Amazon vs the Publishers vs the I Pad vs the Others

I am a life long student of the business world. I try to base my views on what is right/ethical, in my view, vs what is best for one group within a business industry ecosystem. I also know that business is cut throat and if you can take more that is called profits. If you don't someone else will.

We all know this is kind of B.S. There are happy healthy mediums if you can get rid of ego's and entitlements. When a major technology breakthrough disrupts a whole industry ecosystem, the dead weight gets exposed and there is a long slow march to oblivion if they don't change and follow a new path.

I truly feel the emergence of the E-Readers and Tablet computing are great develops for the planet. Especially for the environment. If we didn't need to cut down trees for general paper use it would be a major boon to the health of this planets air, water, and land. But there is sizable infrastructure and jobs in the timber, paper, printing/publishing and transportation industries. Just for books and magazines! Prior to E-Readers these businesses were vital to the book and magazine industry. But soon they will be just extra cost that is not needed. Its the words, the content that has value and we buy. We aren't buying paper or timber, though currently they are part of the delivery system of we want to buy the content.

Amazon is fighting Publishers over the price of he E-Books. Amazon just agreed with one big house that new books will be sold for more and they get 70% of the sell price. And there is this major panic with Apple coming into the game to ensure the higher revenues. And here is where the Publishers are deceiving themselves. What is a fair price for a new book electronically vs hardcover. What percentage of the $22 to $25 hardcover price is the cost of timber, paper, printing, manufacturing? If it came in at $8 and that cost was gone tomorrow the industry would see Revenues drop 33% and they would panic. But in reality the value and revenue for the content, content development, and marketing are the only core costs, everything else is bloat. How it is delivered and consumed might constantly change over time. But the variable non-essential revenue sources should not be what is vital to an industry's view success.

Where Print went wrong...sorry Digital Ad Networks

Print has had a double whammy when it comes to revenues. One is their fault which was free news sites with digital ad networks, the second was out of their control - Craig's List which killed the Classified Ad revenue source.

But first I want to do a quick review of the past vs. the present.

Before the Internet if you wanted news most major cities had 1-2 newspapers, 3 major TV networks that did world, national and local news, and the radio. They competed within each market for eyes and ears and were pretty much protected from non-local competition.

With the Internet what has evolved is that every news source competes now globally. Using my own example growing up my family watched the TV news outside NY City and we subscribed to Newsday. I moved to LA and subscribed to the LA times and also watched Network News. Over time I now read the Digital Versions of the LA Times, NY Times, Economist, BBC, Washington Post, and Huffington Post. I never watch Network TV News. I do watch the Daily Show live and online. I also listen to news Podcasts from the BBC, NPR, and Economist. I read the print versions of Business Week, Fortune, and Rolling Stone. I also read local Entertainment Papers like LA Weekly, Village Voice, etc. All this accounts for 85% of my news consumption.

So now print competes world wide. And seriously I have estimated an industry maximizes competition and productivity when there isn't 500,000 competitors. So there will be a shake out eventually where many cities have no major print newspaper such as San Francisco, Boston, and Denver already deal with.

Prior to the Internet we all agreed to pay for print versions of news sources. Then came the Internet and this idea of Digital Ad Networks evolved. By not charging a subscription for Online viewing of news they lost a revenue stream. Now granted if I pay $0.50 for a print paper that is just subsidizing the true cost of printing and distributing. The rest comes from Print Ads. So removing the physical print and distribution they could charge less than the $0.50 and break even on that portion.

But the Digital Ad Networks promoted a lie to the Print Industry. That their Ad Distribution Networks are better than Static Ads on Print Pages (like a pdf would be). And this was the huge revenue killer. They lost control of this part of their revenue stream. Computer OEM's, Software OEM's, and Internet providers make no extra money if Ads are blocked, like Firefox allows. 700,000 downloads of Firefox's Ad Blocker Plus happen each week for the browser with 22% market share. Viruses have people fearful of interactive ads. I myself use No Script which prevents Java from running on websites unless I allow it. So while I disable Ad Blocker on sites I get free content from, the actual Ad Networks are all prevented from running on my browser because I have had virus infections before.

Since all the players mentioned before are out for themselves. Print has been left high and dry.

The true solution for this would be that Newspapers etc charge a nominal fee for a subscription. And their pages served to E-Readers should be static with Ads just like Print Ads. This way when I read Page 4 of the NY Times it views just like the hard copy of the paper would. This would guarantee impressions and increase CPM's. Why should a Brand or Marketer pay more, if 1] their Ad is blocked by 1 of 5 browsers? 2] They have even less proof an Ad was seen.

I know the rebuttal. Static Ads will prevent click throughs reducing the increased value and creativity they offer. But seriously now. Click Throughs? You mean the 20 average per 10,000 page views? But seriously now. Most of us use a search engine to find website sites, type in URL's directly, get linked via social media, or we go direct via a book mark. Leave your creative interactive consumer engagement effort for your web site. Make it easy to get there. And boom increased R.O.I.