Richard Nash on the Future of Publishing

I like Nash's demeanor and his way of speaking, but what he says doesn't seem to amount to very much. You don't sell books, he says, to make money from book sales, but to create brand value. How the do you monetize your brand value? By affixing it to other products? Stephen King brand printing supplies, anyone? You sell access to your community, er, fan base. Great, but you have to build a fan base first. And you do that by writing books lots of people want to pay for. Seems like a meaningless shell game Nash has convinced himself is some new business model.