Powerful President

He has only been the president for just over an hour, and we can already see Obama’s power to inspire Americans to participate in their country’s direction and future. Mashable has the latest numbers from the CNN/Facebook live streaming video of Obama’s inauguration, and they are staggering! Our new president is truly of this generation.

Publishers, Take Some Notes!

Apple iTunes will now offer DRM-free music from Sony, Universal and Warner starting this week. According to the NY Times, music label EMI was already offering their music through iTunes without DRM. I had no idea. Shows how much I know!

Over the holidays, I had a conversation about this very issue, which concluded with the assumption that iTunes would eventually drop DRM, but not anytime soon. Good thing we were wrong. We have all heard the arguments for and against DRM over and over. Without it, there would be rampant sharing and less buying. With it, people will find a way to hack it or buy music without it.

How many of us have borrowed physical CDs and physical books from people? Each instance represents a potential sale lost through sharing. Even in the pre-digital age, we were sharing and loaning and not buying. Sure, it is easier to share a digital file, but it is also easier to buy one.

Again over the holidays, there was an article in the NY Times reminiscing about the good old days of the music industry, before digitization. Sound familiar, publishing people? It reminded me of all the “death to publishing” articles and laments about this new digital era of publishing. I think the reality of the situation is that no matter what era we are working in, something will challenge us. Those challenges change constantly, and that is what keeps things exciting. We could all certainly find jobs out there with fewer challenges and more stability, but didn’t we get into publishing to avoid such jobs?

The iPhone

Question: is the iPhone worth $199 plus an extra $30 each month of my hard-earned cash? With an iPod, a digital camera, a video camera, a laptop, and a cell phone, do I need to add another gadget to my arsenal? After realizing that all the hip and cool people have iPhones, I decided last week to drop the dough and get the answer to my burning question

Answer: I was an idiot not to get one sooner! I love my iPhone. I have bonded with fellow iPhone lovers. Gone are the days of wandering aimlessly through the city armed only with a poorly drawn map of my destination. No photo opportunities can escape me now. Feel the urge to blog? Anytime, anywhere, that is possible (ok, anywhere there is a 3G or Edge Network signal). I can satisfy my musical urges by playing the piano or the ocarina on my iPhone. I can whip out a classic literary text at a moment’s notice. I have already downloaded several books from Project Gutenberg and some free books from Random House through the Stanza reader. Pleasant experiences, both of them.

I am suddenly so connected to other people and to my own creative impulses. Get an iPhone!

Chad’s second installment

on the publishing biz in these crazy financial times must be read. Read it here.

She’s getting HOW much??

Word on the street is that Sarah Palin could get up to $7 million to write a book. I would like to throw up right now, except that the Times does pose this very good point:

With publishers as nervous as everyone else about next year’s economic
prospects, Palin’s popularity has become a boon. “Nobody is waiting for George W
Bush’s memoirs,” one New York agent noted.

Two Smart People on Two Tough Subjects

The first smart person is Kassia Krozser at Booksquare, and she wrote about social networking. What I like about this post is that Krozser asks companies to be responsible and involved in their social networking strategies. Rather than setting content adrift online or building a rudimentary Facebook page, Krozser insists that social networking is, at its heart, more about old-fashioned relationship building. It is a process that requires a personal investment of time and energy.

Social networking is not a magic new concept. If anything, it’s a return to
basics: talking to your customers, reminding them that they are important to
you. The only difference between then and now is that your customers are
everywhere and technology gives you the power to find them, listen to them, talk
to them, and build relationships that extend long beyond the boundaries of a
traditional marketing campaign.Social networking, by its very definition, is a
sustained, ongoing process. If you’re a publisher, this is requires changing
your thinking. You’ve traditionally maintained some distance from your ultimate
customers: readers. People buy books from retailers. Retailers buy books from
distributors. You might take out some ads and put dollars into promo, but you
haven’t spent a lot of time talking to readers. Focus groups don’t count.

It’s time to get your hands dirty, to dig into the real-world
conversation. It’s a weird thing, and sometimes awkward and uncomfortable,
especially if you’re accustomed to public relations-speak and the cheerleader
behavior that accompanies marketing messages. When you talk directly to real
people who read and buy books, they tune you out when you try to stay on
message. If they wanted to rehash cover copy, they’d read the back of the
book.

In a recent conversation I had with some social networking and media gurus, this very topic of proactive communication and interactivity came up. How do you get readers to visit your website and read your content? These days, you don’t. You push your content and your expertise to the places your target audience spends time. You become the authority outside of your own space, which will eventually create an audience. Am I going to seek out books on a publisher’s website? Not unless I have some personal relationship with that publisher or someone who works there (hint to publishers: most people outside the industry do not have that personal connection). And that brings us back to establishing relationships with readers through social networking.

The second smart person is Chad Post of Three Percent, and he wrote about the business of publishing in these economically challenged times (and will continue to write about this in follow-up posts). As this first installment seems to indicate, we are in trouble and it might be because our industry is a bit too top-heavy.

Rarely—if ever—did people start up publishing houses with the idea that
this would make them millions. Same goes for bookstores and bookstore owners. In
the best of times, these businesses aim for 3% profit margins. As conglomerates
took over the industry though, and houses started merging, the expectations
jumped to the 10% range, fundamentally changing the rules of the game and, in my
opinion, pushing the industry into its current tenuous position where a lot of
people are filled with anxiety and dread.

Good News

from the Bookseller: “Deloitte described books as a ‘significant mover’ in this year’s Christmas survey with shoppers placing books fourth on their Christmas shopping list.”