TECHIE
John Ingram
As you look at the various parts of the business, what stands out to you as things where you’re paying extra attention these days? I’d like to believe I always keep one foot in today and the other always searching for that next thing to step up to. It’s interesting that you should ask this because I just had a conversation yesterday about NFTs, non-fungible tokens, and how those might play in the book business. A few weeks ago, I’m seeing Elon Musk talking about not just Bitcoin and making what I thought was a joke about how much energy consumption is used to make these tokens. I thought, “Come on, this is digital.” I didn’t realize all the computations that go into that. So that’s my way of saying how little I really understood about it on one level. But I think there’s a real role for that in books and almost any piece of content.
DANIEL MEIGS
In terms of the authentication? That and the fact that each piece is unique. Typically in the book market, a book — a physical book or even a digital book — is sold once, right? And then it goes into this whole other world of the used market where authors and publishers get no compensation. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way in a world of non-fungible tokens because each one is unique. I just point that out as something I’m interested in. There are all kinds of new models that will include selling content. New, different models of digital book clubs and ways to discover content. Every time I come across one of these, I’ll call them up and introduce myself and say, “Look, authors and publishers love talking about their content but don’t forget they equally love selling it. And we’re really well positioned to be so much of the plumbing and infrastructure on the back end of making that easy for you to do.”
Because the book business, for all the success Amazon and others have had, still exists. It didn’t get destroyed the way so many people predicted. I want to say the pandemic was really positive for book reading in general. I guess we were all trapped, more or less, and books — whether one prefers reading physically or digitally — were one way to escape. It was a moment for that and I think that has continued on. Certainly, our business has been strong into 2021 as well.
NASHVILLEPOST.COM | SUMMER 2021
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