R: Ok, so we’ve heard a
lot about some of the changes and innovations that you have been a part of, what
are your forecasts for the future? What do you think’s coming? A lot of these
things have happened in just the past few years.
M: I’ll give you
another example of something else they didn’t want to do that someone picked up
on. So, we had a thing at AOL, an actual digital city called Local Experts
where people could make comments about local businesses – they could write in
what they thought about the restaurants, hair dressers, or whatever. What does
that sound like?
A: Yellow pages?
R: What’s that one with
the lady’s name?
M: Sounds like Yelp.
R: Oh.
M: But Yelp was the one
that took that idea and made it actually work. AOL shut it down after less than
a year because they were afraid of liability – afraid they’d get sued a lot by
local restaurants and businesses. So, a lot of things that were new back then
got refurbished when there was more band width, when there was more interest in
social media, and that sort of thing. But it took time. It took time for a
certain amount of awareness about social media and how it worked and developed.
It took younger people coming on and review what it had to do. I mean, a lot of
things had to happen to make that work. And sometimes you may have a great
idea, but the world and the company just isn’t ready for that yet. That’s one
of the problems that I’ve had in the past – a lot of my ideas were just too far
ahead. You have to learn how to do things that aren’t too far, but far enough
that you don’t get caught up in a lot of competition.
R: I wonder with
publishing specifically, I know that we’ve talked in class a lot about
interactive reading now and where eBooks are giving us the ability to have some…
A: where you can read a
passage and share that with your friends…
R: or music…
M: What a lot of people
don’t realize is – all an eBook is is a website. Literally, it’s written in
ePub, or XML5. It can do anything a website can do. So, inside that eBook you
can do anything you can do in a website. You can have eCommerce, you can have
videos, you can have sharing, you can – whatever. It can do anything inside an
ePub or XML5 eBook that you can do on a website. The only problem is download
time. If you want to have it stuffed full of stuff it may take you 10 minutes
to download it as opposed to a few seconds if it was just text. So that’s the
next problem people are trying to figure out – how to stuff it full of all of
these enhancements and it not take 20 minutes to download.
R: do you think people
want that?
M: So far, no. One of
the things I think is happening is when you look at the people who really read
books – like people who read Good Reads – they read 79% of the books that are
sold. Because they read so many each year. So those are true avid readers. And
what avid readers want – they don’t want a movie in a book. They don’t want a
whole lot of extraneous BS in their book. What they are looking for is the
feeling they get when they read a book: the sense of intimacy that you get with
the characters, the great story art that is going on in the book and the story
fades away and you see it all in your mind. That’s part of the experience that
an enhanced book doesn’t give you because it is giving you how the characters
look. You don’t necessarily want that. You want to see them in your mind based
on what you are reading and what the author said. And I think there is a
psychological thing about being in a book, and being really interested in a
book, you don’t want those distractions. Now that may change over time as
people who are digital natives, who’ve grown up with that kind of thing, begin
to read more and more, but I think for people who grew up with books in some
part of their life – and not even all of it – still want that private, intimate
experience of reading a book. So, I think it’s going to be a while before
highly enhanced books become the style or become what people expect or want.
Now some books you want that – like if I was reading a book about fly fishing.
Now I’d want that so I could watch somebody do it, I could zoom in and see what
they were doing, so I could learn how to tie a fly.
R: Like How-To Books.
A: And Non-fiction and
informational.
M: Exactly, and how-to
books.
R: That would be cool
so you could have Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and watch it while you’re
reading.
M: Exactly.
R: Then I wouldn’t hate
that but fiction, I would be enraged.
M: Yeah, fiction is the
area that sells most in eBooks by a long shot. eBooks aren’t selling as well in
other categories. I mean not so much that they are taking over the book sales
like they have in literature.
A: Do you think that
shift will be made to eBooks being used for things that are informational?
M: Well, I think you
have to be careful about the term “book” when you get into things like that.
It’s really not a book anymore. It’s really just content that’s in a container.
WE call it a book to give it a sense of what it is, but eventually books will
be a much more integrated and immersing experience. They’ll become much more
like entertainments. Which is why I think there will always be the book for
that private moment, but I do believe we’ll get to the point where you’ll put
something on and the book will come to life for you. Like a visor or glasses
where the book is actually played out and there’s text and there’s movies and
there’s connection with other people. I think we’re eventually going to get to
that.
R: Like a hologram ring
that you could sit in the middle of and it could be going on all around you.
M: Those things could
happen, but they are very expensive now. So, first they’ll be for the very
wealthy and then the price will come down and then they’ll be mass
entertainments where the people will go together and the audience will partake
and be part of the movie or be part of the book.
A: Fahrenheit 451.
M: That kind of stuff
is definitely gonna happen. How or what form they use to do it – we’ll see who
actually makes that happen. It’s going to be really interesting. And I think
that there will be massive changes in the workplace overtime based on media and
gaming backgrounds. Because when you think about it, as it becomes easier to
connect with people all over the world and companies figure out how to manage
people who are dispersed all over the world, I think a big part of the
productivity around that management is going to have to use social media and
gaming platforms, so that you can create a marketing team of people who are in
50 different countries but who can work together as part of the game
environment to create a marketing plan and have all of this data coming in that
they need. The gaming platform will give them the structure that they need to
work together as a team for an objective, and the social media platform will be
there as a way to sort and contain the data.
A: Right now you think
the books will still be there for the personal, private moments, but publishers
are having problems being able to afford the printing of them. Do you think
books that you hold will go?
M: No, I don’t think
those kind of books will ever go away because there will always be people who
are willing to – at some point they are going to be rare and very valuable.
They will become a very high-end symbol of status.
A: So, they will be
retrograded to when they first came out?
M: The nobleman in the
village who’s got 5 books in the library and it’s worth everything. It’s all
the
knowledge in the world at that time.
R: Life really does
cycle.
M: That’s right. So
there will always be people who collect old books. There will always be people
who will want to have the finest possible bindings and the most beautiful
books. There will be companies arise – there are already companies who are
doing this. Crack and Opus is one. They are creating books that cost
$40,000-$50,000, and they are selling them off for a quarter of a million to a
million dollars, because they are very limited editions, absolutely gorgeously
printed on 64 color presses in China, paper that is (*kiss sound*) to die for,
and the design is beautiful, it’s all original. And they’ll do things like
Dallas Cowboys, or the SuperBowl and have every Super Bowl MVP sign 50 copies
of the book. Or they’ll do Manchester United – they’ll do the same thing. The
book will be $40,000 - $50000 - $60000 for a single book. And they are this
wide, and this tall, and weigh 40 pounds.
A: And they turn a
profit?
M: Yeah. They are doing
one of the Vatican…You name it and they’re picking topics and creating these
books. So, that’s the kind of thing that you’ll see happen as wealthy people.
Everyone can have one of these now (iPhone) and the world is at your
fingertips. Being able to have a book that you could leaf through at some
point? Very cool.
A: That’s such a turn
from even 10 years ago.
M: Yeah, there will
always be a place for that. And the other thing that will happen will be people
who actually have the time and leisure to read a book. That will become more
and more rare, so that will be a symbol of your status as well. Oh, yes. “I
read this book in print over 4 hours.” How can you do that? You must be really
rich. Those are the kind of things I think will happen. Not in the next few
years, but down the road a ways.
A: Ok, so time and
leisure are going away. In China they have these cell phone novels that you
subscribe and every day they send you a chapter. Do you think that will become
more popular here?
M: Those are very
popular in China. Well, you know that’s an old, old model. That was used way back
in Dicken’s day.
A: Yeah, subscriptions.
Three Musketeers…
M: So, the subscription
model works extremely well in China because it is much easier in China to use
your phone and make payments than it is here. They are so far ahead of us in
China, Japan, and Europe too with cell phone technology. Did you know that in
Japan you can walking down the street with this and you get a text from the
competitor saying, “Hey, we’ve got a much better deal for you. And we’ve got
all these new characters that you can use in your stuff blah blah blah. If you
want our service, sign up.” All you have to do is click yes, and they change
everything and you are now one of their customers. We just don’t have that here
because the telecom companies have lobbied Congress to not allow that kind of
stuff to happen. They want to keep competition down as low as they possibly
can. But in Japan and China, no. You can just change it with the touch of a
button. Europe is similar too. So, it is much easier for them to pay for that
as they need it or want it. That model has not taken off in the US, it hasn’t
got much traction. A lot of people are trying it. A lot of people think it’s
going to happen. One of the ways they are doing it is selling a lot of books by
chapter. So, what they’ll do is break the book up and make a URL out of every
page. So, essentially each one will have a unique designator for the web, and
they’ll SEO it, on each one of those URLs and then when people search the web
or Google, they hope that topic, that page will come up and when they go to
that page and look at it, it’ll give them an offer to buy that chapter or some
piece of it for $0.99 or $3 or whatever it may be for the chapter. And they’re
hoping that that is a way that you can take a book and sort of dis-aggregate
it. But I don’t know if that’s gonna work or not.
A: And that’s more for
nonfiction where you would only need a chapter?
M: Mostly for
nonfiction. That’s as close to anything we have that’s like a subscription
service in the United States that I’m aware of. There are people who’ve tried
it in the past and did not have much success yet that I’ve heard of. The
closest anyone has come is Huddle where they prepackage deals with game
companies and book publishing companies for a 30 book package that you can buy
for $30 or $40 or some really reduced price and then they advertise it across
the web to all of their users. That’s been popular, but that’s not a
subscription model, that’s just a big discount bundle. Bundling has became kind
of popular. But not subscription in the US. There is a Chinese company that
claims they are bringing their subscription model to the US. I haven’t seen it
arrive yet, but I just don’t see it happening here. People want it now. They
don’t want to wait a week for the next installment.
A: We do have a lot of
YouTube channels. I just got finished watching one it was the Lizzie Bennett
diaries and it would come out every Monday and Thursday. And you subscribe to
this channel – and it’s free, of course – but you have to wait until the time.
And even though I could have just sat there and watched the whole thing at
once. So I think there are different media…
M: Well I think the
subscription model for media is much more likely to happen than for books.
We’re much more used to that. We’re used to paying the cable company, the game
company, whatever. So I think that if you’re a member of WOW you pay at a
monthly basis. So that’s a model that much more amenable to the American
culture because we’re more broadcast or video oriented than we are print
oriented. So I think that the model has a lot more opportunity there than it
does anywhere else. And I think that subscription model videos are becoming a
big deal. A lot of people are jumping into that marketplace.
A: If you were to start
any of your magazines like Texas West or the Odessa today, how you do it
differently with technology where it is?
M: Well, I wouldn’t
start a local publication. That’s really hard. In fact, if I were to start a
local population it would be on the web but it would be a monthly magazine and
there would be a lot on the web. It would be about day-to-day money issues,
pocket book issues – this new road’s going in, it’s going to make it hard for
the businesses, these companies are coming to town, these new restaurants have
opened, this new freeway is coming and is going to mess up your commute, if you’re
coming from Weatherford: it’s going to be bad, if you’re going to Dallas: it’s
going to take an extra 30 minutes. Anything that effects your life and your
pocketbook or how you navigate the city with your kids. It would be
hyper-local, but it would be about money, about how-to get the most out of your
city. It would go out once a month and be on the web as well. And that’s a
tough model, but I think that’s the best model for print. If you’re going to do
print, that’s the only way to succeed right now. If I were going to start a
magazine now, I’d start a national-based magazine and put it on the web. The
hard part about doing any of this is finding the audience. Anyone can publish
anything, but finding the audience is the really hard part, which is why I
would not start a magazine. But if I did I would do it on a national basis so I’d
at least have a good shot of bringing together a lot of people from a lot of
different areas of the country to create a large enough audience to interest advertisers,
and it would be on a pretty narrow topic, so I could get to that niche quickly
that no one else was in, and bring enough people to it to bring interest from
advertisers, OR I’d not have any advertising in it and sell it under a
subscription basis only – like Cook’s magazine or the Sun. Both of those are
very successful magazines and take on no advertisers. The Sun is the most successful non-advertising
magazines by a mile.
R: I believe you said
you were a journalism major in school – With that, looking at what your
experience has been going through your career and working with the business
side of books, would you have changed your major or done something more
business related? Or, how has your liberal arts major affected your career?
M: I wouldn’t give up
my liberal arts background for anything, because I think that has been a huge
part of what has made me successful. I know a business degree would not have
helped me that much; all it would have done is given me a head-start on
accounting issues. Everything else, if you’re a reasonably smart person you can
figure out. But the reason I value my undergrad education so much (Great Books
Program) is it taught me how to think, it taught me how to look at data – a lot
of data – and how to synthesize it, and how to pull out what was most relevant
to what I needed. That is probably the single greatest skill I have as an
entrepreneur, or even as a business person – the ability to look at a lot of
data and data points that exist around companies, people, businesses, or trends
and very quickly see what is most salient and turn that into leverage-able
things very quickly. I can almost give you step by step how learning how to
read carefully and think carefully about ideas and philosophies and how people
were creating these ideas and how those ideas from their origination from today
got changed and modified and either made better or worse by the people who picked
up on those ideas. Knowing how to look, analyze it, understand it – I think
that’s the single most important thing I did. There’s nothing in the business
school that teaches you how to do that. I encourage my business students to
read, read, read, read, read, and every entrepreneur that I bring in – without prompting
– says read everything you can get your hands on. And not just about your own
business, but about everything. Because you have to have an eclectic interest
about what is going on in the world. Not just politically and financially, but
culturally – what’s happening in movies, music, literature, business, design,
the art world. So you have a sense of what’s going on in science and culture,
so you can have an alignment with it that allows you to think – so this is what
allows this to work in this cultural context. Because if you don’t have that –
you can come up with all kinds of idea, but if they don’t fit the culture and
the context of the time, they are not going to work. So you have to think like
that, or you have to think like: “Well, I know if I produce a high-end book that
it’s going to become more valuable over time, and people who are wealthy are
going to want those as symbols of their success.” So you have to think forward
and retrograde at the same time. I think that business is one of the single
most creative things you can do, because – and this is why I think business
majors should start most businesses – if business majors started most
businesses all the businesses would be in deep trouble. Because really, they
think about the shareholder, they think about money, we need people who think
about the passion of what they do, the love behind what they do, the desire to
help people understand music, dance, art, engineering, or whatever it may be –
they are in that to create a better product for their customers. They are not
in it to make a lot of money. IF we lose that, we lose the soul of business,
and the small business person is critical to the U.S. Even more critical to the
United States, because now if you look at the largest companies in the United
States, they really aren’t companies of the United States, they are worldwide
companies. They don’t have any allegiance to the United States anymore. 40% of
their profits sit somewhere else – they don’t re-patriate them, because they’d
have to pay taxes on them. Better to be kept out there, be taxed where they
are, and not bring them back to the United States. More and more these
companies – and this is one of the reasons I think Wall Street is problematic,
because they don’t care about the United States. They’re allegiance is only to
money. So as a result, back in the ‘30s the President could go to the business
leaders and say the country needs your help – you need to hire people now. And they
would actually do that and hire people and lose money, or not make as much
money, so people could have jobs. Today, they’d laugh in the president’s face.
There’s no way. They’re going to choose the labor in China, because “it’s best
for our shareholders.”
R: Whatever the most
efficient way is that can make you the most money, that’s the path that they
take.
M: The small business
person becomes ever more important to maintaining our cultural ties, in ways
that a lot of people don’t understand yet.
R: What is a key value
or take away that you get from working on the business side of the publishing
and writing industry? What makes you get up every day and do it?
M: I freaking love it. If
you look at my background, it’s been about books from day one. Reading them,
publishing them, writing them – I love everything about the business whether it’s
newspapers, magazines, books – I especially love books. Newspapers are fun
because there are a million different variables that happen every single day
that could mess you up that you have to solve – like a big puzzle every day.
Magazines are interesting because you can be really thoughtful with a month or
a week in between. So you can think about what you want to put in there and you
can do longer pieces and it can be much more targeted. But books. Books are where ideas live, books
are about culture and the continuation of culture. If you do not have books, in
whatever form they’re there, it’s really hard to maintain your culture and it’s
really hard for the culture to develop beyond that. Because that’s where
culture and ideas are shared. That’s where things that people are thinking that
are a little out there get into the public domain. Now, the greatest thing that
has ever happened with books is the internet and all the tools we have, because
self-publishing now is not looked down as a vanity publishing thing. It’s now
indie publishing, much like indie records. So now it’s got a positive aspect to
it. That’s where most of the ideas are going to be coming from, because these
big corporations – the big 6 publishers – they go for celebrities and what they
know will make money. They have no connection to their customers. They just put
out books they like and put them out there and hope they sell. They know by
having celebrities or famous people or crooks or whoever has been in the news,
that they have better opportunities. Small press and indie publishers are the
place where new ideas are going to spring up. And they have to have a better way to be found – which is what my
new company is about. The thing I get out of it is I absolutely love it. Publishing
is what keeps me going every day. I can’t think of anything more fun, more
interesting, that encompasses more things, more topics in the world than publishing.
You can do anything when you’re a publisher. You can explore any topic. You can
talk to any author. You can find the best people to write things. It’s just an
awesome, awesome thing to do.
A: And you always get
to keep learning.
M: It never stops. So,
it gets me up and keeps me going. It motivates me to keep going and to be an
entrepreneur.
R: That’s wonderful
that you’ve found that.
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