Scacity v. Abundance Publishing - the World is Changing?

Traditional publishing, like network television, is built on scarcity.  In traditional publishing, “airtime” was shelf space...

Because the shelf space is limited, traditional publishers only kept books with a fantastic sales record in print. The other books had a short shelf life before they were taken out of the stores and eventually out of print.

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Everyone currently working in traditional publishing, from the publishers to the editors to the writers, learned the scarcity attitude. Everyone. That includes me. That includes any unpublished writer who tried to break in before 18 months ago. That includes agents. That includes book reviewers, copy editors, book editors, and the publishing executives.

Our attitudes got formed in a model based on limited shelf space and expensive production costs. On “gut” decisions instead of quantifiable decisions.

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The very idea of abundance is confusing. How, everyone raised in scarcity wants to know, does anyone find anything? How can something become “big”?

People who come at publishing from the new world of publishing—always-available titles, e-books that might stay in print forever—understand the long tail. They understand that something may not be a hit when it first appears, but word of mouth (or an abundance of page views) will lead to a wider audience. That wider audience will then bring its friends and family to the table, introducing yet another new group of people to the item.

These two attitudes—scarcity thinking and abundance thinking—are greatly different from each other. In scarcity thinking, the bigger the audience, the better. Which means that items have to be geared toward a mass audience because you need to hit a home run one out of one hundred times.

Abundance thinking takes the pressure off each individual item. Instead of trying to appeal to millions with one item, appealing to thousands or even hundreds works just as well provided there are other items available from the same company/individual/provider. The other items don’t have to be similar to the first item (although it’s nice if there’s a grouping). Niche audiences communicate with each other, and slowly bring the fan base to the table.

Traditional publishing, like network television, is built on scarcity.  In traditional publishing, “airtime” was shelf space. Only so many brick-and-mortar stores that carried books (of any type) existed. Those stores only had room for a certain amount of shelf space. Only a handful of books could fit face-out on those shelves. Several more could fit spine-out, but it’s harder to sell a book based on its spine than it is to sell a book based on the cover.
Because the shelf space is limited, traditional publishers only kept books with a fantastic sales record in print. The other books had a short shelf life before they were taken out of the stores and eventually out of print.
I called this the produce model, because I couldn’t think of any other way to express what was going on. Traditional publishers treated books like produce that would spoil because, in effect, sales do decline if a book has been out for a long time. (Sales don’t evaporate and in some cases, sales increase. But they will eventually plateau.)
- See more at: http://kriswrites.com/2012/03/14/the-business-rusch-scarcity-and-abundance/#sthash.NbjHuIDZ.dpuf