Commentary on various aspects of publishing and marketing, primarily focused on books, magazines, and social media.
If you think of a “Like” as an opt-in, you’re as close to the value proposition of an email list as it gets outside of actually acquiring that email, and you should treat the content you post to your Facebook Page with as much care and attention as you do your email newsletters. Even better, think of your Facebook Page as a key component of your brand’s overall audience development strategy, complementing your website and email program, and as your audience there grows, leverage Facebook Insights as aggressively as your web analytics to inform and evolve your content strategy.
While it's interesting to see the affiliate script flipped on Amazon, with their redirecting traffic to purchase the ebooks (surely with a nice cut of the revenue), the user experience leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you're used to purchasing your ebooks via the Kindle itself and/or the apps. The whole setup seems to be targeting hardcore fans—most of whom have probably already downloaded the ebooks for free via a torrent site—while asking the more casual reader to jump through hoops Amazon and B&N, in particular, have worked hard to eliminate.
Since publishers are so concerned with the “perpetuity of lending and simultaneity of availability” of their ebooks, I have to wonder if libraries shouldn’t just help them out and hit the STOP button themselves? Stop buying ebooks across the board, at any price, under any terms.
The latest edition of Book^2 Camp, a publishing and technology "unconference," took place yesterday, and while it lacked the star power of last year's Margaret Atwood appearance, it was another worthwhile Sunday afternoon full of thoughtful conversations about the future of publishing. Three quick takeaways.
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…
Amazon has always understood that readers are the most relevant market and that's why they're in the position of power they're currently enjoying. Do they wield their big stick aggressively? Definitely. And so did B&N and Borders before them, and presumably whomever the boogeyman was prior to them were guilty of the same thing.
What comes with authors' shift to the business side is the reality that the water gets a lot deeper, particularly when it comes to attending conferences and registration fees. If you want to be a true self-publisher, there's a lot more to it than uploading your file to Amazon, and that includes bearing larger expenses like conference registration fees.
