Feb
27
Three Things I “Knew” Before the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
One of the reasons to attend conferences is to confirm that your current beliefs and practices are valid. If you are anything like me, you, on occasion, make business decisions and take actions based on gut feelings or past experiences—feelings and experiences that are, as Nixon’s press secretary Ron Zeigler might have put it, inoperative.
There were at least three things I “knew” before I attended the TOC conference. I was pleased to find they were in fact still “operative.”
1. It isn’t time yet to abandon all the marketing efforts that have worked for years. Book events, speaking engagements, printed reviews, and interviews on radio and TV still have a place. Support your non-social media marketing with social media marketing and vice versa.
2. An app for an iPhone or other device isn’t a replacement for a book, but can both support your book sales and be profitable on its own.
3. The author, rather than the publishing company, is the social media marketer of choice. This is true for at least three reasons: Authors are usually more passionate and knowledgeable about their subject than a publishing company’s employee; social media is about personal connections, not corporate connections; and authors offer star appeal.
One thing I was surprised to learn was pointed out by Tim O’Reilly in his conference-closing address: The top ten blogs according to Technorati.com often include large organizations that are, in reality, publishers in that they are involved primarily in news gathering and distribution. Examples are The Huffington Post, Mashable and Boing Boing.
A side note: When my friends turn up their noses at reading books on a Kindle or other mobile device (like I used to), I’ve been smugly telling them there is an e-reader in their future. Now, after seeing what’s about to hit the landing strip, I’m going to tell them it is in their near future.
Just a write thought.
Feb
24
TOC Publishing Conference Takeaways
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Here, in random order, are a few quotes worth contemplating —often paraphrased—from various speakers at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. My apologies to the speakers for not attributing these, all were brilliant and many said basically the same things in different and enlightening ways.
• Mobile publishing does not equal digital publishing.
• Mobile is more like print than digital.
• Engagement is on the user’s terms.
• Mobile users are acceptive of ads.
• Usage is in short bursts of 3.5 to 4 minutes.
• Monetary exchange answers aren’t clear yet.
• In 2005, Apple’s first attempt at cell, the ROKR, held 100 songs.
• 2010 will be “The Year of the Mobile.”
• Consumers are trained now.
• The pieces are finally in place: Content, distribution substructure, devices.
• No buginess is accepted by users.
• Apps run from $3,000 to $100,000. Sourcebooks spends $3,000 to $7,000 for an app.
• Collect and analyze data: Metrics, metrics, metrics.
• Mobile devices are “super measurable.”
• Apple’s app store: 200,000 plus apps with 2 billion downloads.
• $4.99 is the pricing “sweet spot” for an app right now.
• No gatekeepers, but no quality controls.
• 75% of apps are paid, 25% are free.
• Symbian is the most-used cell phone operating system, but not popular in the U.S.
• Vendors (set up to assist you in making apps) make money by confusing you.
• One app sold for $800 and just returned an image of a ruby. Three were sold before Apple took it down.
• Plan your app’s launch day like you would with a book.
• Tuesdays and Wednesdays are best for launches.
• If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
• Fail quickly, iterate rapidly.
• For wirelesss downloads mentions on Mashable and TechCrunch are better than regular media.
• There’s a free Stanford course on iPhones available from Apple’s iUniversity.
• Most success stories are without a marketing budget.
• Learn XML.
• Your website is the hub of a social media strategy.
• Choose team members passionate about your topic for social media marketing.
• Offer tools so your audience can promote your content.
• Content is king.
• Sales are driven by instant gratification.
• Embed links generously.
• Don’t be a commercial.
• Your high quality content is a targeted sales pitch.
• Stay focused.
• Start slow and build.
• Think long-term.
• Be consistent and persistent.
• A sign in Einstein’s office: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
• Macmillan’s Dynamic Books: Text books that can be changed by the professor are an effort to curb used book sales.
• The speed of innovation is accelerating.
• Generational shifts are coming into play in big ways.
• The 8 to 18 crowd spend average of 7.5 hours on digital device a day.
• Simplify, connect, conquer.
• Watch the periphery.
• Limit the variables.
• Leave your comfort zone.
• Publishing was B2B is now B2C.
• Golden Age of Engagement.
• Self-expression is the new entertainment.
• Moore’s law (Google if you aren’t familiar with it) applies.
• Information technology has a 50% deflation rate annually.
Attending conferences like this is expensive, but it repays you over the year many times over.
Just a write thought.
Feb
23
Books and Cell Phone Apps?
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Promotion, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, held this year at New York’s Marriott Marquis Times Square, is the place to try and keep up with the technological advances currently flooding the book publishing industry.
I attended three workshops yesterday. The first was titled “Selling in Mobile Markets” and was presented by Rana Sobany author of the O’Reilly book Marketing iPhone Apps.
She gave some interesting history:
The 1980s, she said, was all about carriers establishing the substructure necessary for cell phones. The first cell phone call was made in 1983.
The 90s were about cell phone size with, in 1999, Motorola unveiling the StarTAC, the first cell phone to weigh in under one pound.
Today there are a reported 4.6 billion cell phones in use. This approaches the population of the world, which is approximately 6.8 billion, but there are lots of third-world countries without land lines to most places, forcing the use of cell technology and, apparently, many people carry more than one cell phone.
Sobany, an articulate woman in her 30s (I’d guess) who is passionate about her subject, said she’d bet many in the audience were carrying more than one. I doubted that, but later in the conference I was speaking to the sales rep for Publishers Weekly and he fielded calls on at least two as we spoke. I felt underprivileged with only a single iPhone in my pocket.
What does that proliferation of cell phones mean for authors and publishers? It means we had better plan on having a presence in the mobile world. It is predicted that within a few years more people will access the Internet via mobile devices than from PCs. Mobile apps are today—and will be more so in the future—important ways to support book sales.
Here, in no particular order, are a few new nuggets I gleaned from Sobany’s talk:
• She says this decade will be the “iPhone” decade. Not meaning that iPhone will be the only player, but is the one currently defining the industry.
• Publishers, in designing apps for mobile devices need:
—a brand vision, by which I took she meant working single titles would result in loss of momentum and subsequent impact. She said, at the least, use a common logo. This would suggest book authors should consider writing series or leave the apps to your publisher.
—to make data-driven decisions. Metrics, metrics, metrics…one great thing about mobile devices and the web in general is that you can obtain lots of data. Using it to ferret out what actions are best is still art as well as science, but ignore it at your peril.
—iterate quickly. Updating to keep your app current to the needs of today’s user is important if you don’t want your app to be replaced by another’s.
—keep in mind that the attention a user gives to his device is given in short bursts of about three and a half to four minutes. This isn’t all bad, it is a highly-focused three and a half to four minutes, but an app that requires 10 minutes of concentration….
There was much more. I’ll try to get to some of it later, but, an interesting prediction I heard more than once at this conference is that Twitter will, in essence, be a thing of the past by the end of the year. Twitter, a short-lived fad? Who could have predicted?
Just a write thought.
Feb
1
Amazon.com Caves on Kindle E-Book Pricing
Filed Under Book Marketing, Books, E-books, Publishing | Leave a Comment
Amazon.com and MacMillan, one of the nation’s largest publishers, engaged in a bit of tussle over the last few days. It was about the much-debated (within the publishing industry anyway) pricing Amazon had chosen to offer on Kindle e-book editions of best-selling books.
Where a hardcover best-seller might have a retail price of $25 to $30, Kindle editions were offered at $9.99.
Since Amazon pays about half of the retail price for each Kindle edition sold, the company was apparently using the $9.99 pricing as a lost-leader in an effort to sell more Kindle e-readers which in turn would create a greater demand for Kindle e-books.
Publishers, however, were worried that, in the nascent e-book business, consumers would become fixated on a belief that e-books should sell at considerably lower prices than hardcover books.
MacMillan raised a fuss over the discounted pricing and, for a few days, Amazon quit selling thousands of MacMillan titles directly—you could still buy the titles through Amazon from other vendors.
Yesterday, Amazon reversed course and capitulated. They will now offer Kindle editions of MacMillan titles at the publisher-suggested prices of around $12.99 to $14.99.
In my opinion much of this is moot or soon will be.
Within five years, digital files of most books will be stored in one or two huge repositories where the rights owners—publishers, authors, whoever—will dictate how much they want to charge for each downloaded copy; perhaps with prices for different categories of buyers such as libraries, brick-and-mortar stores—who will use equipment that prints and binds a book while you wait—and online retailers.
Amazon and other retailers will tap into these repositories, downloading and delivering a copy each time they get an order for a book. The retailer will add whatever mark-up their efficiencies and market pressures allow to the price they pay.
The repository will handle collecting from the retailer and paying the publisher or other rights holder.
Look for Amazon to discontinue stocking printed editions of most titles, prefering to download and print each book when a customer orders one.
Just a write thought.
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