As the universe expands, the world shrinks

There was a press release last week announcing that in 2008 there were more on demand books published than those by traditional publishers. That might not seem like a big deal if you’re not in the publishing business, but it does mean that if you have ever wanted to write a book, the only thing standing between you and being a published author now is simply doing it.  And maybe the $50 or so to set it up with the on demand publisher.  For authors taking this route it means no more gatekeepers in the form of agents, publishers, editors and others all striving to ensure that they don’t waste their time on something that won’t bring fame and/or fortune.  It also means authors take on marketing, editing, planning, and everything else that goes into getting people to buy what you wrote. I’m not sure that there will be that many more authors than there were before just because of this, but it will be interesting to watch.

For consumers this also means a smaller percentage of filters have been applied from spelling and grammar to simply taste; maybe the book you would love to read never made it past the first desk because that person wasn’t crazy about it.  There is simply more choice now.  Kind of like the internet which also suffers or celebrates a shortage of editing and filtering, depending on your point of view. When there is simply too much choice people tend to stick to their neighborhood (or saved-off favorites) and do less and less exploring. They are more likely to try something new based on a recommendation than through pure discovery.  Partly this is out of feeling overwhelmed – where do you start?  And partly it’s trust, it takes time to evaluate a website or an author – to see if it delivers to your expectations or if you need to move on and repeat the evaluation process somewhere else.  And if handing over your credit card is part of the process than we are even less likely to go beyond familiar and trustworthy boundaries.

Which is what makes an earlier press release from April regarding Amazon simply fascinating. Close to 33% of all U.S. – transactions can now be attributed to Amazon.   My guess is that will increase over the next few years but I’m not a market analyst.  It makes sense though that more and more websites coming online everyday, people are likely to start somewhere that is as close to comprehensive as it gets and if you’ve already had a safe e-commerce experience there why take a risk somewhere else?

I love having free choice and lots to choose from. I certainly don’t want to see anything artificially limited for anybody.  However,  I’ve noticed that when there is an enormous amount of choice my range of exploration is fairly limited.  For example, the Baskin-Robbins original 31 flavors was originally marketed as a different flavor for each day of the month.  Fun, but I wonder how many people ever tried all of them?  Scanning the original list on Wikipedia, I can honestly say I’ve only tried five or six. I didn’t consciously avoid the others, it’s just that on those infrequent occasions when I went for ice cream those gave me more than enough variety to rotate.  Why risk trying burnt vanilla when mint chocolate chip has already proven itself highly satisfactory?

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