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Solving the Harry Potter security problem
Seth Godin looks to the economic theory of complements:
Publish the first edition of the book without the last three chapters. Take your time, save the $20 million [spent on security]. Every purchaser then gets access (hey, everyone gets access) to the last three chapters on launch day.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 21, 2007 at 08:13 PM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Does that actually solve anything? All it does it make it easier for the ending to leak - there's only three chapters for some assiduous person to photograph and leak instead of the whole book. As long as you ship it to stores, it will leak before it gets there. No preventing it. Plus, who would purchase the incomplete first edition? I can't see it being anything but the same and worse.
Besides, he asserts that nobody would read it online. I personally clawed through the 800-ish pages, fuzzy text and all, finishing up six hours before it was released in my time zone.
Posted by: Andrew at Jul 21, 2007 9:37:55 PM
No the idea is that you don't ship it to stores. You release the last three chapters online free to everyone so people run to the store buy the book and once they finish reading everything but the last three chapters they go online and read the final three.
The problems with this are twofold.
1) Many people really like to read the entire book in physical form. Now the people who rush out to buy it at midnight probably won't refrain from buying just because of this but now you either lose customers or have to run a second printing including the last three chapters.
2) The temptation of wanting to know what happens may motivate some people to give in and read the last three chapters even though they haven't yet bothered to buy the book. This might be solvable with per book passwords which make it a sufficient annoyance to look it up online without first buying the book.
It's still a nice idea but frankly I don't think it is worth it to the publisher
Posted by: Peter Gerdes at Jul 21, 2007 9:48:40 PM
Do people really care about spoilers?
Movie trailers are notorious for giving away key plot details. And yet, we can confidently assert that this makes people more likely rather than less likely to see the movie -- otherwise, marketing geniuses would stop making such trailers.
From a marketing perspective, the Harry Potter books are more like movies than books: the release is an event, and most people want to experience it on the "opening weekend" along with everyone else.
If I tell you about the part where Voldemort says "Harry, I am your father", would that make you less likely to buy the book?
Posted by: anonymous at Jul 21, 2007 11:45:30 PM
I guess that the US$20 Million spent can be explained -at least in part - by signaling models (Nelson...). For the publishers, the security costs are not quite different from advertising. They suggest that there is a commitment to keep the quality of the previous volumes of the HP series.
Posted by: L Monasterio at Jul 22, 2007 3:24:08 AM
Most trailers are from another movie.You never see a movie as good as its trailers.
Posted by: JEAN at Jul 22, 2007 7:05:41 AM
Why not print the last 3 chapters in invisible ink?
Posted by: Eric C at Jul 22, 2007 9:35:44 AM
Solving the Harry Potter security problem
I am pretty sure that having millions of people falling in line to buy your product at midnight is not a "problem". So I'll agree with the notion that the security expense and effort is simply part of the promotional hype.
Movie trailers are notorious for giving away key plot details.
The Potter books are not a "most movies" situation - I really don't expect that I will be ever again in this lifetime be standing in a Barnes and Noble having a New Years in July party for a book.
Posted by: Tom Maguire at Jul 22, 2007 9:46:54 AM
So the last three chapters are important! Thanks for ruining it!
Posted by: Hagrid at Jul 22, 2007 12:17:56 PM
All of the hype about security problems created an immense amount of publicity, as if that was necessary.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Jul 22, 2007 3:39:22 PM
Why not publish it without the FIRST three chapters?
The way they did it, spoilers got out anyway. So, let everybody get the book, but people who don't want spoilers (if you do want them, you can get them anyway) can't read any part of it till release day.
Posted by: Fabio at Jul 23, 2007 1:52:44 AM
"If I tell you about the part where Voldemort says "Harry, I am your father", would that make you less likely to buy the book?"
Please tell me you're joking, am I the only person on the planet who has NOT read this yet?
Posted by: Jon at Jul 23, 2007 1:11:43 PM
jon...you've either gotta read it, or get off these internets, man... :) Certainly be more circumspect on which pages you visit. But, Voldemort isn't Harry's father...that's hilarious. (he was just referring to star wars there)
And...I can't believe that anyone would say that people don't care about spoilers. Someone ruined the ending of the 6th book for me (story here: http://onlyshawn.blogspot.com/2007/07/harry-potter-and-shitkids.html), and so I was very careful about how I received the 7th book...and then I read it in 12 hours. :)
Posted by: shawn at Jul 24, 2007 11:33:03 AM
we can confidently assert that this makes people more likely rather than less likely to see the movie -- otherwise, marketing geniuses would stop making such trailers.
I certainly do not claim to represent everyone, but I have not watched commercials in years (except for deliberately watching Superbowl commercials) thanks to both Tivo and reducing my TV consumption.
Likewise, I only watch DVDs and avoid going to movie theater because of the commercials (mostly trailers) that preceed the movie.
Posted by: Lance at Jul 24, 2007 2:25:09 PM
Seth Godin's article continues with this:
"Books are souvenirs. No one is going to read Potter online, even if it's free. Holding and owning the book,
remembering when and how you got it... that's what you're paying for. Books are great at holding memories.
They're lousy at keeping secrets."
I don't know anyone who would consider a book without the last 3 chapters to be a souvenir. I keep books
because I may want to re-read them some day or pass them along to a friend. We're keeping our Harry Potter
books in case our daughter wants to read them herself one day. I can't imagine handing her the book with the
most important part missing.
Or with a print out of the last 3 chapters stuck in the back? Or a link that might not work anymore?
A terrible idea.
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