Ideal e-Book Reading Device
Posted on July 27, 2010
It’s increasingly evident that book publishing is undergoing a fundamental transformation. First, for two-and-a-half years Amazon.com pioneered the e-book market toward critical mass, largely keeping industry statistics to themselves. Second, the March iPad launch accelerated matters by initiating an irrevocable chain reaction that has only just begun. Cascading new developments seem to materialize monthly, if not faster.
For example, by unit volume June e-book sales at Amazon.com were eighty-percent greater than hard covers. Earlier this month notable authors such as Pat Conroy and Philip Roth contracted with powerful agents to publish their pre-Internet-era novels as e-books. The arrangement circumvents traditional publishers and increases author royalties. Simultaneously e-book reading devices are proliferating and prices are dropping. Visiting a typical Barnes & Noble store symbolically underscores the magnitude of change. As the leading terrestrial book chain few companies could be more dependent upon physical book sales. Nonetheless, each store now normally exhibits the Nook electronic reader prominently at the entrance. Read more…
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How Cord-Cutting Will Happen
Posted on July 15, 2010
Most anyone having more than six months experience with a computer-to-TV connection to get unlimited Internet access at the television realizes that cord-cutting is inevitable. It is not a question of “if”, but merely of “when”. But for businesses that must adapt the more important question is how it will happen. Once that process is understood, inevitability is hard to deny and constructive planning can begin.
Download audio of narrative for iPod, iPad, and iPhone here.
For the uninitiated, “cord-cutting” refers to a consumer’s decision to discontinue a television subscription service and replace it with various Internet activities on the TV screen. Generally Cable operators, media companies, and conventional industry researchers dismiss the possibility. For example, earlier this year one prominent industry analyst labeled it an “urban myth” because TV subscriber numbers continued to climb. Read more…
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Selling e-Books as Agent
Posted on February 17, 2010
Phil Leigh
Amazon’s grudging agreement to act as agent when selling Macmillan e-books next month has important implications.
An agent is a business partner. However, Macmillan’s partnership notion is not fifty-fifty. The publisher concludes that they contribute more than twice the value of Amazon by taking 70% of the sales price for themselves and leaving only 30% for the online merchant.
There could hardly be a better example of irony considering that the 167-year-old publisher never found enough time to develop an e-book business on its own. Instead, 14-year-old Amazon.com invented the Kindle. To date Amazon has done more than any single business to launch the entire e-book industry, yet it gets the short end of the stick. Read more…
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Rewriting Apple’s History
Posted on February 6, 2010
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As Mark Twain put it, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest don’t happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” Normally the winners write history, but Apple’s success and lofty stock price has given a number of media executives a bad case of P/E envy. They’re distorting the past by accusing Apple of dictating terms of media consumption on the Internet.
For example, when Apple convinced the recorded music industry to sell digital downloads in 2003 it allocated seventy percent of the sales proceeds to the record labels and music publishers. One might suppose a business partner would be happy with a 70% share of incremental revenues, especially when that partner incurs almost no added cost. Perhaps they actually were smugly pleased with the deal originally. Maybe they figured Apple had been suckered into giving them more than twice as much as it kept for itself. Read more…
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Public Reaction to Targeted Advertising
Posted on October 17, 2009
Dr. Joseph Turow, University of Pennsylvania
If you would like to learn what the public says about their attitudes toward behaviorally-targeted advertising, this audio interview is for you.
A recent study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Berkeley concludes that a two-to-one majority of Americans do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. The 1,000-person survey further indicates that nearly 90% of us particularly object to anonymous tracking of our Web-surfing for purposes of creating behaviorally-targeted ads.
Our interview today is with Dr. Joseph Turow of the University of Pennsylvania who was one of the authors. Read more…
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How My Video Consumption Changed
Posted on August 17, 2009
Phil Leigh
If you would like to learn how my media usage changed during a recent period of enforced idleness, this audio program is for you.
Owing to medical leave during the past two-weeks I have been relatively inactive at the office. This led to an increase, as well as a change in the pattern of, media consumption. Today’s podcast explains how. Read more…
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Future of Recorded Music Business
Posted on September 29, 2008
If you would like to learn how the recorded music business will be generating revenue growth in the future, this interview is for you.
Our guest today is Greg Scholl who is the CEO of The Orchard which is a publicly-owned distributor of music for independent record labels, including one that it owns named TVT. The company also distributes over 3,000 hours of video and TV shows for clients who are the rights holders. Most of the files are distributed digitally to stores like iTunes, Amazon.com, and eMusic. Read more…
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How to get Internet Video to the Television
Posted on September 15, 2008
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If you would like to learn how to get Internet video to your television by using TiVo and/or Amazon.com, this show is for you.
It is increasingly evident that there is a huge latent demand for getting Internet video to the television. It has been an elusive goal for the past eight years, or so. Now it appears as if significant progress is being made. It’s not from a single major product introduction, but instead from a number of innovations from a variety of manufactures and websites. Examples include Netflix, Sony Bravia, Amazon.com, Apple TV, and TiVo. In this video we demonstrate how it is done with TiVo and Amazon.com. Read more…
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