[This post first appeared on the MRIA website today, here: http://mria-arim.ca/publications/mria-blogging/blog-posts/the-publishing-industrys-panacea-in-a-digital-age]
Big
data is how retail behemoth Amazon disrupted
book publishing. Did publishers need to become the contact point for retail and
aggregate data in order to keep their margins too? Authors and publishers
were discombobulated by the rise of digital, shattering
old hierarchies and book distribution channels, reaching different
demographics, epitomized by the game changing and controversial novel Fifty
Shades of Grey accessible on discrete e-readers. The p-book apocalypse
became the top business concern for first world publishers. Short stories and
novellas made a digital comeback: fewer pages did not mean lesser business!
Portability was a blessing for gadget-fed millennials and other urban
commuters.
Disruptive innovation happened in the nineties for some and
noughties for others. For many, it is happening right now. Nielsen
BookScan, BookNet Canada, the
Book Industry Study Group and Bowker Marketing Research among others, compile
book sales figures that make it possible to track real time sales data and
consumer profiles. Authors are held accountable to marketing research and sales
benchmarks that are dubious. Part of the threat is the self-publishing
revolution—where one in five books purchased in Britain in 2013, and a quarter
of the books that got ISBNs in the US in 2012, were self-published!
Will the future of books be unravelled by data intelligence
techniques alone? Or will the success of e-books ride on the cheapest prices to
break inroads with the mass market? The
monopsony that is Amazon scares publishers who have turned multimedia,
attracting mergers and acquisitions as bailouts for consumer starved, segregated
marketplaces. Big data will extract customer insights and link publishers to
retail outlets. It will identify and solve research problems (eg: closet
readerships) and address the book industry’s demands locally, nationally, and
internationally.
Bibliography
Barber, John. (2012). “Why Book buying stats might stifle
the next great author.” The Globe and Mail.Retrieved September 26,
2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/why-book-buying-stats-might-stifle-the-next-great
author/article6755208/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+TheGlobeAndMail-Entertainment+%2528The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Arts+News%2529
Frank, Adam. (2012). “Big data and its problems.” National
Public Radio. Retrieved September 26, 2014, from http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/09/18/161334704/big-data-and-its-big-problems
Fromen, Allan. (2014). “Why Big Data Will Never Replace
Market Research.” Green Book Blog. Retrieved
September 27, 2014, from http://www.greenbookblog.org/2014/05/19/why-big-data-will-never-replace-market-research/
Krugman, Paul (2014). “Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.”
Retrieved October 19, 2014, fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amazons-monopsony-is-not-ok.html?_r=2
Wunker, Stephen. (2011)“Long Tail Business Models: Amazon on
offense and defense.” Retrieved September 26, 2014, from http://www.newmarketsadvisors.com/blog/bid/36296/Long-tail-business-models-Amazon-on-offense-and-defense
Webb, Jenn. (2012).“Publisher: a new role in data herding.”
Retrieved September 26, 2014, fromhttp://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/data-driven-publishing-changing-publisher-roles.html
