Content Matters

The Publisher's Guide to Mobile and Tablet Development

During the past 12-18 months I've had more conversations with publishers about tablet and mobile than about any other topic. In fact, it's probably more than the next three topics combined.

The speed in which mobile and table computing are overtaking the desktop is unprecedented. According to Deloitte, more than one in five Americans own a tablet device. And every day, new vendors and agencies come along pitching products and solutions. The result for most publishers is confusion.

In speaking with colleagues at Newstex, I learned that they were seeing the same confusion among many of their customers. 

So, working closely with the Newstex team, I've authored a new eBook, The Publisher's Guide to Mobile and Tablet Development, which is currently available for free download.

The eBook starts with strategy, exploring 7 mobile content business models, noting that many publishers overlook new revenue opportunities on mobile. From there, it aims to demystify much of the mobile landscape, helping publishers understand the differences in platforms and providing tools to simplify issues like the app vs mobile web decision.

The last half of the book provides an action plan to help publishers implement their mobile strategy. Examples and case studies are provided throughout to help you understand the decisions made by other publishers - and their implications.

Whether you've already launched multiple iPhone, iPad and Android apps or are just trying to move past the hype and understand the mobile content space, this eBook provides quick and valuable insights. Download your free copy here.

A special thanks to Tom Shultz of Creative Attitude for his terrific design work.

From distribution to discovery: the disintermediation of book publishing

Book publishers have long feared that once Amazon (AMZN) completed its disintermediation of bookstores, publishers would be next in their sights. And according to this NY Times article, that day is rapidly approaching.

But this isn’t some nasty plot by Amazon to take over the publishing world (well, OK, maybe in part), but rather it’s the logical progression of a rapidly changing market.

In the traditional book publishing business, the role of publisher was largely focused on production, publicity and distribution. Publishers, leveraging their marketing budgets and relationships with bookstores and book reviewers, were able to take a book and get it into the hands of readers.

In the new world of publishing, the value chain has changed. Production and distribution are largely free and the key factor for success is driving discovery. Publishers with deep pockets can still drive some awareness through traditional advertising, but even that’s a lesser aspect of how to generate success.

Going forward, publishers need to show that they can drive awareness of their authors’ books on platforms like the Kindle, iBooks and Google, while leveraging social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads. Publishers will have to embrace new models, like offering free eBooks to drive awareness.

While “big name” authors have always developed their own following, now every author is their own brand. Publishers who help authors develop their brand and drive discovery and awareness will succeed. The rest will find themselves quickly becoming irrelevant.

Openness and Flexibility: the Future of Book Publishing

Last Thursday I participated in BISG Next, a one-day workshop/conference by the Book Industry Study Group. Since I’ve spent most of my career on the digital media side, I found it a fascinating look at the changes facing the traditional book publishing industry.

The BISG represent many of the more forward-thinking people in the book industry. If the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have a problem, then BISG participants were well on their way through that step. That said, I also saw that many of the participants felt that the way to solve the problem was by using the same tools and skills they’d used in the past, which I don’t think is a realistic option.

The program was a set up as a one-day problem-solving workshop. Teams were created to assist a theoretical publisher in setting their strategy to take them through the year 2020 in four areas:

1. Identifying the customer & core business
2. Mobile strategy
3. Content strategy
4. Making content discoverable

What was most promising about the process was that the participants seemed to embrace things that may have been anathema to them just a few years ago. Some of the key themes that emerged were community, new business models (including free), increased verticalization, a customer-centric approach (including a focus on analytics and data exhaust), open, extensible platforms and a need to become agile.

I was on one of the two teams looking at mobile strategy. Our team took a broad-based view of mobile, first deciding that a flexible and open platform would be required. We started with a few core assumptions:

• Success in mobile meant that we would need to open up our content to others; it would be arrogant to assume that we alone would build the most compelling apps for our content;
• We should embrace the idea of writable APIs. The publisher in our exercise had books on musicians and technology,  as well as textbooks; any of these could be augmented by allowing others to add content (concert video or audio, author presentations, teacher lesson plans);
• We would seek to partner with market leaders wherever feasible. Today that might include apps like Instagram or a wiki like setlist.fm;
• A major role for the publisher going forward would be in the curation and organization of other people's content;
• Especially in those segments where we served an enthusiast audience (particularly music) we would look to engage with a community, both by building social features into the platform and through participation in existing external platforms (e.g. Facebook, MySpace and whatever may follow).

I think our team put forth a compelling vision and plan, but we were far from unanimity. Openness and ceding control are not values that come easily to an industry where editors have often had total control over their product.

And therein lay the biggest challenge. While most of the people in the room acknowledged the need for rapid change, there was near unanimity that the existing staff would be best-positioned to fill these new roles. In our group, there was much talk of how a book Editor would be able to curate community content and how those with the existing domain knowledge would be best positioned to build great new apps. While I’ve no doubt that people in those roles could make significant contributions as part of a team, the centralized editorial power that led to success in traditional book publishing is a very different approach than the team-based, user-centric sharing model which they will need to embrace going forward.

That said, I was most pleased in the ending discussion, where many people in the group raised the issue of whether these plans were being too conservative. Of course, it’s easier to rip apart someone else’s (theoretical) publishing business than to jettison or revamp parts of your own, but this was a promising discussion.

I’d like to thank the BISG for inviting me to participate in this event.

What a Long, Strange Marketing Trip It’s Been

It’s no surprise that a key to innovation is rejecting conventional wisdom. And innovation thrives in many businesses, particularly those in the technology space. But whether in silicon valley or silicon alley, marketing is still largely done in the same way it has for decades. Companies hire PR firms who push out press releases, while marketers post product info to web sites and create factsheets for their sales staff.

Marketers may dabble with new approaches, sticking a toe into the social media space by creating a Facebook fan page or setting up an official Twitter account, but even then most apply old approaches to new platforms. Knowledge is shared through boring white papers which sit behind a registration wall while Twitter accounts push out links to bland press releases or staid marketing messages.

 When it comes to breaking the rules of marketing and rejecting conventional wisdom, David Meerman Scott (literally) has written the book. And now, he’s joined together with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan to author a new book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

It’s not the first time that David has written about the Grateful Dead. Readers of his book World Wide Rave may recall a discussion framed by asking whether you wanted to be like Led Zeppelin, whose historic reunion show at the O2 arena was not made available in video format (and where YouTube was forced to remove clips posted by fans), or like the Grateful Dead who, long before the days of Facebook and social media, encouraged concert attendees to record their shows, even setting up special sections where they could plug in to the soundboard to get better quality recordings.

As the book pointed out:

If you want to remain relevant in an always-on, fan-centric, YouTube world, you need to embrace—not restrict—your most important supporters. You need to believe in the power of a World Wide Rave to sell your products and services.

In this new book, David and Brian take a look back at how the Dead worked to develop and nurture an active community of fans, then show how to apply many of those same techniques to today’s marketing platforms. For example:

Rethink traditional industry assumptions – Rather than focus on record albums as a primary revenue source (with touring to support album sales), the Dead created a business model focused on touring.

 (blogger note: if you’ve read what Fred Wilson and others have written suggesting media companies look to monetize the audience, not the content, this is a great example)

Bypass accepted channels and go direct – The Grateful Dead created a mailing list in the early 1970s where they announced tours to fans first. Later,they established their own ticketing office, providing the most loyal fans with the best seats in the house.

The foreword to the book is written by one of the biggest (literally and figuratively) Deadheads, former UCLA and NBA great Bill Walton. As he so eloquently describes it:

Their passion, creative spirit, imaginative soul, and industrious commitment to promote truth, fairness, justice, and the Grateful Dead way led them through the evolutionary transition where they went from playing for silver to playing for life. This book tells you how to make that transition for your own career.

David Scott’s books are always practical, insightful and a fun read. Fans of his prior books won’t be disappointed here. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead may be his finest book to-date.

 

Five Questions for David Meerman Scott

This week, Content Matters caught up with e-marketing thought leader David Meerman Scott. David is a highly sought-after speaker and is author of the "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" and "Cashing In With Content". His newest book, World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories was published last week and is quickly moving up the marketing and e-commerce charts on Amazon. David can also be found @dmscott.

David is one of my favorite marketers to read or hear because he eats his own dog food. His speaking career was jump-started to some extent by the "world wide rave" started by his earlier eBook on the New Rules of PR (which he later turned into a full-length hardbound book). The ebook, which suggested that in the web environment, companies should target their PR efforts directly to end-users rather than to traditional media channels, was quite provocative at the time and set off a bit of a flame war on the PR and media blogs. That led to several hundred thousand downloads of the ebook and lay the groundwork for much of his subsequent work. So, when David speaks (or writes), I pay attention.

Content Matters: Your new book, World Wide Rave, discusses ways in which marketers can trigger the type of web buzz that typically happens only virally. Can you share a couple of examples of companies who’ve done that well?

David Meerman Scott: A World Wide Rave is when masses of people around the world can’t stop talking about you, your company, and your products. Whether you’re located in San Francisco, Dubai, or Reykjavík, it’s when global communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It’s when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. And it’s when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there.

One of my favorite stories is Erin Weed, founder of Girls Fight Back!, uses her Web site, MySpace and Facebook groups, blog, and YouTube videos as a way to promote women's safety and self-defense issues.

Girls Fight Back makes safety education accessible, especially to young women in their teens and twenties, through her education Web site and live seminars conducted all over the United States. She teaches girls and young women why they are their own best protectors, and then shows them how to reduce the risk of violence and fight back if necessary. Amazingly, Erin has trained over a half million girls and women to fight back.

Anywhere from 200 to 1,000 people attend each hour-and-a-half-long seminar. Erin was having a hard time getting the teen and college girls to log on to her website after speaking gigs and paper sign-up forms to gather email addresses for 500 or more girls at a time was impractical. She realized she had to somehow get to them (as opposed to the other way around). So she gets all the girls to text message their email addresses from their mobile phones, which automatically load to a web page.

Get this... nearly 100% of the girls volunteer their email addresses. Clearly, Erin's understanding about how girls and young women communicate (with mobile phones) is critical. Yet how many organizations fail to understand this? All I have to do is look in my home mailbox and see all the junk mail that colleges, camps, and the like are sending to my teenage daughter.

Another favorite example is Lisa Genova. After her novel, Still Alice was rejected by publishers, she decided to self-publish her novel and received a stamp of approval from the Alzheimer's Association. Her blogs developed a huge platform and the book sold briskly.

As a result of Lisa's World Wide Rave plus the measurable sales success on Amazon.com and other online booksellers, Lisa generated buzz in the book world too. An agent contacted her and sold the book at auction in June 2008 for just over half a million dollars to Simon & Schuster. The book, that the publishing world initiall ignored, was a World Wide Rave and when the new edition was released in January 2009, it made the New York Times Bestseller list.

CM: You encourage companies to “Lose Control”, asking them whether they’re more like the Grateful Dead (encouraging sharing) or Led Zeppelin (total control). Publishers have been having this debate for 20 years. What are some simple steps that publishers, locked into a control mindset, might take to get outside their comfort zone? How can they go from being "Trampled Underfoot" to creating a "Ripple"?

DMS: If you step back and look at the ways musicians make money besides the recordings—concerts, endorsement deals, merchandise (such as $35 t-shirts), and “souvenir” packaging of the music (booklets included in a CD case, for example), not to mention royalties for the use of music in television, movies, and advertising—you start to suspect that clamping down with rigid controls may not be the best strategy. Think about that: the music industry is trying to prevent the spread of their product!

If I were a music executive (or musician), I’d make much of my music available for free online, and I’d encourage people to share it. I would have the confidence that providing music for free would drive sales of my other products. Many unsigned bands are prospering with this strategy through their own MySpace pages or Web sites, and some are finding absolutely tremendous success.

CM: You recently wrote about Century 21 real estate shifting its national television advertising budget to online. With current economic conditions, do you see more of this in 2009? Are there specific sectors or market segments where this seems more likely to occur?

DMS: Marketing on the Web can be free. It costs nothing to put up a YouTube video. It costs nothing to create a blog. It costs nothing to create a presence on Facebook. Yes, with the economic downturn, smart companies are looking to leverage the Web in new ways.
We’re living in a time when we can reach the world directly, without having to spend enormous amounts of money on advertising and without investing in huge public relations efforts to convince the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. There is a tremendous opportunity right now to reach buyers in a better way: by publishing great content online, content people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

CM: As marketing budgets get slashed, what are a couple of things that nimble marketers might focus on to maximize their marketing ROI?

DMS: Yes, you can harness that power and virtually anybody, if they're smart about creating something interesting, can generate something that will spread. Now, that's not to say that everybody can generate a million views of a YouTube video, or that if you do something, everyone in the world will know about it.

Within your marketplace, among the people you're trying to reach, if you have a niche product, it's still absolutely possible to reach a large number of your potential customers online with something very interesting. It could be a video, an e-book, some kind of chart or graphic, a photograph, some data or metrics, or an interesting way of looking at what's going on in the marketplace. It's possible to spread any one of those things. Yet most companies haven't been creating information with the idea that it's going to spread. Instead they've been creating information with the idea that they have to ram it down people's throats. It's a very, very different technique to create something that is primed to be shared.

CM: While there’s a lot of gloom and doom about, there are always bright spots. What are you optimistic about in 2009 (professionally or personally)?

DMS: I'm very optimistic. So are all of my smart friends. When there is chaos and fear, there is also a tremendous opportunity.

 

Why the New Borders.com Will Fail ($BGP)

To much fanfare, struggling bookseller Borders (NYSE:BGP) launched the new Borders.com website this week. Borders ended its seven-year partnership with Amazon, which was born after it shelved its original site, and has now launched its own ecommerce site at www.borders.com.

Visually, the site is rich yet a bit overwhelming. Borders has created what it calls the "magic shelf", which tries to capture the essence of a bookstore bookshelf. The bookshelf aims to provide improved personalization, but as a new user, it just shows me the basic shelves of new fiction, new nonfiction and new DVDs. Since what I buy is typically not on the bestseller lists, those shelves do little for me. Their search is powered by Endeca, whose guided navigation is definitely a step up from typical ecommerce search.

Other than the Magic Shelf, the main benefit that Borders is pitching here is the integration with its brick & mortar stores. Users can order from the website then pick up at a local store. Unless you live somewhere you can't accept deliveries, I don't see that combination of online+bricks as a huge benefit. Certainly less so than Blockbuster's ability to return rented DVDs at the store (which has hardly been the Netflix killer they thought it would be).

So, the main question for me becomes "what will drive the typical Amazon customer to instead visit Borders.com"? To start, let's look at the three things that typically drive users to Amazon:
1. Selection: their search tools are strong and their recommendation engine is compelling
2. Reviews: they have the biggest audience and the most reviews.
3. Price: their prices are consistently among the least expensive on the web (though not necessarily THE cheapest).

I don't see how Borders can beat them on either selection or reviews, so it comes down to price.  I did a quick (unscientific) sample of two books, checking Borders.com and Amazon. Here's what I found:

The hardcover edition of The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr has a list price of $25.95. Amazon sells it for $17.13, while the new Borders.com has it at $20.76.

Scott McClellan's new book, What Happened, will be released on Tuesday. The cover price is $27.95, while Amazon has a presale price of $15.37. Borders.com presale price is $27.95 - full boat retail. Interestingly, when I searched on Borders.com for "what happened", the new McClellan book was about the 10th entry listed, while it was #1 in Amazon. I like Endeca's guided navigation but clearly Borders has some more tuning to do if it can't showcase the presale of a book likely to be near the top of the bestseller list next week.

While I'm an atypical shopper (probably more than 90% of my durable good purchases are made online), I'm a reasonable candidate for Borders, primarily because the ground floor of my office building (100 Broadway in NYC) houses a Borders store. At various times, I've gone to Borders to buy a book only to find that it's selling for 20-30% more than via Amazon. If Borders can't be competitive on price, it doesn't matter what neat features they can add. No one will be there to find out. And that's why I believe that the new Borders.com will fail.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

I’ve just finished reading the galleys of David Meerman Scott’s latest book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.  The final version will be published in June; you can pre-order a copy here.

For those who read David’s Web Ink Now blog, the themes of this book will be familiar.  David released an eBook, the New Rules of PR, last year, focusing on direct-to-consumer press releases.  That eBook, plus all of his experiences in viral marketing have led to this new book. 

The book expands beyond PR to include online marketing, viral marketing and leveraging content.  As David points out, in this new environment, these areas are all converging.  A news release, posted to your website, simply becomes marketing content to the reader.  As with his previous book, Cashing in With Content, Scott uses compelling real-world examples to demonstrate the benefits of these methods.  I was pleased to see Alacra mentioned twice in the book – once for the Alacra Blog and again for the Alacra Wiki.

Even for those who read his blog regularly, David brings some new themes to the book.  There is an interesting discussion on the creation of buyer personas – for each type of buyer who may visit your site, so that you can provide relevant content to each buyer type.  This builds upon some of his earlier work, where he focused on content to address users in various phases of a purchase cycle. 

Roughly half the book is focused on putting these concepts to practice in your own environment.  These ten chapters provide specific guidance for understanding buyer personas, using content to position your company as a thought leader and writing content that will resonate with your buyers.  There are also hands-on chapters on blogging, podcasting and leveraging social networking sites.

David Meerman Scott clearly uses the tools that he writes about.  His eBook was downloaded more than 150,000 times, all through viral marketing.  Advance copies of his new book were distributed to a lengthy list of the bloggers who were mentioned in the book.  Clearly David knows that's an easy way to get all of those bloggers (like this one) to write a book review. 

The New Rules of Marketing and PR covers a lot of ground in less than 300 pages.   For traditional marketers and executives, the book is an accessible guide to the emerging models.  For those knee-deep in online marketing already, the New Rules serves as a useful checklist of tips and tools to ensure that your marketing, PR and content are working together to help you achieve your goals.

The New Rules of PR - updated

About a year ago, David Meerman Scott released a free e-book called "The New Rules of PR".  He posted it to his WebInkNow blog as a free download. 

It became an overnight viral marketing success, with more than 15,000 downloads the first week and more than 150,000 downloads over the course of the past year.  For those who haven't read it, the New Rules describes how smart companies are using press releases to reach consumers directly, rather than as a means of attracting traditional media attention.  Web practitioners have become skilled at leveraging SEO-rich press releases to drive traffic to their sites.

David has just released an updated second edition of the e-book, also available free at his blog.  And, of course, since David follows his own guidance, there's a press release describing the new version.  The second edition includes a forward by David McInnis, CEO of PRWeb (a Vocus company).  This version also features a snazzy new color cover as you can see above.

David has also posted a link to the presale of the companion hardcover book, due this spring.  In addition to having an even snazzier cover, the book will include a number of case studies, some of which have been previewed on David's blog in recent months., like this one on CruiseCompete.  If it's anything like his previous book, Cashing In With Content,it's sure to be a practical and relevant read.

Organizing for e-Media

Every senior manager in the media or publishing industry the past ten years has struggled with decisions about how to align their organization for e-media.  Do you have your print ad sales team sell online or bring in a dedicated team?  Is SEO a core competency or do you use outside consultants?  Should we centralize our web development or let each brand do its own thing?

And while it seems like we’ve debated this issue forever (or at least for a decade), the deliberation continues today.

Executive recruiter Cara Erickson (Managing Partner of New Coordinates) and Outsell Lead Analyst Chuck Richard have collaborated on a fascinating new study, “Creating the E-Media Organization.”  The study is based upon interviews with CEOs and e-Media executives at 18 magazine and news organizations.

The authors describe four potential frameworks:
1. Publisher’s pure play: the e-Media organization is completely separate from the traditional print organization, with its own P&L, reporting to the CEO.
2. Centralized structure with a corporate e-Media group servicing each of the business units.
3. A hybrid/matrix approach with online P&L’s rolled into the brand P&L’s.
4. Brand-integrated, where the e-Media function is fully integrated into each brand.

The “pure-play” approach was common in the mid-90’s as publishers sought to take advantage of this new, disruptive channel.  According to the study, only 2 of the 18 companies surveyed still employed a pure play model today.

The hybrid approach is the most commonly used today, with eleven of the eighteen companies surveyed using it.  In this model, the online business may have a separate P&L but it is rolled up into the brand P&L.  The benefit of this approach is that the online leaders interact with the traditional business leaders, which should lead to knowledge transfer over time.

The brand-integrated structure is clearly the preferred model in the long-term.  Business leaders should be focused on brands, not on platforms.  That being said, there are risks for companies looking to rapidly move to this approach without having the talent (both executive and through the ranks) to support it.

The report delves deeply into the leadership skills required to run today’s diversified media business.  The authors discuss the value of “straddlers”, whom they define as “executives with a traditional media background, but who’ve spent the past 5-10 years in interactive media.”  As they point out, not only are straddlers crucial in understanding the issues the business faces, but they are critical magnets in attracting online talent, otherwise hesitant to bring their digital media skills to an old media brand.  The need to infuse traditional media organizations with digital understanding often creates conflicts with the traditional publishing model, where management comes up through the ranks.  More and more, traditional publishers are going outside their organizations for new leadership, or finding that talent through acquisition of online properties.

Either way, the survey describes a huge imbalance between supply and demand.  Virtually all the companies in the study had more online vacancies than they were able to fill and one executive indicated that the “demand for e-talent is five times greater than the supply”.  The change in skills cut across all aspects of the business – in addition to the obvious needs in marketing, product and technology, the dynamic nature of online media has had a similar impact on sales and editorial.  Perhaps most critical, the study points out the need for nimble leadership at the top, capable of making fast decisions and recalibrating on the fly.  Or, as Outsell describes it, the need to “fail faster”.

For those who’ve spent the past decade leading media and publishing organizations through change, these issues are not new.  What may surprise some is the fact that ten years in, we’re still struggling to solve these issues and most media companies have yet to fully integrate online with their traditional platforms.  More importantly, the next five years will likely bring a more rapid pace of change than the past five.  Web services have lowered the barrier to entry for online content, so you’ll see more competitive pressures than in the past.

While there's no simple plan for managing this change, it's helpful to understand where you stand in comparison to your peers. 

To order a copy of the study, visit Outsell.

If you’re an organization seeking digital leaders to fuel growth, or if you’re a straddler (and if you’re a reader of this blog, there’s a good chance of that) seeking new opportunities, reach out to Cara Erickson at New Coordinates.

Understanding Google

When I finished reading John Battelle’s “The Search”, I intended to post a book review to my blog. But, although I found the book compelling, I realized that there was almost nothing I could add that hadn’t already been said in one of the more than 1,800 blog posts discussing the book. Not to mention, of course, the more than 40 reviews on Amazon, plus detailed articles in dozens of business magazines. Sometimes, there’s little more to say.

 

However, I’ve recently begun reading a different book on Google. This one, by search engine analyst Steve Arnold, is an e-book entitled “The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search Is Transforming Application Software”.

This 295 page tome takes a technologically-focused look at Google, and proposes that Google and their network-centric approach is the “logical heir to the Microsoft dynasty”. 

The Google Legacy is geared to those looking to capitalize on the large economic ecosystem created by Google, or those who may soon find themselves threatened by it. As Arnold shows, Google is much more than simply web search. With more than 50 applications today, ranging from the Google Search Appliance to Google Local to Gmail to image management application Picasa, Google has leveraged its search technology in numerous ways. According to Arnold, this huge array of products and services exist due to Google’s software and hardware engineering achievements. Google’s success in these areas is as much tied to their ability to harness commodity hardware and Linux in creating massively parallel computing system as it is to their search algorithms. 

The Google Legacy is a comprehensive analysis of Google, its technology and its potential impact. If you’re in software, hardware or information services, or in a knowledge-driven business, you need to better understand the impact that Google will be having in your market. 

You can view the Table of Contents or read a sample chapter at the Infonortics site.