Illustration ©jimbo www.okayboss.com

One of the things I enjoy the most about the movie The Wizard of OZ is the use of color in the transition from the farm life shown in black and white to the land of OZ. The stark differences in life styles and characters are revealed in a direct and simple way—with color!

In our Industry, it's interesting how quickly a discussion about change in publishing business models elicit's a mostly black & white discussion about the death of the printed book.

Perhaps, instead there is a more nuanced position, displaying a full spectrum of color?

Recently, Henry Blodget of the Alley Insider Blog offered advise on How to Save the Publishing Industry. Or perhaps at best stirred the debate. Given relatively flat growth over the last year in the Industry, his "Radical" suggestion: Reduce print distribution, increase digital distribution and lower the price of a digital book to about $5.00. The decrease in cost and increased availability will drive up demand and revenues. While an interesting proposition on the surface, most of the industry professionals who responded, immediately question the financials used by Henry.

Amusingly Tim O'Reilly offers, "whether or not you are right about low prices stimulating demand, your proposed P&L is pure fiction". And Jeff Gomez of Print is Dead states, "this all just goes to show what publishers are up against. I mean, do people really think — in the face of enormously changing consumer habits and online trends — that it’s that simple? We need to have ideas that do something other than just leave us and our authors with drastically reduced revenue."

While quickly viewing the other responses, two distinct groups of customers emerge: the Manics and the Passionates. The manics, like Blodget feel that book reading becomes a struggle to fill the minute fragments of time available or quickly reference content to be used for some other purpose. Low cost, easy access and rapid retrieval services mean more to this group than the Passionates.

The second group is passionate about books. They must possess books. Their homes and offices are full of them. This response best sums up the group's feelings: "People like me who can happily lose themselves in a book for two weeks are being replaced by people like Blodget who equate reading with skimming and start breaking out in hives if they have to follow one train of thought for more than a minute".

Tim O'Reilly wants everyone to know that, "the biggest challenges publishers face is to rethink what kind of products work online, and why. What job do their products do? How can that job be rethought so that online actually makes it better than the print version? Who needs your products, and how badly? If the audience is limited, high prices might be the answer? If the product is a commodity that needs to stand out from the crowd, getting viral distribution by fans, free might be the answer."

The genuine value in posts like Henry's and Jeff's is the direct feedback they provide from customers and professionals of the publishing industry. Following Tim's advice and using our samples from the blog post, we easily identify two distinct buyer personas: Manic and Passionate.

It is clear for the Manics that cost, relevance, retrieval and reference-ability are key traits of products that fulfill their needs. These needs and a commodity approach align well with digital distribution. While passionate buyers are more interested in possessing bound products. The bound products may have a limited release or come bundled which would carry a premium price structure. Perhaps under commodity and premium pricing structures publishers have the means to maximize profits in each vertical and underwrite the loses generated by product experimentation regardless of pricing structure.

As for me... I have books stacked from floor to ceiling in my apartment, lining my office walls and in crates stacked neatly away at a manhattan mini storage! What do you need from your publisher? How can they help you? My hope is that publishers quickly identify the need to build both authors and audiences equally by providing the core services each requires.