View From the Phlipside Radio - Amazon vs Libraries

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

It’s not often that I come across a media story that makes me uncomfortable.  Not creepy uncomfortable just I’m not sure I like this idea.  And that kind of uncomfortable is probably a very bad sign for this particular business model.

The media world in general is very imitative.  If you see someone else doing something and succeeding you immediately try and figure out how you can get in on the same thing.  One

reality TV show is a success and suddenly the whole world is filled with reality TV.  Streaming video is a success online?  Then everybody has to offer streaming video.  Needless to say not everyone does it well which means that some of those folks end up losing a lot of money on bad imitations.

For example we’ve talked about the success of Netflix in offering first DVD rental service then streaming media.  It’s not that they were first but rather that they were the first to really make it fly.  So people start imitating.  Amazon earlier this year decided to jump in.  So far the results are eh.  But Amazon didn’t become Amazon by being shy and retiring in business.  The other way of imitating a success is trying to find a slightly different approach.  And that’s where my discomfort begins.

Amazon is looking at taking the Netflix concept and use it in their prime product line, books.  Word is that you pay a monthly subscription fee just like Netflix and you get access to their massive inventory of books.  Now there’s still lots of details to work out, like hard copy, digital or both?  What kind of payment to the publishers will be needed?  There are others who are already trying this like the folks at booksfree and bookswim.  Neither of whom I’d heard of before this story surfaced.

So what makes me uncomfortable?  It’s that neither of those companies are who has the most to lose in all this.  That would be your local public library.  If Amazon makes a deal for e-books with the major publishers it creates a huge and insurmountable challenge to libraries moving into the digital age.  In times of tight budgets this is a game that the libraries just won’t be able to stay in.  Netflix helped put brick and mortar video stores on the endangered list.  I have an uncomfortable feeling about the outcome of this particular piece of imitation.

Call that the View From the Phlipside