Now that blog readership has passed newspaper readership in most US communities, I wonder what is next for blogs.
Today, blogs are all about open access to content. Indeed most bloggers are expressly interested in having readers “share” their blog content, and even provide socialization tools that allow readers to republish the blog content to any number of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.
As the plummet of newspaper readership continues, what happens to the writers? It is easy to hate the newspapers, but the writers have fans. Today, despite the efforts of unions, newspapers have been faced with economic crisis that has forced them to cut staff. Where do they go? – a recent Newsweek article may offer clues.
Attention, would-be professional bloggers: the nice folks at Amazon have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that Amazon now lets anyone create a blog and sell subscriptions to owners of its Kindle e-reader device. The bad news? Amazon sets the prices, and Amazon keeps 70 percent of the money.
Such a deal, right? You do all the work, and Amazon pockets more than two thirds of the loot. If you don’t like that arrangement, well, you can go build your own e-reader and online store. But if you want to participate in Amazon’s e-reader marketplace-which happens to be the only such marketplace that matters right now-well, you’ll have to play by Amazon’s rules. For what it’s worth, that 70-30 split is the same one that Amazon offers to big newspaper companies. So at least bloggers can take comfort that they aren’t getting shafted any worse than the big guys.
Remember when everyone was saying how digital media was going to be the greatest thing ever for writers and other creative types-or “content creators,” as we’re now known? The theory was that everyone could sell direct over the Internet.
Perhaps this seems pretty grimm for writers, but consider Seth Godin – blogger turned ad sponsored online publisher, Author of top selling books, professional speaker, Forbes 100 consultant, and now, movie actor. Bloggers will need to get on the ball, as Seth Godin has done – or perhaps a new cottege industry of blogger marketing will emerge.
Here is a link to one of our prior posts – Newspapers are like Nursinghomes –https://www.wavgroup.com/why-newspapers-are-like-nursinghomes
