Steemit & The Future of Book Publishing
1. The Downfall of Big Publishing
- Self-publishing is slowly eating away at the market share of the Big 5 publishers.
- Big publishing's share has declined yearly since 2012.
- Overall publishing industry sales fell by 2.6% in 2015 when compared to results from 2014. (Excludes Amazon and other online retailers that don't share sales numbers)
- Sales of ebooks published by the Big 5 are declining and don't make up for the fall in print sales.
2. The Rise of Indie Publishing
- Data demonstrates that many readers are abandoning traditionally-published books and buying indie-published books instead.
- Indie publishing is increasingly bringing good exposure and sales revenue to authors.
- Producing, publishing and distributing books is easier than ever.
3. The Disintermediator Becomes the Monopoly
74% of all US eBook purchases and 71% of all US consumer dollars spent on eBooks go through Amazon.
Amazon controls 85% of e-books sold by self-published authors.
- In the United States 80% of all indie author earnings come from Amazon.
"digital platforms from companies like Amazon are ultimately dis-intermediating existing industries like book publishing, by allowing content creators to do an end-run around incumbents and sell directly to consumers." - Mathew Ingram, No, e-book sales are not falling, despite what publishers say, Fortune.com
Amazon recently won an important legal battle against Apple and the big publishers.
Authors United worry that Amazon's monopoly is not good for freedom of expression.
"Is it good public policy to allow one corporation to have total power over a nation’s published output?" - Lee Child, Lee Child on Amazon’s real-life bookshops – and why we should be worried, The Guardian
Authors that sign exclusively with the Amazon Kindle store via the KDP Select program reach more readers and earn more money.
Adjustments in incentives by Amazon have significant impact on how literature is read – and how it’s written.
“The e-commerce behemoth is deploying economic levers to shape creative content in the interests of ebook selling.” - Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch
4. Book Publishing Trends
- Big-Data and AI: Data-driven production, publishing, promotion and discoverability.
- The rise of mobile reading and audiobooks.
- User preference for native mobile apps driving broader adoption of ‘native’ phone readers.
- The networked book. A draft (minimum viable product) evolves iteratively with the input of early readers and experts.
- Multi-path digital storytelling.
- Highly interactive, mixed-media ebooks.
- Book crowdfunding.
- Connecting content creators with multi-channel media networks.
- Social reading.
- Platforms focused on the incremental publishing of serialised fiction.
- Royalty payments per number of pages customers read.
- Royalties powered by micro-payments and cryptocurrency.
- Curation as paid quality assurance.
5. Disintermediating the Disintermediator
Innovators and early adopters understand Lean Startup principles. Data-driven validation of the minimum viable product enables the startup to evolve quickly with little waste. Our challenge is to figure out what to validate first. The possibilities and opportunities for a platform like Steemit are endless.
A multi-sided platform as a business model drives network effects, but it also creates tension as we must serve the needs of many types of participants such as content creators, curators, consumers of content, investors, and advertisers.
A clear, well-articulated business strategy that evolves over time ensures everyone is focused, rowing in the same direction, and able to change course quickly as necessary.
The publishing use case is an interesting one. To thrive, Steemit needs quality, high-profile content creators. The focus on the publishing side of the platform could enable Steemit to cross the chasm and reach a mainstream audience. Of course, I'm biased. ;)
I don't know enough about the business strategy of the platform to be able to share a definite opinion. I am confident that authors and other content creators would jump on a publishing platform that integrates the key trends outlined above. Steemit is heading in the right direction, but extra focus on the publishing side comes with trade-offs. Other participants could see their preferred features deprioritised in the short to medium term.
Why Serialized Fiction?
Today, writers are motivated and incentivised to deliver and evolve serialised fiction driven by:
- the success of serialised TV, Netflix et al;
- the move to pay per page read royalty models;
- the success of the wattpad model;
- the widespread adoption of agile principles in the creative process and the need to validate early and often;
- the access to early consumer data and metrics;
- the shorter attention spans of digital consumers.
The future of publishing is serialised, iterative, data-driven, mobile and powered by micro-payments.
Is Steemit the right platform to disrupt the book publishing industry?
I would love to read your opinions. If this is a topic of interest I'm happy to setup a working group. Let me know.
Jamie
p.s. Yes, a lady that writes fantasy and romance fiction may know a thing or two about business strategy and innovation. I like to colour outside the lines, and I hate to stick to one single lane. Ahe'ey will return later today, but I can assure you that Morgan is still VERY upset with Gabriel.
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©Jamie Le Fay, 2016. Reproduction is strictly prohibited.
Jaimie, I think that potenatilly this will have a place.... for now we are very early up in beta stages to speak about steemit bieng the place for publishing oneself.
There are no instruments to support all authors here.
As steemit strives to be a society, it will eventually MUST have a seperate chanell for publishing, where people would have the time, space and the resource to check out others work and decide what is popular and what isnt.
I am an old romanticist deep inside, and for me nothing will ever replace that smell of a real page =)
I spend a lot of time in book stores and libraries smelling books too. :) The book stores now have to work harder to sell books so they are very beautiful, well designed and full of wonders. J.
I agree with everything you've outlined above, save for the idea that to thrive Steemit needs high-profile content creators. I think the real thriving will come with the rise of Steemit-made high profile content creators.
We will still need high profile content creators of course, but the Steemit-made ones will inspire the next wave of new authors. The community that these Steemit-born high profile content creators will have us being made now.
Oh, just take my upvote, you're brilliant ;)
Thank you @prufarchy. I will keep my fingers and toes crossed for all of us. We are sitting on a huge opportunity that we need to nurture very carefully and deliberately. Collaboration is key. I love the support here. Waving enthusiastically from down under. J.
I couldn't agree more, that we need to care for this opportunity and that collaboration is the key. And we have that in spades around here :)
I have been in a book review mode lately and I've recently published a book cover design walkthrough, which should provide context for what I am about to say.
I definitely see an opportunity for steemit to cut into Amazon's profits. It would just require a new type of post to be created.
This new post would be a book and an author can source the contents from individual posts. There would need to be a way to have drafts, or hide posts.
The author would have the freedom to allow none part or all of the book to be read.
It would also be neat to have a pay-per-view. Where if you click on a link to the book, steemit throws up a window saying, "Are you sure you want to send 10 SBD to author for full access to Book Title". The reader says yes and it is deducted from their wallet (re enter creds for security).
It would be even cooler if that system was a contract that sent a little SBD to the artist who designed the cover and inner illustrations, to proofreaders, to promoters, and to the author. Then this would be a good STEEM alternative to publishing.
You could give users an option to pay extra for their own copy of the pdf to read offline.
If Steemit is already snagging the top spots on Google searches, Steem Book Publishing seems like a great experiment to try.
Perhaps some day we should create a feature backlog focused on the requirements of serialised content producers. I bet we all share a lot of the same type of requirements. I certainly could use lifetime post editing capability right about now. :) J.
That would be nice but the way I understand it, once a block is added to the chain, it can't be edited. Not sure if there is a way to bridge that in our current platform.
I absolutely love this post, backed up with data and evidence, and all the comments that you are getting. I read and write #science and #academia. Previously, i talked about publishing science articles in steemit here Seems that there is also a similar trend in publishing Serialized Fiction. Following you :-)
Hi @coinbitgold62, thank you for the kind words. Yes, there are some similarities between fiction and non-fiction publishing. I agree that Steemit could be the platform that brings the vision of Aaron Swartz to reality. J.
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The big trend right now both in Europe and in North America are a type of co-op publisher who splits costs and profits with the author. Self-publishing has too many cons which is why most self-publishing stars go on to secure a traditional publisher once they've hit it big. Self-publishing is a business and unless you are prepared to spend most of your time dealing with marketing, distribution and logistical issues, you're better off exploring other options. By the way, as someone who used to work for a publishing database employed by Amazon, the average payout for self-published authors was less than $117 a year in 2014. Less than 2% of all self-published books on Amazon in 2014 made over $500 for the author. And only a tiny, tiny fraction of that 2% made $10K or more. Those stats haven't changed much since then.
Edited: Amazon lost its big case with Hachette just recently. As a result, the big publishers expect profits of 3 to 5% over the next two quarters which still pales in comparison to the growth seen in smaller independent publishers, many of whom will benefit from the Hachette win.
Indie and self-publishing are growing fast, and the market is changing very rapidly as demonstrated by the data I shared. I do like the co-publishing platforms, particularly when they bring in good expertise. As an author, I like to understand all parts of the process including marketing and distribution. J.
I run a little publishing company, and have been playing with steemit, in part, to see exactly how this platform may change the industry. After releasing a little sci fi novel exclusively on steemit (and finding/following a bunch of awesome writers etc.), it seems like steemit has the potential to become the place for specialty fiction/poetry/graphic novels.
I've actually started recommending my authors to develop a steemit presence as part of their standard marketing activities.
@mada Perfect! I look forward to reading your work and the work of your writers. J.
A friend of mine asked for an advise on his Facebook page today, about how to promote his book written in russian on Internet .
Well, russian segment of Steemit don't seem to me to be a place to be recommended right now.
I am getting ready to self-publish, is it possible on Steemit now?
Sort of. I posted a short novel on Steemit last year. And I'm sure there is a way to integrate a STEEM/SBD payment button into a self-hosted digital downloads website. But I do not think there is yet an easy way to sell ebooks on Steemit.com.
Wonderful post, Jamie! I've been in the business for almost 23 years and have seen the shift from having to obtain a "yes" from a gatekeeper in the publishing industry to all of the freedom we have today. After my experience here on Steemit with Alarm Clock Dawn, I see serialized fiction as a viable alternative to self-publishing on Amazon for, at the very least, a debut novel. Steemit earnings could easily finance the launch of a second book (i.e. cover design, professional editor, publicist, etc.) Thanks for writing this!
We are 100% aligned my friend. I'm keen to know what features you would prioritise here on Steemit. Let's discuss sometime. J.
I think it has great potential for the new and emerging authors, because getting paid, even small amounts is beneficial as one attempts to establish themselves, build an audience, produce content etc. From this perspective alone I think its value is enormous, without even looking into the even broader publishing industry. But yes, I can see how it could be very disruptive to many scales of the industry. And I welcome it.
I agree, the value is enormous. J.
Steemit is a place to test certain ideas and to build an audience around the development of the story or book and even monetize during the time of writing the book.
Absolutely. That is what I'm personally doing with Ahe'ey.
Steemit or a Steemit based platform could move further into publishing. I believe that in the next few years, someone in the crypto space will move into this market.
This is a good point, and I hope to see more energy, action around it