Cottage industries’ new home: the internet…
Indie authors know all about the internet as a home for cottage industries. Even if you use Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some other online retailer as a distributor, an indie author still has to publish, market, and sell his or her books. The author’s writing or content is the industrial product and the reader is the customer who buys that product.
Services for authors and readers are a natural for internet cottage industries. Google “ebook formatting” and see how many different services you find, for example—or “eBook cover design.” There’s a website with info on forensics and many websites that discuss some or multiple aspects of the writing trade (see the list in “Steve’s Writing” here at this website). For readers, there are services from the monolithic Goodreads (that probably started as a cottage industry) to websites or blogs more focused on reviews (see Holly Hook’s bargainebooks) to several online ezines—eFiction is one of the latest and open to submissions.
I was interested to hear a few days ago that due to some banks’ campaigns to charge debit card fees—Bank of America received the most criticism, but other banks were also guilty—a new cottage industry has sprung up. I just Googled “I want to change my bank” and found several advice sites and FAQs, but I couldn’t find the service I heard about. SwitchAgent was on top of the list, but they seem to be in cahoots with the banks. (Love that word cahoots—sounds like a cross between a crow and an owl.) Maybe the service already disappeared. It seems that even B of A is backtracking now on the debit card fees. (Poor banks. Congress took away a few of their golden eggs and they want them back!)
That’s the problem with old-fashioned cottage industries and the modern versions come and go even faster. Every one fills a niche that sometimes only opens for a brief time. It’s like a collision between protons. Sometimes a few strange and exotic particles result (the cottage industry), but they’re ephemeral, often disappearing in a little blaze of glory. This is a characteristic of the internet. The ephemeral nature was not recognized in the dot-com glory days, an error that self-corrected with the dot-com bust. On the other hand, cottage industries often become huge, like Amazon, Google, eBay, NetFlicks, and so forth. The internet is just one huge lottery for entrepreneurs, it seems.
Internet cottage industries also make me eat my words from Tuesday a week ago. There are corporations that do care. Ignoring the many charities and support groups for the sick (their do-good nature is not debated), other internet cottage industries are often responding to a very particular need—a little niche opens up where some people need something very particular. They can be local—websites that correspond to local restaurants and bars serve people living in a particular area and people traveling to it (the latter, integrated over the time span of a year, can number in the many thousands). They can be global—a website advertising a doohickey for removing unwanted facial hair with one end and pointing to PowerPoint slides with the other.
Yes, internet cottage industries offer a service—that’s caring in a specific way—while trying to make a buck. In the process, they might be taking a buck out of someone else’s pocket. For example, a will writing service precludes the necessity of hiring a live lawyer. Your only problem is getting it notarized. As far as I know, you can’t do that on the internet. But you can usually do it in your bank (it’s a free service in many banks…shhhh! Don’t tell them!).
Another new type of service is similar to the old library or supermarket bulletin board. People offer something they’ll rent on this type of website and a person interested in renting the item contacts them if interested in a particular item. The items offered up include cars, pets, picnic baskets, bicycles, storage space in a house, use of a kitchen or a bathroom in a house, and even friends (no dating and no escort service—just a friend to give you company). This saves the renter money (renting a punch bowl set for a party costs a lot less than buying one or renting from a party service, for example) and gives the person renting some extra cash. All of these websites are cottage industries—they’re just providing the bulletin board.
Many dating services covering the whole range of ages often started as a cottage industry and some still are. They can pair up an Eleanor Rigby with an Edward Recluse and bring a bit of happiness into their world. They can be dangerous, too. The serial killer or rapist that frequents such services is not just material for thriller and suspense authors—he’s an unfortunate reality of our modern age. So are the sites selling arms and other weapons and the sites recruiting for militias and other violent groups—these sites probably do more harm than good since their product is violence. Porn and prostitution sites are similar. These latter websites are still cottage industries offering a service, but the service might be questionable.
There is very little control of the internet. Some places like Craig’s List are so busy that is impossible for them to self-police their site. Others don’t want to. We live in strange times where every nut case can come out of the cracks and put up a website or rage blog—the internet is the soapbox of all soapboxes. It’s possible that the internet should be better policed. Many services that are offered by electronic cottage industries, some mentioned above, are outlawed as physical cottage industries in many states (for example, a NJ physics professor was running an internet prostitution ring—as far as I know, prostitution is only legal in Nevada), but it’s hard to bring them to justice if they’re limited to the internet. Already police and other law enforcement agencies spend lots of tax dollars monitoring various sites, many of which offer services of dubious value. How this can be done and still protect free speech and other freedoms we hold dear will be an intense debate for many years to come.
Even this blog offers a service—it’s informative and hopefully entertaining to my readers. In its op-ed aspects, I realize I often write things that no newspaper editor or TV newscast (or Chinese bureaucrat) would allow me to write or speak. I’m my own editor and (so far) I can say what I want—any censorship is self-inflicted. This uncensored writing reflects both the power and the danger of the internet and its cottage industries. We should use gentle hands when we set out to control it and them. While there is some argument to be made that the use of the internet is out of control, too much control smacks of fascism. Today there is already too much control and monitoring of information in general—we need to tread lightly.
And so it goes…
