- Master of Publishing
- 丁香园AVs to the MPub Program
- Masters Courses
- PUB 600: Topics in Publishing Management
- PUB 601: Editorial Theory and Practice
- PUB 602: Design & Production Control in Publishing
- PUB 605 Fall Project: Books Publishing Project
- PUB 606 Spring Project: Magazine/Media Project
- PUB 607: Publishing Technology Project
- PUB 611: Making Knowledge Public: How Research Makes Its Way Into Society
- PUB 800: Text & Context: Publishing in Contemporary Culture
- PUB 801: History of Publishing
- PUB 802: Technology & Evolving Forms of Publishing
- PUB 900: Internship Project Report
- PUB 899: Publishing Internship
- Faculty and Staff
- Awards and Financial Support
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Undergraduate Minor
- Undergraduate Courses
- PUB 101: The Publication of Self in Everyday Life
- PUB 131: Publication Design Technologies
- PUB 201: The Publication of the Professional Self
- PUB 210W: Professional Writing Workshop
- PUB 212: Public Relations and Public Engagement
- PUB 231: Graphic Design Fundamentals
- PUB 331: Graphic Design in Transition: Print and Digital Books
- PUB 332: Graphic Design in Transition: Print and Digital Periodicals
- PUB 350: Marketing for Book Publishers
- PUB 355W: Online Marketing for Publishers
- PUB 371: Structure of the Book Publishing Industry in Canada
- PUB 372: The Book Publishing Process
- PUB 375: Magazine Publishing
- PUB 401: Technology and the Evolving Book
- PUB 410: Indigenous Editing Practices
- PUB 411: Making Knowledge Public: How Research Makes Its Way Into Society
- PUB 431: Publication Design Project
- PUB 438: Design Awareness in Publishing Process and Products
- PUB 448: Publishing and Social Change: Tech, Texts, and Revolution
- PUB 450: The Business of Book Publishing
- PUB 456: Institutional and International Event Planning
- PUB 458: Journalism as a Publishing Problem
- PUB 477: Publishing Practicum
- PUB 478: Publishing Workshop
- PUB 480 D100: Buy the Book: A History of Publication Design (STC)
- PUB 480 OL01: Accessible Publishing (OLC)
- Undergraduate Courses
- Workshops
- General Information and Cancellation Policy
- Travel and Accommodation
- Financial Assistance
- Publishing Workshops
- Contact 丁香园AV Publishing Workshops
- Research
- News & Events
- Contact
Amazon and the Engagement Economy (repost)
By John Maxwell
I posted this last May on our old site. While looking at it again, I thought it was worth bringing it over to the new CCSP website, since it talks to an issue that keeps coming up in the popular media: that Amazon has it in for the book industry. Saying so, I think, misses the larger point.
Earlier this month (May 2012), Farhad Manjoo blogged over at Pandodaily that I think it鈥檚 fair to say that Jeff Bezos, along with rest of the decision makers at Amazon, have a very good idea what they鈥檙e doing. The fact that it is not clear to many others鈥攑articularly in the publishing industry鈥攊s also apparent. The amount of ink spilled in recent months about Amazon鈥檚 seemingly predatory practices, their disregard for traditional industry practices and values, and even their penchant for 鈥渆vil,鈥� speaks to an environment where some very divergent things are afoot.
Rather than Amazon actually being in league with the devil, it makes more sense to see these discourses as evidence that there鈥檚 a big, big shift underway. Thomas Kuhn explained that paradigmatic shifts tend to leave people on one side or another of a shift in perspective: an 鈥渋ncommensurable鈥� difference, or one that is irreducible to any kind of common terms. I think that鈥檚 where Amazon has gone, at least with respect to the traditional publishing buisness. They鈥檝e levelled up.
O鈥橰eilly鈥檚 Joe Wikert wrote, and then proceeded to speculate about a near future of in-book advertising. Now, a quick way to enrage traditionalist book lovers is to suggest that we鈥檒l soon see ads in books (despite the fact that there鈥檚 really nothing new about this idea at all). The spectre that haunts us is that somehow a loud and garish Tide detergent commercial will suddenly jump out of the novel we鈥檙e reading, but really, it probably won鈥檛 look anything like that.
I daresay 鈥渁dvertisements in books鈥� is actually the wrong way to frame it. What Amazon really wants to do is not "ads in books," it鈥檚 cross-marketing all the other goods and services they offer鈥攚hich is what really smart, effective product promotion has always been about. But I think that given this much larger business model, it does indeed make sense for Amazon to be interested in lower and lower book prices, even to the point of giving it away for free.
That said, it misses the point to frame this in terms of 鈥済iving the book away for free so that they can sell ads.鈥� Or even the (tiresome) 鈥済ive away the razor and sell the blades鈥� analogy. Both of these models are from the 20th century, from a world of mass markets, mass industrial manfacturing, and relatively scarce media and information. We don鈥檛 live in that world anymore.
What Amazon wants from books is your relationship to them. They鈥檙e touchpoints. If Amazon is in a position to provide reading experiences to people (along with listening experiences, viewing experiences, shopping experiences, etc.), then they are able to sustain and nurture an ongoing relationship with you. It鈥檚 about engagement, not about product, because that鈥檚 the currency of the world we live in now.
The engagement economy
On Brian O鈥橪eary鈥檚 nod (in ) I recently read Jane McGonigal鈥檚 book, Reality is Broken, which talks about what we can learn from the success of games and the gaming world. Jane McGonigal talks about the 鈥渆ngagement economy,鈥� an extraordinarily fertile concept that O鈥橪eary picked up on, and that I think bears much more contemplation.
The idea of an 鈥渆ngagement economy鈥� goes an important step farther than Herbert A Simon鈥檚 classic notion of an 鈥渁ttention鈥� economy. In Simon鈥檚 original formulation,
鈥n an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. (Simon 1971, pp. 40鈥�41).
But where 鈥渁ttention鈥� is a blunt instrument鈥攏on-hierarchical, one-dimensional, a currency which we either pay or we don鈥檛 pay鈥斺�渆ngagement鈥� has depth, dimensionality, and is a matter of degree. We 鈥渆ngage鈥� to a greater or lesser extent with all the things we pay attention to, and it is the degree and nature of engagement which is precisely the key factor.
In McGonigal鈥檚 2008 article for the Institute for the Future, , she explains that
鈥n the economy of engagement, it is less and less important to compete for attention, and more and more important to compete for things like brain cycles and interactive bandwidth 鈥� (p2)
McGonigal admonishes: 鈥渕ass collab developers will have to learn how to optimize participation bandwidth鈥� (p6), which she calls the 鈥渃ommodity of engagement economies.鈥� McGonigal goes on to enumerate the key factors of managing engagement: the emotional incentives media and experiences offer participants, the diversity of rewards and motivations across a community, arranged in what she calls a 鈥減yramid of participation,鈥� and the value of flow, fun, and personal meaningful activity. This is a picture significantly more rich and evocative than one of a zillion information sources all clamoring for eyeballs.
What matters in the 21st-century economy
If the new scarcity in the age of the Internet is engagement, then it makes sense that the companies who are desperately trying to gather information about you, hook you in, and make you dependent and/or loyal (you know who they are) are the ones who are acting most sanely in the new environment.
In other words, Amazon has figured this out already, and are succeeding because of it (or at least making very large bets on it). Amazon, I believe, does not care about the price of a book. They do not care, beyond finding the price that maximizes your engagement with them鈥攊t may be zero, or it may be that a recognizable pricepoint does a better job in certain circumstances. Brian O鈥橪eary suggested that Amazon鈥檚 been doing nothing but price-testing all along. But we need to understand that this isn鈥檛 price testing in pursuit of the revenue-maximizing potential of book sales. Rather it is about the engagement-maximizing potential of a wide variety of touchpoints. Book sales were the vanguard, but think about the range of things Amazon offers: not just books and other media (for sale and to lend), but electronics, clothing, used and consignment items, self-publishing and marketing services, server and computing capacity, and a even a decent social network arranged around reviews.
It鈥檚 not about the books. It鈥檚 not about the price of books. It鈥檚 not about the book trade in any recognizable sense. Publishers need to understand this, and stop trying to make sense of Amazon as a traditional supply-chain partner; attempts to do so lead to bizarre Satanic conspiracy theories.
What it is about, which is to say the business Amazon is really in鈥攁nd has always been in, if you look at the history of innovation coming out of the company since the late 90s鈥攊s a whole new model of what we used to call 鈥渃ustomer relations management.鈥� But Amazon has taken this to a whole new level. They want you for life. They want to be your conduit to a whole universe of things that matter to you.
Because the real commodity for Amazon is your long-term engagement with them, they鈥檙e willing to play all sorts of games with pricing and access that make no sense in a traditional business model. So it鈥檚 really not about pricing ebooks in order to sell Kindles, nor is it pricing Kindles to develop the market for ebooks. It鈥檚 neither of those things. Both books and Kindles are touchpoints on a much wider and longer-term spectrum of engagement. The price or volume of an individual title is irrelevant to Amazon; they鈥檙e making marketing decisions across a much larger whole, across massive patterns of behaviour.
Douglas Rushkoff, in his excellent little book, Program or Be Programmed, writes:
On the net, everything is occurring on the same abstracted and universal level. Survival in a purely digital realm鈥損articularly in business鈥搈eans being able to scale, and winning means being able to move up one level of abstraction beyond everyone else. (p68)
鈥︹�渟caling up鈥� means cutting through the entire cloud in one direction or another: becoming all things to some people, or some things to all people. (p69)
Amazon has levelled up. They鈥檙e not playing the same game as the publishing industry. The traditional rules don鈥檛 make sense at this higher level of abstraction. The sooner we begin to appreciate this, the sooner we can stop tearing our hair out about it.