The upcoming complexity of the digital business models

Dosdoce.com, in collaboration with The Publishing for Digital Minds Conference (London Book Fair), kicks-off the New Year releasing the infographic “The upcoming complexity of the digital business models”.

The aim of this infographic is to help all professionals in the book world -publishers, agents, authors, booksellers or librarians- understand the upcoming evolution of the business models on the Internet, so they can determine opportunities, as well as its growing complexity.

The evolution of the publishing business models in the digital age will become increasingly more complex. Selling single unit ebooks on online stores like Amazon, Apple, Kobo or Google is a relatively simple business model. Determining the most appropriate business conditions and pricing for a public library license is a little more complicated. Fragmenting the contents of an ebook by chapters or pages to allow later remix in the sales process is a bit more difficult to manage. Licensing content to upcoming platforms with a «pay for what you read» model entails a degree of management a bit trickier. Developing new paid services derived from big data analysis of the readers behaviour is a highly sophisticated task.

No one today has a roadmap with a clear outline on what the business models that will last are, which ones are just marketing, which ones are the most sustainable, etc. This lack of a clear roadmap should not delay the testing and implementation of various business models.

In order to help book world professionals evaluate the different scenarios, we have defined three levels of complexity (low, medium and high) through the colors of battery icon. Green indicates a low degree of complexity; orange color, a medium degree of complexity; and finally, the purple color indicates a high degree of complexity.

The horizontal axis describes the different types of content formats and services available today. From the traditional one unit ebook offering through bundles to the upcoming new range of services from the Big Data Analysis or the emerging Self-publishing content.

The vertical axis of infographics describes the different business models operating today. From the traditional unit sale through current subscription models, as well as licenses to libraries, to new models like resale of content or gamification.

We hope the visual reading and detailed analysis of this infographic will help publishing professionals design their best suited mix of business models to meet the needs of each customer. The mix selection will depend on the peculiarities of each publisher: specialization of their catalog, volume size, digital skills, among other variables.

Please, to download the infographic click in this link: The upcoming complexity of the digital business models.

Related content: Publishing for Digital Minds