Yesterday David and I had a rather lovely meeting with a gentleman who runs the Law Institute of Victoria’s beautifully organized and rather enticing bookshop on Bourke Street in Melbourne city. Owen Hyde didn’t explain how long he’d been in this role but hearing how he’d been involved with early explorations into taking the bookshop online and how after five long years the movement to online distribution of niche legal content could really be seen to be happening I’d guess it was long enough to be really meaningful.
Owen runs both the real world LIV bookshop and its equally successful online version and because they are so well organized lawyers and those needing access to specific legal content from all over the country, purchase their content with the LIV bookshops. They have become the de facto national legal bookshop – a perfect niche in my opinion.
For me this was a really interesting meeting as I’ve not spent anytime at all in the world of law institute lawyers and all of my dealings with lawyers have been pretty much through the businesses David and I have been involved with and we’ve dealt mainly with commercial lawyers, who while still legal fraternity, are not really hallowed halls and unique precedents and arguments.
As I’ve written in previous blog posts, David and I and our little company Webzing Pty Ltd started a new venture, actually with specialist lawyers, the team at Erskine Rodan & Associates Immigration Lawyers a few months ago. Christine and Erskine Rodan had published in 2009 a unique book that drew on their vast knowledge of and practice in immigration law called Migrating To Australia: A Guidebook, that was one of only a couple of publications targeting the immigration law space.
This wonderful book was available in the Law Institute of Victoria bookshop and as Owen told us it sold really well and they’d sold out. The issue the writers found with the book was that in the area of immigration law there are at least a couple of legislative changes every month and therefore the book fairly quickly became out of date, even though it had been three years in the researching and writing. This issue of losing relevance as soon as there is a significant change to immigration law isn’t one that goes away in this fast-changing area of law, so a solution to this needed to be devised.
In our collaborative venture with the Erskine Rodan & Associates team we’ve completely updated and a 2nd version of the Guidebook and decided to make it available as an e-book, giving us the facility to do a major update and rewrite as soon as the legislative changes start to make the content of the book look out-of-date and out-of-touch. But interestingly in our discussion with Mr Hyde from the LIV Bookshop, there are various really specific areas of the law where the customers really aren’t that worried that the book is out-of-date, that they use it as reference and a kind of text, but that they really like to have access to a hard copy version as well as an e-version.
Which leads us back to the issue of creating a book whose content we know will be out-of-date very soon, printing it on demand, but making sure we keep the customer properly informed via emailed legal updates. Whilst it is early days for Webzing and Erskine Rodan & Associates on this venture, we’re starting to get a bit more clear on how those who want content around immigration law are likely to want to receive it and use it.
Our short journey and interlude at the LIV Bookshop, whereby you can buy a legal reference book which costs you over $500, and those who want and can put to good use the information and content in this book do not hesitate to pay that amount, reminded me that in a really perfect niche the economics are quite different to a mainstream product. With a really important legal tome you may only sell a thousand copies of a version, however 1000 copies at $500 is not a number to sneeze at.
As my life rolls on and so much around me appears to become commoditized I really get interested and excited in those perfect niches where small groups of people congregate, and they congregate around content and ideas that have a really premium value to them. That to me is a perfect niche and I’m looking out for more of those in 2010.
For those of you who are interested in Australian migration law or have someone in your world who needs to get across what’s involved in migrating to Australia, don’t hesitate to refer them to our site www.migrationdigest.com.au. There are two definitive guidebooks available for sale – Migrating to Australia: The Guidebook which is a definitive overview of all bar the tourist visa categories, and Business Skills Migration: The Guidebook a comprehensive guide to migrating to Australia under the business skills and investor visas. You can also sign up for a free weekly digest about all the latest in Australian immigration news and trends at the Migration Digest website.
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