revised to remove confusing terminology that had some folks balking.
Dear Author recent post covered a lot, but missed a crucial detail. In talking about the publishing industry's byzantine and neolithic (wow, there's a combination) business model, and especially in comparisons to netflix, must address LIZARDS.
For awhile, the net was all agog over the notion of a 'long tail': at the onset of a new item's introduction, the sales should be pretty high for X amount of time, and then those sales taper off. The longer that tapering lasts, the longer the 'tail' of the sales. If, as [name I can't even recall right this minute and should damnit] first noted, you do the math, you might eventually figure out that a long tail, if stretched long enough, could end up equal to (or at least rivaling?) the original burst of, uhm, roundbody sales.
Pretend you sell 100 units every week in the first six weeks. After that, just to pull random numbers, let's say it drops by 1/2 each week until you get down to the actual tail, where the minimum would be (duh) 1 unit per week. ( Behind this cut are a lot of business basics, bookstore generalities, and what Borders did that's so epic fail. )
I had meant to talk about the lizard-tail, but I'll do that next -- it just seemed like (or maybe it's my bias) that unless folks understand how the bookstore industry nuts & bolts things, then it wouldn't make sense how to go about lizarding things. Although that's possibly also because I don't have more than a general clue how publishing works, but I do have a grasp on how bookstores work, so I'm going to naturally approach any solutions from the POV of whether it would be help/harm to bookstores.
goto part two
Dear Author recent post covered a lot, but missed a crucial detail. In talking about the publishing industry's byzantine and neolithic (wow, there's a combination) business model, and especially in comparisons to netflix, must address LIZARDS.
For awhile, the net was all agog over the notion of a 'long tail': at the onset of a new item's introduction, the sales should be pretty high for X amount of time, and then those sales taper off. The longer that tapering lasts, the longer the 'tail' of the sales. If, as [name I can't even recall right this minute and should damnit] first noted, you do the math, you might eventually figure out that a long tail, if stretched long enough, could end up equal to (or at least rivaling?) the original burst of, uhm, roundbody sales.
Pretend you sell 100 units every week in the first six weeks. After that, just to pull random numbers, let's say it drops by 1/2 each week until you get down to the actual tail, where the minimum would be (duh) 1 unit per week. ( Behind this cut are a lot of business basics, bookstore generalities, and what Borders did that's so epic fail. )
I had meant to talk about the lizard-tail, but I'll do that next -- it just seemed like (or maybe it's my bias) that unless folks understand how the bookstore industry nuts & bolts things, then it wouldn't make sense how to go about lizarding things. Although that's possibly also because I don't have more than a general clue how publishing works, but I do have a grasp on how bookstores work, so I'm going to naturally approach any solutions from the POV of whether it would be help/harm to bookstores.
goto part two