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Survival Ideas
This is an invitation to those who are survivors in their occupations and domains. We all are. Young have survived their jobs and old their marriages. Children have survived schools and good intentions of parents. We invite them to help us in finding ways and means so that we may:
- Continue to get published and get content
- Continue to get quality readership and contributors – referral and networking welcome.
- To discover ever new techniques to continue entertaining and enlightening ourselves.
- Any killer idea that had missed the in-house geniuses
For more on this theme, please see Editor-at-Large Pritam’s impishly practical (im-practical?) Suggestions on survival of Pentasect – The Prodcon Model
The Prodcon Model of Publishing
1. A short historical review
If we go far way in history of publishing, the first organized publishers were priests and religious seminaries. Cut-copy-paste and Xerox were millennia away and people used to copy manuscripts by hand. This caused non-accurate copies and a text mutated in course of successive copies. Readers were few, cost to copy and distribute was enormous and distributors were who’s who of history. Chinese Monk Hiuen-sang is still getting thanks from India and China for achieving this distribution task. Speed of transfer was somewhat 1 Mb / 5 year. Because the carrier has to cross mountains, deserts, high-roads and no-road.
Printing press arrived in Europe also during the time when Asian hegemony was getting broken. The demarcation between publisher, writer, printer and bookseller has not appeared yet. In Bengal, in early nineteenth century, a pundit but no Bengali pundit of entire Hindu past or present is like him – Ishwar Chandra Bidyasagar became writer, printer, and distributor and seller altogether. In course of time, the market of publishing increased its circle of influence as well as depth and separate functional chain appeared. The chain constituted something like this: content provider à publisher à printer à distributor à seller à end user.
In line with evolution of any industry, publishing industry’s power centre started to concentrate. The concentration was spread strongest in the link between publishers and distributors. Printing was just outsourced. For a content provider (writer), the cost to connect to end-user was enormous and infeasible. Publishers have this ‘connection control’ and hence, the relationship between publishers and writers, historically has been very tense, conflicting but have been tolerated somehow. Looking from the end user, i.e. reader’s or consumers of published products: a factory produced published materials (goods) and sold at a price. The users can neither know how this is being done or the economic cost. This is Centcom model - centralized factory producing materials or good for consumption. Unlike a watch factory (where we don’t know the persons name or face who made the item), publishing industry keeps (not always) the name /face of the person/persons who ‘produced’ the content. Knowing the name / face is one thing and establishing a communication with the content producer is another thing. Impossible is the thing to enter into an economic transaction. Simply, for the end user, it is virtually impossible, due to legal, operational and transactional issues to ‘buy’ directly from the content producer. This Centcom Model is the dominant model now in publishing now.
2. Content as a factory product
Any factory cannot produce continuously for a considerable time. Hence Centcom Factories could easily experience that by simply transactional selling of products, it is neither profitable economically and sustainable operationally. Hence, during the gaps in factory works, Centcom Model asked producers of other products to use their factory’s idle time. How? The industry of advertising was born and all business models in this theme, including Google’s are refinements of this core idea of effective utilisation of factory idle time. This became so much rewarding economically that some publishers made this advertising their core work, keeping a façade of publishing. Look at the daily newspapers or TV shows and you will figure it out for yourself. It is strange to find that in 1970s were born Packet Switching, Digital Communication and also Mass Advertising. All these share a fundamental trait: To use, effectively the time-slice surplus.
Internet, during its initial days itself, showed juvenile tendency to provide a counter to Centcom model. Free Software, Music Sharing, Code Sharing, Voice calls through Net (which means to bypass the huge telephone factories of monopolistic telecom providers) were signage and people who would be most affected were quick to take note. Regulation, Legislation, Protection, and Intellectual Copyright were hotly discussed and debated. Hypertext, Email, paypal – provided the trinity of New Model – The Prodcon (Production-Contribution) Model. Now, it became possible, not only in theory but also in practice, and at a very low cost for a content provider to reach and get feedback from his end client (Hypertext + email), get paid direct if a transaction is entered into (paypal). For the first time in publication industry, end user can actually tell the producer something he likes or does not, at all stages of Production Process. Pricing in these transactions were not unilateral but negotiable without intermediriares. We call this Prodcon Model – Production and Contribution going simultaneously and linked from the start of production (feedback to content providers) to final deployment. Google, E-bay, amazon, blogs – their success and sustainability confirm that Prodcon Model is a serious contender against the Centcom Model and in some aspect, its winning.
3.Pentasect.com and Prodcon Model
Pentasect is based on the opportunities this new Model provides. In practical terms, we have translated some of the advantages of this new Model into actionable policies. Here are they:
- Advances in Internet access and also in Bangla computing (much remainining although) make it economically viable for us to start this initiative, unlike centralized print model where entry cost is huge.
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We are providing email / contact of content providers immediately below the content. This seemingly plain act is a an act of non-linearity and has tremendous significance. This means that the provider can be contacted by other buyers of content, in theory - globally.
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Our market research shows that one of the prime grievances of a freelance content provider is irregularity or absence of payment after content is delivered. Online media virtually makes it impossible to track content once it changes hands. In order to remove this non-payment issue at the core, we have adopted order based content, with a PO (Purchase Order) and a Freelancer has the right to accept or reject it. This ensures a freelancer to be paid and is an enabler and a stimulator of better works. With his contact available direct, he / she has the full opportunity to get other projects. Please see our Offer to Freelancers and Terms and Conditions in Contribute Section.
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The process ensures that a freelancer, for their own interest has an incentive to promote the initiative. As Pentasect grows in terms of quality content and readership (not necessarily more viewer ship or ‘eyeballs’ alone), the content writers have a larger space to showcase themselves and larger is the opportunity for further projects – potentially coming from anywhere.
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The comment, review and rating system (CRR) by readers (not by some hired celebrity or paid brand ambassador) is a goldmine for a content provider to understand and anticipate market trends and behaviour. This CRR will be open and for anyone to see.
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Pentasect is grappling with many issues – mostly transformational (into digital space) on its Bangla version. But, if we all work hard and succeed, the reward is huge. Firstly is of differentiation. Secondly is localization advantage.
We have this faith that competition, at the highest level and in solving greatest problems becomes collaboration. A man and a woman may compete in workplace for a career which lasts few years or decades. To avoid genetic extinction, collaboration with delight between a man and a woman is the easiest way! Prodcon Model, in its full bloom is competitive minus the narrowness of competition and collaborative minus the continuous threat of non-sustainability of impractical collaboration.
Behind all the anxieties and concern of our age, behind all excesses of power, there is a lurking hope. Impacted by all these forces, we are slowly understanding the fact that our problems and objectives getting complex, connected and global in nature. Competition, as we generally understand it and being made to understand by people and institutions that benefit from it, has to either transform itself into something higher or vanish into insignificance.
Editorial team – www.pentasect.com