Comments on: Fighting Fire with Fire — The Only Remaining Option?

By: David Smith

David Smith — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:13:12 +0000

Reading this, I’m taken straight back to Tim O’Reilly’s original paper on Web 2.0. If you haven’t read it, your really should. Very Carefully. More than once. There are a number of profound insights in the paper. One of them – the ‘Network Effect’ is the one to really get your head around. It isn’t an easy concept to grapple with. The network effect can only occur when multiple factors converge to enable it to happen (eg Google, -a great search algorithm + the use of cheap hardware + the use of open source software + stored search feedback from the userbase + luck[right time right place etc etc]) Even then it isn’t a certainty to occur.

If it does happen, you have one choice – to jump on board and see where it goes. This is what Bezos did back in the 90s and early 2k’s when Amazon regularly headed the lists of web companies that were going to go belly up. He has played a long game. So have Apple under Steve Jobs and Google as well. What do they have in common? VERY strong leadership who are not motivated to trade short term gain for their long term plans. I wonder if that thinking is an east coast – west coast difference?

By: Mark Anderson-Wilk

Mark Anderson-Wilk — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:22:45 +0000

Interesting discussion–thanks for keeping it going. STM publishing, which has thrived in recent decades, could of course be called a “system” itself. The new system (Google, Web 2.0, etc.) may disrupt the business model of the old system, but as David Crotty commented, the value of content issue is a matter of definition. The billions of dollars that are invested in the research that forms the basis of scholarly publishing is one measure of the value. Many of the traditional publisher functions–including peer review, editing, and design–are just as valuable now, even if the indexing and dissemination functions are altered by new systems. And providing this value costs something. Publishers are currently still the best equipped organizations to consistently provide this added value. As business-as-usual is disrupted by new systems, the funding mechanisms may need time to adjust to new ways of ensuring that the essential publisher functions are supported.

By: Maxine

Maxine — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:36:55 +0000

Interesting thesis about self-published books on Amazon, but how well do they actually do, compared with books that have a marketing budget behind them?

I would not agree that “self published” books are in an ascendancy. I would suggest that print-on-demand will become a more popular and economical medium for publishers and possibly authors, but that is not the same thing as “self published” (most of which is dire I suspect).