{"id":2196,"date":"2011-09-13T13:09:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T18:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=2196"},"modified":"2020-01-05T17:58:32","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T22:58:32","slug":"a-tale-of-beer-and-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/a-tale-of-beer-and-books\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of beer and books"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2201\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/iniquity-800x600.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2201\" class=\"wp-image-2201 size-medium\" title=\"iniquity (800x600)\" src=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/iniquity-800x600-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Southern Tier Iniquity black ale. \" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/iniquity-800x600-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/iniquity-800x600.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2201\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Out there in The Long Tail you&#8217;ll find some mighty fine brewskies. P.S. Southern Tier, please bring Iniquity back. Thank you.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Only imagine: MSNBC has a story up about beer sales, and lo and behold, they&#8217;re plummeting &#8212; for mainstay brands like Bud, Old Milwaukee, and Michelob. [UPDATE: sadly, story no longer there&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Of the 23 &#8220;largest selling beer products&#8221; in the U.S., &#8220;eight . . .&nbsp; have lost a staggering 30 percent or more of their sales between 2005 and 2010.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yikes.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s what strikes me. For years, we&#8217;ve been hearing that &#8220;digital&#8221; is killing the publishing industry. Digital is killing newspapers. Digital is killing music.<\/p>\n<p>And the focus for the most part has been on the medium. You&#8217;ve probably heard &#8220;kill the medium!&#8221; arguments along these lines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Blogging makes it too easy for know-nothings to pose as journalists. Result: newspapers face too much competition from low-quality websites. Newspaper circulation plunges.<\/li>\n<li>Digital music is too easy to steal. Producers can&#8217;t control their product any more &#8212; people are getting for free what they used to have to buy. Music sales plunge.<\/li>\n<li>Self-pubbing books is too easy. Now unvetted self-proclaimed &#8220;writers&#8221; can put their better-hold-your-nose junk on Amazon or B&amp;N with a click of a mouse. They are squeezing out legitimate publishers. Print book sales plunge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing. With beer, you take the medium out of the equation. People can&#8217;t buy or sell beer in digital form. It&#8217;s an analog world experience still, thank doG.<\/p>\n<p>So beer becomes a control case.<\/p>\n<p>Right?<\/p>\n<p>You have your traditional, old school industry &#8212; all those gargantuan beer brands that our grandfathers used to drink &#8212; and you have this nascent (well, still sort of nascent) decentralized craft brew movement with its funny labels and quirky flavors.<\/p>\n<p>And what happens?<\/p>\n<p>We learn that when people have a choice, lo and behold, they will abandon &#8220;safe,&#8221; boring, insipid products and seek out interesting, imaginative, vibrant alternatives. In proverbial droves.<\/p>\n<p>This also suggests IMO that &#8220;brand&#8221; &#8212; which you&nbsp; may have noticed has been elevated in the past couple decades to near-mystical status in the marketing lexicon &#8212; is actually not enough to carry a product. On the contrary, &#8220;brand&#8221; has some mighty heavy clay feet.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, a prediction. Bud, and Old Milwaukee, and Michelob (which btw is in my WP spellcheck. Really? My spellcheck doesn&#8217;t recognize the word &#8220;spellcheck&#8221; but it generates its red squiggle if I type Michalob or Michelobe? Really????) are already working furiously behind the scenes to launch a stunning new menu of &#8220;craft-style&#8221; beers.<\/p>\n<p>Second prediction. Book publishers will engage in a parallel activity, if they&#8217;re not already. And they&#8217;ll figure out which self-pubbed products sell well (possible examples: shorter novels; serials) and start assembly-lining e-books into those niches with a vengeance.<\/p>\n<p>But without offering author advances ;-)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only imagine: MSNBC has a story up about beer sales, and lo and behold, they&#8217;re plummeting &#8212; for mainstay brands like Bud, Old Milwaukee, and Michelob. [UPDATE: sadly, story no longer there&#8230;] Of the 23 &#8220;largest selling beer products&#8221; in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/a-tale-of-beer-and-books\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,243],"tags":[1693,384,1694,398,1695,298,241],"class_list":["post-2196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-publishing","tag-beer","tag-books","tag-digital-publishing","tag-ebooks","tag-industry-disruptions","tag-self-publishing","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6547,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions\/6547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}