Some Vitriol With Your Morning Coffee?
Category: Metadata
As Ophelia, the-little-hurricane-that-could, chugs its way up the East Coast, the morning pundits maintain a surprisingly consistent attention span - Friedman, Dowd, Wonkette, even Damon Wayans have nothing good to say about the administration. Now we seem to have discovered the cure for ADD - moral outrage.So what does any of this have to do with publishing, content delivery, etc? It's more of an overall economy thing. Retail sales, according to the Department of Commerce, have sunk by 2.1% for August. Two more airlines are declaring bankruptcy. And while gas prices fell by two cents today, overall they are higher than they've ever been. Wal-Mart blames fuel prices for its performance issues.
The economic picture is looking pretty grim. And while the conventional wisdom is that when the economy sours, bookselling improves (because overall, books are cheap entertainment), the last few economic downturns haven't proved that out - where the economy went, so did the book sector.
In terms of online content, well, that's always been something of a luxury investment. If there are cutbacks to be had, it's generally in the world of content development. Trust me - I've been fired/laid off enough times after a downturn to know.
So what does that mean - it means that as an industry we have to be really smart about developments. I've been thinking a lot about Global Data Synchronization. (Oh, Bowker? Bowker??? Anyone home???) All the economic signposts point to getting book data into a mass-merchandising data pool, where stores can download the book data along with grocery data and clothing data and hardware data and salt-and-pepper-shaker data - and hone their sales, and be smart about selling and merchandising.
As consumers become more and more dependent on the big box stores (and even while fuel prices are hitting them, they're certainly hitting specialty stores harder) in tough economic times, the book industry is going to have to compete not just with other entertainment items such as movies and music as we have in the past, but also with groceries, clothing, office supplies, health and beauty products, and dog food. In other words, retail is flattening and books are just another commodity - and as the economy gets worse (and it will, there's very little doubt about that), efficiencies are going to continue, the big box stores will overtake the little guys, and it is seriously time to get smart about joining the rest of the retail world. Books do not occupy a privileged position in retail anymore.
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