SIGNS OF PROGRESS IN THE “MIXED MARRIAGE”

OF ON AND OFFLINE PUBLISHING  

After several years of wrangling over how to make a profitable “mixed marriage” between on and offline publishing, indications are popping up in surprising venues that the betrothal is progressing quietly, but steadily. 

Creative experiments by several sectors of the publishing industry, from newspapers to book publishers, are blending the features of print and digital in ways never before considered. The results are so exciting that we are devoting all the news blurbs in this issue to showcasing them. Perhaps some of these may spark a new idea to boost sales of your books.  

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BOOK PUBLISHERS FIND NEW WAYS

TO PROFIT FROM ONLINE ACTIVITY 

It’s no longer just e-books! Those electronic wonders have captured the headlines week after week and more than doubled sales in the first half of the year. Flushed with that success, publishers are exploring newer means of participating in the digital world and benefitting from its unique potential.  

Some have begun rental programs of digital text books at prices far below retail, and offer students the option to return them or pay the difference and buy the books at the end of the rental period. Others have begun subscription programs modeled after Netflix. Rental programs may well become a way to counteract the growing popularity of used books which bring no revenue at all to a publisher or author. 

While some publishers have found that offering their books in both digital and print format has not reduced demand for the print version, other somewhat more leery adventurers have begun selling single chapters in e-book form for as little as $1.99. 

There is no question that selling books online at prices substantially lower than print versions reduces overall income, but the profit these sales produce are far higher than that of print book sales because production costs are so much less. Savings in pre-press work, printing supplies like ink and paper, press room staffing and post-publication storage and distribution can turn these lower selling prices into soaring profits. 
 

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N.Y. TIMES SEEKS TO TURN TWITTER EXCITEMENT

INTO A SEARCH PROGRAM LIKE “THE MOMENT” 

Reaching out to bridge the gap between digital and print, the New York Times built its presence on Facebook to more than a half million followers, and is now planning an increased involvement with Twitter where it already has more than a million followers. The principal vehicle for its effort is The Moment, its signature digital product. This fast-paced, upscale fashion blog has generated a good deal of attention, integrating commentary from social network sites. 

According to Mediaweek.com, the paper is exploring the possibility of developing a search product that can wander through the mass of Tweets to aggregate commentary on specific  topics. The approach has worked in compiling comments for The Moment. 

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vp of digital operations at the paper, claims that the involvement with the social networks is driving in the neighborhood of 15,000 visitors to NYTimes.com  every week. He said that the Times is seeking to serve as a guide and an editor with its proposed new plan which hopefully will aggregate commentary from thousand of categories. 

Perhaps it’s not yet producing a revenue stream, but laying this mixed media ground work bodes well for ultimately fashioning a lucrative breakthrough.  
 

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FACEBOOK BREAKS THE 300 MILLION MARK

AND BECOME CASH FLOW POSITIVE 

The big news from the digital world this month was Facebook’s announcement that its worldwide membership had crossed the 300 million mark. Even more important was the news that the world’s largest social network was finally making profit.  

Its growth has been rather remarkable. Since July, just three months ago, it has mushroomed by 50 million new members. While the company had claimed several profitable quarters, the expectation was that it would take until 2010 to become cash flow positive. 

Marriages like the one with the N.Y. Times, surely has helped push membership to these new heights. Blending on and offline media helps both partners in the marriage   

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Charlie’s Choice

Weekly Tips to Help You Write,

Publish & Promote Your Work 

DISTRIBUTING AND PROMOTING YOUR BOOK

IN A CROWDED, COMPETITIVE MARKETPLACE 

      Writing and publishing your book is just the beginning, not the end, of introducing it to the reading world. You are about to enter a highly competitive market of hundreds of thousands of books fighting for space on the shelves of bookstores and for the attention of readers through both on and off line channels. Just last year alone, 480,000 brand new titles never before in print were added to that list of competitors.

      What happens once your book comes off the press is as important as the writing and editing you have done, if you plan to market it to more than just immediate family and friends. It requires continuous promotion to introduce a new book and then to sustain purchasing activity. But first let’s look at the distribution process and how you bring your book to market.

Distributing Your Book

      It’s important that you understand  how books are sold in today’s world. These statistics were unveiled at this year’s Book Expo by the PubTrack division of R.R. Bowker, the industry’s most respected compiler of book information:

      23% of books are purchased online

      22% are sold through the large book chains (B&N, Borders, Books-a-Million)

            10% are sold through book clubs

            20% are sold through mass merchandisers (6%), warehouse clubs (4%), supermarkets           

            (2%), other retailers (1%), bookfairs (1%)

            The balance are sold through other outlets like direct sales by the author, organizations, charity     

            programs, speaking/signings and craft fairs 

      Far too many novice authors don’t realize that books are never sold directly by the author or publisher to a bookstore or a library. There can be one or more intervening levels, each of which has a specific function to perform. A distributor handles your book when it first comes off the press. It stores the books for you, contacts stores and/or libraries and tries to sell your book through its staff of salespersons.

      But even the distributor in most cases never sells directly to the bookstore or library. Actual purchasing is done through a wholesaler, whose job it is to maintain a basic inventory of books and be ready to ship them to the store or library when requested.

      Maintaining separate accounts for the vast number of authors and publishers they deal with is far too cumbersome and costly for stores and libraries. Therefore they order books from almost all sources through the wholesaler they choose to deal with. That way they control the bookkeeping for just one supplier. Although there are specialty and regional wholesalers, the most widely used on a national basis are Ingram selling principally to bookstores and Baker & Taylor to libraries, government offices and other institutions. However, each of these wholesalers is able to fill orders from any source.

Online Selling

      You are familiar with Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Borders.com and Books-a- Million.com. Both traditional and POD publishers usually register your book with at least one and usually three or four of these sites. They can produce substantial sales, but you must be aware of how to obtain the best advantage from each of them. In future columns, we’ll look at tips and techniques of using these to get the most exposure for you and for your books. 

      Of course, many books are sold by you directly to the customer through the Internet. We have talked in earlier columns of the importance of creating a web site to serve as the home base of all your online operations. One of those operations is selling your books. That can be done by using either a separate web site or a page devoted to it on your primary web site or both. 

      A good selling page (landing page as it is commonly called) will contain narrative about your book and the benefits derived from reading it. It should have endorsements and/or excerpts from favorable reviews. Your customer needs a place and a method to pay for the book. The most widely used system is PayPal through which a customer can pay by a variety of standard credit cards or by setting up an account with PayPal. 

      There are a number of good systems available on the market today. You might go to your favorite search engine to find them and review their web sites before you select one. The rates are generally very affordable. PayPal, which processes more than 78 million accounts worldwide, normally charges between 1.9% and 2.9% of the transaction price, plus a 30 cents fee per transaction. Setup is free and there are no cancellations charges.

      In addition, there are a number of book stores online that can handle your book. Many of them are linked to Amazon with a direct tie-in. Your book is ordered and billed at the site and processed and shipped by Amazon.

Launching Your Book

      I am sure all of you realize that the heaviest barrage of promotion occurs at the time your book is formally published. But there is work to be done well before the release date. Some of the most prestigious reviewers will not accept a book after it has been published. They want to receive it at least three months before release. These reviews in publications like  Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus , ForeWord Magazine and others are extremely important in generating attention within the industry. A favorable review will generate many other reviews and result in better sales right out of the box.

      The book should be sent to them as an Advance review Copy (ARC). This can be either in galley form wrapped in the book cover or sent in what is essentially the final form. It should be marked as an “Advance Review Copy – Uncorrected Proof” since it may still contain minor uncorrected typos. Your printer may be able to run ARC’s. If not, there are a number of short-run digital presses that can accommodate your need. I suggest printing between 50 and 75 copies and sending them to selected sources for endorsements that you can use on the back cover or inside the book as well.

      Once the book is officially launched, don’t stop sending out review requests. A review is one of the most effective forms of publicity you can receive because it is not you or your PR firm praising the book. It is a detached third person, and therefore carries much more weight. Think in terms of “the more the merrier” for the first six months to a year and keep sending out your requests. Always request that the reviewer place his/her review on Amazon and hopefully on the other .com bookstores.

      In future weeks we will continue discussing more of these post-publication activities, concentrating first on developing a powerful sales campaign and following that up with more detailed discussions of obtaining reviews, getting the most out of your presence on Amazon or B&N, using many of the available online sales-boosting possibilities . See you then.

      Keep Writing!    

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TWITTER’S TWISTING AND TWIRLING

ON THE ISSUE OF PAID ADVERTISING 

It’s hard to know whether Biz Stone and his Twitter gang are eager to dance at the online/offline wedding. Two weeks ago Reuters ran a piece quoting Stone’s statement, “We leave the door open for advertising,” and with that the terms of use were amended to allow ads on the site. The change specified that user must agree that “Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place advertising on the services…” 

This past week, Reuters reported that Stone reversed his position and stated that he had no plans to allow advertising on the site this year. He added that the financial picture was “pretty good right now,” despite the recent chatter that Twitter was now planning to monetize and start earning revenue.  

Nonetheless, there are rumors that the site could begin some experimental activity such as testing for-pay features and help for commercial users to harvest data on the people who follow their twits. It sounds as though the wedding ceremony may have been delayed, but there still remains a pretty solid engagement.

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WILL RISING ENROLLMENTS OF JOURNALISM STUDENTS

HELP TO SOLVE EXISTING ON/OFFLINE CONCERNS?  

Despite widespread layoffs and some closings in the newspaper industry, enrollments in journalism schools are on the rise. These young people bring with them a background of blogging, posting and twittering, expressing their thoughts through the new media that have caused such havoc in the print industry.  

Dean of Academic Affairs at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism told the Chronicle of Higher Education that he attributes this to their desire to be “part of the effort to recast and remake journalism.” 

There’s no question that these newcomers approach the staid world of journalism with fresh ideas of how to integrate print and digital. They come with a perspective that is radically different from the concept of today’s single-minded newsroom.  

As Barbara B. Hines, President of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication told the magazine, “These students are also very comfortable multitasking, and they like the allure of doing different things every day.”  

Enrollments were up last year, capping a ten-year trend that has seen  growth of 35%. The information comes from the annual survey conducted  by the University of Georgia’s Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Respondents to the survey totaled 2,542 graduates of journalism programs at 86 schools. 

Can this trend herald new, creative marriage counselors who can resolve the rocky problems of online/offline wedlock? 

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BANNED BOOK WEEK IS SCHEDULED

FOR SEPTEMBER 26 THRU OCTOBER 3 

The only national celebration of the freedom to read, Banned Book Week, was launched in 1982 to counteract the proliferation of attempts to remove or restrict access to books in public and school libraries, classrooms and bookstores.  

Since that date, more than 1,000 books have been challenged in hundreds of communities in every state of the nation. The targets have ranged from classics and great works of American literature to books that explore current social problems. 

Banned Book Week was created as a cooperative effort of the American Library Association, Association of American Publishers and the American Booksellers Association. 

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ONCE AGAIN, GOOGLE TAKES THE LEAD &

MARKETS NEW ONLINE SOURCE FOR NEWS  

Convinced that the major stumbling block to effective online news sites is the length of time they take to load, Google researchers have created “Fast Flip,” on which viewers can flip through a variety of articles from a large number of sources to find those that interest them. 

Krishna Bharat, the researcher who created Google News, states that browsing news online is far slower than scanning pages of a print document. 

The bone that Google is throwing to publishers of print periodicals is a share of the revenues from the advertisements that will appear along with the news stories.  

A number of prominent periodicals have been wooed by the digital giant. Popular magazines like Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek and Good Housekeeping have signed up. Among the newspapers are leaders like the Washington Post and the New York Times. 

The big question is will this experiment lead to a way to develop adequate ad revenue for online versions of periodicals. After all, that has been a major stumbling block to conversion from print to digital. Equally important is the concern of whether participating periodicals will be able to sustain their own discrete sites when confronted with the competition of an aggregated site. 

“Fast Flip” may prove to be a major step forward to help print publications reach a solution to the thorny question of survival in the print/digital battleground or it may signal their demise. Only time will tell. 

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JUSTICE DEPT CALLS FOR CHANGES

IN THE GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH SETTLEMENT 
 

Here we go again. Now the U.S. Department of Justice has weighed in on the controversy over Google’s Book Search program, stating that “The court should reject the proposed settlement and encourage the parties to continue negotiations to comply with Rule 23 and the copyright and antitrust laws.”  

Although it condemned this proposal, the department gave strong support to the development of an agreement that would create a fair program of digitization of books. It states that it recognizes the “important societal benefits” of a balanced program. 

Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers issued a joint statement that they would work together to resolve the objections of the DoJ. The Open Book Alliance, which has long opposed the deal but supports the concept, announced it was pleased by the latest development. 

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