Fragmented Marketing: Making Owls Appealing
"From the Director of 300 and Watchmen" isn't an ideal tagline for a PG-rated movie aimed at kids.
Commentary and advice on marketing, mostly for publishers (traditional and brands) and writers, but sometimes from a broader perspective.
Your Brand is NOT a Community
Back in January, Shiv Singh gave a great keynote presentation, Engaging Readers in the Digital Age, at the inaugural Digital Book World Conference that, in retrospect, set the tone for what was to come in 2010.
“Build consumer brands,” Singh exhorted, “because your current value chain is breaking.”
Since then, we’ve seen the introduction of the iPad, the Agency Model, and ugly public standoffs between Amazon and several publishers over ebook pricing; notable authors like J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin have made a fuss about eschewing “traditional” publishing channels; and uber-agent Andrew Wylie challenged Random House to a stare-down over ebook royalties, launching his own ill-fated ebook imprint, Odyssey Editions.
Underscoring all of these dust-ups is one recurring theme: publishers’ lack of a direct relationship with readers leaves them vulnerable to disruption and disintermediation.
The Godin Situation: Content, Context, Community
Seth Godin's decision to not publish his theoretical next book(s) via traditional channels has caused a predictable stir amongst the pundit class, with proclamations about "The Death of Publishing" coming from many of the usual suspects looking to scare up page views. Predictably, few have acknowledged the unusually nuanced statement Godin actually made about his situation: "The thing is--now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn't help me or you."
Can Digital Expand the Audience for Comic Books?
From a fragile network of brick-and-mortar direct market retailers and the often fickle tastes of hardcore, social media-savvy fans, to online piracy and the tantalizing possibilities of the iPad, comic books have been out on the bleeding edge of the digital transition for years.
While some comics publishers have had success expanding beyond the limited (but non-returnable) direct market into mainstream bookstores, ICV2 reports the first half of 2010 saw continued challenges in the once-booming graphic novel market. Manga, which represented 35% of all the graphic novels released in the U.S. in 2009 and accounted for a similar percentage of sales in the category, has been hit especially hard:
Graphic novel sales in the direct market have declined by double digits every month in 2010 so far with the exception of February, when they posted a 1% gain.
Graphic novel sales appear to be down in the bookstores as well with Yen Press’ Twilight graphic novel the only breakout hit. The other bestselling movie-driven graphic novel in the first half of 2010, Marvel’s Kick-Ass Hardcover posted sales that were less than 10% of what Watchmen achieved during the same period in 2009…
After two years of double digit declines in sales of manga, American manga publishers have formed a coalition with their Japanese counterparts to battle the illegal Internet distribution of unlicensed manga via scanlation sites where translated versions of manga often appear just days after publication in Japan. The coalition has had some success in shutting down some of the main aggregator sites, though it’s far too early to see if sales will be boosted by making it somewhat more difficult to read manga for free online.
Goodreads Takes Next Step in Social Reading
Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, according to the latest Nielsen research, and the most conservative estimates predict eBooks will represent at least 10% of book sales by the end of the year, but one question that’s not been clearly answered yet is whether there’s any demand to bring the two together.
Goodreads, the largest social network specifically for readers, claims a dual mission: “to get people excited about reading,” and, via their Goodreads Author program, “to help authors reach their target audience — passionate readers.”
The site boasts 3.6 million members who have added more than 100 million books to their virtual shelves and created more than 30,000 groups covering a variety of interests.
“Weird and Wonderful”? Me, on the Future of Publishing
The above tweet led to a fun interview over the at the Book View Cafe blog, “Weird and Wonderful: Digital Book World and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez,” with author Sue Lange asking me some interesting questions that really made me think hard to solidify some of my ideas about the “Future of Publishing” and what it means for authors and publishers.
There’s a lot of fluff and blather right now that makes it sound like eBooks are a magic bullet and simply uploading your book to Amazon makes you an independent author.
Most of that fluff and blather is coming from new intermediaries who take a smaller cut than traditional publishers, while putting your eBook on a virtual shelf where no one who doesn’t already know it exists will ever find it. And, of course, some of them will also upsell you on services to help you market your eBook and increase sales, for which they’ll get their cut.
In a lot of ways, it’s basically Vanity Publishing, in a shiny 2.0 coat.
I also explain a few things about Digital Book World, make the argument “that marketing is, first and foremost, a publisher’s responsibility,” and talk a bit about my own writing and how it has evolved over the years.
On Inception, The Passage, and Writing in The Obama Era
The weakness of “It’s all a dream” — why we hate that, why we feel cheated when narratively anything is revealed to be all a dream — is that you’ve just asked me to spend so much time and emotional capital investing in the stakes of this, and you’ve now swept it away with the most anti-narrative structuralism that doesn’t have anything to substitute in its place. It’s laughing at you for even taking it seriously. You don’t want to feel like a victim of the narrative, and I don’t think Christopher Nolan would do that.
Inception’s Dileep Rao Answers All Your Questions About Inception
Nuanced, brainy and thought-provoking, Christopher Nolan’s provocative sci-fi masterpiece (yeah, I said it) isn’t your typical formulaic summer blockbuster. Even its car chases, gun fights, explosions and special effects wizardry exist on a whole ‘nother level, raised by the sheer audacity of Nolan’s demanding that moviegoers sit still, pay close attention and think hard about what they’re seeing for 2.5 hours rather than be spoon-fed the usual red/blue pablum Hollywood spews out like clockwork from their “me, too” factories.
There’s no filler, no empty calories, no short cuts, no opportune pee breaks; Nolan packs something worthwhile into every second of screen time, and you blink at your own risk. It’s an action movie for intelligent adults who are tired of being treated like teenagers, and it will stick with you long after, whether you loved it or not.
It’s also a call-to-action of sorts for writers and publishers. Or could be, if they’re listening.