Just read a great blog post “No Ebook No Sale” by my friend, Augusto Pinaud and commented there. Basically what he said is this - if you - PUBLISHER or AUTHOR - don’t provide your content in a digital form - EBOOK - I won’t read it. Augusto made the switch to Kindle and iPad and he doesn’t need paper books anymore. I totally agree with his sentiment:
We live in a digital age and we need digital content. Now.
For some reasons (piracy?) both the authors and publishers are afraid to publish their content in digital form. Even though iTunes Store has proven them wrong like million times, but they still hesitate it. Augusto quotes JK Rowling (the author of Harry Potter) as a person who’s afraid to publish the books in digital form. Instead of fearing digital age, both authors and publishers must embrace it.
We live in a global, Internet-connected world, so better offer your content globally.
Once upon a time, when a movie aired in the United States first, it came to Europe in half a year. Now it’s coming the next day, whether you like it or not. Either, because some publishers got smart and made a worldwide premiere the same day, or… which is still more likely, because the publishers and distributors got stupid… it’s coming via illegal torrent networks - whether the distributors like it or not.
Come on guys - we have Internet now - we know that the movie is available over there… so if you’re not making it available over here, we’ll still watch it anyway. But then you won’t earn a thing. Don’t make us steal the content to watch it - we’ll happily pay, but give us a chance!
Same applies to the TV series… and in most cases we in Europe are far behind there.
Convenience is the magical word - and both publishers and authors need to embrace it.
We love convenience. iTunes made it convenient for people to get their music directly to their digital players and people bought it. Although they could’ve downloaded it free off a peer2peer network. If you make something convenient for the customers - they will pay, and they’ll be happy about the warm fuzzy feeling of staying legal.
As you know, I love audiobooks, I even listen to them while skiing, and although I could have downloaded them off a P2P networks, I actually subscribed to Audible and I’m paying for them. Audible makes my purchases convenient, offers great prices and promos… and gives me that fuzzy feeling of staying on a legal side and supporting the content creators.
C’mon guys, nobody wants to rob you publishers and authors… but not giving us the content they way we want, you’re asking to be robbed. And we are your customers. And you should serve us, not penalize us. And customers are always right. Don’t you think?