What Publishers Should be Doing Now — the Podcast
I am listening to the podcast from the keynote panel from this year’s Publishing Business Conference. I captured points that interested me (and my own thoughts) below …
- Shatzkin points out that companies need to shift the way they are organized to survive. Horizontal-reaching content factories are doomed. I wonder how you would reorganize a publisher like RandomHouse to be more vertical? Sell and market by topic rather than by channel? Acquiring editors are typically subject matter experts already. Would you reorganize the creatives as well? I guess one answer is to act small everywhere — in the manner of small pieces loosely joined. Hmmm.
- Ha-ha. Shatzkin knows his audience. He references Nov 22. 1963 then moves on. I wonder how many people under the age of 30 know what happened on that day? Dan Rather is retired. Apparently, the room is filled with folks his age. Texting and manga generation for sure!
- Shatzkin calls AOL “a dead man staggering.” Funny, I am sensing the Weblogs Inc. properties (and model) bouncing back. I think Yahoo would have been a better example.
Shatzkin runs down how to rethink general publishing:
- “Think beyond the book.” I think this one is misunderstood by most companies. It is not about thinking of different outputs or ways of selling chunks of content. Instead publishers need to think beyond the book at the input level — when, how, and from whom they acquire content.
- “Audio and Video.” Wow no kidding. Steve Osgoode at Harper Canada has been a pioneer in this area. I wonder how many people truly understand how to make this work? In my experience people don’t get the new reality in audio.
- “Reach out to your audience directly.” And sell directly. Why only go half way?
- “Use your authors.” Yep. Easier said then done.
- “Online marketing infrastructure.” Everyone knows this, but not everyone knows how to implement this.
- “Use all channels.” Use ebooks, POD, etc on every project.
- Peter Osnos asserts the primacy of the bricks and mortar retailers. Hmm. Really?
- Carolyn Pittis of HarperCollins says publishers should share data. Wow did she just say that? Does anyone reading this wanna start a casecamp for book marketing? She also talks about Harper’s hidden marketing assets — their employees. So true!
- John Morse talks about “best ways” versus “good ways” to tackle problems. Welcome to the age of also.
- The comments about DRM at the end — amazing how far we have come in a year.
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