by Joseph T. Sin­clair

It strikes me that we have a cul­ture of print-pub­lish­ing busi­ness mod­els super­im­posed upon the new dig­i­tal media that restrains exper­i­men­ta­tion with new eco­nom­ic pro­to­types. For instance, it’s dif­fi­cult for authors and pub­lish­ers to exper­i­ment with the inclu­sion of adver­tis­ing (third-par­ty spon­sor­ship) in their pub­lished dig­i­tal prod­ucts when Apple, Ama­zon, and Google put restraints on such adver­tis­ing in the name of good taste. In this case, good taste means a threat to their rev­enue-pro­duc­ing monop­o­lies.

It also appears to me that demand pub­lish­ing (dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing sup­port­ed by ver­i­fi­able demand for the con­tent pre­sent­ed) is quick­ly tak­ing over the print­ed book mar­ket for infor­ma­tion pub­lish­ing. Demand pub­lish­ing is pri­mar­i­ly sup­port­ed by adver­tis­ing. It’s obvi­ous that adver­tis­ing pro­vides a huge poten­tial for the future of dig­i­tal book pub­lish­ing but is sad­ly ignored in most pub­lish­ing con­ver­sa­tions.

Books

Books are an unusu­al media in that they go back to the Guten­berg press in 1450. Although it’s true that some books were paid for by patrons, the patrons were gen­er­al­ly acknowl­edged at the begin­ning or the end of the text and not inside the con­tent. And it came to pass that most books were cre­at­ed and dis­trib­uted by printer/publishers who paid the author a roy­al­ty out of the pro­ceeds from the sales of books to con­sumers. That tra­di­tion was well estab­lished long before the age of adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship in media, the adver­tis­ing age which blos­somed in the 19th and 20th cen­turies.

Because the con­sumer pays for a print­ed book, there is no need to have adver­tis­ing to spon­sor it. And because a print­ed book can­not be infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed except at great expense, print book pub­lish­ing is not a medi­um that lends itself well to mod­ern adver­tis­ing. In addi­tion, con­sumers often keep their books for a long time, some­times decades. Much adver­tis­ing would be stale the first few months after pub­li­ca­tion or cer­tain­ly after the first few years.

Newspapers and Magazines

News­pa­pers and mag­a­zines (dis­pos­able media) were the first media to be spon­sored by adver­tis­ing. They, too, can­not be infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed with­out great expense, so con­sumers are required to pay enough to at least defray the cost of repli­ca­tion. Nonethe­less, it is adver­tis­ing that pays for the major por­tion of the con­tent deliv­ered in these two media.

Movies

Next movies came along and with a busi­ness mod­el sim­i­lar to books. Con­sumers pay to see movies. And movies go from begin­ning to end with­out any dis­rup­tion from spon­sor­ship or adver­tis­ing. But movies are out-of-home enter­tain­ment in a the­ater, and peo­ple pay specif­i­cal­ly to enjoy the enter­tain­ment. For con­sumers, it’s an expen­sive 90 min­utes, but it’s doubt­ful whether adver­tis­ing would be tol­er­at­ed just to pro­vide a dis­count to the price. Since film per­for­mances in the­aters (e.g., with pop­corn and soft drinks) are not infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed with­out great expense, the con­sumer must pay.

Nonethe­less, movies do sup­port adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship in their own way. First, in many movie the­aters, there’s heavy adver­tis­ing, typ­i­cal­ly local, before the fea­ture film and after­ward. Sec­ond, the movie indus­try itself uses the time before and after movies to adver­tise its own prod­ucts: trail­ers for oth­er movies.

Third, in mod­ern times movies also get rev­enue from prod­uct place­ment. The Ford car you see rac­ing through the movie in a crime thriller is not there by acci­dent. It’s there because Ford paid to have it there. And final­ly, movies are often repur­posed to oth­er medi­ums (e.g., movie to TV) where that par­tic­u­lar medi­um is sup­port­ed by adver­tis­ing; and thus the movie is there­by sup­port­ed by adver­tis­ing

Radio and TV

Then along came radio and tele­vi­sion: the broad­cast. The broad­cast is infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed via radi­a­tion from a broad­cast tow­er. There is no need for the con­sumer to pay for the con­tent, and the con­tent includes not only enter­tain­ment but all types of infor­ma­tion too. Although con­sumers pay for the receiv­er (radio, TV) and even for ser­vices that pro­vide bet­ter recep­tion (i.e., cable), con­sumers don’t pay for the broad­cast con­tent.

Cable Channels  It is true that certain cable channels (e.g., HBO) provide specific high-quality content and are paid by consumers (subscribers), but such channels comprise only a small fraction of the content viewed on radio and television.

Digital Books

Cul­ture and tra­di­tion change very slow­ly and then often move ahead with great leaps for­ward. The idea of the dig­i­tal book has been around for sev­er­al decades. It took on the char­ac­ter of print­ed books; that is, it has been sold to con­sumers with­out adver­tis­ing in a man­ner iden­ti­cal to print­ed books.

Ama­zon came out with its Kin­dle ebook read­er and Apple came out with its tablet, both of which made read­ing more con­ve­nient and less expen­sive. This was a great leap for­ward. The dig­i­tal book is infi­nite­ly repli­cat­ed at a very low cost. Thus, the dig­i­tal book looks more like radio and tele­vi­sion than any oth­er media.

Yet through the momen­tum of cul­ture and tra­di­tion, every­one’s idea of a dig­i­tal book close­ly con­forms to that of a print­ed book; that is, con­tent is unin­ter­rupt­ed by adver­tis­ing or spon­sor­ship. In fact, the pri­ma­ry pur­vey­ors of dig­i­tal books (ebooks and book apps) have a spe­cif­ic biased against per­mit­ting dig­i­tal books to car­ry more than a token amount of adver­tis­ing, if any at all. The ques­tion is, can this no-adver­tis­ing idea about dig­i­tal books weath­er the winds of time? I think not, and here’s why:

1. Peo­ple absorb much free con­tent from web­sites, blog sites, and oth­er free inter­net media sup­port­ed by adver­tis­ing. They become quite used to see­ing adver­tis­ing in their con­sump­tion of text media.

2. Print­ed books con­tin­ue to be an expen­sive means of dis­tri­b­u­tion to the pub­lic, and print pub­lish­ers have not found a long-term busi­ness mod­el that will sup­port their pub­lish­ing in the future when print­ed books will be rare and dig­i­tal books will dom­i­nate the mar­ket­place.

3. Apps that are books (bookapps), just like oth­er apps, can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly updat­ed. This means that for bookapps that car­ry adver­tis­ing, the adver­tis­ing can be updat­ed at any time to keep it fresh. This same capa­bil­i­ty is avail­able for ebooks, although not as con­ve­nient. Web­books are eas­i­ly updat­ed. In fact, when adver­tis­ing is a link to the adver­tis­er, the adver­tise­ment is self-updat­ed with­out any action by the pub­lish­er (i.e., the adver­tis­er does the updat­ing).

4. The tech­nol­o­gy that deliv­ers inter­net adver­tis­ing enables pre­cise tar­get­ing; that is, ads can be deliv­ered that are direct­ly relat­ed to the con­tent being con­sumed. Such adver­tis­ing is much less annoy­ing than the gen­er­al adver­tis­ing that every­one endures while watch­ing tele­vi­sion. Indeed, such adver­tis­ing can even be use­ful to con­sumers.

5. The book pub­lish­ers have lost a huge amount of mar­ket share in the infor­ma­tion­al gen­res to inde­pen­dent and even novice dig­i­tal pub­lish­ers. It’s the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of pub­lish­ing. In this new era of pub­lish­ing, the new pub­lish­ers are not as devot­ed to adver­tis­ing-free con­tent as the print pub­lish­ers have been. In fact, the new pub­lish­ers are search­ing for ways to mon­e­tize their pub­lish­ing efforts, and new types of adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ships for dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing have been invent­ed and are wide­ly used.

6. The rigid lines between the media of yes­ter­day are being blurred by the devices used by every­one today, par­tic­u­lar­ly the younger gen­er­a­tions. The smart­phone is used to talk to oth­ers; to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers in a vari­ety of ways; to read books, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers and oth­er infor­ma­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­vid­ed in print; to watch dig­i­tized movies; and to gen­er­al­ly pro­vide all the infor­ma­tion and media in just one device that a per­son needs to be a hap­py and pro­duc­tive cit­i­zen in the dig­i­tal age. With the dis­tinct lines between media being blurred, how much longer can the tra­di­tion­al pro­scrip­tion against adver­tis­ing in books last?

The Future of Digital Books

The ques­tion you have to ask your­self as an author is, Where do I stand in this media per­fect storm? What inter­est do I have in help­ing to con­tin­ue the con­straint of adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship for book con­tent? The answer is, none. Adver­tis­ing and spon­sor­ship of all dif­fer­ent types for books is a sub­stan­tial oppor­tu­ni­ty for writ­ers who want to be authors and pub­lish­ers and make mon­ey for their con­tent-cre­ation activ­i­ties.

Purists will stead­fast­ly adhere to the old print pub­lish­ing busi­ness mod­els. But all the whin­ing and whim­per­ing will not serve such neo-Lud­dites well. At this point, Dou­ble­day and Ran­dom House, Ama­zon and Barnes & Noble, and Apple and Google are very vul­ner­a­ble when it comes to pub­lish­ing con­tent. It is up to authors to help forge new busi­ness mod­els specif­i­cal­ly for dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing so as to pro­vide them­selves with a greater share of the pub­lish­ing rev­enue in the future.

Authors of print­ed books are already required to pro­vide their own mar­ket­ing at a time when roy­al­ty advances from pub­lish­ers are dimin­ish­ing and the num­ber of copy­rights ced­ed to pub­lish­ers for each book is grow­ing. But in the new dig­i­tal age, if authors take the next step for­ward to seek spon­sors and adver­tis­ers to include in their dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing prod­ucts, they will ensure their inde­pen­dence and increase their rev­enue.

Adver­tis­ing in books? The dev­il is in the details. And a future blog post will cov­er in detail how you can find and con­tract adver­tis­ing to sup­port your pub­lish­ing efforts finan­cial­ly. It’s much eas­i­er than you think.