What is a book worth?

George Packer writes a New Yorker-quality piece on Amazon’s changing, always-provocative role in book publishing.

It’s long but worth a thorough read and two.

The usual themes are there – that Amazon’s DNA is influenced by its online bookstore origins…that Bezos’s relentless customer focus creates some friends, many enemies and even many-er customers…that its forays in content (from literary magazines to trade publishing to the Kindle device), while ambitious, have seen mixed results. And finally, that the publishing establishment feels about Amazon what an alcoholic feels about a bottle of Johnny Walker black.

Jane Friedman, the former Random House and HarperCollins executive, who now runs a digital publisher called Open Road Integrated Media, told me, “If there wasn’t an Amazon today, there probably wouldn’t be a book business.” The senior editor who met Grandinetti said, “They’re our biggest customer, we want them to succeed. As I recover from being punched in the face by Amazon, I also worry: What if they are a bubble? What if the stock market suddenly says, ‘We want a profit’? You don’t want your father who abuses you physically to lose his job.”

Packer’s argument is that, while Amazon’s role in book publishing has been largely positive for customers (by making it better, faster and cheaper to buy books), it is what might be called a Pyrrhic victory. That Amazon won the book retail battle, but it may lose the publishing war and pull everyone down with it, especially those hard-working authors.

“Amazon has successfully fostered the idea that a book is a thing of minimal value,” Johnson said. “It’s a widget.”

It’s still early, but some new data shows that self-publishing is doing well for readers and authors. You can’t hold back the tides of change: of technology, of transparency, of individual empowerment. However, this sort of debate has been – and will continue to be – around for decades.

As for me? I’ve got a growing backlog of ebooks, blog posts, tweets and Quora threads to get to! :)

A thorough and entertaining piece. Read it here.

Disclaimer: I run Hyperink, an ebook publisher.

Recent interesting articles

1. Sarah Lacy on Kleiner Perkins [link] – high-performance is difficult to maintain in a hits-driven business…

2. French cafe charges more if you’re rude [link]

French Cafe

3. Desiderata by Max Ehrmann [link] – “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”

4. GQ profile on Avicii [link] – article makes him look a tad douche-y, but it’s hard to blame a 23 year-old who suddenly starts making $250K a night…

5. An entrepreneur’s observations on Brazil [link] – I loved, and miss, Rio’s beaches, fun-and-carefree attitude, the farofa…

6. Korean couple starves baby to death while playing online game…raising a virtual child [link] – this says something…I’m still figuring out what

7. pmarca on bitcoin [link] – I love when he wades into a controversial topic and lays the smack down…whether long-term right or wrong, always entertaining

8. Charles Stross on his first visit to Japan [link] – beautiful writing; it’s the closest someone’s come to articulating my stream of consciousness while visiting japan

9. Japanese man refuses to believe WWII is over, defends outpost on Philippines Island for 29 years [link] – a good reminder, and framework, to face life’s challenges

Here’s a full list of interesting reads and highlights (thanks to Postach.io!). Or you can view the original Ever-notebook.

Startup 101 Series: Updated links and what’s next

Just added ~20 new reads to the startup 101s (collections of great startup reads). Removed a few, too:

I’m also working on a simple ebook which will combine these 101s with some new material and an edited collection of my 1-Read-A-Day lessons (you can subscribe here; warning: it’s a lot of content :)

I’ve also started a new, related project — trying to iterate to something truly useful. So far, the feedback has been great. More on that soon. Still startup content, still about saving you time and finding you the best. I love Joe Wikert’s idea of the content concierge.

Would you pay for some combination of curation and summarization? I’d love to know!

“Doubt is our product” – fascinating memo on the tobacco industry’s PR strategy

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this document but its contents were illuminating.

The document is a memo from Brown & Williamson, a then-subsidiary of British American Tobacco, reviewing the current state of the tobacco industry’s public relations and proposing next steps.

The Tobacco Institute has probably done a good job for us in the area of politics and as an industry we also seem to have done very well in turning out scientific information to counter the anti-smoking claims.

Yet, trends were moving against the industry:

We are restricted in terms of ability to sell — in colleges and in vending machines. Our products are branded with a warning label. Our ability to advertise has been attacked on all fronts and has consistently deteriorated.

But people want to smoke — and doubt gives them an easy excuse:

Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.

Even then — 40+ years ago — it was clear that “pro-cigarette science” was pseudo-science:

Unfortunately, we cannot take a position directly opposing the anti-cigarette forces and say that cigarettes are a contributor to good health. No information that we have supports such a claim.

So let’s focus on the arena of public opinion!

Finally, a series of studies are proposed to understand exactly which messages most effectively create anti-smoking sentiment, and then to find the best means “of anticipating and countering the release of misinformation.

Fascinating stuff. Here’s the original document, courtesy of UCSF.

Isaac Asimov should have been a VC

Isaac AsimovVisiting New York’s 1964 World Fair, Isaac Asimov imagines what it would be like 50 years hence.

Here are some of his predictions:

Mostly right

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.

Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan.

Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains”*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.

Probably in my lifetime…and I can’t wait

Electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare “automeals,” heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be “ordered” the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.

There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground.

For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections.

Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which “mock-turkey” and “pseudosteak” will be served.

Asimov predicted the internet…yet he thought boredom would be mankind’s greatest disease!

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.

The most errant Asimov predictions involve human colonization (by 2014, he foresaw Moon colonies and underwater housing settlements) and unchecked population growth (still a concern, but who could have guessed that economically-developed countries would stop having babies?).

Sidebar: it seems that we humans consistently underestimate the power of exponential growth, but once we’re convinced of it, we then — with the same consistency — overestimate how long it will last.

His original article is here.