Publishers make needed global changes

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Derek S

In the past week or so, there have been two major announcements that help point the direction that global publishers are going.

First, HarperCollins rolled out their HarperCollins 360 global publishing program–an initiative designed to make all of Harper’s English-language titles–no matter where published–available in every market around the world. Distribution will be restricted only by rights, not by “technology or geography.” This addresses one of the big issues for global publishers–making their content available wherever the customer expects to find it. If I read about a book in a blog, hear about it on Twitter, or discover it via search, but can’t buy it in my market, then I’m lost as a customer.

A few days later, Holtzbrinck’s Macmillan announced that they would restructure their global business along verticals rather than by geographies. In the publishing part of their world, this creates two global businesses–one is focused on trade and the other on their Science & Education business. Instead of “multi-domestic” publishers, with a regional focus, Macmillan will run these lines of business globally–joining up resources across boundaries to open up new opportunities.

Both of these initiatives seek to take advantage of key trends around digitization and globalization of the publishing business–the lack of borders in digital/online channels, the ability to drive worldwide discovery through digital marketing including social media, the rise of alternative means of book delivery (POD, eBook), a growing global customer base that expects to find the book they want wherever they are.

For many big international publishers, especially in English-language, there are opportunities to create centralized, global services within their businesses (marketing, finance, operations for example) to drive collaboration, share ideas, and create an impact for global author brands. Not coincidentally, these globalized departments should be able to create efficiencies for the business–not just in cost savings, but in cost avoidance, and new revenue streams.

However, despite the promised upside, these new structures will require people to think differently about their roles. For example, if my email campaign launched from Singapore drives customer demand in Australia, the order is fulfilled through an online retailer in the UK, and that retailer bought stock through a US wholesaler, should the US sales rep get that credit? These are tricky questions for organizations that are used to managing their business locally.

It’s no coincidence that two of the major international publishers are looking at their global businesses in a new way. Expect to see more publishers follow suit driven by digital trends, customer expectations, and new opportunities.

BEA and BEA Bloggers conference 2012

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Derek S

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I can only claim it’s because this week has been packed with the BEA Bloggers conference followed by BEA. As I told a couple of publishing friends, I had more fun at BEA this year than I’ve had in years. (And I didn’t even make it to any parties–other than a terrific set from Band of Outsiders at Local 269.)

So, what made this year’s BEA more fun than ever?

As I posted earlier, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel on Demystifying the Publisher, Blogger Relationship. It was simply inspiring to be among 400+ people in love with books, authors, reading and writing about it. I know many publicists see bloggers as something akin to a plague of locusts, but it was great to see how keen these writers are to improve the professionalism of their writing and their relationship with publishers.

The panelists did a great job of fielding questions, giving different perspectives, and holding an insightful conversation with each other and with the larger room. Clearly, book bloggers — especially in fiction and young adult writing — are an important, emerging force in developing the conversation between author, reader, and publisher. Figuring out how to make this relationship work effectively and professionally, has the potential to signficantly benefit the publishing ecosystem.

The blogger conference was followed by BEA proper. For me, it was great to experience the fair without any connection to a booth. I didn’t have to worry about giveaways, author schedules, or a full slate of meetings. Instead, I had a handful of scheduled meetings and ran into old friends everywhere.

Taking the pulse of the fair through many hallway conversations, it seems to me that (for the most part) the publishing world is starting to believe that they can navigate the digital transformation of this business without becoming irrelevant.

And, along these lines, I thought the idea to bring in “Power Readers” on the last day of the show was refreshing. I know some publishing people were worried about it–but how great to let influential consumers and heavy readers backstage to connect with authors and brands. If the industry is to thrive, it must be more externally-focused on customers and even better at facilitating the connection between author and reader. Kudos to Random House for grabbing the branding opportunity to give every power reader a totebag and advance reading copies. At the same time, if this new initiative is to be truly successful, BEA does have a duty to make sure these power readers are really influential enthusiasts.

BEA also did more than ever to bring technology into the conference–from a very useful (if somewhat-slow-to-load) app to streaming video to social media. All very welcome. Maybe next year, free wifi in Javits?!

Tech, Jive, and Innovation

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Derek S

Over the last few days, I attended a Jive user group meeting and the May NY Tech Meetup.

I’ve written before about Jive. I believe their approach to social business has the potential to unlock great value—especially across big, global organizations—by changing how people work.

A selection of cases provided by one member company at the meeting showed a number of easy wins to be had by crossing silos, eliminating waste, incentivizing change, reducing duplication of effort, and streamlining communication. More importantly, Jive, in this user’s >$35 billion company, has clearly become an incubator for innovation—creating an environment where it’s easy to try new things, see if they work, and then either get behind them or move on. The freedom to test and experiment helps support a culture of innovation.

For many big, global companies, this is a tough thing to do. Too often, innovation gets relegated to formal programs that become their own slow-moving bureaucracy. Not so with this small team that is quickly driving change and innovation across a >$35 billion company.

And not so, at NY Tech Meetup (NYTM). This was my first time attending this event—700 people at NYU’s Skirball Center listened to eight teams present just-launched or about-to-launch digital products. The audience was engaged, responsive, and impressed. I was blown away by the creativity and energy shown by these entrepreneurs and how quickly they are moving to realize and test their ideas.

I thought there were a couple of note-worthy points about this event:

questions about business model are frowned upon—in this forum, the point is not to talk about how to make money (though I’m sure that’s considered elsewhere); the discussion is about what’s fun, cool, creative, clever, useful. This helps create a culture of innovation.

If you’re in “old” media, or any entrenched, big-infrastructure company, the barriers to entry are dropping away. Somewhere, a team of innovative technologists is thinking about how to eat your lunch for a relatively small investment—and they may not even know or care that it’s your lunch.

Driven by technology, more disruptive innovation is just around the bend. Companies that think they are secure for whatever reason—key account relationships, authors, superior product, infrastructure, geography—should stop and think about how a small innovative team would disrupt their business:

What legacy issues would a start-up avoid? How would they handle opportunity? How could innovation be unleashed? How will they connect with customers? How might a start-up collaborate better? How might they change the value proposition?

For me, these two events highlighted both the threat and opportunity that technology offers global publishers and other large companies. On one hand, NY Tech Meetup highlighted the pace of tech-driven innovation that could quickly disrupt established markets (or disrupt those markets further). Jive’s user group meeting illustrated how big companies can use technology to drive change and move more quickly to use their vast resources in order to be more competitive and innovative.

Brand, Facebook, and Office Parties

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Derek S

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but in the past few days, I’ve come across two brand sites on Facebook where photos of company parties were extremely prominent–not just a couple of snaps to show that they’re a fun bunch, but 50+ photos of everyone at the event–some looking good and others a bit worse for the wear. These were large, established companies–not start-ups using Facebook to enhance their fun appeal.

So, what’s wrong with that, you might ask. Only that a brand page (on Facebook–or anywhere) should be a considered projection of what the brand intends to communicate. The message should be focused on engaging with a community of customers, users, or potential employees. What’s the message created by candid photos of internal company events posted on a global forum? Is it okay if people in the photo are wearing badges with their first and last names, maybe their company and country or state? What if it’s clearly a swanky venue? As a customer or client, do I think the company is wasting my money? If it’s a dive bar, do I think the company is failing?

The right answer depends on the company and the brand–and the viewer of the photos. But generally, “too candid” or “too casual” photos on a company site represents lax brand stewardship. Worse, it could well be a privacy issue if people haven’t agreed to be personally identified or pictured at an event. This is not a friend’s Facebook page, but–like it or not–a corporate promotion and should be managed like one.

If a company is more casual and wants to build community and internal good will by showing everyone at a party, then by all means they should do so–by using an internal-facing vehicle: Jive, Sharepoint, Intranets, etc. But there should still be some level of curation if these are company properties.

When I see Facebook pages like the ones I’m talking about, it makes me wonder if the company has a bad social media strategy or just no social media strategy at all.

Pinterest: I’m in!

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Derek S

I’m more excited than I should be about getting my invite to Pinterest–the new, visual social media site that everyone’s talking about. I even liked the fact that they make you wait to join–a bit like Google+ but with more of an authentic feel–and it’s fascinating how they’ve taken a different, visual approach to social sharing.

I was thinking about how publishers might use Pinterest–what is the most visual representation of our products?– and immediately thought about cover design. As a veteran of the “cover wars” in more than one publishing role–you know, the ongoing discussion about packaging between design, marketing, sales, editorial, and the author (did I get everyone?)–I’ve come to believe deeply that good design matters. It’s where the consumer makes the first connection to a book. And of course that’s even more the case online.

For a while, it seemed like eBooks might mean the end of creative cover design for books–after all, is a cover really embossed if no one can touch it? So why bother with effects and special treatments? And perhaps there’s a degree of truth to that. But one thing Pinterest shows is that people have an emotional response to imagery. A great cover design communicates something about the content of the book, the perspective of the author, and appeals to that emotional response–even if the reader isn’t holding the book in her hand.

So, with that in mind, I was pleased to see the book cover from Hosseini’s The Kite Runner on my Pinboard the other day. That single image inspired many admiring comments about the book. I was curious, so I searched the title–and found hundreds of pinned and repinned cover images, likes, and comments about both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Pinterest reinforces that effective cover design isn’t only important in the physical world. We’ll see what happens as Pinterest grows beyond 10 million users, but I’d be advising authors to pay attention. When social lets consumers connect with appealing design, there are powerful forces at work–how exciting would it be for fans of The Kite Runner to see Hosseini comment on one of their pinned images? And how likely would that fan be to recommend the book even more enthusiastically? Effective cover design can help make that connection.

Mmmmm, Big Data: analytics, digital marketing, and the eBook

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Derek S

This week, in the space of a couple of days, I dropped in at Digital Book World and was invited to a dinner sponsored by Human 1.0 and DataXu (like Zoo). What’s the common theme? Analytics and Big Data.

Or, as Publisher’s Weekly put it in a Digital Book World overview: Consumers, Data, and Analytics in the Digital Book Era. The gist of what we talked about at dinner and at DBW is that we (and I mean everyone, not just publishers) are creating more and more data through our online activities–whether creating, purchasing or reading an eBook, browsing a website, tweeting, or posting a blog. Over time this adds up to petabytes and petabytes of data–big data–that a company can collect and could run through an analytics package. (DataXu provides one of these packages focused on Digital Marketing Management.)

This huge amount of data can be completely overwhelming. Lots of people I know are used to managing finite data points (small data) via spreadsheets and backward-looking reports. Having access to big data can be overwhelming. So while some publishers collect a lot of data, I haven’t seen many that have moved over into true analytics. Near real-time analytics could be a game changer for those publishers that want to build a deeper understanding of their eBook customer.

Why is this good? When your customer spends more and more time online and buys online–especially if they buy a digital product like an eBook–it becomes easier to collect and use consumer behavior to create effective marketing than it used to be. In the old days, a marketing manager might hang around a bookstore and watch as consumers flipped through books. At best, that yields anecdotal information. It might be better than nothing, but it’s not that much better.

So, it’s great to see the potential for big data discussed in industry forums especially as relates to digital marketing and eBook publishing. This year, it seems like retailers–B&N and Amazon in particular–have figured out the importance of using analytic tools to better reach eBook readers. I hope next year we’ll see more publishers talking about how their marketing and product development have been changed by customer insights developed through analytics.

Customer Experience: panmacmillan.com gets it right

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Derek S

Yesterday, I tweeted about the just-launched Pan Macmillan website in the UK(www.panmacmillan.com). While I appreciate the design and the functionality of their site, what I really like is the strategy behind it–putting the reader at the center of the PanMac customer experience. Not many publishers think this way, yet.

For those of you with access to Forrester research (www.forrester.com), Josh Bernoff (www.twitter.com/jbernoff) wrote an interesting piece of analysis about six months ago: Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer. He advocates four imperatives for customer-obsessed customers, and one of these is creating a customer experience that reaches across sales channels.

Until recently, this didn’t seem like a realistic proposition for many publishers –who often defined customer experience as the bookstore/online environment. Social media, email, web, and other digital-marketing tools now make it possible for publishers to curate their content and support a reader experience beyond the pages of the book. (Disclosure: while at McGraw-Hill, we created a site with similar intent though not as slick or complete as Pan Macmillan. Check it out if you’re interested: http://learnmore.mcgraw-hill.com).

It’s more important than ever that publishers make a meaningful connection with their readers (customers). Traditional retail around the world is under significant pressure. Without owning some part of the customer experience, publishers are at the mercy of price-promoting sales channels that, too often, see books and ideas as a commodity.

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