Smaller Thoughts

The Content Licensing Industry Is Broken

Tonight I logged on to Amazon.com to order Chris Guillebeau’s awesome book “The Art of Non-Conformity”, since 3 separate people recommended it to me in the past week. The first choice I was confronted with - Kindle or Paperback?

What is wrong with this picture???

It costs $10.17 to print a new copy of Chris’s book on dead trees, bind it with glue, put it in a box, and drive it across the country to my door in a gas burning mail truck driven by a real human being.

The Kindle Edition delivered instantly over the internet costs $12.99. WHY?!

Because Penguin Publishing says so, that’s why. In fact, if you click on the Kindle price, you’ll see the following note:

This price was set by the publisher. Amazon actually goes out of the way to tell us that Penguin has specifically mandated higher Kindle prices for many of its books. We can see the same situation with lots of other popular Penguin books, for example (not affiliate links):

• Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help” - $9.00 in paperback, $9.99 on Kindle
• Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat Pray Love” - $10.17 in paperback, $12.99 on Kindle
• Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” - $9.38 in paperback, $13.99 on Kindle

There are plenty more examples you can dig up yourselves. The bottom line is this - the content licensing industry is broken. Consumers want cheap, clean, instantly delivered digital content. The days of paper, vinyl, and cellulose are coming to an end. What practical reason is there to make the far less environmentally impactful digital version artificially expensive?

This is a telling microcosm of how broken the content licensing industry is as a whole (books, music, movies), as well as how much work still has to be done to adapt content creators’ business models to the digital age. I hope it happens quickly.

The Secret to Advertising URLs on TV

URLs are everywhere. Just turn on your TV - it seems like almost every commercial is trying to get you to walk over to your PC and visit their website to “learn about this season’s great offers”, or “see the unrated version” (thanks GoDaddy). In fact, I recently read a stat that 61% of all TV ads include a URL.

But there’s a problem - I don’t think television marketers understand their audience, or how users translate what they see on the screen to what they type into their browser. My mom doesn’t watch TV with a laptop on her lap. Instead of immediately typing “http://chasesapphire.com/preferred” into her location bar, she’s got to quickly write down or remember that URL before it disappears from the screen.

Mom is much more likely to walk over to her computer a few minutes later and type “chase sapphire” into Google, or even more simply, just go to Chase.com and look for a link to the Sapphire card. Both of these methods play to the strength of advertising - getting images and brands to stick in your head. 30 second flashy slides are good at communicating ideas, not creating retention of specific information like a URL.

So how can advertisers do things better?

Two ways:

1. Make sure the thing you’re advertising is easily “googleable” - once your brand sticks in people’s minds, this is how they’re going to find it.
2. If you’re paying thousands/millions of dollars to advertise something…PUT IT ON YOUR HOMEPAGE! If I all my mom can remember is that she’s interested in that new Chase credit card, she’d better be able to find it front and center on Chase.com.

Maybe this stuff is obvious, but if you watch TV you’ll see it happening all the time. The same thing happens with other media people consume when they’re not directly in front of a computer - billboards, magazine ads, etc. If you’re going to pay to advertise something, make sure people can find it!