Publishing is changing.
That is not news. The industry has been in disarray for the
better part of a decade, or maybe longer depending on how you look at it. As
soon as Amazon entered the market, the brick-and-mortar distribution model
began to crumble, and then e-books and on-demand printing followed not long
after. Borders closed up shop, and Barnes & Noble is uncertain about its
future.
Readers are consuming content in different ways, and the
old guard is hesitant to admit that their original recipe might not match
current tastes as well as it once did.
We’ve seen this shift in the world of jiu-jitsu publishing
as well. The use of on-demand content sites appears to be growing, if the
proliferation of such sites is any indication. MGInAction.com was once the lone
player in the jiu-jitsu video on-demand market, but now Andre Galvao, the
Mendes brothers, Eddie Bravo, and the Ribeiro brothers have entered the market
as well.
The benefits seem clear for everyone involved: instructors
can generate more consistent revenue more quickly and users can enjoy a quicker
turn-around in new material and wider variety of content. The focus of DVDs and
books tends to be narrow, and the production time can take months or even
years. The video on-demand model is successful for many of the same reasons
that YouTube as a service is successful: content is updated almost daily and
the material is easy to digest.
Other jiu-jitsu content producers are taking advantage of
digital distribution in a different way. Where Stephan Kesting and Roy Dean
produced DVDs they are now producing apps. Budovideos has also taken note of
this shift and being pushing its own digital versions of instructionals,
seminars, and competition footage.
When I was the Editor-in-Chief at Lockflow.com, I saw the
shift from photo by photo instructionals to YouTube videos, and it seems that
this shift has touched every corner of jiu-jitsu instructionals, whether that
content is being consumed on YouTube, in an app, or through an on-demand
service—large numbers of short, specific videos.
This change in paradigm has some proclaiming that books are
dead or dying. I don’t think that’s the case.
The written word, regardless of genre, can accomplish things
that video and pictures cannot. In terms of jiu-jitsu instructionals, videos
are great for demonstrating movement and for mimicking that personal delivery
of information that we’ve become accustomed to on the mat. Video’s weakness,
however, is its ability to organize and to synergize concepts and theory. When
the discussion of idea becomes more lofty than a simple how-to, the edited and
revised delivery of text makes it easier to present that information where a
stumble in speech can muddle and confuse.
Again, not a new observation. Successful jiu-jitsu blogs
like Aesopian.com and the Jiu-Jitsu Laboratory have proven this notion to be
true over and over again for years, and their popularity suggests that a mixed-media
delivery of technical information resonates with jiu-jiteiros worldwide.
Grapplers love short videos that explain technique, but they also love
exploring the depth of their art.
Jiu-jitsu instructional books may be falling from favor now,
but that fall won’t be permanent. The written word has not become weaker. In
fact, more people are reading now than ever with the spread of smartphones and
mobile devices. The container that we call a book and the way we’ll deliver
will need to evolve, but books aren’t dead.
This is a challenge that I’ve spent some time exploring, and
I think I have the solution. It’s much more complex than simple coupling video
with text, which I’ve been doing with Artechoke in a Can and which many others
have done before, but it’s also not terribly complex. I’m looking forward to
sharing that solution with you this summer.
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