The music industry had its Disintermediation Moment with the advent of Napster. Once consumers discovered the power of acquiring individual songs, rather than whole albums, the days of the $16.99 album CD were doomed. Lawyers shut down Napster but could never put the genie back in the bottle. The music business, where “thieves and pimps run free,” according to Hunter S. Thompson, was forced to cut a deal with another rebel, Steve Jobs. An industry that once condemned the idea of “ripping” songs from CDs to computers has turned to iTunes to save their sliding profits.

Newspapers were early adopters of the web, launching some of the first web sites and online services, such as the Washington Post’s Digital Ink in 1994. Early efforts made the mistaken assumption that people would pay for content – despite being surrounded by a sea of free information. For more than a decade, newspapers have tried to use the web to support a business model (money from classified ads goes for reporters, buildings, paper, trucks) that’s been undercut by Craigslist and others. It would be better if they adapted to the medium like the Huffington Post or Politico.

Back in the 1980s, movie studios tried to stop the development of the VCR, arguing that the devices enable copyright infringement. Though they lost, they continued their efforts, athwart the flow of history, as they sued DVR makers, as if they had learned nothing. Meanwhile, consumers have moved on, and watch clips and whole movies online.

And now it’s the turn of the book industry.

I’ve been reading a lot about e-books and the Nook, both as an avid reader and an author. I wrote a book, Murder in Ocean Hall, have an agent and am looking for publisher.

However, I also work on web sites for a living so the slow print publishing world seems really outdated to me. Why does it take a year for a book to go from an author to a bookstore? I could publish my book on Lulu and start selling it immediately.

Why are there so many gatekeepers involved? Why do writers get such a small (10%) royalty on their titles? Why do so many writers have to do their own marketing, despite the fact that publishers claim that’s what they’re for?

The argument seems to be that this is the way we’ve always done it. The book publishing world seems little changed, a Mad Men environment of stacks of manuscripts, Manhattan offices and boozy lunches. I would love a noontime martini but like the manual typewriters and flirtatious secretaries of Sterling Cooper, that world is long gone.

The price of e-books today is subsidized by Amazon and others. Publishers would like to charge much, much more than the standard $9.99 for e-books, arguing that they have high costs. This makes no sense – when you have perfect, unlimited digital copies of something, the price has to come down, as anyone who’s bought an album or song on iTunes knows. Consumers are saying that e-books should be comparable in price to paperbacks. That’s what its worth to them and book publishers need to adapt if they’re going to survive.

The fact that the publishing industry takes such a big chunk of the price of a book really seems like an argument against it. If so much of the cost of a title pays for execs and marketing campaigns, then why have a publishing industry at all? How is this model any different from the music, film and newspaper industries – all middlemen and gatekeepers have been rendered irrelevant by the Internet.

Without such high costs, books would be cheaper for readers and writers would make more money. My thoughts were really crystallized by this wonderful blog post by Joe Konrath. In it, he breaks down the amount of money he makes off e-books he sells through his publisher and those he sells on his own. He gets more money from titles he sells himself. And readers get more works to chose from and at a cheaper price. Konrath is meeting the demand of the market and making a better living than he would if he used a book publisher.

What value do book publishers add then? Are they not just standing in the way of more books at lower prices for more readers?

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I love newspapers. One of things I like about living in DC is the heft of the Washington Post. Weight seems to connotate authority, a “real” newspaper for a real city, so different from the flimsy papers of smaller towns. However, that distinction is changing as the Post eliminates sections and physically shrinks while raising the newsstand price.

My loyalty has been tested. Why pay 75 cents for yesterday’s news when I can read the latest updates on my computer or iPhone for free? In this recession, millions of people are probably having similar conversations in their heads, and quietly dropping their subscriptions.

Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, makes this great point (among many others) in an excellent article on the state of newspapers. He observes that we’re living through a revolution just as momentous as the invention of the printing press, a piece of technology that destroyed the Catholic church and ushered in both religious wars and the Reformation.

Newspapers have been unable to come to grips with this reality.  Shirky writes:

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

The sudden collapse of printed media is surprising to me. They once fashioned themselves as a fourth branch of government. Now they find themselves overshadowed by blogs and Craigslist.

Many of those of us who work on web sites have a certain animus toward print media, fueled by familiarity and contempt. We’ve collaborated with newspapers and magazines, struggled with their antiquarian publishing systems, been subject to their high-mindedness. They didn’t want to share their content, didn’t want to contribute to the web site, looked down on web users and their desire for interactivity. Publishing was a right accorded only to the special few, not the democratic masses.

With mixed feelings, I see that world being swept away. Back in 90s, we embraced revolutionary screeds like the Cluetrain Manifesto but I never imagined the entrenched institutions of print media would be threatened with extinction. Like with the early years of the printing press, none of us knows where this is going. However, Shirky makes a final, hopeful point. That while newspapers are disappearing, journalism doesn’t have to. We’re carried into this unknown future, like it or not.

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A newspaper is easier on the eyes than a glowing screen.  It also offers the chance of serendipity, of stumbling upon some article you never would’ve read, just because you have to turn pages to find the article you’re looking for.  A newspaper is also mostly distraction-free (no videos blaring, no animating ads) which, IMHO, makes reading an article in print a richer and more rewarding experience.  Things I really want to absorb, I need to see on paper.  

Today comes the news (ironically, from The New York Times), that the Washington Post is ending Book World, its Sunday books supplement.  Economic reasons are cited.  I find this hard to believe.  Washington is one of the most literate cities in the country, filled with readers, and writers, too.  Hop on the Metro, visit a coffee shop, stroll through a park and you’ll find scores of people lost in good books.  The city is home to excellent and popular bookstores, like Kramerbooks and Politics and Prose.  With the wide range of books that people in DC read, there’s got to be a need for book reviews.

How much could Book World really cost?  Reviewers aren’t paid much and the books are sent for free by publishers.  There’s the cost of newsprint, I guess, but the review is printed on the cheapest paper available – the CVS coupons are on much better stock.

Also, book reviews are not something that’s done well online.  Reviews on Amazon are a jumble of contrary opinions and there’s always the lagging suspicion that some of them have been paid for.  But when Book World puts a tome on its cover, you know it’s an important book.  Print (in contrast to the democratic online world) does authority really well, which is what you’re looking for in a book review.  You want expert opinion before you invest your time and money.  For example, Jonathan Yardley in Book World is someone whose reviews I trust.  I’ve been reading them for years and following his recommendations.  He’s an authority that I trust.

Are there book reviews on Washingtonpost.com?  Maybe.  I visit the site often, have devised my own ways of navigating the labyrinth, but am not sure I could find them.  ”Try to find the book reviews” – that would make a good web site usability test for the folks at the Post, so eager to take away the sections of the paper that people actually use and enjoy.  Perhaps they should spent more time figuring out what their audience wants instead of penny-pinching cost cutting.

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