In Monday's seminar we looked at the repeated pattern of new entrants disrupting the operations of the incumbent businesses in various markets. Francois explained that new start-ups are dismissed at first by the dominant parties as 'not our competition' or 'not as good'. Eventually, this attitude is replaced by an acceptance of the need to compete or even co-operate.
Whilst reading the Winter 2011 Nieman reports, I have been considering the application of this pattern to the profiled businesses. Byliner, for example, could be said to be disrupting the operations of both book and magazine publishers. Its original, commissioned articles might easily have been dismissed by publishers of books and magazines because their length of 10,000 to 30,000 words put them in what John Tayman calls "publishing's dead zone" (Nieman reports, Winter 2011).
Byliner's first ebook, 'Three Cups of Deceit', became the bestselling ebook in the Kindle Singles store, with 70,000 downloads in the first 72 hours after its release (when it was free). With sales figures such as these, publishers might start to pay attention. If that many people are reading Byliner's ebooks, then their time and money is being diverted away from the existing offerings of book and magazine publishers. This is the point at which the traditional publishers might choose to compete or co-operate with Byliner. Or, alternatively, to buy it.
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