As book publishing, especially trade book publishing, has become absorbed into larger media companies, and as the pressures of digital technology continue to mount, publishers find themselves looking to other media to understand vulnerability and to gain insights.

In creating their digital warehouse last year, HarperCollins looked to “sister” companies like newspapers and magazines for guidance in the process. But one of the fixations of the publishing industry over the last decade, especially publishing associations, has been the record industry. Year after year at the AAP’s Annual Meetings, Napster and its ilk provided the fascination of a train wreck, until that offending company was wrestled to the ground by lawyers. The health of copyright was/is, purportedly in grave danger, if, god forbid, a P2P file sharing system that has bedeviled the record industry were to raise its head in book publishing. And the flames were fanned by the crowing of the RIAA that the reason for the declining success of their companies is that CD sales have been undercut for years by the “illegal” availability of music for free.

Oh, really? Then how do we explain this phenomenon, reported on January 10 in the NY Times?

In a twist for the music industry’s digital revolution, “In Rainbows,” the new Radiohead album that attracted wide attention when it was made available three months ago as a digital download for whatever price fans chose to pay, ranked as the top-selling album in the country this week after the CD version hit record shops and other retailers.

Several things come to mind. All large media companies are afflicted by lawyers… who individually may be great people. I remember being in a meeting where the lawyers were crafting language for book contracts that would give them not only electronic rights to an authors work, but rights to “whatever medium may be created in the future.” Nice, guys. Fortunately, we don’t seem as afflicted as the record industry, with the suits now crying in their beer after living for decades off the fat of rock and roll.

I would suggest that the book industry cast its eyes inwards. People love to be entertained. There is an infinite market for good works of all kinds. Understand your customers. Improve your processes. Do a better job of finding writers and nurturing them. Do your homework and go to bed at a reasonable hour. We’ll all be ok.

Posted by: Jim Lichtenberg