I don't understand the existence of two markets here.
I may be simple-minded but I would have thought that people either want to read a book or they don't. But now is there really a market for people who want to read a book but only if that book's content is made different from what it actually is? (I'm worried if that's the case).
(2) could be solved by marketing the same book differently. I agree that (1) has value, and (2) has some value when classifying customers.
However, this thread started because many adult sci-fi and fantasy readers look down on YA books. That's the purpose for which I'd suggest that the distinction doesn't make much sense.
The author literally gives an individual reason why about half the books should be read by everyone and the other half by many based on their interests. What are your objections?
It's the exploit/explore tradeoff. In the cultural industries, most consumers (the majority of whom don't care to be more than that) prefer to exploit--that is, read or watch or listen to something very similar to what they already have--than explore.
We think readers should be a smarter crowd--and, thus, more upscale in their choices--than TV watchers and popular music listeners (as both groups comprise, roughly, the general population). This is possibly the case, but it seems to be cancelled out by the massive time investment involved in seriously reading a book: eight hours for a typical novel, as opposed to an hour for a TV show or 3 minutes for a pop song. The high cost of exploration means that the book world has the same problem and, unfortunately, the processes and people who are trusted to filter for quality, quite frankly, don't. Traditional publishers follow the market and "book buzz" is built from the opinions of highly influential non-readers.
Why would a publisher narrow its target purchasing demographic preemptively?
At the end of the day, the point is book sales, not to actually make you successful (even if that’s the effect for some small slice of the people who actually buy it).
I would assume they picked the examples because it's singularityhub. Most of their readers are likely to be technology/gadget centric and a message about more tech centric activities was probably expected to resonate better than a message about something as "old fashioned" as reading a book.
Beside, be honest. What percentage of the population do you think actually spends more time reading books than watching TV and surfing the internet?
BTW: According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, watching TV accounted for more than half the total leisure time for Americans 15 years and older. (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm)
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