Great post by Thad McIlroy in his blog, “Future Of Publishing.”
The numbers say it all. There’s been plenty of evidence that this industry is broken, in the micro view:
- $200+ for a book (a book!).
- Frequent, unnecessary revisions (has calculus changed in the last 450 years?).
- Frantic versioning to create ISBN confusion (feels dishonest, doesn’t it?).
- Bundles of stuff you don’t need (but all wrapped into the price, ultimately).
- Treating your own sales reps as your customers (baffling, but true).
- eBooks that are effectively renting a PDF for $75 (does that make any sense in the real world?).
I could go on. But Thad tackles the macro view with simple numbers. The industry is failing under its own unmanageable weight. It was bound to happen. You can’t keep asking your customers to bear the brunt of your inefficiencies. It catches up to you at some point. Seems like that point is now, doesn’t it?