Transition time

I will start changing the focus of this blog over the next few days, so stay tuned.

This will continue to focus on internet marketing, but it will also be taking a broader approach to all new media types and such.

The future of publishing (part 3 of 3): publishers

When considering the future of the business from a publisher’s perspective, it must be noted that this is extremely hypothetical.

Too much of the business is in a state of flux to offer any concrete examples (provable or otherwise) of what it will look like, but here are some educated guesses.

Based on the availability of POD technologies, what is going to happen is that the independant publisher is going to be able to compete to e certain degree with the bigger publishers.  By being knowledgable of the different aspects of publishing, an Ooligan grad will be able to handle all aspects of a job, ranging from acquisitions (I have several friends that are working on manuscripts, and I’m sure you do too) to editing to design.  The software is readily available and the work is limited only to the amount of time that you want to spend on a given project.

However, the big publishers will have to widen the scope of their own publsihing efforts, taking into consideration all of the various online methods of community building and author support.  The fittest will survive, and they will be the ones that cultivate a good working relationship with the author, providing social network access, alternative methods of author readings (podcasts as freemiums on websites), and cross-media applications of their intellectual properties.

A press will be viewed as successful only if it is able to manage all of these different avenues (multiple ebook formats, POD versions of the book, and collector editions for the hardcore fan).  Books will not go away (as long as people like vinyl, there will be people who read books), but the alternatives will bring more readers into the fold, so publishers will have to be ready.  There will be companies that have dedicated social networking staffs who manage social components to marketing campaigns, as well as designers well versed in Xml, xHtml, and epub formats, and they will work with all versions throughout the entire design and production arc of a book’s creation.

Online marketing will no longer be an optional component of publicity, but will be the cornerstone of a book’s life cycle.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if some publishers get their own island in second life.  I’m just saying….

-bk

The future of publishing (part 2 of 3): the authors

With the inevitable changes taking place now and in the future, I believe that authors are going to benefit in the long run.

As more and more of us publishers learn how to do our jobs, and then find that there aren’t enough jobs to go around, we’ll actually start to manipulate the business structure in the pub world.  With the different POD options out there and the limited turn around time for making an Ebook from an Indesign file, it’s going to be easier to help authors get there books in print and available.  With limited time and money, sliding scale royalty rates should apply, giving both the author and the publisher the opportunity to tailor to each individual project.

This means that instead of having to pay several hundred dollars to self-publish, an author could have a publisher do the same amount of work, getting paid only if the work sells.  I know, I know, doesn’t sound like too good of a deal, right?  But it just means more opportunities for the author to get their work out in the world.

Additionally, with all of the content that will be used in the big publishing houses (I’m thinking of creative marketing plans, web content, hyperlinked backstories, webisodes, etc.), authors will be some of the best people to fill those roles.  Creating content, blurring the lines between real and virtual reality, will fall to the most prepared of the authors.  Blogging, creating narratives (which can then be easily converted to some new Ebook device), and telling stories on netbooks and cellphones will serve some of the multiple narrative streams that authors will get to do.

While there might not be as many ways to make a huge ton of money off of a book directly, if (and this is a big IF) the book in question gets to that “tipping point”, based on the future’s interconnectedness, it will be easier to analyze the chances of getting viral (when fully analyzing the mavens and network brokers that visit your site), thereby helping well-connected authors get assistance in getting published.

Hopefully.

Again, while there not be as many opportunities to make money, there will be many outlets for creativity.

And if they can eat and stay clothed, will be a good thing.

 

-bk

The future of publishing (part 1 of 3: the readers)

As I think about the future of publishing, there are three aspects of the business that I’m concerned about:

1 – the readers

2 – the writers

3 – the publishers

I tried to condense these into one post, but I couldn’t.  So I’ll start with the readers and work toward the publishers.

With all of the new technologies coming to the people, I’m often struck with how they impact the way the readers get the information and stories that they want to read about.  Basically this breaks down into two distinct sections: paper and other.

Paper books are going to see a dramatic shift in the production over the next few years.  Readers would normally have to rely on only the books that were printed in the “traditional” way, off-set, huge runs to get the price down, and physically going to the store to see the book.  Now with Amazon’s distribution and POD technologies, it’s easier than ever to get a book into printed form.  To further compete in these uncertain times, the bigger booksellers (Barnes and Noble in particular) will more than likely be able to offer POD services as well.  Imagine going into Barnes and Noble and looking on the shelves, picking up books and looking through the contents, and deciding on a particular title, going up to the checkout and paying.  Then in the back of the store, in  a big printer, the file is downloaded and printed while you wait.  This creates more stock on the shelves (just one of every book, not one of some, 30 of others), and lets more availability of titles be selectable by the reader.

Good for the reader.

Secondly, the accessibility of Ebooks is only going to increase throughout the upcoming years.  Netbooks and Ereaders (stand-alone units and programs integrated into smart devices he readers already own) will do wonders for people always wanting new content.  As the digital ink technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, the Kindle will also get more competition (but in the end, I do believe that there won’t be only one device, but the Kindle will probably be the most popular after it drops its price a little bit to compete better).  Newspapers will be on a level playing field with bloggers and websites, as both will be readily accessible on the different devices.  Additionally, the increased functionality of these new readers will also change the creation of books and texts, integrating hyperlinks as citations and narrative devices (want to know more about the history of the ONE ring?  Hit the hyperlink and be carried to the story of how the rings were forged.  Narratives will get shorter, but wider, allowing lateral reading through maneuvering behind and through the hyperlinks.

In the end, I do believe that having more choices of how to read stories and nonfiction will be good for the readers and end-user.

And traditionally printed books?  Well, even people with tons of gadgets and broadband internet can have a record player to listen to how music is “supposed” to sound like.

-bk

Kick your shoes off for a bit…

Ok, as much as I’d love to sit here and talk about the importance of marketing or ethical business practices or whatever, I’ve decided to take some time and reflect on that magic that comes from pen, paper, and book.  Enjoy… (And click on the bigger images if you want to go somewhere else on the interweb)

I love this guy (Peter Callesen):

Sometimes it’s nice to take a step back and remember that the love of books comes from those moments that we had with those books that transcend the act of reading.  Whether it was depression after that last page from you missing the main character already, or a great idea that you had never thought of before, or those stories that you couldn’t stop reading no matter how much homework that you had to do, I feel like some of these pictures contained some of that wonder.

-bk

The Metaphysics section of the bookstore…

There I was, 21, an alcoholic and a bartender.  Not a very good combination for a college dropout.

But thankfully for me, I worked with a guy who got his Master’s in Philosophy who would try to blow my mind with crazy new thoughts and ways to look at the world.  It worked.

For months we would talk about subjective realities, postmodernism, and the baby boomer generation’s influence on public policy.  It was great.  Eventually we got to the point where he didn’t want to talk anymore about stuff, but instead told me to go check out Ken Wilber’s book A Brief History of Everything.

I remember thinking that this guy must be a pompous ass.

But after reading a few chapters (with a dictionary close by, I will admit), I started to realize that I was internalizing a lot of the contents.  Most of it has to do with the postmodern situation and integrating it and other cultural and social philosophies into one all-encompassing framework.  He covered stuff from Jung’s obsession with UFOs to Robert Monroe’s ego-centric and pseudo-scientific approach to Out of Body Experiences to chemical differences between the sexes to improperly handled ecological public policies.  When it said Brief History of Everything, it meant it.

What was great about the book was the way the words fell from the page and into my head, leading me to talk about things in a new way with those around me; all the while I tried to constantly strive for that chich encompassed Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.  I grew up with the Bible always close at hand, so this was a real change (zing!).

Pretty soon, most of us bartenders had read it, and the nights after closing were spent talking about the world instead of trying to drink our body weights.

Wilber has gone on to publish several other books, of which I’ve read a few, but it was that first book, in that certain time, in that specific place that held a lot of magic.

-bk

Not to get all serious or anything, but

I am kind of an idealistic guy.  I look out there into the world and see mostly good people trying to do good things (instead of attacking some sort of postmodern, relativistic interpretation of what “good” is, we’ll just leave it at that).

That being said, we’re looking at some crazy economic stuff going on (did sensationalizm start it? Did corporate greed? Is this some sort of necessary maintenance of the overall market equilibrium? What’s the chicken and what’s the egg?), but for those of us looking to get into the publishing business after graduation, take heart.

I think about Kent Watson sometimes and how he attempted to differentiate “evil” marketing from book marketing.  After all, they’re books, right?  And we all love books.  It’s not like we’re trying to sell some pyramid scheme to a poor single mother or some hyper-inflated mortgage to some poor schmuck who believes the media when they say that the housing market is just going to go up, up, up.

But, the big boys aren’t hiring right now.  Unemployment is on the rise.  People are buying less books.

But people are buying more ebooks.

And you people can help your friends self-publish.

People will give their penny-pinched money to an ethical company (and to casinos, so I guess it’s just to honest ones, I mean who honestly thinks they can walk out of a casino with a lot of money on a consistent basis? [Besides me, of course]), because of the immeasurable value that comes from honesty.  It’s the one thing that doesn’t come up on those stock reports in the mornings.  But I have a friend that started a fair-trade certified chocolate syrup company out of his house a few months ago, not in the hopes of making tons of money (he had a waiting job to pay the bills), but in the hopes of helping people receive a quality product that was good for them.  Another friend started a community acupuncture clinic in Tucson (even though he could have worked at a boutique and made more money), deciding it was better to have a sliding scale payment system (ranging from 15-30 dollars, depending on what the patient thought they could afford) as opposed to the traditional upwards-of-a-hundred-dollar treatments where you only take care of rich people who have really great insurance.

Both of them are doing really well, even though they started less than a year ago.

The market is screaming for ethical businesses to replace the raping, pillaging, selfish bastards stealing from the poor to make themselves even richer. And ebooks are cheaper than books.

Unsubscribe! Unsubscribe!

I like to think that I am above all the useless email marketing that I have been inundated with over the years across my multiple email accounts.  But that would be lying.  Every once in a while, Amazon will hit me with a beautifully personalized email offer (You like Blurays? We’ve got these on sale at 35% off!).  And then I’d go, look through their site, find one that I wanted and checkout, somehow still convinced that I was media literate.

Well now I have this unique defense against all these damn emails: graduate school.  No money equals no fun email sales that I respond to.  

But I think what worked so well from them was the segmentation that Amazon probably did in sending out its email to me.  I’m not sure if they have robots working on this or not, but my gut reaction is that they catalogue my buying habits and then craft the specific subject line directly to me, which then gets me to open it, and then I see all the goodness that comes from their marketing savvy.  This is all stuff that we talk about in the online marketing class.  

Which brings me to an offhand comment on the beauty (horrors) or marketing: it’s all rhetoric and sophistry.  Knowing your audience is key to knowing what to say in the subject line, and that is extremely similar to the notion of audience based composition theory.  Yeah, I’m sure Plato and Socrates are rolling in their graves, but that’s how I see it.

Who knew that it would be Amazon’s rhetorical mastery that would syphon so much of my money over the years…

The Long Tail and Time as Money

Recently I got to hear from Vintage Roadside and the way they have embraced Web 2.0 strategies into their marketing plan.  Well, it basically is their marketing plan.

When I first started learning about all of the potential inherent in some of the options out there for Web 2.0 integration, all I could think of was how we’re going to bring down all of these evil corporations with grassroots networking and blogging.  But now I think I have a little more cynical and realistic opinion about it all.

It’s not simply about making a facebook page and having the people flock to be your friend.  It takes a lot of work to really utilize social networking’s benefits for your company.  Vintage Roadside talked about the many hours a day that is spent cultivating online relationships and networking.  That’s worrisome to me, someone who can’t seem to juggle all the various online identities out there.

As much as I’d love to say that I can sit down, blog here, blog there, network with facebook people, trudge through the littered halls of myspace, blog again, and still manage to have any sort of time to spend with family and school, in reality I don’t find the time.  

Instead of actually doing all of those things, I sit and think about things that would make my life easier (I am an American).  I think the key is some sort of user-defined layer that can manage multiple accounts, passwords, bookmarks, all that stuff.  If you have to work on multiple books, multiple accounts, or anything like that, the key is being able to switch between those accounts on the fly and without too many obstacles between them.  

Before I go any further, I have to admit that I have no idea if there is already something out there that is able to do those things (ProfileLinker is almost there).  This all ties back into the idea of online identities and being able to manage those newtorked relationships.  Unless the IP in question is something that is tied personally to you, spending all of that time doing all of the required hours of work on managing social networking sites will not happen (without a fat paycheck).  So, let’s go techies!  Make our future jobs easier.  Please.

 

-bk

How many email addresses do you have?

So I’m one of those guys out there that was worried about internet privacy for a while.  As such, I started up separate accounts for registering with certain places and all that; I’m sure that you have done it, too.  

What’s interesting, though, is how virtual identities are linked to an email address.  It’s your primary method of distinction in the World Wide Web of Wonder (why else would you be required to type the thing twice when registering at some website?), and as such, most of us have a JUNK mailbox (probably a hotmail or yahoo account, am I right?) and the one where we get our work done (unless you go to Portland State and decide to use the PDX mail and then you’re screwed).  

Right now I have 5 email addresses.

My yahoo account is the one that I use when signing up for online offers and when I may or may not actually want to talk to someone.

My PDX mail account is where I do most of my correspondence for school and such (and my Facebook account – I’m old school from back when you needed to go to college to get on the site).

My gmail account is used primarily for my bl0gs and Blogger Identity.  I try to maintain anonymity, but it never happens.

Then I have a yahoo account that I use for Sarah Lincoln, but I rarely check it; it was created mostly for Facebook registration.  

And I have a mac email account, too, but I feel like I reached critical mass and can’t respond to the sixth account.  Camel’s back and straw sort of thing.

Additionally, I have several yahoo accounts where I forgot the passwords and a hotmail account that I don’t remember the address to.  

And in the end, I feel pretty typical.  

What there needs to be is some sort of Meta-email center that will not only remember all of the passwords to my various accounts, but it will also list them all in one place at the same time.  Then I could get some work done.

 

-bk