I’m back from TOC and still mulling over the problems, and maybe some solutions to problems in the publishing business. There are lots, but a fundamental problem seems to be that most publishing houses have never had much to do with their readers. Their clients, traditionally, have been book stores. And outsourcing relationships with the people who are your reason for existence is a bad idea.
If you look at the talk around the perilous state of the publishing business, and the challenges of ebooks and DRM and digital and the web, it ends up being this old sad story of: “How do we maintain our financial viability when fewer people are reading?” And not, “What do readers want and how can we best provide it?”
In fact, at TOC, I did not hear one person from a major publishing house say: “What about the readers? Are we serving their needs?” (It was a big conference, so maybe I missed it, but I didn’t hear it).
Why not? I ran into lots of Directors of Digital, and VP’s of Marketing and Managing Editors and publicity people. But I didn’t run into anyone responsible for the Reader Relations Department, as Kat Meyers and Kassia Krozer both pointed out to me.
What kind of business runs without constantly questioning how it can best serve it’s clientele? The answer, especially when consumer choice has never been so great, is: a business that won’t last very long.
Tim O’Reilly gave a great talk, about the need to innovate and how publishers must be nimble. But the most important thing about the talk was not so much what he said, but what his talk illustrated about his company. O’Reilly’s interest is in delivering valuable content to people, in whatever way they can. Paperbacks, blogs, conferences, ebooks, podcasts. O’Reilly is a publisher, not just a book publisher: they find good content they think people will like, and package it and sell in ways they think their customers might like. Turns out people are happy to pay O’Reilly for content they value. People buy books from O’Reilly’s site, and from Amazon and other stores, they download ebooks, download iphone apps, and subscribe to book services online; they get a fair bit for free too – blogs and podcasts, and the odd free ebook. And people pay thousands of dollars to watch O’Reilly writers speak, to rub shoulders with other luminaries who speak at O’Reilly events.
So, books are just one part of the picture. They are, I believe, at the base of O’Reilly’s success, the foundation upon which the company is built, but not necessarily it’s financial driver. O’Reilly is successful because they understand the value of books not as “things we can sell” but rather as “things that are of value to our customers: the readers.” O’Reilly provides readers with something of value, and gives them many many different opportunities and different routes to give money in exchange.
So: If you are in the publishing business, who is your VP of Reader Relations? Does your exec committee meet regularly to discuss: How can we sell more books and cut costs?
Or are your meetings titled: How can we deliver more value to the people who want the content we have to give them? How can we give people more opportunities to give us money for the valuable service we provide?
Dan from the Casual Optimist just dropped his subscription to the Globe and Mail because they can’t deliver the paper before he goes to work. By the time he gets home, there’s not much “news” left to read. Times are tough in publishing, but Dan thinks, and I agree, that publishers worry too much about the wrong problems. Says Dan:
But, newspapers, and publishers for that matter, are mising the point. The internet, e-books, social media — they really are not your problem. Taking your readers for granted – THAT is your problem.
Newspapers and publishers have been able to get away with being so utterly complacent about their consumers because, for years, readers had no alternative. But now they do. And too often the newspapers that are printed and the books that are published — and way they are delivered — are not good enough for people to want to pay for them because there is more interesting and convenient stuff elsewhere. [more...]
The question every publisher should be asking themselves every day is: how can I provide more value to my readers? I suspect the ones that start each day with that question will find the right answers, and will navigate the next few years with success.
6 Comments
Publishers and newspapers are stuck in the past. If they die out because of their ignorance, than that’s what happens, I won’t feel sorry. Some other company will always come and fill that void.
So I attended ToC, albeit not as a major publisher. I do consider myself VP of reader relations, it’s in this capacity I’m writing here, just to say I exist, but sadly it is not a position in my company, because my company was bought out 18 months ago after our distributor went bankrupt. And even though the acquirer is independent, being independent doesn’t prevent you form taking readers forgranted. And in fact it was not that company that paid for me, but rather Kassia gave me a spare ticket. Here’s the thing though—no one wants to be VP of reader relations. Most people in publishing treat readers as if they have cooties. In fact, when books don’t sell, it’s the readers fault. And if readers think eBooks price points are wrong, the solution is to raise our prices, and “educate” the readers. I’m reminded of the poem of Brecht’s that followed the 1953 worker uprising in East Berlin: “If the government doesn’t trust the people, why doesn’t it dissolve them and elect a new people?”
Hi Richard,
I think we stood next to each other at TOC, but we never actually met.
I’m “glad” to hear that I’m not totally off base. I’m an industry outsider, so to me so many things that seem obvious are, I’m told, impossible. Good to know that some people, in industry, have similar thoughts about things.
first of all – i’m falling down on my job as hostess = “Hugh, Richard – Richard, Hugh.” now you are bff’s.
With that out of the way, may I concur that indie does not = “excels at reader realations.” I’d say anyone who publishes out of passion (and not out of a desire to capture sales with “what will be most popular with most people at this very moment in time” ) has a huge leg up on the problem of pleasing the reader.
It also helps that bootstraps companies don’t have coffers filled with spaghetti to fling at walls and see what sticks. So, they generally put a little bit more time into the actual development and production of their bookish spaghetti. And often, they’ll think about whether the spaghetti will really appeal to readers, or should they be offering up gnocchi.
Okay, i’ve perhaps exhausted the metaphor – but my hope is that readers will step up to the plate and demand a more prominent place in the business model of book publishing. Somewhere much closer to the beginning of the cycle. Maybe publishers will get smart and invite them into the conversation where spaghetti is being flung at the walls — might take some of the mystique out of publishing, but I for one am pretty sure a lot of book pub professionals would prefer to be working in an environment where they are already sure their efforts will find an audience, and their jobs will continue to exist.
(p.s. I heart softskull!)
~ Kat
While the customer is always the customer (reader), he/she are not always right. There is no obvious solution to moving publishing from its existing business model to one that works in the age of the Internet.
Most of the “brilliant” innovators will fail. As will most of the existing suppliers in an industry undergoing the rate of change that publishing is going through.
The winners will claim that they are more customer-focused, or more innovative than the losers, but it may be that they were just luckier.
Customers (readers), and their lack of loyalty to the hard working existing publishers are the true villains. Damn them.
Well I think Adam Smith might disagree ;-) … or, whether consumers (readers) are villainous is beside the point for the publishing business, the point is that they ARE fickle and that must be taken into account as we navigate the evolution of the book business. It’s the problem publishers, like all providers in a market, must solve: how to we keep giving customers the stuff that will keep them coming back.
I agree though that it’s hard to guess how things will play out.
Still, I think that as the web grows in importance as a distribution & sorting mechanism, publishers are going to have to get closer to their readers than in they were in a the pre-web business model.