What if You Crowd Sourced Category Management?
In its first phase adding “social” elements to book production has failed, but I am liking how round two and round three are shaping up.
Round One — The Wiki Trend. RIP.
Wiki-novels and wiki books are really interesting experiments. They are failed experiments but good ones. Kevin Kelly made the astute observation that maybe, just maybe Wikipedia was the one and only wiki killer app. Why? (1) Length — anything longer than a magazine article probably can’t bear the wiki treatment. (2) Voice — emulate the encyclodpedic style or get edited or worst — deleted. Having a coherent voice remains a problem in story-based wiki endeavours. All-in-all kudos for trying but the narrative stuff has fizzled. I would expect to see publishers shy away from future wiki projects.
Round Two — Regrouping a.k.a. Learning to Love the Wisdom of Crowds All Over Again
Joe Wikert just blogged about RateMyBookcover.com. This is the perfect kind of social implementation for publishers. The one problem I see is a publisher not trusting the mob rule. We have the elitist reputation for a reason. Publishers — as a rule — talk to their resellers not their readers. Hopefully an innovative publisher can make this kind of thing work for them. There are a lot of sucky covers out there.
Round Three — We is Smarter than Some Buyer at Head Office
Where involving readers gets interesting is when it saves money. Publishers often choose to publish in new areas with little or no research. A tech publisher, considering whether to publish a new guide on Drupal, could consult the community before proceeding. Or better still, a retailer could let its customers tell it what tech books to stock. Sound crazy? Smart retailers already use their websites as an early warning tool for in-store demand. Why not open up that process? Formalize it so to approximate Chris Anderson’s Long Tail suggestion of having the books arrange themselves. It makes a lot of sense in categories where books don’t backlist — like tech, current affairs, and celebrity bios. Which bookselling chain is brave enough to try that?
Publishers may be in the dip with socializing their processes, but they shouldn’t give up.
www.amillionpenguins.com — Penguin’s wikinovel project
Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0. Wiki Project
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