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Internet Authors are Market Traders

By Mike Scantlebury

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 23Sep2007 Word count: 835 Viewed: 317 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Picture the scene. You jump into your car and drive out to the nearest supermarket, maybe part of the local shopping mall. As you drive in through the gate of the car park, you notice a number of scruffy market stalls on the roadway outside the store. Who are these people? If you've ever been abroad to a hot, fly-ridden Third World country, you know that sometimes scroungers and beggars hang around in the street outside the expensive tourist hotels. It looks a bit like that. The market traders seem to be trying to make some money by being in the vicinity of the big shop and picking up the odd customer, the ones with enough curiosity to venture out onto the street and look at what the market traders have to offer, perhaps hoping for a bargain or some cheap imitation of the real goods inside the mall.

New internet publishing seems to look a bit like this. It appears to some as if Internet Authors are not part of the mainstream, but hanging around instead outside the smart plush offices that Traditional Publishers inhabit, trying to pick up a few customers as they go about their business, those arriving and leaving the well to do buildings, the skyscrapers that big publishing firms enjoy. That might be true on the street, but it's certainly not true of internet bookshops. Internet Authors are finding that they face no disadvantage if they can get their books listed on a site like Amazon. As far as the customer is concerned, they find an author, and a list of books. If they order a book, they pay for it in the normal way and it is delivered to their door, just like any other book from any 'big name' publisher. The fact that the author might have organised the publishing of their own book for themselves, perhaps through a Print-on-demand service like Lulu, well, it's not apparent. The Internet Author is being considered on the same terms as any other writer. It's as if these upstarts have somehow managed to sneak into the bookstore in the mall and insert their books onto the shelves of the well known bookshops there. Well, no, that hasn't happened yet, (although book stores can order Internet Authors' work off the net – just like anyone else – and put them up for sale, if they choose to).

In the end, of course, it's the people who are buying – the customers – who count. Some commentators seem to think that new-style Internet Publishing is simply a business battle between these new arrivals and Traditional Publishers. It is, but it's a battle for customers. Whoever wins the sales, wins the war. It's not about the quality of the printing, or the design on the cover, the scale of distribution or the talent in the P.R. department. It's about turnover and profit, and since Internet Authors have less costs and easier means of production and distribution these days, they find themselves competing on increasingly equal terms with the big boys.

Imagine the scene. Mrs Jay is back from shopping and is sharing a cup of coffee with Mrs Kay at her house. Mrs Kay comments that those darn market stalls are a terrible blight on the landscape and a scruffy scene on the shopping street. Mrs Jay agrees, but says that she was interested to see what they had to offer, overcame her hesitations, walked out of the car park and had a good look at all the stalls. She found a book she was interested in, brought it home and started reading it. She's enjoying it very much. She offers to lend it to Mrs Kay. Mrs Kay takes it home, reads it, likes it and decides – much against her better judgement – that next time she drives to the mall, she too will have a look at what the market stalls have to offer.

That's it. In a moment, a customer has resolved to change their behaviour. That's the important thing. While Traditional Publishers are arguing amongst themselves; while Internet Authors are working like guerrillas to undermine the existing publishing infrastructure; while all else is going on behind the scenes; meanwhile one consumer has been persuaded to shop elsewhere. That's all it needs. When customers change the way they shop, then Internet Publishing will have arrived. It won't matter what any publisher, company, employee, individual or commentator has to say – the market will have changed. The scruffy individuals with their tatty stalls will have become part of the new way of doing things, and it's thanks to the behaviour of customers. It's not about what publishers want, or even what authors would prefer. It's about what readers want to read and, as we know, car boot sales, garage sales and second-hand and used bookstores are also good sources for finding the book you want. These days, simply add the internet 'market stalls' of Internet Publishers to the list of places to visit.

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