice of an iTunes Store sale. 

For easy math, let’s say the average hour of “television” is going to cost 50 million per 13 week season, or 200 million for a year’s programming. As we saw in my earlier post about how the numbers stack up for new media, programming in that price range rates 4-5 million viewers (or it’s produced more cheaply or cancelled). Some programming, like the Daily Show, is very viable at 10c per viewer per show.

There is cheaper television. The Daily Show’s $5 million a year deal with Comedy Central buys about 80 TV hours a year. (161 half-hour shows in 2008) so Apple or Google  pick up for $5.5 million or so per year. But the Daily Show is not Prime Time.

$200 million per Prime Time hour per year. $3 billion buys you 15 hours a day or Prime Time Television, with Network standard production and the expectation of Network size audiences. Keep in mind that Prime Time for the networks has been considered 22 hours a week, or an average of around 3 hours a day, not 15 hours a day.

Scale those numbers to Cable size budgets and audiences and an Apple or Google, putting in just 10% of their available cash-on-hand could create the equivalent of a five new Prime Time channels each.

It still seems that NBC-U, ABC-Disney, Fox and CBS need downloadable sales and rental channels more than ever. Clearly they don’t have the power in the argument.

Do I think Apple would ever go directly into the production business? Probably not “willingly” – as a first preference path – but as a bargaining ship against any network that wanted to withhold content….? It’s a very interesting thought. If Apple felt that commissioning the content themselves was in their best interest, they’d do it in a heartbeat. They have the money, it’s only a matter of a decision.

OTOH, I don’t think that will qualify for being ‘new media’ any more than I think Hulu does. My definition, What is New Media anyway?, came to the conclusion that new media is where there is a direct connection between the viewer and the producer. Having Apple commissioning shows would have Apple as the gatekeeper, rather than the network and their advertisers. I suppose getting the prissy advertisers out of the loop might improve the programming by allowing to be more real.  

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