Goodbye Neighborhood Video Rental Store

March 21, 2010 By

It used to be we had small neighborhood mom and pop video rental stores. That gave way to the large, big box, mega retailers like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster. Hollywood Video is in Chapter 11 and now Blockbuster is hanging by a thread. Netflix was the first nail in the coffin. Now there is iTunes, Amazon.com, Boxee, and Roku among others. There’s just to need to drag yourself down to a Blockbuster and put up with their silly return rules, let alone hoping the title you want is even available.

RedBox has been a massive hit without large stores because they put their vending machines where people already are, like the supermarket. No extra trip or hassle required. And at $1 a movie, Blockbuster doesn’t stand a chance. It’s interesting that Blockbuster has watched all this go on in the past few years but has not been able to do much of anything about it. They’ve experimented with a few things, but halfheartedly and they have been failures. Someone at corporate didn’t want to hurt the mainline retail business, which was really bad strategy because that business is dead now anyway and they have nothing to show for it.

Blockbuster has misread and misunderstood most every new business reality of the digital age. There CEO talks a good game but somehow I doubt they will have the boldness and smarts to actually do what it takes to catch up. The only thing they have going for themselves is a still strong brand name. If they can just find the guts to capitalize on it.

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Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Technology, Video Tagged With: , , , ,

Comic Books and the iPad

February 5, 2010 By

iPadI’ve been saying this for awhile now, comic books on the Apple iPad are a massive opportunity. The large color screen is perfect for this kind of content. I would even argue that it’s a big strategic advantage the iPad has over the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is the perfect device for black and white books with it’s superior e-ink display but when it comes to content like comics or color magazines, the iPad can do things the Kindle can only dream of. As a comic book lover, I’m pretty excited about the possibility of comics on the iPad and I would seriously consider getting one if for no other reason than to read comics.

There are indications now that Amazon may try to make a new Kindle with color and multi-touch technology, bringing it much closer to an iPad. I think it’s very dangerous for Amazon to rush headlong into a competition with Apple on their own turf. Maybe the smart play is to remain the dominant player in black and white e-ink technology and let Apple have the rest. Amazon’s strength has always been traditional black and white books, not magazines or comics. Here’s an even smarter play, make a full iPad version of the Kindle reader. Amazon needs to remember their focus, they are a bookstore not a hardware manufacturer. By making a great Kindle reader for the iPad, they stand to sell more books from their online bookstore, even possibly cutting into Apple’s store.

2010 will be THE year of the tablet computer as Sony has also said they want to enter this market. No doubt there will be others. 2010 could also be THE year traditional publishing makes the turn to digital distribution. People have been predicting the death of traditional publishing for years now. These new tablet machines go a long way to bringing that prediction to pass.

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Digital Books and Digital Music: Parallel Futures?

December 15, 2009 By

Stephen Covey

Amazon.com has scored it’s first big win in securing exclusive electronic rights to publish Stephen Covey’s popular business title 7 Habits of Highly Successful People on the Amazon Kindle. As ebook competition heats up among the Kindle, Barnes and Nobel Nook and others, these companies will seek more exclusive deals with popular authors to gain an advantage for their platform.

I think the really important news, however, is Stephen Covey experimenting with self publishing his own titles, at least the electronic versions. Reportedly the royalty split is more favorable and I’m sure there are other aspects Covey gets more control over with self publishing. The music industry is already going through this right now as many artists are seeing less and less value in the traditional record company. Artists can record, produce, distribute and market their songs all on their own and keep more of the profit and control. Now we can see the first steps of this happening in the publishing world. Stephen Covey is a big name and a best seller. If he can show success with this model, others will likely follow.

It’s not as likely this self publishing senario will flow over into traditional paper bound books as there are real costs there for printing and distribution, unlike electronic books. In fact, Covey says he has no intention at this time of changing his paper book publishing setup. Popular podcast book author Scott Sigler, though, is running a very interesting self publishing experiment with his hardbound book called The Rookie. The Rookie is not the typical horror novel Scott is famous for and as such his publisher Crown Books was not interested in putting the book out. So Sigler started taking pre-orders for the book online, utilizing his lage fan base and social network marketing. Sigler was diligent, making this an exclusive limited print run at a specific price that insured everything was paid for. With some luck, Scott may make a small profit as well.

Self publishing isn’t just for blogs anymore, the whole book industry is about to go through a major disruption in the next several years. More book readers will be released. Tablet computers that may display full color magazines are likely and more. If publishing is to survive they will need to figure out how to utilize this new technology for themselves. If they grip to hard holding onto the old models, they will suffer the same fate as the music industry.

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Big Step for Amazon – Kindle on iPhone

March 4, 2009 By

When Amazon introduced the new Kindle 2 ebook reader, somewhat overlooked was what may end up being the most important announcement of all, that Amazon was looking to put the Kindle technology on other devices. It came much faster than I expected when last  night I discovered the Kindle iPhone application was available.

The app itself is very well done and after purchasing my first Kindle book, opening the app synced my purchase right over to the iPhone, easy as can be. The reading experience on the iPhone is surprisingly good. Of course it’s no match for a real Kindle with the larger screen and eInk technology, but I was perfectly happy with the experience. You can control font sizes, create book marks and the software remembers where you left off.

It’s a significant development because it effectively drives the price for a Kindle reader down to $199 from a regular Kindle price of $359. For people who already own the iPhone, which is far more people than the Kindle device, the app to add Kindle functionality is free. This is going to put Kindle books into far more hands far quicker than Amazon could do on it’s own. It will also likely sell more Kindle hardware as well as people want to upgrade to a better reading experience. As I said in the last podcast, Amazon is in the book sales business not the hardware business. This is a great first step and I can’t wait to see where else Kindle technology shows up.

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Connected World Radio: Kindle 2 vs. Author Guild

March 3, 2009 By

The Kindle 2 is a wondrous device and possibly the savior for the publishing industry. But the Authors Guild is making a stink over a new text to speach feature. Does it really infringe on audio books or is this yet another case of an old school business unable to grasp the potential of new technology?

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Social Media Morning Show 1/16/08

January 16, 2008 By

All the major record labels are now offering non-DRM music, but they are using Amazon.com not iTunes as their platform. What does it mean for Apple?

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  Social Media Morning

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