💡 Business Brainstorms 💡- My favorite ideas of the week
'The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.'
Teilhard de Chardin
💡Broken Hips
This feels like one of these problems that most people have accepted as inevitable but that will be solved soon and we will look back and think how crazy we allowed this to happen for so long.
Ideas range from bone density supplements to exoskeletons.
💡Drone Slaying
📰 The Business of Books
This is a fascinating deep dive into the world of traditional book publishers.
The business is incredibly hit-driven. Most books only sell a few copies and the few big winners pay for all the rest. The best method publishers have to find the next big hit is to chase celebrities and offer big advances.
It’s interesting to contrast this deep dive with the income reports by David Kadavy. He has published a few books independently that are doing reasonably well in terms of sales. But his profit numbers are surprisingly low. This shows that book publishing is not a great way to make money, regardless of whether you go down the traditional or indie route.
Nat Eliason shared some contrarian thoughts why traditional publishing is great despite all the hype around indie publishing.
Books are lindy and will not vanish anytime soon. (Despite some people claiming “they don’t work”.) But it will be interesting to see how the industry keeps evolving. The current models do not seem to work particularly well for anybody. A huge problem for independent publishers is that Amazon basically forces everyone to price their book below $9.99. Their cut is 30% if the price is below $9.99 but jumps to 70% as soon as you cross this threshold. Even at $20 most books would be massively underpriced for the value you’re getting. A lot more valuable knowledge would be shared if the economics would be different.
🔬 Artificial Light Causes Cancer?
This study found evidence that artificial light at night leads to cancer in humans.
Given the ubiquity of artificial light and how big of a problem cancer is, this seems like a big deal.
Will be interesting to see if the only solution is to go full luddite or if there is a technological solution.
Quite fitting, interest in “off grid” living is exploding.
🎷Music
I’m on my 5th or 6th listen of this set from Folamour. Enjoy!
🎭 Art
End Note
As always, if you’re enjoying this brainstorm, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.
Have a great week,
Jakob
Of course blue light causes cancer at night. That's been known for decades
(fd: I'm a bookseller, ex-publisher) sounds like Amazon is the problem, rather than econ of publishing & bookselling :) Given at least 3 of the big 5 have made a big push into their own B2C channels, I'd be really interested to see what would happen if they left Amazon. They'd still sell books (perhaps doubling margin) Amazon wouldn't really notice, and if local bookstores could take even 1% of sales it would be a golden season...