Obviously our anthologies help move blog content from the internet-space to real-world meat-space. We enable our readers to read while on the bus, train, or in a park. While lying on a coach with their legs hanging over the side. But what other value is Fractal Press adding?
Let me illustrate this through a metaphor in finance. Consider the S&P500 index. It is simply a basket of 500 stocks that are all already listed on the stock exchange. Stock pickers could easily reproduce the returns and risk profile of the S&P500 by buying the individual stocks underlying the index. So what value is the index?
An index offers the following benefits:
1. Reduces transaction costs
I don’t know what stock broker you use, but mine (Fidelity) charges $8 per trade. If I wanted the risk/return properties of the index I would lose a lot of money trying to buy each of the individual stocks. It is simply much more cost-effective to purchase the index itself and then maybe consider other individual stocks for my portfolio.
2. It offers a level of quality
A lot of research goes into creating indices. There are many forms of indices to begin with - market-cap weighted, price weighted, etc. Also, there are strict rules for a company to be listed in an index. Growth, profitability, and volatility are only some of the parameters that a company needs to pass before being listed.
The Case-Shiller index which represents home prices (now in the news because of the sub-prime problems) is created and managed by Yale University professor Robert Shiller. A lot of expertise and filtering goes into the index. So when a lay trader buys an index, she knows that there is a certain quality bar that the component stocks have passed. Without the index, the trader would have had to do hours of her own research to get the same quality.
3. Springboard
As indices create a quality bar for the individual stocks, people use the index as a springboard to research and invest in other stocks that are similar. Faced with a vast number of available stocks (more than 10,000 American companies are listed in the markets), the index offers a great starting point to explore other companies. Finding competitors or other companies in the same industry becomes more straightforward once one has a “seed” to begin working with.
Anthologies offer similar benefits:
Our anthologies play exactly the same role as the index with individual blog posts acting as the underlying stocks.
1. Less searching, more reading
Our readers spend less time searching, jumping, and subscribing to blogs and more time actually reading them.
2. Quality guarantee
Being anthologized means that the blog and the blog posts has gone through some amount of filtering. Even if we, the editors at Fractal Press, are incompetent, the other co-authors of the anthology will not tolerate low quality content from other bloggers because they have reputations to maintain. (We like to think we’re competent though.)
3. Springboard
The anthology acts as a perfect springboard for someone who is new to the area and wants to get a good overview of the options available. If she’s impressed with a particular post in the anthology, she’s likely to make an effort to visit the blog and subscribe.
The anthology acts as a quick, representative taste of the world of blogs in that area.
Anthologizing adds a lot of value to both readers as well as the bloggers. We hope you’ll help us publish many anthologies!
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