Richard Charkin: Unintended Consequences in Publishing

Unintended Consequences in Publishing support Charkin’s Law: everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

HarperCollins’ announcement of a big increase in digital sales—largely downloadable audio and materially generated by the partnership with Spotify—made me contemplate the balance between decisions made with the best will in the world and their not-always-beneficial consequences.

I don’t know enough (I couldn’t know) about this particular deal, but is the offer of 15 hours a month of free audiobooks to Spotify customers a longer-term benefit to sales? What proportion of audiobook listeners actually listen to more than 15 hours a month? There will be some, of course, and Spotify might indeed increase the numbers of the hard-core audience but what happens to the rest?

With the benefit of an exceptionally helpful rear-view mirror, let’s think about other similar decisions.

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