Why Is This Hill So Steep?
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But this strategy has left them vulnerable to major changes from without. Like a medieval castle that hopes to withstand a World War II howitzer or a cruise missile, it is only a matter of time before the walls will be breached.
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When e-books appeared in the 1990s, mostly as manuals written by programmers and amateur fiction written by fans of science fiction, fantasy or pornography, Big Pub had little reason to take immediate notice. The very limited phenomenon of creating and sharing electronic files on storage disks seemed related more to computers than books, and computers were only then beginning to make a significant impact into businesses, with an eye to the home market on the horizon, thanks to the efforts of Microsoft and Apple. In addition, literature did not seem to be the dominant media being shared by computer users: A quick perusal of the many disks available in legitimate and less-than-legitimate sources indicated commercial interest for electronic files was primarily about software, games and dirty pictures.
Fan fiction, of course, had been around for years by then, especially in the form of typed and copied short stories and novellas distributed by hand amongst fans of a particular TV show or comic book series. This material was shared freely, since fans generally were more interested in someone reading their material, and telling them how good it was, than to try to make money off of it. Besides, Big Pub had already applied the rules of copyright to establish a mind-set in the consumer sphere that any attempt to capitalize on someone else’s work would result in painful lawsuits and public humiliation—a rare action, but the cost of falling victim to one was enough to keep consumers at bay. Not to mention the implication that “fanfic” was by definition badly written, by virtue of the fact that it had not gone through the Big Pub machine. Amateur writers accepted this without much fuss, and didn’t ask a dime for their work, so the publishers let them alone, a sign of their magnanimity and tolerance of the hapless Little Guy.
The ongoing proliferation of computers, with their inherent ease of producing and disseminating documents, did little to phase Big Pub. They foresaw, at most, that the same unimportant fanfic would flit about from individual computer to individual computer, still not making the amateurs any profits, and still not threatening their own profit base. To be fair, they were as much taken by surprise by the meteoric rise of e-mail, and then the internet, as most industries, no more or less. But by the 2000s, computers had developed by leaps and bounds… and it was the amateurs that were taking the raw potential in the hardware and software, and creating masterworks of programs, games, and new media types, forcing the big boys in the computer industry to struggle to keep up.
A combination of factors finally caught Big Pub’s attention. One was the occasional sighting of a document, some piece of literature that someone had gone through the trouble of transcribing into an electronic format. The other was the rise of the e-mail attachment, allowing the e-mailer to send a copy of the attachment, each as good as the original, to any number of recipients with the press of a button. And finally, it was the realization that there were people out there who were perfectly happy reading those documents on their computers, or printing them out into letter-sized pages, instead of buying carefully crafted and formatted books. And still, Big Pub thought nothing of it. One or two books, sent to a few people, were no threat!
In fact, only one group saw a threat early on: Textbook publishers. Their niche was fairly unique in publishing: They commanded a captive audience for their works, and because that audience was relatively small, and their works were generally only usable for a few years (given regular textbook rewrites), they could charge large sums for their books to finance R&D and rewrites. In upper level schools, students had been talking about digital textbooks for years… and some of them were smart enough to actually create and disseminate texts of their own, if they were so inclined, putting direct pressure on educational publishers to look into the e-book thing. But these learned people could not figure out how to make a viable financial model out of e-books that would be nearly as lucrative as their print-based system. A few test programs were attempted, but there was always the impression that it was a foregone conclusion that they would only support the predetermined findings, that ed publishing couldn’t do e-books. Maybe next year. They were among the first publishers to investigate e-books, and one of the first to pass on them… but at least they’d acknowledged that they existed.
Finally, a few intrepid readers began contacting publishers with a new idea: “Why don’t you release your books as ‘e-books’? If you did, I’d buy ‘em.” But these requests were too few and far between, and Big Pub hadn’t even looked at “e-books,” whatever they were. So the requests were easy to ignore… and in the process, Big Pub missed out on the another quality of the nascent internet: The ability to spread electronic “gossip” and comments about anti-consumer sentiments and actions amongst millions of people, literally, overnight. By taking no action, Big Pub went from nigh-omniscient authority on literature, to Luddite organization holding back progress, before they knew what had happened.
~
When e-books started to make a mark in the computer-savvy public’s consciousness in the 2000s, Big Pub was woefully ignorant of this supposedly future version of the very product through which they made their living. But they had recently watched as the music industry had been thoroughly drubbed by the ascension of digital music, and they were well aware that a lot of consumers were suddenly turning away from the bloody MP3 tableau, looking at Big Pub, and saying, “You’re next.”
Unfortunately, they were unprepared to mount a serious effort into the adoption of e-books into their finely-honed, now-decades-old system… in fact, many insiders still insisted it wasn’t worth the trouble. And in the absence of Big Pub influence, the e-book market had taken advantage of a total lack of industry or standards guidance to begin development in a number of directions, leaving the 2000s e-book landscape looking disordered and confusing at best. So the initial research by Big Pub revealed a chaos of standards, formats, selling methods, bad habits, predatory practices and lack of regulation. Trying to straighten all of that out, they realized, would require teams of programmers, media blitzes, and the assistance of major corporate players in the computer and internet landscape. And every publishing company knew they did not have those kinds of resources available, or if they did, did not want to spare them for fear of eating through their profit margins. Before Big Pub had even entered the gate, it seemed that the race was already lost to them.
So, they fell back on Standard Operating Procedure… in this case, giving the impression that Big Pub was perfect as it was, and there was nothing in the e-book world that would ever impact them. They told themselves the whole thing was a fad, and would soon go away. More importantly, they told their vendors, their stores, and their consumers the same thing. A few publishers made some efforts for consumers, to make it look like they were actively pursuing an e-book agenda… but in reality, they were token efforts, with no budget or personnel applied to them, no decisions made, and no clear directions established.
~
Only recently, with the sudden onslaught represented primarily by Amazon and the Kindle store, has Big Pub finally been forced to take notice of the e-book phenomenon. Unfortunately, many of them are either unwilling or unable to accept that the mechanics of a computer-based industry are radically different than the horse they have been riding for the past century. Many of the elements are radically different, some are new, some older elements no longer needed at all, and the delicate balance between writer, editor, supplier, producer and retailer has been forever changed in the new, computer-dominated landscape.
Some of the Big Pub familiars are working feverishly to adopt to the demands of the new world. Not all of them will succeed, however. For many of them, the challenges of retooling a business system for a new era will tax them beyond their abilities, and they will either have to concede defeat, or fight to the last until they go down in flames.
In the end, some of both groups will undoubtedly face the same end: Collapse, a buckling of the old infrastructure under the weight of the new. Some of the original Big Pub players will survive, and will join new players in the publishing arena in picking up the pieces of the twentieth century, and trying to build a publishing scenario for the twenty-first.
2: Enter Windows—The modern computer era begets the Format Wars
Today, even some veteran office workers have to think hard to remember a business environment before there was Windows. It’s a bit easier for people to remember a home environment before computers… provided you are older than thirty. The computer has taken its place as one of the most transformative appliances of the modern age, up there with the television, the telephone, the radio, and the stove.
When computers were first introduced to the business environment, they were mainframe devices used for specialized data storage or number-crunching tasks, and run by electrical engineers who spoke strange languages like FORTRAN. Their exotic nature created an air of mystery and fascination, and this extended to the men and women who operated them: They were modern sorcerers who spoke in tongues to the magic machines, and produced incredibly fast and precise numbers at will.
The early desktop computers, mostly running DOS or some similar text-based operating system, were considered too complicated for any but the most highly-trained workers to master, so the first programs were designed to be used by mildly-trained workers, of which there were many more in abundance. I was one of those early workers, using DOS-based accounting and word-processing programs to keep track of sales orders. It was a bit clumsy, but it did its job much more efficiently than manually-entered figures in paper ledgers.
But a few people saw a market for easier-to-use computers that could be sold to just about everyone, and one of them, an IBM employee named Bill Gates, started his own company to develop and market an IBM idea that had been passed over for development. The company he formed was Microsoft… the idea, a user-friendly graphical interface over a DOS substrata, became Windows… and the rest is history.
Though other computers with similar operating systems were being developed at the same time, Microsoft followed its business roots and marketed its machine to the business market first… a shrewd move, since companies could buy in bulk and creatively massage the expenses into operating costs and tax writeoffs. Microsoft also continued to write other software packages, the best of them designed to run on their Windows platform, the idea being to promote more purchases of Windows to run the desired programs. And although the lax business practices of the early twentieth century had mostly been tightened up since then, Microsoft was able to take advantage of what trade loopholes there were to begin the process of shoehorning its way into stores and marginalizing its competitors, in much the same way that Big Pub had done it before them.
As many Americans were already used to the idea of bringing their work home with them, it didn’t take long before the new machines for the office were being purchased for home offices as well. Windows quickly became ubiquitous in the U.S., and not long thereafter in Europe and Asia, overshadowing even its better-made competitors and becoming virtually synonymous with computers in the modern era.
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Business was largely paper-based before computers. Documents were first written by hand, then typed up by hand in typing pools, stored in notebooks, reproduced on copying machines, notated by one or more people, then sent back to the typing pool to be retyped, stored in notebooks, reproduced on copying machines… ad infinitum. The amount of paper used by modern business was monumental, and the waste generated by used and discarded office paper was gargantuan.
Computers were designed, though maybe not fully intended, to change that. They introduced the electronic file to the standard business lexicon, and began the shift from moving paper from place to place, to moving disks from place to place, or accessing files from central servers that connected multiple computers. Enough text to fill a 3” binder could now be fit onto a 2.5” floppy disk, and a literal library of documents could be stored in a shoebox.
This new way of handling documents inspired plenty of forward-thinking office workers, who began conceiving of and developing new and better ways of using electronic files beyond the capabilities of paper. New software was developed to ease the process of collaboration between multiple people—that is, multiple computers in different locations—and shared files. Microsoft detected this trend quickly and, wanting to cement its market share of the business environment, began developing new tools for Windows to support collaboration and new work patterns.
Microsoft’s desire to dominate its almost single-handedly-created market seemed to be matched only by the desire of many businesspeople to push computers back, to slow their advance into the business market. Some saw the trend to computerization as disruptive, overly-complicated and bothersome, while others resisted the Windows platform in particular over other operating systems that were more robust and less crash-prone. Microsoft fought against this trend in a notoriously heavy-handed way, essentially throwing its new commercial influence and monetary might around to force retailers to feature their products, drive competitors out of business, or buy up competitors with the idea of assimilating or dismantling them.
In following these business practices, Microsoft ushered in the adversarial nature of the computer business, pitting competitor against competitor, and users of one OS against users of another, in a constant and escalating battle of one-upmanship and domination. This environment frustrated those who saw the potential of Windows and/or other OSs, but who were getting tired of the reality of plodding advancement. And as many of them were programmers, college-taught or self-taught with the idea of helping to usher in the new computer-dominated era, they decided that they didn’t have to wait.
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When computers were still in their mainframe stage, they had created an upsurge in popularity that inspired students around the world to take programming courses, and prepare for the computer age. I was starting college at that time, and I remember the pressure to try your hand at languages like Fortran and Cobol, while they were hot. In contrast, the reality presented by Microsoft was far from the dream those programmers carried. Instead of controlling mainframe systems, computers would run independently with commercially-prepared applications, and a minimum of programmer input. Many of those programmers felt the new computer systems would marginalize them, and either on their own or in groups, were convinced that they could beat Microsoft (and its close rival, Apple) at their own game. And thanks to the open architecture nature of computers, they could build their programs to run on existing computers, which were already commonplace… so anyone could use their programs as they did.
Therefore, when these programmers were faced with a piece of software that did not do what they wanted it to do, their solution was to write their own versions of those programs. Some borrowed heavily from existing programs, while others worked from scratch, to customize their applications to their desires or the desires of their groups. But although they were willing to go to such lengths to customize their programs, they were not as interested in making sure their programs could read already-standardized document formats. In order to work on their programs, document files had to be custom-written as well, its code optimized for the application that would run it.
Enter the Format Wars… in my opinion, probably the absolute worst single thing ever to happen to computers. From here on in, it became standard operating procedure to create a new format for every new application, and even to tweak the format when
the application was upgraded, often restricting the format to the version of the application for which it was created. The added complexity made even the simplest alteration to a program a nightmare of fixes for multiple versions of programs, and each of their document formats. And very often, this complexity rendered a popular and useful program to be buggy and crash-prone, inevitably inspiring some young programmer to write a new alternative to that program, with its attendant new document format, and on, and on…
E-books were not spared by the Format Wars. For every major company that thought it knew the best way to format e-books, a basement programmer thought he knew a better way. And thanks to the newly-developed World Wide Web, it was as easy for the programmer to disseminate his program as it was for a major business. At one point, there were literally too many e-book formats to count; today, there are probably more than a score of e-book readers and formats being used by someone, somewhere; and even narrowing your focus to the most popular will turn up at least half a dozen formats vying for superiority.
Until recently, there has never been a consensus of which format (or even two or three formats) was superior to the others. The formats were all too similar, while each had a unique feature or two that was highly prized by its users. As a result, the only formats that died off were those that were neglected by their creators or user groups; none of them “merged” together into a new, better format amalgamation.
But as publishers sought to enter the e-book arena, the plethora of formats confused and frustrated them. It made little sense to commit to the time and cost of creating 15-20 different versions of one e-book, to satisfy so many document formats. Yet, there were few clearly dominant formats to choose, no way to confidently select the one or two that held the overwhelming market share and leave the rest. And what if future software improvements meant going back through the library and making changes to the book formatting? The proposed logistics of an entry into the e-book arena was clearly too much for Big Pub, and a stretch even for smaller publishers with much more open minds.