E-books and e-publishing | Page 9

to exclusively cater to the needs of a highly idiosyncratic group of
people (Silicone Valley geeks and nerds). The assumption that the USA
(let alone the rest of the world) is Silicone Valley writ large proved to
be calamitous to the industry. In the 1970s and 1980s, evolutionary
biologists like Richard Dawkins and Rupert Sheldrake developed
models of cultural evolution. Dawkins' "meme" is a cultural element
(like a behaviour or an idea) passed from one individual to another and
from one generation to another not through biological - genetic means -
but by imitation. Sheldrake added the notion of contagion - "morphic
resonance" - which causes behaviour patterns to suddenly emerged in
whole populations. Physicists talked about sudden "phase transitions",
the emergent results of a critical mass reached. A latter day thinker,
Michael Gladwell, called it the "tipping point". Seth Godin invented the
concept of an "ideavirus" and an attendant marketing terminology. In a
nutshell, he says, to use his own summation: "Marketing by
interrupting people isn't cost-effective anymore. You can't afford to

seek out people and send them unwanted marketing, in large groups
and hope that some will send you money. Instead the future belongs to
marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested
people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get
out of the way and let them talk."

This is sound advice with a shaky conclusion. The conversion from
exposure to a marketing message (even from peers within a consumer
network) - to an actual sale is a convoluted, multi- layered, highly
complex process. It is not a "black box", better left unattended to. It is
the same deadly sin all over again - the belief in a miraculous
conversion. And it is highly US-centric. People in other parts of the
world interact entirely differently. You can get them to visit and you
get them to talk and you can get them to excite others. But to get them
to buy - is a whole different ballgame. Dot.coms had better begin to
study its rules.

The Medium and the Message By: Sam Vaknin A debate is raging in
e-publishing circles: should content be encrypted and protected (the
Barnes and Noble or Digital goods model) - or should it be distributed
freely and thus serve as a form of viral marketing (Seth Godin's
"ideavirus")? Publishers fear that freely distributed and cost-free
"cracked" e-books will cannibalize print books to oblivion. The more
paranoid point at the music industry. It failed to co-opt the emerging
peer-to-peer platforms (Napster) and to offer a viable digital assets
management system with an equitable sharing of royalties. The results?
A protracted legal battle and piracy run amok. "Publishers" - goes this
creed - "are positioned to incorporate encryption and protection
measures at the very inception of the digital publishing industry. They
ought to learn the lesson." But this view ignores a vital difference
between sound and text. In music, what matter are the song or the
musical piece. The medium (or carrier, or packing) is marginal and
interchangeable. A CD, an audio cassette, or an MP3 player are all fine,
as far as the consumer is concerned. The listener bases his or her
purchasing decisions on sound quality and the faithfulness of
reproduction of the listening experience (for instance, in a concert hall).
This is a very narrow, rational, measurable and quantifiable criterion.

Not so with text. Content is only one element of many of equal footing
underlying the decision to purchase a specific text-"carrier" (medium).
Various media encapsulating IDENTICAL text will still fare differently.
Hence the failure of CD-ROMs and e- learning. People tend to
consume content in other formats or media, even if it is fully available
to them or even owned by them in one specific medium. People prefer
to pay to listen to live lectures rather than read freely available online
transcripts. Libraries buy print journals even when they have
subscribed to the full text online versions of the very same publications.
And consumers overwhelmingly prefer to purchase books in print
rather than their e-versions. This is partly a question of the slow demise
of old habits. E- books have yet to develop the user-friendliness,
platform- independence, portability, browsability and many other
attributes of this ingenious medium, the Gutenberg tome. But it also
has to do with marketing psychology. Where text (or text equivalents,
such as speech) is concerned, the medium is at least as important as the
message. And this will hold true even when e-books catch up with their
print brethren technologically.

There is no doubting that finally e-books will surpass print books as a
medium and offer numerous options: hyperlinks within the e-book and
without it - to web content, reference works, etc., embedded instant
shopping and ordering links, divergent, user-interactive,