I think we are all aware that the industry is changing. Who gives us money, how much we get, and what we provide in return is going to be different in ten years than it is today. That is a given. But ultimately the name of the game will be selling content* — either to readers or advertisers or companies that add additional value (like movie studios) or whoever.

So talking about new products or new pricing strategies or new sales channels or new contract terms or new marketing tactics all seem short sighted. We should be talking about the entire model — the framework, the org structure, the business design, the ecosystem, whichever — not the component parts.

Yesterday Seth Godin told publishing people to develop their own “tribal” networks to reach readers. Great. But how do you actually execute that? You don’t. It is not a strategy. It is not a framework. It is a behaviour. It is more bafflegab about how publishers need to change or else. It is FUD.

Instead we need to have a level-headed conversation about reorganizing the publishing company. Identify strategies. Identify outcomes. Make decisions. In short we need to model an alternative business. There are tools and methods for doing that. Is anybody using them? Am I crazy thinking no one is?

*selling content versus selling a service will have to what for another post

But what about taking decentralization one step further in book publishing? What about decentralizing the downside?

Right now the publisher assumes the risk, so it has all the power and makes most of the decisions about how a book is marketed and sold. What if the risk was spread out along a contracted supply chain? Each party along the chain invests time or money. Each party should be rewarded or penalized based on the book’s performance in proportion to their exposure. Essentially invert the existing model and put the author — not the publisher — at the centre.

Here is an example of how this could work: a freelance editor and a writer team up for a project. The editor agrees to work with the author to get the manuscript in shape for publication. The editor isn’t paid by the author so there is a built-in quality filter at the very beginning. Editors, theoretically, would only sign up for projects that have potential.

Once the project is underway the editor/writer team approach a freelance marketing/publicity person. Again the marketer is not paid until the book makes money so there is a secondary filter for quality. The fourth and last person to join the team is the designer/producer. Together these four people make a beautiful product and split the potential profits. Say a third goes to the writer, a third goes to the editor and the designer and the marketer split what remains.

Now here is the key. All the decisions about the book are made together and they are made in the open and online. Else wise the circle of reinforcing trust that filters for quality could be gamed — writers could convince their in-law who has an English degree to be the editor and that wouldn’t get us any farther ahead than the Trafford model. The reputations of the editors, marketers, and designers need to be on the line with the authors’.

And it goes without saying, at the beginning of life, the book is sold online or print-on-demand. That way returns are non-existent and the need to cut in a retailer and a salesperson is minimized. If the success of the project warrants an offset print run, the cost of that could be split or crowd sourced via a platform like Kickstarter.com.

Voila. A 21st century publishing model that puts the power back in the author’s hands while it reinvents the quality-control mechanism of a traditional house and it eliminates the waste of warehousing and shipping. All that remains to consider is the website for such a project — what would the platform look like and who would run it?

Kickstarter is halfway there but I want to invest my expertise — not my money. Bookoven and Fictionaut could also grow into these shoes. They would need to change their focus slightly. I am not convinced that Bob Miller’s “Re-thinking the Publisher/Author Partnership” goes far enough. At the end of the day the writer needs to retain control of their own intellectual property. Signing up for life with Harper, regardless of royalty, makes me uneasy.

—————————

Kickstarter was covered by cNet and the NewYork Times. Eoin Purcell blogged about it.

See also Nicola Griffth‘s Ozymandias publishing co-op.

The bookseller.com has posted the complete text of a speech given by Victoria Barnsley, chief executive of HarperCollins UK, entitled “Media’s last diehard?” I am posting this in a hurry today so what follows is my reaction in brief.

Barnsley offers some tantalizing info on the Bookarmy.com project (a link to the beta), “the secret weapon, in BookArmy’s arsenal, is a sophisticated algorithm, which generates book recommendations, based on feedback from other readers about their likes and dislikes.” This is starting to sound like a project I can get behind — part Netflix, part IMDB part Publishers Marketplace. Great ingredients. It is coming in January.

Barnsley outlined an initiative to create an annotated version of The Golden Notebook in conjunction with Institute of the Future of the Book. This is really cool.

This project is a purely marketing exercise aimed at increasing the continued relevance of Doris’s work to new generations but it also illustrates the kind of value, that can be added, by a publisher, to the experience of consuming a text.

Barnsley also talked about the authonomy.com project. I have yet to check out the Golden Notebook initiative or authonomy.com but I am looking forward to doing a deeper dive.

Barnsley also tripped my cynical radar a couple of times with her comments.

She said “I’m not as worried as some by risk of disintermediation. A publisher’s job is complex….” And a music label executive’s job isn’t?

She said “authonomy [puts] us at the centre of a hub of interactivity, between readers and would-be writers….” Meaning the writers on authonony aren’t really writers until they are published by you?

And it is a wee pretentious to have “a number of writers and academics” first, then readers second, annotate the Golden Notebook. She obviously didn’t read Here Comes Everybody. Not to mention the publisher’s true value-add in that example is really pretty minimal.

But those are just small gripes. Barnsley’s message that publishers have to change is well received. And I am glad to see an executive at Harper Collins saying these things. I was worried with Jane Friedman gone and their profit down, they would have their heads in the sand. Instead they are challenging Penguin UK for the industry leader.

update – http://thegoldennotebook.org
I heart Laura Kipnis.

update2 —
A Great Roundup of Victoria Barnsley’ speech by James Bridle at Times Emit Apt Studio
Reaction from So Misguided and Beyond Hall8

update3 — The Digitalist

After reading first news of Indigo Books’ plans for a new e-content platform, as vague as it is, I am tempted to play a similar role to the American architect. I am tempted to suggest Indigo go small and simple, in spite of their ambition to go big. Usually I am all about innovation, but in this case I think Indigo should simply sell (e)books not try to shift the entire ebook/mobile marketplace. That is too much.

Let me backup for a second.

I want ebooks. I want ebooks on my iPhone. I want ebooks on my computer. I want them to be cheap(er). I want them to be future proof. And I want to buy them from Indigo.

I want to buy them from Indigo now.

To make me happy, all Indigo needs to do is set up a digital warehouse of DRM-free ePub/audio files and sell them to me. I would love that. I would buy heaps from them. Done right the addition of ebooks to  Indigo’s pre-existing product pages would be to the Kindle marketplace what Amazon’s MP3 store is to iTunes. A killer.

POW! Right back at you Bezos!

The ePub standard is set. It is device agnostic as well as platform agnostic. The standard has been shaky these past two years but it is a standard.

DRM is done. Indigo could use its clout to convince publishers to come around.

The most nuanced decision to make is whether to offer ‘a shelf in the cloud’ for customers with low-storage handhelds or not. Other than that, it is as simple as signing the terms and building the data warehouse. No?

By the sounds of it Michael Serbinis, Indigo’s chief technical officer, has other ideas. The Quill story says that he wants to create ‘an application’ for delivering publisher and user-submitted short content. I have something on my iPhone that does that already — it is called the internet. Forgive my pithiness Michael. I mean no disrespect but speaking as your target customer, I don’t want another layer — like this, this, this or even this — between me and an ePub file. I appreciate that you are trying to build value, but please, I beg you sell me a product not an ecosystem. That is my plea.

The one other thing in the article that had me worried was the focus on short content. Does anyone remember the Wired cover story on snack culture? See rebuttal here. It doesn’t work with books for two reasons: 1) Sampling a chapter mid-volume has to be the most unsatisfying reading experience of all time. Try it, you will see. Content chunking needs editorial intervention. End of story. 2) The filter problem just gets bigger as the content chunks get smaller. You can read the book excerpts in the newspaper because an editor already has. They are preselected for you. How should I know what chapter of War and Peace is the best to read out of sequence? How should I know what magazine article from Rolling Stone has stood the test of time? I don’t and I can’t.

Yes there are subway novels and twitter novels. But at the end of the day those are simply just novels too.

That said, I am fully prepared to be blown away in January. I would love if Indigo could change the way I consume content. As an iPhone and a Blackberry owner I am ready. And I am willing to pay. I hope they can go from standing start to success in no time. I hope they bring some innovation to the filter problem. But I still want a regular modest ebook store. Sell me ePub ebooks. I will be happy with that. No major architectural changes required.

I spotted the attached ad in last week’s news paper. Beijing Confidential author, Jan Wong, is touring China. The offer beckons “Book this trip and receive an autographed Jan Wong book pack from Random House of Canada.”

Ehren Cheung wrote a post last week about changing the nature of marketing and publicity in book publishing. He noted that running on catalog cycles is stupid. I have been thinking about the end game of digital for book publishers. One of my conclusions — not only shouldn’t it work on catalog cycles, marketing should never stop.

From the time an author signs with you until they are forgotten by the public you should be constantly selling them and selling their ideas — not necessarily their books. Impossible? Maybe. But there is scale to everything. Twenty percent of your authors already get 80% of the resources. But more importantly those resources should be available all the time — not just when an author has a new book and not just when a new season roles around. This assumes talented writers contracted with houses long term. Skeptical old school marketers may need to be reminded the web makes it easy to be always on. This idea shouldn’t be scary.

A possible reaction is that publishers are gate keepers — publishers aren’t talent managers, speaker bureaus, or agents. Currently agents are the “first line of defense”. Then publishers weed out the chaff. Book stores edit down the offering, Reviewers have their say. Then friends and fans are left to keep a work in circulation. Gate keeping isn’t a great longterm value proposition.

To keep marketing going 24/7/365 houses need to change the way the money works. If it is off season or years after publication, will there be a budget to draw from? Can the rules for managing that money be codified — i.e., so that it is not discretionary spending? There would be a bunch of ways to do this — a digital marketing escrow fund comes to mind. Regardless, for marketing and publicity to adapt to the digital reality houses need to change their budgetary practices, if they haven’t already.