Perspective From A Father Of Three Premature Children

Today is my youngest son's fourth birthday. We will be celebrating with a party at a local indoor kids recreation center, complete with jungle gym, movie room, pizza, cake, and a "grab-nabber" game.

I've posted on the blog previously about my family's involvement in the March of Dimes and their fundraising. Each time we celebrate a child's birthday in our house, my wife and I are reminded of our three wonderful opportunities to be parents. It's something we lose sight of way to often, namely the other 362 days of the year. It real easy, after the years, to forget that advances in medicine, and the hard work of a few doctors, made all of the annoying days possible. Some readers know exactly what I'm talking about, having been through the exact same experiences as we have. I'm asking you to be just a little more patient and understanding with your kids today. Some parents never got to take their baby home from the hospital. We did. We show our gratitude by doing our best to ensure greater opportunities for future parents of pre-mature babies. 

I'll spend the day reminding myself that the number of pieces of cake my son has for his birthday is beyond insignificant. Tomorrow, I'll go back to being the strict dad. 

e-books, the final frontier.

So I've been reading a little bit about this "price-war" that is breaking out regarding e-books, publishers, authors, and consumers. Of course I have thoughts on this, and now I share.

 

First, I think this is all a rerun of what already happened to the music industry and what is happening to the newspaper and magazine industry.  I can remember the moment I had my personal falling-out with music CD's, September 1997. I took over 200 music CD's to a small record store in Bayside, NY and sold them for about $100. Of course I needed the money, but I was also beyond sick and tired of paying $17.99 for one great song, one good song, and 10 pieces of junk. Thank goodness Apple brought along the iTunes store and restored the ability for consumers to buy only the songs they wanted. As society moves to greater acceptance and usage of electronic devices to access media sources, the old model of physically printing and distributing media is going to die. I remember being a newspaper delivery boy in NYC back in the 1980's. The management of the papers were always complaining about fixed costs - driver's pay, paper and ink, writers expenses, returns from the newsstands, and 13 year old boys trying to make some candy money. It was a never ending list of "costs associated with bringing you a quality newspaper". Along comes electronic distribution via the web and mobile devices, combined with user generated content, and what do you get - complaints of the old model getting attacked! The old model didn't work! Embrace the new model - poof - end of truck driver no-show jobs, no more holdouts in the printing plant, finally that senior guest editorial writer getting $150,000 for his once a month contribution can be eliminated. With today's electronic formats, I specialize my news to my criteria and availability. Travel news for Walt Disney World everyday, not just in the Sunday Special Spring Travel Section once a year. Two examples of this business model (not necessarily the content or subject matter) are The Christian Science Monitor (homepage) and Huffington Post (homepage) If you have problems in you business model, you should be thrilled when something challenges your model.

 

Second, yes I believe $34.99 is too much for a book. I'm not cheap. I just believe that most books are not that good, there are too many published authors, and there are too many books from the same authors. The value of having read the book does not out-weight the cost of the book. I like Jim Cramer, I think his book "Real Money" was excellent, but the three follow up books? Unnecessary duplicates. I read every book in the "Harry Potter" series but I bought all of them at Costco (great item on their pricing model for books here). One of the first apps I added to my iPod Touch was Amazon's Kindle Reader, and I am splurging on free - or very close to free - versions of the classic books that I never got to read (Sherlock Holmes, A Christmas Carol, The Art of War, Last of the Mohican's).  I am not above paying for a book that exceeds my value proposition. I just bought two new releases from Amazon (The Four Hour Work Week, Crush It!). Nor am I removed from paying for an e-version of a book I already read (The Great Gatsby, 1984). As with music CD's, the full price that publishers expect consumers to pay for the 29th book from an outspoken political pundit is not in line with the product that is being delivered. Are new books worth about $10 bucks? I say ten dollars is generous for some of these new releases. The odd part of this price issue is Amazon could earn more money if they sold e-books at higher prices.

 

Lastly, there is one very large reason why I know that books, movies, magazines, music, radio, educational materials, serial television shows, and anything else you can get into a mobile media device, will eventually get into a device is this - Star Trek does not have any Hudson News locations.  There's restaurants, lounges, bars, holodecks, and work  - sickbay, engineering, transporter room, shuttle landing bay, the bridge, etc. Nowhere in any episode have I ever seen someplace to get a newspaper. Clearly these stores do not exist in the 24th century, along with bathrooms.