The slow death of the mass media business model
First, music, then motion pictures (did you realize there are sites popping up that stream movie videos illegally? ), now books. The Internet has unleashed intellectual property leakage that frankly, can't really be resolved because there will always be an unknown someone in the world (say, a theater employee in Shanghai), uploading copy, and untouchable by governments and regulatory institutions like MPAA.
All media producers are challenged by the short form internet publication format. The work of painstakingly producing full length books and movies will be left to those who have the credibility, popularity and finances to do so. Every other artist resorts to YouTube, music uploads and blogs to promote their craft, until they become recognized enough to get a major contract. This changes how creative arts will be pursued - every artist becomes an entrepreneur relying on online marketing creativity to further their careers.Book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales.
This is the bleak forecast of the Society of Authors, which represents more than 8,500 professional writers in the UK and believes that the havoc caused to the music business by illegal downloading is beginning to envelop the book trade.
Tracy Chevalier, the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring who also chairs the London-based organisation, said that her members were deeply concerned that the publishing industry was failing to adapt to the digital age.
The internet is awash with unlicensed free digital copies of individual chapters or in some cases entire books. Prominent victims of book piracy include Jamie Oliver and J. K. Rowling but the most vulnerable writers are less well-known poets, authors of short stories and writers of cookery books.
The economics of free needs to be evaluated as a societal inevitability. It will be ingrained as an expectation, even an obligation, by a society becoming accustomed to the wealth of free data. Real estate is no different, society will expect its experts to provide data freely with the quid-pro-quo of a "premium upgrade" coinciding with the hiring of the service provider.
As for books, they will always be around... but the consumption of bound, paper books (as a percentage of media market share) will slowly shrink in the same way the major TV networks have been losing relevancy. Sad to say.
I still go to the bookstore twice a month and spend a couple hours and $50 to $100 every time I go. There is something to be said about the reality of a book vs the virtual nature of bits and bytes. But that is just me.
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My sympathies are with the movie and book people.
Though I'd like to add that they should also learn from the mistakes of the Music labels- instead of making friends of innovation they fought a losing battle. And as we all know they eventually conceded but at a loss of at least five years.
They need discipline thinking on how to integrate the changes. And they will find something i am positive if they start with the right mindset.
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As a veteran of the film industry, I'm also keenly aware of the creative artists' dilemma over the piracy of their content. That said, the new business models do support artist benchmarks of talent, recognition and eventual celebrity that will get them over the hump to the current "classic" business model of rewarding celebrity. We've just entered an era of online fame that will eventually be as influential and lucrative as fame on any other media... and it's far more meritocratic to gain a viral online following than having your cousin introduce you to Warner Bros. A&R VP. Really, the same artist challenges exist as before, except today's road requires the artist to understand how to market online en route to more lucrative contractual work... the earlier road was just "getting signed".
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"We've just entered an era of online fame that will eventually be as influential and lucrative as fame on any other media... and it's far more meritocratic to gain a viral online following than having your cousin introduce you to Warner Bros. A&R VP"
Right,absolutely.
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This returns the advantage back to the listing agent.
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http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/
This is only the beginning. The internet's going to change a lot more than just these.
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I believe step one for the agent is to understand these dynamics. Step two is to understand that what you describe above is what has happened to the listing agent.
I still believe that the mantra"those who control the listings control the market" applies. However, more and more online it is the aggragates who list the listings and thus in some way control the agents listings.
Therefore, the agent to survive, indeed succeed must come from a new learned publishing model. They must learn how to write useful material that does not just act as bait for a search engine (yawn), but serve to educate, engage and lead that prospect to the next level of relationship with said agent.
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