Tim,

This is a followup question / response to the "Ask Tim" column on Small Print Runs. In that column, you say the following (hopefully this copy of your quote won't be too badly mangled):

One of the things that Lightning Print doesn't solve is the "marketing shelf space" problem. While virtual inventory is infinite, the space in a publisher's direct mail catalog, or on the price list presented to bookstores, or in the advertising budget, is not. So while it means a book can remain available forever, this isn't all that different from what happens to many books today. Go to many publishers' warehouses (especially smaller publishers), and you'll see rack on rack of books that have sat untouched for years, kind of like the endless warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I agree that the "marketing shelf space" problem, in the form you describe it, is real. However, I would argue that the reason for the problem is that the marketing materials you are making use of are physical / tangible, and therefore have a non-trivial cost to manufacture and distribute.

If, instead, marketing of this type of publication is done solely in an electronic / on-demand / virtual fashion (e.g., Amazon), perhaps implemented with database and expert system technology as appropriate, I would assume the incremental cost of marketing any one item would be much less than that of marketing it using physical (printed paper) mediums. I admit that at the least there would be a significant fixed recurring overhead cost (pay for the computers / servers / disk space, bandwidth, electric, s/w maintenance and enhancement, etc) and a non-trivial fixed one-time cost per item (load data into the system, make connections between items in the inventory, etc). These costs (esp the recurring overhead) would probably require a large enough inventory of titles, and including some well-selling titles, that any one inventory item's pro-rated share of common costs makes it affordable to maintain that item in the first place. However, I think the numbers could be wrangled such that this mechanism could be made to work in a practical, real world sense, and not just in theory.

Your thoughts? Comments?

Joseph R. Justice

Joseph,

You're absolutely right that as you go online, the virtual shelf space is infinite, but unfortunately, the virtual attention span of readers is not. Just having an Amazon page for a book doesn't mean that anyone will ever look at it. In fact, in some ways, because it really is a pure demand-based market (with a relatively small amount of proactive outbound marketing), Amazon in some ways increases the spread between the "haves" and the "have nots".

I think of Amazon as having the most benefit for two classes of books:

1. Very popular books, which have a lot of demand (which feeds on itself, since high demand books get lots of positive reviews and other word of mouth, which makes them more popular); and

2. Books that are unique, and that are sought out by people who already know what they are looking for.

   The books that really suffer are the ones in the middle--neither outstandingly popular, nor unique. (In some ways this is good, since it helps winnow out some of the chaff in the book publishing market, while preserving a sales outlet for books that might otherwise be made completely unavailable.)

   And you're right that the unlimited virtual shelf space of an Amazon means that these unique backlist books can be made available "forever." But even then, there's a ripple effect from lack of attention.

   Once books are produced in a way that makes them amenable to Lightning Print and other print-on-demand technologies, single copies can presumably be made available long after the book would normally be taken out of print.

   But back to the lack of "marketing shelf space." While Amazon is going great guns, they still represent only a small fraction of the possible universe of sales. At least at present, there isn't any author or publisher who could survive only on their Amazon sales.

   For certain kinds of books that aren't well distributed otherwise, to be sure, Amazon may represent 30 or 40% of all sales, but for others, I imagine that the percentages are in fractions of a percent. Again, the big winners are unique backlist books (like Edward Tufte's classics on information design, for instance, which were revived as bestsellers by Amazon.)

   --Tim

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