Two Publishing Concerns
Julie Wilson, aka The Book Madam, appears to be starting a business. My friends Kassia and Kat from Quartet are scuttling theirs.
First, Book Madam & Associates. Julie has posted a run down of some of her business ideas at BookMadam.com.
Book Madam & Associates is an author and book promotions service designed to provide a variety of affordable, short-term support to existing online publicity and marketing campaigns.
In her blog post, Wilson goes on to describe MB&A as more of a network of savvy publicity and marketing book pros that can kick in on an author’s campaign at low cost and do so with a small footprint. This kind of model has worked wonders for Alex Lindsay’s Pixel-Corp which has been able to undercut major production houses by bootstrapping a highly knowledgeable but cheaply equipped network of techs. For publishers, innovation in the org chart on this side of the business is overdue. Book Madam & Associates may become the model everyone will use once publishers realize digital dollars don’t keep the lights on at a downtown office. This a great development and — characteristic of Julie — just a wee bit ahead of its time. Best of luck to Ms. Wilson. I wish her heaps of success.
The news from Quartet was disappointing. Kassia, Kirk, Don, Kat, and Angela are some really smart folks. They have been working really hard to pull their plans together. I know they didn’t arrive at this outcome without a lot of consideration but I trust it was the best course of action. I am sad things didn’t come together but what is that line about failing — do it fast? It was a great run guys.
Two things in particular I wanted to call attention to. One, starting a business in the open like they did takes guts. Failing to start a business in the open like they did requires strength and grace. Two, I am not sure this points to anything definitive about the ebook market. I risk saying — although I have no inside information — that it has nothing to do with the ebook market and very little to do with the Romance market. I hope other entrepreneurs don’t draw the wrong lessons from Quartet — I think it is still better to be open and better to be digital. Best of wishes to all the stakeholders.
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