Driving over lemons

In 1970, Nobel laureate George Akerlof’s seminal essay “The Market for Lemons” described a situation when consumers can no longer distinguish between a high or low-quality product, inevitably driving the manufacturers of the costly, better stuff away. When everything looks like a lemon, you don’t want to pay extra for a tangerine.

Akerlof was theorising about the used-car market, but the argument has also been applied to books. When Amazon introduced 99p e-books, the fear was that every book would eventually be reduced to that price, regardless of cost. Of course, it didn’t pan out that way. Traditional publishers worked hard to differentiate their titles, and book purchasers understood that there was an inherent value to them.

But perhaps Akerlof’s thesis will come again. I was reminded of the conceit after two businesses rolled out plans to use new technologies to speed up publication.

At Microsoft an imprint called 8080 Books aims to shorten the lag between the final manuscript and the book’s arrival in the marketplace, using internal talent to publish original research, ideas and insights at the intersection of science, technology and business. Meanwhile, a new start-up publisher, Spines, has said that it aims to disrupt the book industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 using artificial intelligence (AI) to minimise the work associated with this.

I don’t mean to be rude, but these ideas lack a little zest. My concern is that they have failed to understand the value in the process of bringing out a book, and assume that readers don’t see it either. In Akerlof’s used-car example, it is inspections, warranties and certification that assure buyers of the worth of their purchases. In our world it is publishers, booksellers and influencers, none of them outmoded, replaceable or amenable to being hurried. Books take time because this effort brings with it an accrued value.

I don’t mean to be rude, but these ideas lack a little zest. My concern is that they have failed to understood the value in the process of bringing out a book, and assume that readers don’t see it either

But that does not mean we cannot be disrupted. At the FutureBook Conference, which was held at the beginning of this week, we learned how the new tools are additive, widening and deepening what we can do, as well as, perhaps, reducing some of the more burdensome tasks. As for AI, it would be “negligent” not to experiment, said one speaker, in reference to audiobook narration. The message was positive and front-footed. We see the challenges and we lean in.

Value is not just about time, however, it is also about how we choose to apply ourselves. The latest CLPE report into representation in children’s books shows a decline in titles featuring characters of colour. We must identify the block here, writes Penguin’s Lit in Colour lead Dr Zaahida Nabagereka, warning that this retreat narrows our reach and sends a signal about whose stories we care about.

None of us should be comfortable reading this report, writes Storymix founder Jasmine Richards. She is right. We cannot present a progressive persona about some parts of the business, and then separately act as if the task of representing modern Britain is somehow beyond us. “The Market for Lemons” assumes that it is the purchasers who don’t understand the value in the product: but a more existential threat is when those who make the goods don’t understand the value in putting the effort in.