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Read: E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: Amazon: Only Copyright Holders Can Unzip Kindle's Lips.
This is an interesting debate that once again shows that many rights holders will need some serious hand-holding when it's about understanding new technological implementations. I think this will be a major task, and very powerful if somewhat tedious opportunity, for the likes of Amazon, Google (Youtube), Yahoo and Facebook (yes... why? Stay tuned!) and very soon, the big agencies such as DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi, as well as for all those Telecoms that want to play in the content & experience business (and which one does not?).
The creators and rights holders urgently need to understand and embrace the web-fueled paradigm of 'giving something' in return for 'getting something' - and the increasing empowerment of the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users) means that the creators will have to give more before they can get something back. Some people would call that the pressure of the Attention Economy - but this is the undeniable reality of the hyper-connected and mobile world we now live in, and it is not something we can switch on or off as we see fit. Ignore this trend at you own peril - witness the music industry's refusal to give more value before the purchase, and where it has taken them.
Now, Spotify, Last.fm, Myspace and iMeem provide free music on-demand, Hulu and Youtube provide free TV shows on-demand, Amazon and Google let people search-and-read-inside-the-book. And now the new Kindle will allow you to listen to a robotic voice rendition of a book - hardly a competition with the audio book, I would argue. In fact, this feature would probably drive people towards buying more audio books - free added values convert to sales based an getting better interfaces and higher quality. Sounds familiar?
This whole debate is very much like, years ago, the issue of Amazon's Search-Inside-The-Book feature. After a lot of deliberation, the publishers found out that the new feature really did increase sales (I think by something like 10%) and what's more, it got a lot of people 'addicted' to the book right there and then - which is usually the best way of snagging a new customer.
I think that Amazon should consider offering an additional, small monetary incentive to the publishers as well as some clever reporting on who is listening where (based on opt-in), and maybe even some promotional, highly targeted audio 'advertising' options to the participating book publishers, and thereby sweeten the deal.
But most importantly, the publishers need to start looking beyond their constant fears of cannibalization of existing revenues, and look at all these new options with less toxic assumptions (as social media expert and fellow bloggerati Neil Perkin likes to calls them). In addition, drastically lowering the price on digital books (the audio versions, too) would go a long way in boosting the take-up of electronic reading. And beyond that: what if you could use Kindle to have actual conversations with the readers - wouldn't that be a boon to writers and publishers?
The bottom line: switch to Openness and find new revenues. Now. Look at Nokia / Symbian, Firefox, Apache, Adobe, Android... Openness is tough but it always wins the users.
Ceck out this video on 'Compensation not Control' (MidemNet 2009)- this Lessig-inspired meme applies here, too!
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