It's all about how on-demand streaming video via the Net is not the future -- it's right now.
This coincidentally dovetails nicely with my recent DVD epiphany.
And there's one paragraph that I must quote:
The tone of voice when I talk about these things tend to be a disdainful "Well, sure but how are we supposed to monetize this?" Right question, wrong tone. We. Don't. Have. A. Choice.
Emphasis added by me.
The music industry has been usurped by technology. Now television has been too. And movies.
The one remaining industry is book publishing.
Google has already stolen all of the historical backlist.
All that's left is recent and not yet published.
It's as if the book publishing industry was situated on a giant iceberg -- which suddenly cracked apart, leaving publishers on a precarious floe.
Over there in a big rescue ship are eBook readers screaming, "We'll save you! Just publish eBooks quickly and at reasonable prices!!!"
On the other side are the pirates on a self-built makeshift archipelago in international waters free from all law enforcement. They don't care what book publishers do. They have worldwide distributed teams with scanners and free proofreaders ready to "set everything free."
And on the horizon are writers themselves in small boats trying to figure out how to best survive on their own, liberated from the constraints of ink-and-paper publishing.
Book publishing -- unlike music, unlike TV, unlike movies -- Still. Has. A. Choice.
Will it allow eBook readers to rescue it?
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