Thursday, July 2, 2015

So Many Voices – Who Can Hear Yours?



The numbers are mind-boggling when it comes to our media and content.  Consider this:

There are up to 3,000 books published every single day of the year, including Sundays and holidays.  That comes out to 750,000 book pages per day (for 250-page books), or 250 million pages in 2015.

How is all of that getting purchased, read, shared, and talked about, whether through traditional media, social media, book clubs, or author appearances?

Time magazine calculated that 350 scripted series were available on broadcast, cable and stream this past year. It estimated that with 10-episode seasons it came to 3,250 hours of programming.

If one didn’t sleep, eat, or do anything else around the clock for 146 days straight, he or she could consume all of that. But that doesn’t include other TV: news, sports, talk shows, reality shows, game shows, commercials, and other TV fare.

Then think about radio, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, trade publications, podcasts, blogs, videos, movies, videogames, music and web surfing. Add in online chats, emailing, and phone calls. People have a lot of information and content to consume, share, download, and overload!

How do we come to know all of our options and make intelligent decisions on what to consume and when to digest it?

How do we filter what’s out there and obtain summaries of circulating materials?

Time is precious but our choices grow exponentially on what we can do in terms of reading, listening and watching the world. Everything is a click away, 24/7.

Just to read a two-sentence description of each of the things we could enjoy would take us all day to get through. Is this a golden age, to be overwhelmed by content and data to the point we don’t  even know what to take in?

Further, because so much content is created independently and doesn’t legitimately pass through any uniform standard of quality or taste, how do we know if the content is accurate, unbiased, and created properly?

We live in an era of having more information than we can handle, less time and fewer resources to double-check the veracity of the content, and worst of all, we are in a fragmented era where the nation or even the world can’t always be on the same page because everyone is listening to a different voice at a different time. Even when 50 million people watch the same video of a cat doing something funny, we are not on the same page, given there are 7.25 billion people on the planet.

There are still billions of people who lack access to information via technology. Not everyone is on Facebook nor do they have a way to even get onto it. Not everyone has a smartphone or an iTunes account. Amazon, for all of its reach, still doesn’t claim every home as its own.

So when you write, publish and promote your next book don’t feel bad if it sells a few thousand copies. So much content is out there. We are all fighting for attention.  But don’t think that even if your book sells a million copies that the world has taken notice. It has not. You still have over seven billion people to reach and impress.

We are each a drop of water in a vast ocean. Our content mirrors this ratio as well. It’s just the way things are – and it is likely to get more crowded soon.


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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015




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