PUSH By Steve Snodgrass via Flickr

Transition, transformation, disruption, disintermediation… whichever word you prefer, the publishing industry is undergoing a massive shift that’s being driven by the Internet, with the news and magazine sides arguably a bit further ahead of the curve than the book side, for better or worse, though few major players among them are seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.

The Atlantic is one of my favorite examples that I’ve cited often, and 2011 was the second great year in a row for the “legacy” brand that went all-in on a digital-first strategy in 2007 and are now reaping the rewards that include growth on the print side of the business.

“We decided to prioritize digital over everything else. We were no longer going to be ‘The Atlantic, which happens to do digital.’ We were going to be a digital media company that also published The Atlantic magazine.”

That must have been a frightening prospect for a number of people, I suggested in a conversation with [Justin Smith, president of Atlantic Consumer Media] at The Atlantic‘s offices last month.

“It’s easier to be ‘digital first’ when your legacy business is not strong, when you have nothing to defend,” Smith explained. “At the time, all we had to defend was red ink.”

Many publishers are in a similar situation, perhaps not quite as dire as defending red ink, yet, but with each passing year the turning radius to make the shift to digital-first becomes tighter and tighter, and even more so for staff. There’s no value in being the last man standing at a publisher unable (or worse, unwilling) to make the shift, and there are few job opportunities for those “good soliders” who can’t clearly demonstrate that they have at least tried to stay ahead of the curve.

We’re in the early stages of such a shift at the day job, and having just completed annual performance reviews and reporting on our analytics from last year, I started noticing a few things that were common to the people who really GET IT.

1) Shift, don’t Drift

Stop being a passive consumer and jump in the deep end of the pool. Try everything until you’re savvy and connected enough to figure out what to ignore at a quick glance. Even if a particular medium or platform doesn’t appeal to you personally, try to understand where it fits in the big picture and who the primary and secondary audiences are. (For me, Tumblr and Pinterest fall in that category.) Launch your own website on WordPress; get on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and LinkedIn and Goodreads. Set up a Google Analytics account and learn how to make the most of it; experiment with Google AdWords and Facebook ads. Sign up for Constant Contact or MailChimp and learn about email marketing. Get access to a smartphone, an ereader and tablet, download a few ebooks and apps, and understand what’s really happening in mobile. Don’t just rely on publishing industry rags and pundits; bookmark MarketingProfs, eMarketer, and ReadWriteWeb and understand what other industries are doing, many of which are way of ahead of the digital curve compared to publishing.

2) HTML 101

This Internet thing isn’t a fad, and it disrupts every industry it touches, no matter how mainstream or niche it might be. Don’t be that person who leaves HTML to the “digital guy,” or a junior editor or marketer; I’ve worked with too many people who did that over the years and have watched almost all of them eventually lose their jobs because their skills weren’t up-to-date. Learn the basics yourself and understand what it takes to build and manage different types of websites. Make liberal use of “Right click > View Page Source” and take a look at the guts of your favorite websites. Befriend web designers and ebook and app developers, in person or online, and learn from them. Sign up for Code Year.

3) Data is Your High-Maintenance Best Friend

“Crisitunity: Real-time data; it’s what we asked for.”
–Lou Paskalis, VP of Global Media, Content Development and Mobile Marketing, American Express

At the end of the day, the Internet is all about connections — people-to-people, people-to-information, information-to-people — and one of its byproducts is data. Metric tons of data! So much of it that we often don’t know where to start other than to place astronomical values on the companies that successfully acquire and curate it, or worse, cower in fear of them. In the digital age, there’s no need to rely solely on instinct and intuition, though both remain invaluable tools when they’re not ego-driven. Remember Einstein’s words: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” First step, determine what’s most important to your business’ success and measure it on a regular basis. Second step, don’t just report the data, analyze it thoroughly and translate the story it’s telling you into something actionable. Third step, TAKE ACTION!

4) Develop Personal Learning Networks

You don’t know everything and you never will. Thankfully, no matter where you live or work, you are not alone. The Internet is huge and has few borders, and in every nook and cranny you’ll find a community of people with similar interests and passions and varying levels of experience. Most of those people are willing to share their insights and hard-won experiences, especially with others willing to reciprocate. No matter how experienced you are, or aren’t, be a giver not just a taker and you’ll become a valued member of your community and ultimately get more value from it.

5) Impatience is a Virtue

Stop waiting for someone else to figure it out, whatever IT might be! If you’re facing an unexplored path, attack it with vigor and dare yourself to push past your comfort level. I’m a firm believer in “it’s better to seek forgiveness than permission,” as long as your approach is informed and well conceived. Embrace mistakes, but don’t set yourself up to make dumb ones. If you’re on to something, others will take notice and eventually follow. If you’re on the wrong track, you’ll learn from it and be able to teach others from the lessons you learn. And if you work somewhere where this approach isn’t valued, focus on the first four points, update your resume accordingly, and find a better employer.

Vertical Speed Indicator by Barnaby K via Flickr

It’s a brand new year, and that means the publishing conference calendar is about to hit overload for the next several months, as pundits o’plenty will mount their soapboxes to advocate for their business models du jour, usually delivered with a not-so-subtle undertone of condescension for anything that doesn’t align with their murky view of the future… and what an incredibly myopic and uninformed view it usually is!

One of the perennial memes that will surely be flogged again and again is that of community, variously referred to as niche, genre, branding (um, no) and/or, the worst buzzword of them all, “verticalization.” I’ve been entertained over the past few years as trade publishers (and those who seek to “advise” them on how to navigate the digital shift despite having little experience outside of traditional publishing) fumble with the idea of verticals, rarely looking to their magazine counterparts who’ve been doing it for a long time and could teach them a thing or five, or the comics and gaming industries that know all about audience engagement, collaborative world building and participatory storytelling.

As anyone who’s actually worked within a “vertical” knows, whether from a niche consumer or business-to-business angle (or, heaven help them, for a non-profit organization or political campaign), just because a subset of people share a common passion doesn’t mean they’re a single-minded group that can be engaged in one templated way. Every vertical that presents a viable business opportunity is going to have its own sub-communities and overlapping layers, with some often in direct opposition to others.

Case in point, this fascinating post from 10 years ago, “When Cards Go Bad,” wherein Mark Rosewater, Head Designer of Magic: The Gathering, explains to an angry player/customer the reasoning behind the existence of “bad” cards:

To recap (or to fill in for those unwilling to read the long version):

1. By definition, some bad cards have to exist. (The most important reason.)
2. Some cards are “bad” because they aren’t meant for you.
3. Some cards are “bad” because they’re designed for a less advanced player.
4. Some cards are “bad” because the right deck for them doesn’t exist yet.
5. “Bad” cards reward the more skilled player.
6. Some players enjoy discovering good “bad” cards.
7. Some “bad” cards are simply R&D goofing up.

The entire post is a worthwhile read whether you’re into gaming* or not, but his explanation of the second point is of particular interest for those looking to ride the vertical-niche-community-branded bus:

The problem is players tend to define “bad cards” as cards that they personally see no reason to play. But certain cards aren’t meant for them in the first place. A good example would be Goblin Game from Planeshift. This card was designed as a fun, kooky card for social players who enjoy things like Unglued. (As a quick aside I should point out that despite rumors Goblin Game was not from Unglued II.) It upset a number of serious players. Because, to them, it was a waste of cardboard…

One of Magic’s strengths is that it is many things to many people. Its adaptability allows each gamer to shift the game to his or her liking. The downside to this cool aspect of the game is that players have to realize that they will open up cards designed for other types of players.

Magic: The Gathering is about as niche it gets, and even within that niche, they have to grapple with the fact that “it is many things to many people,” and they recognize that as a strength, not a weakness. Especially interesting is that, despite celebrating its 20th anniversary next year, MtG has 12 million players and is growing:

That growth has come in two ways: the player base has grown by over 80% during that period [2008-2011], and per player spending has grown by 16%…

“For the more than 12 million players around the world, Magic is more than just a product and more than just a game, it’s a lifestyle,” he said.  “The average tenure of the Magic consumer is over eight years.  And the more engaged the Magic consumer becomes in brand the more value they are to us as a business, as we migrate them toward successively deeper levels of engagement with complementary analog and digital experiences.”

Stop.

Read those two paragraphs again, and ask yourself how many “traditional” OR “new media” publishers you can name that can make a similar statement?

A 20-year-old “legacy” trading card game that reaches 12 million people (16 to 35-year-olds, predominantly male high school or college students; aka, those guys who supposedly don’t read books), has successfully managed the digital transition and is growing, and whose head designer has been writing a weekly online column and engaging directly with fans for ten years?!?

When’s the last time you saw Mark Rosewater speak at a publishing conference? Or anyone from Wizards of the Coast for that matter? And don’t get it twisted, Wizards of the Coast is just as much a “publisher” as Random House, Macmillan, et al., and far more diversified than most.

“Verticalization” isn’t a panacea; it’s just a silly buzzword for another way of doing business, one that’s neither better than its alternatives nor a guarantor of success. In fact, one could easily argue that “going vertical” is actually much more challenging than going horizontal, as the latter is often more amenable to appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Kind of like most general consumer magazines and publishing pundits.

/meh

*On gaming: I’m not an MtG player, though I have recently become obsessed with PoxNora, a collectible, turn-based, tactical, online fantasy game that, besides being fun to play, has totally flipped the script on my ownership vs. access bias. I found Rosewater’s post via PoxNora’s forums, in the midst of an interesting debate over its mix of good and “bad” runes (cards). You want to see what a passionate community looks like in action, spend some time poking around in there and then ask yourself if you’re ready to “go vertical.”

Seth Godin Rides A Unicorn by zoomar via Flickr

Digital goods and manifestos in book form make it easier to spread complex ideas. It’s long frustrated me that a blog post can reach 100 times as many people as a book, but can’t deliver the nuance a book can. The Domino Project is organized around a fundamentally different model of virality, one that allows authors to directly reach people who can use the ideas we’re writing about.

–Seth Godin, December 8, 2010

Was it really just twelve months ago that Seth Godin boldly launched The Domino Project, his purportedly innovative publishing partnership with Amazon that was going to ride the coattails of the Internet and the Kindle, eliminate the middleman (O RLY?!!), and “remap” the “foundational principles” upon which trade publishing was built?

Has it really been only nine months since The Domino Project’s first release, Poke the Box, a disappointing retread of his traditionally published and far superior Tribes?

Did any of the 12 books he published offer truly complex ideas, go viral in any demonstrable way, or introduce a viable new business model for trade publishing?

And yet, not quite one year to the day it was announced, Godin is shutting The Domino Project down, offering the awkward explanation that “it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books,” instead of, perhaps, admitting that publishing is harder than it looks if you want to swim at the deep end of the trade pool in the middle of a dramatic transition, as he obliquely acknowledges in many of his noteworthy takeaways, especially this one:

The ebook marketing platform is in its technical infancy. There are so many components that need to be built, that will. Ebooks are way too hard to give as gifts and to share. Too hard to integrate into social media. And the ebook reader is a lousy platform for discovery and promotion of new titles (what a missed chance). All that will happen, the road map is there, but it’s going to take commitment from Apple, B&N and Amazon.

–Seth Godin, November 29, 2011

Ironically, most of his takeaways are things that weren’t unknown to anyone paying attention a year ago, including the value of an email list; the importance of an author’s platform; the increasingly out-of-whack signal:noise ratio in the market; print as premium product; the power of free promotions combined with targeted marketing; and, perhaps the most obvious, ebooks have a long way to go before they replace print.

Credit where due, though, while not nearly as humble as Richard Nash’s candid take on Cursor’s shortcomings, Godin does a nice job of offering highlights, and lowlights, of each of The Domino Project’s books at Squidoo, including the interesting explanation of his disappointment in We Are All Weird: ”This one hit the bestseller list the first day (I think it went to #9 overall) but it ultimately disappointed me. The problem, I think, was our lack of aggressive outbound promotion. We alerted my blog readers and readers of the Domino blog, but I didn’t hit the road, didn’t do a lot of virtual promotion, didn’t push.”

Ebooks aren’t magic; having a platform doesn’t mean you don’t have to do the work; and, most importantly, in the digital era, distribution is the easy part. It’s also a part that Godin took a calculated gamble on by limiting himself to Amazon and the Kindle platform, and it will be very interesting to see where he goes for his next book after so boldly proclaiming he was done with traditional publishing last summer.

For the second time.

I should note that I generally like and respect Godin, mostly when he sticks to his knitting and focuses on permission marketing, but I think we can safely add The Domino Project to the ever-growing list of wannabe disruptors who get tons of hype only to fade away into bit players or complete irrelevance.

“We are not anywhere near the digital future yet with comics. There is so much exciting ground to be staked out!”

Alex de Campi

For someone known for pushing boundaries, Alex de Campi‘s bio is rather understated, simply noting that she has “written creator-owned graphic novels for IDW, Tokyopop, and Humanoïdes (in France), plus stories for Dark Horse and an issue of Batman that DC has yet to publish. Her music videos for acts as diverse as Amanda Palmer, Black Francis, Los Campesinos!, Art Brut and the Puppini Sisters have been shown everywhere from SXSW to onedotzero.”

What I’ve always appreciated about de Campi is that she unapologetically embodies the “Make the F***ing Comics” spirit, and her latest graphic novel, ASHES, has garnered some industry attention for her innovative use of Kickstarter, where she is not simply looking to fund the graphic novel to help “support [co-creator and artist] Jimmy while he draws it, and pay the printers to make the nice hardbound edition,” but also offering a unique deal specifically for retailers, and (until Kickstarter asked her to not do so) soliciting the trade and film rights for the project, too.

I’d been hearing a lot about Kickstarter over the past year, but it wasn’t until two months ago that I took the plunge, backing two projects by creators whose work I’d previously enjoyed — Eddie Wright’s Tyranny of the Muse and Tobias Buckell’s The Apocalypse Ocean. The former is a graphic novel adaptation of a great self-published novel, Broken Bulbs; the latter, the self-published sequel to the excellent, traditionally published Xenowealth series; both were successfully funded.

ASHES is the next Kickstarter project I plan to back, and to help promote it, I asked Alex if she’d do a short interview, and not surprisingly, her answers were insightful and provocative.

GLG: How has the comics industry changed, for better or worse, since the publication of SMOKE in 2005, and how have your feelings about it changed?

AdC: The comics industry hasn’t changed that much. The economy’s changed, so the appetite for risk from publishers has hit rock bottom and begun to dig. Otherwise, mainstream comics are a buck more expensive and have two pages less content; there are still (riddle me this, Batman!) a majority of female editors but almost no women writers or artists on mainstream books. The writing of female, LGBTQ and minority characters is still kinda cringemaking as they’re still mainly penned by straight white guys…. but… but… now there’s Kickstarter. And now there’s digital self-publishing, without having to front up a crapload of money to pay a printer. See, lots of people love comics. Lots of people make comics. Most of us aren’t included in the mainstream. Now with our own books, we can reach a far broader audience than capes comics or art/autobiographical comics can.

The economy stuff has meant there is even more of a gap in comics publishing for what I do, and for what people like Dan Goldman and, hell, Alan Moore do: intelligent hybrids of genre and literary. The genre publishers want licenced properties or proven hits, and the literary publishers get *extremely* sniffy about “genre”, like it would give them the clap or something to touch a book that is in colour and doesn’t feature a straight white hipster’s relationship troubles (or: orientalised versions of this subject). So, as they say on the tube platform, “mind the gap”. There are a lot of us who are very good at what we do in that gap, and we are all on Kickstarter raising a shit-ton of money to make our books. When you raise money on Kickstarter, it is because people believe in your book so much they are willing to buy it before it is finished. Doesn’t that suggest to you there is a market for our books? Golly, I dunno.

GLG: You have a couple of notable digital comics projects under your belt already with SMOKE and VALENTINE, the latter of which was “born digital” and made the longlist last year for the inaugural Publishing Innovation Awards. What are some of the key differences in your creative process when working print-first vs. digital-first? Do you have a preference?

AdC: You know, that’s like saying, do you prefer playing the blues, or do you like new wave. I like playing both. Both are fun. Certain books feel like they should be in certain formats. Valentine was really episodic and suspenseful, and was a no-brainer as a serialised digital-first book. But then it’s nice to go back to the page, and organise panel numbers and page turns to speed up the reader and slow her down again. Ashes has stuff that involves actual physical mediums, like paint, and collage, so it would never really be right for digital-first… but we are making it smaller, so it reads really well on digital.

I never feel like I reached my full potential on digital-first, though, because Valentine was self-funded and, of course, being one of the first to be out there, we really didn’t get stampeded with offers of support and help. We only got download numbers in the hundred thousands, which I guess wasn’t enough. [Editor's Note: That's insane!] There was so much further we wanted to take Valentine — clickthroughs to sketch art; to more information on historic background/influences/notes; maybe looped, videogame-style music; some simple looped animation (snow, smoke, fire); better sharing capabilities, etc.

But I’m a writer, not a coder. We are not anywhere near the digital future yet with comics. There is so much exciting ground to be staked out! We just need a new publisher, or a collective of coders, comic writers, and artists. I think the latter is more likely than the former.

GLG: Why Kickstarter for ASHES? Why not publish it via Image Comics or Dark Horse, or go digital-first like VALENTINE?

AdC: Ah, here you are conflating two things: PUBLISHING a book, and GETTING A BOOK MADE. Two separate worlds that, strangely, do not intersect in the Bizarroverse of indie comix. We can publish the book, sure. Four different publishers queued up for it. But none of them pay an advance, and 3 out of 4 wanted 50% of the rights (non-negotiable!) for the privilege of calling up the printer. Publishing schmublishing.

What I need (and hence the Kickstarter) is to support my wonderful artist for the 300-odd days it’s going to take him to draw, ink, colour (in some cases paint) and letter the book. No publisher does that, in comics. They used to… that’s how things like Watchmen got made. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ALSO needed to eat and pay rent and stuff. We don’t just magic this out of thin air. (Well, Alan might.)

On Ashes, Jimmy and I are splitting ownership 50/50, but you can’t eat ownership, or pay rent with it. It’s entirely possible to write a novel on evenings and weekends. Heck, I wrote the Ashes script in just such a way and theoretically I am writing the Margaret the Damned (my next book) script that way too (but in reality I am spending 4-6 hours a day marketing the Kickstarter campaign). But! It is NOT possible to DRAW a book like that. Well, it is, if you want to get to know the concept of “eternity”.

Comics are an extremely costly and labour intensive entertainment form to produce — and that’s why most prose genre publishers steer clear of them. OMG so spendy! Yes, we know. Tony Harris raised $60k for his Roundeye For Love graphic novel on Kickstarter so he could devote a year or two to it. We are raising $27k to pay for nearly a year of Jimmy’s time ($15k) and printer fees/kickstarter fees ($12k). Jimmy’s wage is $60 a page, about 10% of what this would cost to produce at DC or Marvel. But still, he needs that to eat. No publishers give that money. So we raise it ourselves. And then somebody comes along and wants 50% of the rights to “publish” us? Seriously, eat me.

Unscientific analysis from Ashes: people who want digital-only: 7. People who will pay 2x as much for digital and print bundle: 155.

November 3, 2011 4:43 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@alexdecampi

alexdecampi

GLG: You noted on Twitter yesterday the disparity between those funding ASHES at the digital-only level ($15) vs. the more expensive limited edition hardcover ($30). Why do you think that is, and does it surprise you?

AdC: I think there’s a variety of reasons. People want to support, of course. And it’s nice to have an object, especially a numbered, limited-edition object. Mass trades, meh. I think they can be replaced by the digital experience. But a really lovely exclusive object, that’s nice to have as well as the digital experience. I actually learned that from lots of bands, who have long ago pioneered the “exclusive numbered coloured vinyl release plus digital download” road.

There is also the fact that a lot of comics people aren’t on digital yet. They still like reading books without a screen. And $30 isn’t that much for a 250-page hardback graphic novel. I think there are about six major reasons why people are skewing towards the $30 and $60 purchases that include a printed book, rather than the $15 digital-only pledge. I also think that bundles may be a real future trend — Marvel has been offering free digital copies of one of their Spider-Man titles (apologies, I can’t remember which one, there are so many) with hard-copy purchase, and they’ve sold in the hundred thousands. [Editor's Note: I think you're referring to Avenging Spider-Man?]

What if a print publisher gave an ePub download code with purchase of the same hardback? And the EULA was nothing more than as the child sang to St Augustine — “tolle, legge” — “take, read”? You have your hardback at home, and you can pop back in and read more chapters on the bus or while at work. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Please tell me this is already happening. I bet someone is doing it. It makes sense.

GLG: You were initially offering trade rights and film rights as reward levels but Kickstarter asked you not to do that and you’ve since removed them. Have you gotten any nibbles, before or after, and why did you opt to include them in the first place rather than go through an agent?

AdC: We have gotten nibbles! And actually an agent is involved: my wonderful and incredibly patient literary agent, Ethan Ellenberg, who normally deals with far larger fry than me. If people nibble, we then pass them to The Man With the Plan, and Ethan sorts it out. We hope to have a few announcements in the coming month about rights deals.

The thing is, there are no comics agents. Creators go direct to publishers. Ethan is a SF/F agent, and is interested in me because I push the boundaries of publishing, and what I do has a big genre SF/F element. There are a TON of comics-to-film agents. I’ve been represented by several of them. You know, just because you say you’re an agent, doesn’t mean you’re good at your job. And sadly I’m not a big enough cheese to attract the attention of the three or so *great* comics-to-film agents.

We do have a really innovative retailer plan, and are one of the first (if not the first) to specifically work with comics retail shops via Kickstarter. Comic shops are not sale or return — it’s just straight sale — so they’re actually MUCH more up for this sort of thing than, say, an indie bookstore, which will just bitch about not being able to return unsold books. Don’t get in my face about indie bookstores now, a friend is actually trying this with some amazing authors, and that is what indie bookstores are saying. Whinge, whinge, discount. Whinge, whinge, returning. Fiddle, fiddle, Roman burning.

GLG: Besides hitting your funding goal, how will you define success for ASHES?

AdC: Honestly, at this point, I feel like I’m a broken record. Once we hit our funding goal and I can stop hassling everybody all the time to buy our book — and I can just go back to being a writer, which is all I ever wanted to be — then that will be success. The critical reception when the book comes out, well, it is what it is. Comic books take so long to come out after they are written, it’s like people are commenting on last year’s dress anyway.

GLG: Bonus Q! What can you tell us about the issue of Batman you wrote that DC has yet to publish?

AdC: Oh, lordy. That was so long ago… 2007? I was emailed by a junior editor at DC tasked with bringing in new talent, and asked if I would write an issue of Batman: Confidential — a series which I am not sure still exists [Ed: Nope.], meant to illuminate “firsts” in Batman’s crimefighting career. Mine was called Batman: Daylight, and was all about his first time fighting crime in, well, daylight. Also the first time he met Vicki Vale, and, the first time he met Clayface. I posted a PDF of it ages ago. It was fun. Quite pretty. Some nice formalist touches. Shame it never saw the light of day, but the alumni of the Batman flat file at DC are both exalted and legion.

BIO (via Twitter): Alex de Campi makes films; writes books; starves.

ASHES: Ashes is a bullet ride through the brain of a dystopian Britain into the dark heart of the American psyche. As soldier Rupert Cain and journalist Katie Shah are reunited five years after they brought down a government, punishment — from an unexpected source — looms for that good deed. Chased from London’s CCTV-bristling streets to the Home Counties, they are finally brought to ground by an acquaintance’s betrayal and dragged off to an army base in a high-sierra American wasteland. Their only way out is through the mind of a twisted teenager… providing they can also escape his father.

“It was just too damn premature. We basically spent all our time trying to explain to everybody what the problem was, leaving no time to explain how we were the solution.”

–Richard Nash at Books in Browsers 2011

Richard Nash’s presentation at Books in Browsers last week garnered a lot of attention for his candid look at what did and didn’t work with his highly touted startup, Cursor, and having just watched the video, I give him credit for not simply sneaking out the back door and moving on to his next project, like so many others have already done.

While the first 15 minutes of the presentation offers some interesting tidbits — Red Lemonade effectively ends up being a mash-up of Subterranean Press and, to a lesser degree, Writer’s Digest (with a more literary slant) — you can see his body language change as he gets to the tougher part of the presentation, actually seeming to become more comfortable as he goes along, finally acknowledging his boast of launching 50,000 independent publishers was a bit too, let’s charitably call it… ambitious: “Yeah, I know; I fucked up.”

I like Nash a lot (in ODB’s words, we go back like babies and pacifiers, from our overlapping days at Soft Skull to my early critiques of Cursor), and have always thought if anyone was going to make a go of something like Cursor, he had the best shot because he was coming at it from the right place, even if the angle was ultimately flawed. Ironically, what I thought was his main advantage just might have been his downfall: he simply wasn’t mercenary enough to attract the kind of funding needed to scale Cursor beyond the literary niche experiment it arguably always was fated to be.

That said, he took an honest shot at something he believed in and, more importantly, maintained his integrity throughout the process. While neither Cursor nor Red Lemonade ended up being the “game changers” some thought they might be, one could argue (and so I will) that the publishing industry overall is stronger for the attempt, and what *did* work shouldn’t be lost in the discussion.

Kudos to Richard and his partner Mark Warholak, for their passion and hard work at a time when so many prefer to play armchair quarterback from their keyboards.

Wheel of Fortune by iwinatcookie, via Flickr

Even with the challenges that traditional publishers face, it can’t be denied that this ever-changing landscape can also be embraced as a time of opportunity to connect directly with readers, cut out middlemen, and disrupt norms that are no longer relevant, so that this illustrious and important industry, which I still love wholeheartedly, can take its rightful position at the forefront of connecting great stories with readers.

–“The Book Publishing Industry of the Future: It’s All About Content,” Felicia Pride

Truth: Disruptors are overrated. Most are made of smoke and mirrors, and the rare “Black Swan” is exactly that, rare and unpredictable.

For every Google, there’s ten Cuils.  For every Facebook, there’s twenty Pings. For every iPad, there’s fifty Skiffs. In publishing, every day it seems there’s a new upstart or three that’s going to disintermediate (or even better, KILL!) traditional publishers, but with the exceptions of Open Road Integrated Media and, possibly, Ruckus Media Group — both run by major publishing veterans, and have partnerships with a variety of “traditional” publishers — you’d be hard-pressed to name too many others that have had any truly notable impact to match the hype surrounding them at any given moment.

Beast Books? BLIO? Copia? Cursor? Push Pop Press? Scribd? Smashwords? Zinio?

Not a game-changer in the bunch, despite all kinds of hype that proclaimed otherwise.

Last week, in preparation for a video interview with Jane Friedman (my former Writer’s Digest colleague, not the Open Road founder), she referred me to an older post by Michael Nielsen, Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?, wherein he made a number of interesting points, including this one:

The money and power that come from commitment to an existing organizational architecture actually place incumbents at a disadvantage, locking them in. It’s easier and more effective to start over, from scratch.

It’s a longish read, and the tl:dr takeaway is basically summed up in, “It’s easier and more effective to start over, from scratch.” While that’s certainly arguable, as someone who’s worked on both sides of that equation, “easy” is often exaggerated and/or misrepresented (everything’s a bit easier when there’s millions of dollars in funding and no short-term obligations or expectations), and I’d argue that the ideal angle is building from a solid foundation with room to experiment, test, and strategically fail forward.

(eg: The NY Times, or The Atlantic.)

For some, that means funding new projects via mature projects before things fall apart; what Sourcebooks’ Dominique Raccah frequently refers to as running two companies at once, and what Google is currently in the process of doing with its latest initiative, or Macmillan has done with its publisher-agnostic, community-centric online properties, Tor.com, Heroes and Heartbreakers, and Criminal Element.

In reality, most so-called disruptors are effectively just industry research & development units that end up folding, fading into the background as minor players, or, if they’re lucky, being acquired by bigger fish, which, if we’re being honest, is often the primary objective.

As the publishing industry evolves beyond the fascimile stage of ebooks, and there proves to be actual gold in those distant mountains, most of the Big Six publishers will make the necessary pivots, either via acquisitions, like Random House acquiring Smashing Ideas earlier this year, to develop their own mobile and interactive online products and services; via internal startups, like Macmillan launching Macmillan Films last year to develop original properties; or, via strategic partnerships, like Scholastic and the aforementioned Ruckus, and a slew of smaller publishers for whom Open Road handles marketing efforts.

A SIDE NOTE ON TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA

Amazon is making a big investment in books and writers, and that’s exciting. They are putting together an interesting team, and I’m eager to work with them and see what they can do. But it’s not white-hat/black-hat. There is something much more interesting and complex going on than the one-dimensional article in the Times would indicate. It’s unfortunate that people outside our industry got such an incomplete and misleading view of things.

–Really, New York Times??, by Brian DeFiore

I’m a big fan of Brooke Gladstone’s recent book, The Influencing Machine, wherein she states, “We get the media we deserve,” and think about it often when reading muddle-headed coverage of the publishing industry that’s filtered through the prism of technology.

Truth: Consumers control the future of media, and right now, Amazon, Google and Apple have their fingers on our collective pulse and are developing the new distribution channels via which we will consume increasing amounts of a variety of content, but they are neither infallible, nor immune to being “disrupted” themselves. The fanciest devices, apps, and websites are useless without good content, and I’d argue that’s why we’re seeing Amazon and Google move into publishing directly rather than solely as distribution channels. Same with Netflix, though their self-inflicted wounds may have already disrupted their long-term viability.

It’s also worth noting that Barnes & Noble, which has been a publisher for years now via Sterling and should not be mentioned in the same breath as Borders, is in no way ready to concede the digital playing field to Amazon:

Sales of digital content through BN.com quadrupled in the quarter, and B&N estimated it has a 26%–27% market share of e-book sales and a 30% share of the digital magazine market. The majority of e-book sales are made through the agency model and B&N’s self-publishing platform, PubIt! By the end of fiscal 2012, B&N projected that digital/Nook sales will represent about 24% of total revenue compared to 12% in fiscal 2011 (and 2% in fiscal 2010).

I’ll repeat what I said in the Spring of 2010: don’t sleep on Barnes & Noble. The value of a brick-and-mortar presence is grossly underrated these days, but there’s a reason Apple started opening retail stores 10 years ago, five months after launching iTunes; and there’s a reason Amazon made deals to sell the Kindle at Target, Staples and other brick-and-mortar locations. Even Google is experimenting with brick-and-mortar to help their Chromebooks gain traction in the marketplace.

The future isn’t a zero-sum game, and while further “disruption” is inevitable, there’s arguably a lot more opportunity than DOOM! on the horizon for most publishers, whether they be fledgling upstarts or savvy established players. In the end, the Big Six might become the Big Five or the Big Ten, and there will surely be shifts in market share and a few new players in the mix, Amazon being the most obvious.

My optimistic hope is that, unlike the music industry, we’re going to see the publishing industry actually grow as the evolution (and definition) of the “book” takes us beyond short-sighted debates over formats into far more interesting experiments with content, subject matter, and experiences, not to mention new audiences who were previously under-served due to limited physical shelf space.

If you work in the publishing industry and are expecting any less, it begs the question: Why not go work somewhere else?

a wolf in sheep's clothing by Annsy Chan, via Flickr

“There is a better counterargument that the eBook license does not allow for the establishment of the material in question to be library material in any form; basically, it is and never will be library material.”

-“Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed,” Andy Woodworth

There’s been a bit of a dustup in Libraryland as it seems many (most? all?) librarians were unaware of the details involved in finally getting Kindle compatibility via Overdrive — the leading ebook distributor to public libraries (for now, at least) — as Amazon pulled off a not-at-all-surprising move that gives them at least two opportunities to make a sales pitch directly to library patrons every time they borrow an ebook from them.

But, wait a minute…

Woodworth, who has one of the more level-headed takes on the situation, steps back to look at the bigger picture and asks the most important question: who actually owns those ebooks?

When the detail-light announcement of the Overdrive/Amazon deal was first made back in the Spring, Josh Hadro, my colleague at Library Journal, read the tea leaves and did a bit of foreshadowing that ultimately proved to be right on the money:

As others have pointed out, it is perhaps telling that the Amazon release refers only to Kindle customers, not patrons: the new feature will “allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries” [emphasis added]. So all the folks doing the lending, they’re Kindle customers from the start, taking only a brief detour into patron territory, and hopefully back into customer mode “if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it.”

The ebooks being borrowed by Amazon customers aren’t the same ePUB files being licensed to libraries via Overdrive, they’re Amazon’s files that they’re allowing their customers to access via a marketing partnership with local libraries.

Basically, Amazon one-upped Barnes & Noble’s Read In-Store feature that allows Nook customers to “read NOOK Books FREE for up to one hour per day” in any of their 700+ stores, and put the exact same feature in every Kindle customer’s living room via 11,000+ public libraries, without the physical and timing limitations. Notably, it seems they’ve also side-stepped Overdrive’s new WIN (Want It Now) Catalog that allows library patrons to purchase books (and audiobooks) directly, via links to retailers.

While I understand the ambivalence, frustration and/or outright anger some librarians must feel over the situation — it kind of goes hand-in-hand working with Amazon — there’s an unfortunate combination at play here that seems to be an underlying truth of the digital age: “Be careful what you wish for,” and, “If you get in bed with the devil, sooner or later…”

Ebooks are disrupting business models left and right (even Amazon took it on the chin when Macmillan dared to stand up to them way back in January 2010), and no matter how much everyone loves (or claims to love) libraries, they’re not immune. Hell, in some cases, they’re being eyed warily or left out of the ebook game altogether!

As “licensing” increasingly becomes the norm for various forms of media, knowingly or not, libraries are finding themselves on the front lines of a battle that most consumers arguably don’t even realize is being fought: the question of ownership in the digital age.

It’s a question that doesn’t offer any easy answers, and is so much bigger than the symptomatic issue of who knows which Kindle ebooks you’re borrowing. On the bright side, if anyone’s up to the challenge of fighting for answers to these questions, it’s librarians!

Be careful what you ask for, indeed.

The Scarecrow by Bart Heird, via Flickr

“It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,” he said. “Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.”

–“Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal,” By David Streitfeld, NY Times

If you have any doubt that the NY Times is still the paper of record, watch how far and wide their latest update on Amazon’s move into “traditional” publishing spreads. While it’s a subject that’s been debated to death in publishing circles, it’s always interesting to see the response when it spills out into more public forums.

There’s an insightful comment buried in the beginning of the article, attributed broadly to unnamed Amazon executives, that perfectly sums up the true state of the publishing industry and Amazon’s position in it: “…they played down Amazon’s power and said publishers were in love with their own demise.”

Ain’t that the truth?

The dominant meme over the past several years has been the death of publishing, usually at the hands of the ebook, and the looming threat of technology partners/competitors that, as Grandinetti alluded to, presents “both risk and opportunity.” As with most memes, there’s a bit of truth mixed in there, usually buried amidst heavy doses of exaggeration, ignorance and inane snark.

While publishers in general are cautiously navigating the choppy waters of the digital shift, most are riding the strong wave of ebook sales that’s putting as much profit in their coffers as Amazon’s, while balancing a constricting (but by no means expiring) market for print books, along with a rats nest of pre-digital contracts, rights, and royalty scenarios.

Amazon moving into “traditional” publishing is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also not the end of the world for the publishing industry as we know it. By default, they immediately become a major player in the markets they enter, and because publishing is likely to be a minor revenue stream feeding the Amazon Ocean for the foreseeable future, they’re undoubtedly going to be more aggressive in making deals than a traditional publisher can be.

One could argue (and so I will), that by moving into “traditional” publishing, Amazon is simply acknowledging that content is and always will be King, and while the self-publishing angle has worked out quite well for them, only a few handfuls of authors are truly making any notable profit on $2.99 ebooks. Some of those authors have subsequently been scooped up by “traditional” publishers who are effectively doing the same thing Amazon is doing, and have been for years. (see: Celebrity novels; blogs-to-books; Amanda Hocking; etc.)

Conversely, as Amazon ramps up their “traditional” acquisitions, they’re going to learn what most publishers already know, distribution is only one piece of the puzzle, and relatively speaking, the easiest one to solve. Also, while a robust customer database and algorithms that can match those customers to books they’re interested in is a true differentiator in the digital age, it doesn’t address the one killer app for which no publisher, traditional nor newcomer, has yet nailed: consistently acquiring great books.

Instead of the typical (and oh so tired) “The sky is falling!” coverage of Amazon Publishing, the real story is that publishing is far from dead, and there are myriad opportunities for old and new players alike to reach readers through a variety of channels.

Of course, while optimism and rational thinking are good from a business perspective, they rarely translate into massive clickthroughs, so prepare yourself for more stories this week filtered through Dr. Jonathan Crane‘s skewed perspective.

NEWSSTAND by panavatar, via Flickr

The Audit Bureau of Circulation must go back to counting subscriptions that count and not just counting. A penny paid for a subscription should not count as a paid subscription. Remember when paid subscriptions used to be at least half of the basic subscription price. Those were the days my friend and they have to come back. I know that is only one of the many problems surrounding the advertising driven business model, but we have to start somewhere. It is never too late.

–“The Insane American Magazine Business Model is Back with a Vengeance!” Samir Husni

Most magazines, print and digital, are little more than advertising platforms whose readers are defined as “targets”, valued in quantity over quality, and when the advertising revenue stream dries up, the magazines usually fold, readers be damned. It’s a business model that has ruled for decades, with the print side built upon a smoke and mirrors combo of deeply discounted, often unprofitable subscriptions; expensive newsstand distribution; and deceptive metrics long accepted as industry standards.

On the digital side, expenses related to the creation and acquisition of content often get buried on the print side (or worse, valued differently), fluffing up the digital margins and sending misleading signals about the true ROI for each. Meanwhile, most successful digital pure plays are small, scrappy efforts where editorial teams wear multiple hats and reader engagement is a priority, even when advertising is the primary, or only, source of revenue.

The Columbia Journalism Review published a thorough report on the business of digital journalism this past Spring, and among its many critical insights was this blunt take on the advertising model and an engaged readership:

“Media companies should redefine the relationship between audience and advertising. They have spent a great deal of time and resources building masses of lightly engaged readers. And the industry has turned online ads into what Rothenberg calls low-value ‘direct-response advertising—a.k.a., junk mail.’

That kind of advertising is dependent on volume—a game publishers will never win when competing with behemoths like Facebook and Google. This is not a goal that can be accomplished just by the business side. Journalists must make a fuller commitment to understanding the audiences they have and the ones they want, and to revamping their digital offerings to ensure deeper loyalty.”

For multi-platform publishers, I’d argue that it’s not just their digital offerings that need to be revamped, but the print ones, too, as the definition of a “magazine” has evolved and the use case for the printed version isn’t always as clear as it used to be.

Portability and endurance are two theoretical advantages that print magazines have over their digital counterparts, but the ability to deliver engaging, focused and original content cheaply and on a consistent basis is much harder to do in print than it is online, where expectations are lower and the exchange rate is typically more favorable. Paradoxically, magazines’ own online presences are, more often than not, commensal partners at best, if not outright parasites.

In a typical ad-supported print magazine, even the best editorial intentions are constricted by the costs of printing and postage which are subsidized by the diminished and ever-fluctuating advertising revenues that ultimately dictate page counts, especially for those offering heavily discounted subscriptions. They’re further contradicted by mixed messages about the actual value of the content itself, as in the insulting subscription offers Husni noted from Hearst and Conde Nast.

When ranting a couple of years ago about heavily subsidized subscription offers that devalue content, I noted my container-neutral definition of a magazine as ”quality content curated with an emphasis on a specific community over generic demographics.”

Content + Context = Value.

The magazines that put their readers first and assign clear value to the content they publish for them (eg: The Atlantic; Harvard Business Review; Cook’s Illustrated), will be the ones best positioned to weather inevitable shifts in advertising revenue.

I wrote this back in June 2009 and, sadly, it bears repeating:

In an ideal world, traditional publishers would take the opportunity to reinvent their business model and approach 2010 as follows:

• Place a clear value on all content and offer it in a variety of mediums, as dicated by the community’s needs, not the publisher’s budget line items;
• Abolish the rate card and don’t accept spreadsheet-based RFPs;
• Most importantly, ensure their content, and the products they’re advertising, are all worth paying for.

There’s only so many ad dollars to go around these days and the media contraction that’s already underway will continue to weed out the weakest brands and seasick investors. If a pure-play brand is a legitimate competitor to your established print brand – whether for readers, advertisers or both — you don’t have a viable business model anymore. Period.

If the viability of your magazine in 2012 hinges on maintaining the fickle lucre from 4-5 major advertisers, you’re doing it wrong.

“We need to think about containers as an option, not the starting point.”

–Context first, Brian O’Leary

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to engage with the transmedia community, much less blog about anything happening in those circles, but I have noticed it’s getting more mainstream attention with each passing month, sometimes actually using the term “transmedia,” but more often simply referencing its fundamental principles of designing an immersive experience.

I alluded to it briefly in my post from a couple of weeks ago, It’s the CONTENT, Stupid! (And the Community.), noting how the ebook aficionados once again were missing the big picture, this time in reference to Pottermore, a nuance Jeff Gomez, the godfather of transmedia storytelling, picked up on:

In today’s interconnected world, our attention flows from our computer screens to our mobile screens to our TV screens without our giving such activity a second thought. The problem has been that the stories we enjoy don’t do that; they don’t behave the way we’ve come to need them to behave.

–Pottermore: Expert Explains How Harry Potter’s Website Will Transform Storytelling, Forbes

Two recent articles, completely unrelated to transmedia (on the surface), have also picked up on the value of immersion, specifically noting that more engaged users are more profitable users.

First, Ken Doctor, on maximizing engaged users on the web:

Don’t tell me how many customers you have; tell me how much money you are making on each of them…  Would you rather have the [NY] Times’ $170 million in digital revenues or HuffPo’s $30 million?

–Comparing News Sites On Revenue Per Customer, paidContent

Second, Erica Ogg, on maximizing engaged users in mobile apps:

More and more apps “are becoming vehicles for constant engagement, cloud connectivity and reusable utilities,” said Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing for Appcelerator… These coming improvements to iOS–scheduled to arrive sometime this fall–are “the key” to developers’ evolving way of looking at apps, said Schwarzhoff. Because, he says, “getting new users off the App Store is kind of a pain and kind of expensive.” Many developers are “counting on these new tools to keep their audience engaged.”

–App makers relying more on repeat users to make money, GigaOm

Magazine publishers have long understood the value of keeping an existing customer vs. acquiring a new one, and many have slowly evolved their multi-platform approaches over the years, expanding their brands into emedia, ecommerce and live and virtual events offerings that go beyond simply repurposing print material or amassing “eyeballs” in pursuit of fickle advertising revenues, in favor of maximizing the lifetime value of each customer they have. In this regard, from The Atlantic to Writer’s Digest, and many other brands in between, the experimentation and innovation on the magazine side far exceeds that of their book publishing counterparts.

Book publishers, on the other hand, have traditionally either focused on “digital” as a secondary medium, or worse, not even as a distinct medium at all, simply a fascimile or marketing channel for their print products. In doing so, they’ve effectively positioned themselves for easier disintermediation, being seen as container manufacturers instead of content curators and community organizers.

eg: There are notably few examples of trade book publishers that can effectively move readers from one popular author’s books to lesser known authors in their stable without the help of an intermediary or three, and most are now facing direct competition from those same intermediaries for all of those authors’ works.

Brian O’Leary’s Context first essay is a must-read for everyone in the publishing business, traditional and new media:

We need to think about containers as an option, not the starting point.  Further, we must start to open up access, making it possible for readers to discover and consume our content within and across digital realms. Without a shift in mindset, we are vulnerable to a range of current and future disruptive entrants.  Containers limit how we think about our audiences.  In stripping context, they also limit how audiences find our content.

Emphasis is mine there, but it’s ultimately O’Leary’s core point and bears repeating: Containers limit how we think about our audiences.

Containers also limit how our audiences discover, consume, engage and share our content, too.

Plain and simple, publishers who see themselves as primarily being in the book business, print or digital, are limiting their viability, profitability and longevity.

Last Fall, I noted that my ideal publisher of the 21st Century would fully embrace transmedia development principles:

…every story would go through an organic transmedia development process BEFORE acquisition to identify other appropriate media, either for production or format licensing, including film/tv, video/computer games, interactive apps, T/CCGs, online education, merchandising, etc. Some acquisitions would be made without the expectation of a physical book being a factor.

In the 21st Century, the container is a secondary concern, dictated by the kind of content being curated, and most importantly, by the needs of the community for which it’s meant to serve. Anything less is a missed opportunity, and a disservice to all involved.

[Image: "my other hobby i" by Laenulfean, via Flickr.]