One of the coolest things I have seen this week is HarperStudio’s formspring account.
This action is particularly amazing/awesome since Bob Miller — the head of HarperStudio — announced his departure just when they opened the account.
When I originally read Jonathan Karp’s 12 step program to fix book publishing I cynically understood it as his prescription to recast the industry in the image of his own company — Twelve. Now, a year later, a session with a local literary agent has me rethinking Karp’s outlook. Karp’s points are as follows…
12. End Kabuki publishing
11. Tell the truth
10. Stop the copycat books
9. More editorial quality control
8. Imprints for everyone
7. One bidder per company
6. Pay authors to market their work
5. Empower them
4. Be loyal to the book, not the ego
3. Announce all deals
2. Downsize
1. Advertise
Upon reflection, two things come to mind.
First, it is remarkable that Karp swims below water most of the time. For instance why is he not making the kinds of appearances that Bob Miller is making? Is he too busy or is he being ignored? If it is the latter, that just proves what a joke the publishing conference circuit is.
Second, most of Karp’s points pertain to shaking the inefficiencies out of the system. As a rule, when digital meets analog that happens naturally from the outside in. It is really really hard to do well from the inside out. It is like Karp is telling publishers to go light themselves on fire. Cannibalize yourself is a hard enough message to execute. Immolate yourself, to then be reborn is almost impenetrable… until of course you wait a year and see that what was once impenetrable is now inevitable. Stupid bidding practices, random acquisition patterns, in-house redundancies, and overconfidence in authors and properties in the pipeline all have to go. As Karp notes, houses still have mystery employees –
“What does that person do?” Until you can answer that question for everyone, publishers will be carrying too much overhead.
Exactly. This is why publishers get no sympathy from me on the pricing issue. The fat still needs to be burned off at most US houses. As Karp reminds me this is just a timing question. Digging your heels in won’t help.
THE READER by Fragonard
There is a company in Hollywood that polls viewers as they leave movie theatres. They don’t employ clipboard toting college students. They don’t ask for your postal code or email address. They simply hand you a smallish card that resembles a tear-away lottery ticket and ask you to indicate your preferences on a sliding scale. The cards are usable for any movie. They don’t require a pen and they can be handled and returned by viewers in less than a minute. The cards are the perfect vector for gathering in-the-field data about consumer preferences. Did you like the movie? Would you see it again? Would you recommend it to a friend? Those are all deceptively valuable questions if you are deciding to pile more marketing dollars onto a property.
When I look at the consumer-preference data floating around bookland it is embarrassingly absent. I say it is embarrassing because we now have the benefit of the internet and we aren’t using it. Why not? It has never been easier to reach out to readers and ask them questions that would help publishers make decisions. Perhaps publishers don’t see value in asking readers what they think? The marketing dollars are spent. The publishing decisions are made. I could easily see a publisher saying sales is the only metric that counts. For shame. Marketing science is a newish field but one that could greatly influence how publishers did business, but first they need to know about it and understand it and realize it isn’t expensive.
So where to start? Publishers should take heed from the example above. Be quick, be easy, and be specific with your questions. Put up a dedicated URL for feedback per book and experiment with the prompt for customers. Iterate until you get it right. But most importantly start with the end-result in mind. What problem are you trying to solve by polling readers? What kind of data do you need to make the decision? Ask for that, and only that. Don’t cast your net too far. Then do it again. After you are relatively confident in the process, map into the Facebook demographic data and let the value pour in.
I kept thinking of Hugh McGuire as I read ReWork by the guys from 37Signals. Rework is about launching a business and doing great work. It is about handling meetings and hiring. It is essentially about being and thinking like the partners at 37Signals. At its core that means doing less.
McGuire — a friend — started developing BookOven in 2008. It was ambitious and sprawling and primarily a secret. Ultimately, the target was the inefficiencies/friction in the book making process. Authors submit their manuscripts and then wait two years for their book to hit the shelves. McGuire took aim at that fat and positioned BookOven to be the Bowflex work out machine for the publishing business.