The following article, from Newsweek, is about Airbnb, an upstart (small) Hotel company that is going after the “big boys”.  Although this may sound like something only those in the Hotel business may find interesting, the article touches upon something that has intrigued me for several years now: the evolution of businesses in the age of the internet.

Read the article and you’ll see what I mean:

http://www.newsweek.com/end-mass-production-225700

If you’re not interested in reading the whole thing and/or too lazy to click the link, let me offer you this quote which neatly summarizes what the article has to say about the current business world:

Information technology is eroding the power of large-scale mass production. We’re instead moving toward a world of massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff – and of consumers who reject mass-produced stuff. The Internet, software, 3D printing, social networks, cloud computing and other technologies are making this economically feasible – in fact, desirable.

Let me repeat one small part of this great paragraph: Massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff.

I see this today in Amazon whenever I check out my books, for am I not very much a part of this very game?  I’m one small independent writer out there offering my wares (books) to everyone out there.  At this point there is no major publishing company distributing my works.

Back when I first got into the publishing business in the 1990’s, being an “independent” publisher involved considerable investment and therefore potentially big loss.  Why?  Because the only way to publish works was to actually publish them at certain minimal quantity levels and on actual paper.  If you were publishing “Book X”, you could list it in the trades and pay good money for a full page add.  Eventually you’d get your order and you hoped it would be a sufficient quantity to pay for the publishing costs and still make you a little bit of money.

If the orders were too low, however, you could do one of two things: a) cut your losses (both in terms of money and time) and cancel the book or b) go ahead and publish it at a loss and hope that over time you can recoup your publishing costs and sell whatever material you were forced to over-produce.

This changed radically with the advent of the various tablets.  Now, you can “publish” works that can be read on your computer and tablet via Kindle or Nook or any other e-reader.  There are now “print to demand” companies that do just that, print your book in the numbers you need them printed without any minimal orders.

But even more importantly, the internet has given regular folks the ability to review the works of others.  Moving away from books for the moment, we as consumers can comfortably go to a McDonalds restaurant in all corners of the United Stated to get a meal and we know what we’re going to get.  Yet we may avoid the small, independent (and mythical) Billy’s Burger Joint right next door to a McDonalds for the opposite reason: We don’t know what we’re going to get.  The food may well be far fresher and tastier than that found at McDonalds yet as consumers we may shy away from this place because we simply don’t know if that will be the case.

In the book world, you may avoid a book authored by one E. R. Torre because you haven’t the foggiest idea of whether this fellow has any talent whatsoever (if you should even stumble upon him!) and time is money and you have neither available in healthy enough quantities to devote to this “newbie”.  Yet you buy novels by, say, Big Author X because s/he has a track record of sales and past successes which make you as a consumer more likely to try his/her latest novel out.

This in spite of the fact that you may not have enjoyed any of this author’s books in many years.

The wonderful thing is that the internet is in the process of changing all this.

Now, if you see Billy’s Burger Joint and are not in the mood for a Big Mac, you pull up your smart phone or any other internet device and see what others say about Billy’s Burger Joint.  If the reviews are good, you feel more comfortable in giving the place a try.

The same may well benefit someone like me..  I’ve been blessed with mostly good reviews for my books and I suspect that makes it easier for others who are not familiar with the works of E. R. Torre to give them a try.  While sales of my books certainly are not on the level of, say, a Stephen King I can’t help but feel each positive reviews has to encourage potential buyers.  And the reviews have the bonus effect of encouraging me to keep writing and releasing new works!

Perhaps the end of “mass production” is the future of not just the food, lodging, and writing industries but of all fields.

We will certainly see!