It’s not (just) about price

An interesting tweet by award-winning Spanish writer and journalist Juan Gómez-Jurado caught my attention today about a message he had received from a 19-year-old who had just bought one of his titles in digital format, even though he could have downloaded it for free.

The context here is clear: many of Spain’s leading publishers are actively lobbying the government to crack down on peer-to-peer book downloading, even though it has been obvious for years that the real problem is about supply. The way for the publishing industry to reduce downloading is simply to adapt prices to the electronic environment and improve the way it deals with customers.

The message sent by one of Juan Gómez-Jurado’s fans is clear: I am prepared to pay a reasonable price, I want to invest in helping creative people to continue creating, and I’m not a freeloader. The publishing industry’s approach has always been confrontational, and I for one, as a customer, am not prepared to put up with unsustainable profit margins based on outdated cost structures and value chains, and much less when I am being insulted and threatened with legal action.

Things make more sense when seen from the perspective of an author like Juan Gómez-Jurado, who puts huge amounts of time and effort to make his work available to readers at reasonable prices. The outcome of this type of strategy is to create a sustainable business, albeit one that functions outside traditional distribution channels.

So let’s get one thing clear: this is not about price. It is obvious that e-books cannot continue to be sold for as much as 11 euros, in the same way that there is no way in the long run that people will pay one euro for a song: these are prices based on cost structures and profit margins from the last century, before the internet age, and are simply an invitation for people to go ahead and get these products by other means. Aside from charging reasonable prices, the publishing industry needs to start coming up with a sustainable strategy, it needs to start talking to the book-buying public, and stop insulting us and playing the victim.

When the publishing industry starts selling books at the right price, and when it has purged itself of a generation of CEOs living in the last century, we might be able to start repairing the damaged relationship between clients and industry. But the reality is that even when that has happened, there will still be downloads: it’s a question of human nature, and people will go to any lengths to get something for free.

All the publishing industry can really do in the long term to combat downloading is to reduce the incentive by improving its offer. This will reduce downloading to a minority, but nevertheless one that can help spread the word about interesting titles by making them freely available.

In other words, however much the publishing industry rants and raves, it will always be possible to download a book for free, in the same way that it was possible to acquire copies before the digital age. But the industry can reduce the impact of downloading to a marginal level.

(En español, aquí)