Unsurprisingly, Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Chris Anderson’s ‘Free’ didn’t go unnoticed. First, Anderson tapped out an angry rebuttal, ‘Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?’, over at The Long Tail:
But since journalist Malcolm Gladwell has somewhat parochially decided to make the Future of Paid Journalism the focus of his review of Free (which is, ironically, free on the New Yorker’s website; perhaps this is something Gladwell should take up with David Remnick?), I’ll try to respond in a bit more detail…
Now, Seth Godin’s chimed in with ‘Malcolm is Wrong’:
I’ve never written those three words before, but he’s never disagreed with Chris Anderson before, so there you go…
All we need now is Gladwell to slap Nick Carr through the ropes and we’ll have a good old fashioned tag team wrestle.
Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price for the New Yorker. He doesn’t think it’s all that great.
There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively Free), a psychological claim (consumers love Free), a procedural claim (Free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological Free and the psychological Free can make you a lot of money). The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, “has so far failed to make any money for Google.”
…
For Anderson, YouTube illustrates the principle that Free removes the necessity of aesthetic judgment… But, in order to make money [from advertising], YouTube has been obliged to pay for programs that aren’t crap. To recap: YouTube is a great example of Free, except that Free technology ends up not being Free because of the way consumers respond to Free, fatally compromising YouTube’s ability to make money around Free, and forcing it to retreat from the “abundance thinking” that lies at the heart of Free.
Taschen’s upcoming book, Norman Mailer, MoonFire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 has a small print run of 1969 copies (get it?), all signed by Buzz. But the last 12, according to Publisher’s Weekly, will also come with fragments of the moon:
Numbers 1 through 1,957 will be priced at $1,000, while the final 12 copies (numbered 1,958 through 1,969) will come with a certified fragment of moon meteorite. Taschen has not yet priced the 12 “Lunar Rock” editions, but will base the price according to the meteorite size. Those volumes will come with cases designed by Australian designer Marc Newson, who recently designed aluminum champagne coolers for Dom Pérignon. Public relations manager Creed Poulson said the meteorite editions “will be the most expensive books we have ever done.”
Bruce Sterling’s list of industry challenges reads like a summary of the blogosphere’s most tiresome commentary over the last two years. Except for this point:
Unstable computer and cellphone interfaces becoming world’s primary means of cultural access. Compositor systems remake media in their own hybrid creole image.
This is the most interesting, and lethal, threat to the industry. It overrides superficial concerns, such as text length, literary genres, screen size, the smell of a book, e-ink technologies, physicality, and territorial rights. Instead, it speaks of the fundamental nature of information, of the semantic web, and of its likely progenitor, linked data. It’s the opposite of intention, fixity, and publishing authority; it’s the opposite of codex technology and its 500-year-old business model.
Clay Shirky has a funny name. Because of that, some people find it hard to take him seriously. That’s a damn shame, because everyone really needs to listen to stuff like this:
People my age tut-tut at kids, telling them that we wouldn’t have put those photos up [on Facebook] when we were young, but we’re lying. We’d have done it in a heartbeat, but no one ever offered us the chance. Now that kids have these capabilities, it falls to us to keep our prurient interest in their personal lives in check.
Mull over the rest of Clay’s short missive here.
There are at least two great things about working at the State Library. First, I get to look at old maps all day. Second, is that right next to my office is a steady rotation of incredible galleries, such as the World Press Photo 09 exhibition:
This annual exhibition features the award-winning photographs from the prestigious World Press Photo Contest for press photography. Showcasing approximately 200 photographs in ten theme categories including: news, nature, portraits, arts and entertainment, sports, and daily life, this is the Library’s most popular guest exhibition.
There is one ethical response to an order to torture: Disobey the order.
So, Lexcycle, the folks behind the very excellent Stanza, has just been assimilated. Lexcycle says it will be business as usual, which is an odd thing to say given that the whole damn reason one company buys another is because one or both companies do not want business to stay as usual. So, assuming things will change, here are some questions:
Whichever way things go, the ebook industry won’t be the same.
More from LBF09: Random House is launching an ‘enhanced’ ebook range. Unlike Penguin’s enhanced classics, RH’s range seems to be more contemporary:
The enhanced ebooks offer readers a range of additional content such as videos, games, quizzes, photos, author interviews, interactive graphics and the option to listen to or read the text at the start of each chapter. The initial list of ten enhanced ebooks includes titles from popular authors such as James Patterson, Danny Wallace and Derren Brown. More enhanced ebooks from Irvine Welsh, Katie Price and other bestselling authors are planned for later this year.
(Via Booktrade.)
Publisher’s Weekly has just summarised a panel discussion at this year’s London Book Fair relating to differences between UK and US readers:
In terms of what readers are buying, mystery and romance accounted for much larger shares of fiction purchases in the U.S. in 2008 (a combined 57%) than in Britain (31%), where “general popular and literary fiction” as well as adventure/thrillers were more popular. Gallagher’s conclusion to the findings is that the American market is very much driven by sales of front list and bestseller list titles. In nonfiction, religion is a prominent player in the U.S. market, but much less so in Britain—although Bohme referred to a different sort of religion, one of the “cult of celebrity,” driving nonfiction book sales: one in five nonfiction books purchased in the U.K. are biography, and celebrity bios are especially popular, he noted.
Interestingly, ebook sales, which apparently constitutes 1.5% of the market in the US, isn’t even counted in the UK.
