Snack Culture and its Effect on Publishing
The March 2007 issue of Wired features a cover story on “The New World of One-Minute Entertainment” and how media is being distributed and consumed in quick and easy chunks. In a world where viewers prefer a series of 60 second webisodes streamed to mobile phones instead of weekly 30 minute program, do publishers need to adapt to keep pace with bite-sized culture?
I was particularly interested in Joanna Pearlstein’s sidebar (bite-sized, of course) 403 Ways to Slice a CD :
“An album isn’t just an album anymore - it’s an opportunity to dice a dozen songs into ringtones, downloads, blog skins, and more.”
Although there have been experiments with a-la-carte publishing in the past, I wonder if it isnt time for us to look at new and innovative ways to deliver bite-sized content to our readers. This is particularly challenging in the type of publishing I do - technology and programming, where Google already provides a seeminging endless supply of snack-sized content.
There remain very strong value propositions for a printed tech book in the Age of Google - convenience, portability and being a reputable source are 3 that immediately come to mind. And until the killer e-book reader comes along and we as an industry sort out our DRM issues I don’t think the printed book is going away soon. But it sure seems like there is a market opportunity we are missing here.
What sorts of bite-sized content do you consume?
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[...] Bingo! Cory is speaking specifically about novels, but I think this applies to most books, including the technical publishing that I do. Maybe we need to stop thinking about e-books as just the electronic copy of the book, and start thinking of them as a different product. This seems to mesh with the “bite-sized” content I posted about previously. [...]