From: Brian Atkins (Jutta.Stoeckel@t-online.de)
Date: Fri Jun 30 2000 - 13:49:46 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> At 05:19 AM 29/06/00 -0400, Brian Atkins wrote:
>
> >Or it could be that mostly people only want to buy the Harry Potter
stuff.
> >Someone asked me the other day- why is it that the top 40 music is always
> >sooo lame, no matter what decade you are in? Obviously this is because
> >the majority of the people out there (think of a Bell curve here) _like_
> >that music.
>
> It's not that simple, as ad agencies know. Lots of people choose to buy
> Potter books because (1) they're simple and entertaining (as evidenced by
> the initial word-of-mouth break-out sales), (2) they're now massively
> hyped, (3) they're everywhere, crowding all the alternatives off the
> shelves - since those who own the shelf space insist on it, and insist on
a
> series of other inappropriate accounting measures that are killing
> diversity of choice. This kind of Big Marketing leads to vast booms and
> busts, to enormous overstocks of books that *don't* take off and have to
be
I don't buy the "its's the ads, all the ads fault" theory. As you say,
Hollywood or book publishers can pump ads out for bad product all they
want, but it doesn't take off with the masses. They love what they love,
ads may help get it rolling, but that's about it.
> pulped, to the ceaseless toppling and replacement of publishers and
editors
> acting as if this were a rational process when actually it's a bizarre
crap
> shoot. Now that Potter is flavour of the year, I hear that every other
> publisher is rushing out clones - a series by Clive Barker, etc etc.
Anyone
> can see that this will tend to clog the market, but you keep following the
> sheep until they all fall to their deaths, then do it all over again when
> cowboy stories or nurse stories spontaneously emerge as slightly more
> interesting than kid wizard books. It's monocropping, with all the
> temporary benefits and finally fatal dangers of that stupid practice.
> Meantime, species are going extinct (and I'm one of them, whine whine).
Welcome to digital capitalism- die, survive, or thrive its your choice.
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