Dan at Casual Optimist thinks I’ve been sounding grouchy lately, and maybe I have but I am sort of in awe at the strange relationship the publishing business has with the web. Or lack of relationship.
I’m not angry so much as puzzled and dumbfounded by publishers who, in 2009, have ceded the web to others, and have so ceded control of the public discussions, and the buying and selling of their authors. I think that’s suicide for the publishing business in the long run.
Can we agree that the web will increase in importance as the place where people find things, find out about things, talk about things, and then buy them? If you need convincing on this point, take a look at four of the universe’s most successful web sites: Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, and Amazon. These have been successful because they let us find things (Google), learn about things (Wikipedia), talk about things (Twitter), and buy things (Amazon).
Or ask yourself:
When I want to know something about a product I’m interested in buying, what is the first thing I usually do? Who do I telephone?
My answer: I call Google. Immediately.
My understanding is that Amazon has overtaken Barnes and Noble as the largest seller of books in the US. That trend – buying books online – will continue apace, and if the data is uncertain today, I will bet you my favorite ten books that in five years online book sales will dwarf what is sold in bricks and mortar stores.
Further, the great driver of book purchases, the newspaper book review, is an endangered species. With newspapers closing down their review pages, and indeed newspapers themselves starting to drop off, where will people go to read talk about, write about, and read about books? Here are a few hints, and some more hints, and some others. More if you need them.
So let’s assume that as a publisher your job is to make sure that you produce books that sell well so that you can pay writers and editors and all the others to make more books. Then your job, as I understand it, is to have a handle on how people buy the things you want to sell. If that’s the case, and if you don’t have a handle on the web, or a plan for it, or a plan for panning on getting a handle on the web, then you are ignoring the most important place where people’s eyes are, and where they spend their time looking for the things that interest them, things they might buy. And if you ignore that, well, I’d suggest your future as a business is bleak indeed.
Dan suggests that small publishers often don’t have the time, money or skills to grapple with the web. Fair enough, I can understand that. I am sympathetic to small publishers and their budget constraints. But here is an idea for a summer intern ad that every small press ought to send out to craigslist:
Small publisher seeks a summer intern who is passionate about books, reading, fiction, and skilled on the web. Must know their way around installing, tweaking, and managing a wordpress site, and have some basic design chops. Tasks will include helping us design a wordpress website, putting our catalog online as wordpress pages (with links to Wikipedia pages, and RSS feeds from Google alerts, Technorati, and delicious to scour the web for any mention of our books or authors, as well as links to any online stores that sell our books: Amazon, Indigo etc.) Finally, must help us explore the possibility of: setting up our own online shop (using shopify.com?) to sell ebooks, and also to show us how to convert a Word file to .epub using Stanza or other similar tools. Ability to upload a file to a server will be richly rewarded with nice coffee as well. Twitter and Facebook knowledge are taken for granted.
I might consider responding to such an ad myself. (That’s not to say that summer interns are the answer to the publishing business, but that a decent web strategy and implementation needn’t be expensive).
As for Penguin, HarperCollins, Randomhouse and the rest: they are owned by the biggest media companies in the world and their inability to have their sites rank in the top 10 or 20 google results for their books and authors is totally baffling to me.
4 Comments
Does the substance of your post change if the publisher is in the non-fiction business? I note that the legal publishing world (which I am the most familiar with) seems to be clinging to ancient business models, which will likely ruin them in the long run.
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for the comment. The type of publisher changes things somewhat, but as for web presence, I would ask any business two questions:
1. Do you want people who are interested in the things you sell to easily find the things you sell, and find out how to buy them?
2. When you are looking for some information about something you are interested in, what do you usually do?
My answer for #2 is: “I search for the information on the web,” which implies that I should answer #1 by making sure that all pertinent information about my products are on the web, easy to find, and friendly to Google.
Hugh: Great post (as always).
Wendy: I think Hugh’s rant holds true for all publishers, but it’s even WORSE for those that publish non-fiction.
I say that as a writer of nf: Unlike novels, nf books come with a built-in “hook” and a niche. It’s easier for publishers to use the web to promote/market/sell them — so my question is: why don’t they do so?
Answer: publishing houses are, for the most part, unwilling to join the brave, new e-world.
It took me awhile to figure out how to use it to my advantage (I’m 55, so I’m a digital pioneer, not a native, so I sort of have an excuse) — but my publisher? No. And it’s a respected house.
No one there seems to get it — which is one reason (although definitely not the only reason or even the main reason why the house is hurtling toward destruction). (And I am truly fond of my crew there. This is not meant as a personal attack on them.)
Twitter, for example, is a powerful tool for promotion. Any writer who is NOT using it is a fool. But many editors/publishers seem oblivious.
End of my rant!
Thanks Maureen!