Marketing

Commentary and advice on marketing, mostly for publishers (traditional and brands) and writers, but sometimes from a broader perspective.

An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

6Qs: Richard Eoin Nash, Social Publisher

BEA: Richard Nash by cgkinla
BEA: Richard Nash by cgkinla

“Basically, the best-selling five hundred books each year will likely be published much like Little Brown publishes James Patterson, on a TV production model, or like Scholastic did Harry Potter and Doubleday Dan Brown, on a big Hollywood blockbuster model. The rest will be published by niche social publishing communities.”

—About Richard Eoin Nash

Richard Nash, former publisher of Soft Skull, has been making waves ever since stepping down from the acclaimed indie earlier this year to “go all in” and pursue his vision of the future of publishing. Equal parts philosopher and raconteur, his over-the-top performance at BEA’s 7×20×21 panel reminded me of Frank T.J. Mackey, Tom Cruise’s motivational speaker in Magnolia; I fully expected him to start yelling “Respect the READER!” at one point.

He caught some flak as the focal point of my post asking “Is Social Publishing simply Vanity Publishing 2.0?“, not so much because I think he’s actually going into vanity publishing, but because of the various social/digital/ePublishing initiatives I’ve seen popping up lately, Cursor seemed to have the closest thing to a viable business model worth critiquing.

After doing exactly that backchannel, he graciously agreed to a brief interview to shed some more light on the subject and I’m thrilled to have him as the second in a sporadic series of interviews with insightful publishing and marketing professionals – Richard Eoin Nash, Social Publisher.

1) Define “social publishing” in terms the average book reader would understand; no buzzwords, no “organic gurgle of culture”. What is it, and what’s in it for the reader?

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

On Branding, Tribes, and Seth Godin Goes Wild

Seth Godin Rides A Unicorn by zoomar
Seth Godin Rides A Unicorn by zoomar

“If you can just assemble these 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 people who love literary fiction, then you’ve earned the right to be the ringleader, the leader of that tribe—and you’ll never, ever again have trouble selling literary fiction.”

–Seth Godin, How to Fix the Publishing Industry

Seth Godin arguably did not have the Best Week Ever last week, between his ill-conceived Brands in Public initiative, and his controversial talk at a brown bag lunch put together by the Digital Publishing Group here in New York City. Harsh reactions to both raged on Twitter and in the blogiverse, and he quickly walked back his brandjacking project, a brazenly opportunistic social media scam that effectively sought to leverage the real-time web and SEO tactics to extort $400/month from brands looking to control the presentation of their dirty laundry via his Squidoo site.

Between these two incidents, and his ill-advised comments on non-profit organizations and social media a couple of weeks ago (for which Geoff Livingston and Ike Pigott deftly cut him down), I’m starting to think the old man has lost a step.

Or three.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Will eBook Exuberance Kill Publishing?

One iPhone Case To Rule Them All by Photo Giddy
One iPhone Case To Rule Them All by Photo Giddy

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine. We started to market it that way, and it just took off.”

–Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs on Amazon and Ice Cream

There’s a particularly virulent meme running through the publishing industry that says the only thing keeping eBooks from supplanting print books tomorrow is a great eReader, and that Apple’s long-rumored Tablet is that killer device. Yesterday, another Apple event came and went and, as has happened every single time, there was neither an announcement of a Tablet, nor any mention of eBooks being a critical part of their plans for world domination.

Interestingly, Jobs specifically noted that eBooks weren’t a significant market yet, pointing to Amazon’s continued silence on the actual number of Kindles they’ve sold: “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”

Two other notable developments popped up yesterday that suggest the hype surrounding eBooks has hit an unwarranted level of “irrational exuberance”: the premature demise of Quartet Books (“there are very few industry best practices“), and Tor.com’s announcement of a POD-based imprint.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Freemium for writers is two debates

[This is a guest post by Dan Holloway. His info is at the end of the post.]

Audience in Red by felipe trucco
Audience in Red by felipe trucco

The battle isn’t getting people to pay; it’s getting people to read. If they do read, they might not pay. If they don’t read, they’ll never pay.

Writers who use the “freemium” model face two distinct challenges, and the harder one isn’t always the one you think.

What a delightful piece of coincidence that I should be asked to write this blog the day before I headed off to the Reading Festival. My wife and I were going for the headline set by the most important band of the 1990s,  Radiohead (sorry, Kurt), who propelled the issue of providing content for free into the public consciousness (sorry, Trent) when they released their album In Rainbows on a set-your-own-price basis; 60% of people chose, in the event, to pay nothing.

A delightful coincidence, but not actually that significant. Radiohead are still the most important band in the world; Trent Reznor is one of the most important figures in [re]shaping the music industry; Stephen King is about the most long-term successful writer on the planet. And Chris Anderson is, well, Chris Anderson. But these are the names that come up again and again in the freemium debate – “look how great they are; see what they did!” on the one hand; “it wasn’t a success, it was a disaster; and the free wasn’t properly free!” on the other.

I want to make two points. First, the exploits of established megastars have nothing to do with the relevance of the freemium debate to new writers. Second, they actually skew the debate rather dangerously, because they focus attention on the wrong challenge, not the one that’s most important to new writers.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Soda Pop Stop Lessons for Bookstores

“Thank you very much, Pepsi-Cola, for reminding me that I own my shelf space and I can do anything I want. So I immediately went out and found 25 little brands of soda that were still in glass bottles…”

—John Nese, Galcos Soda Pop Stop

John Nese, proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, shows independent bookstores one way they can deal with major publishers and compete with Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc. — depth over breadth.

I came across a great example of this approach while on vacation a couple of weeks ago, at Adventures Unlimited Books in Cottonwood, AZ, located on North Main Street in the historic part of town. Covering two decent-sized storefronts (maybe 800 sq. feet total?) with a small entrance connecting them that doubles as a seating/reading area, the left side features a modest selection of the kinds of new, recent and notable books across the typical categories that are found in most small, independent bookstores.

The right side, though, is an alternative history, conspiracy theory, sci-fi/fantasy aficionado’s dream, featuring an impressive selection of Adventures Unlimited Press books as well as books from other publishers covering similar topics and territory. It’s about as niche as you can get, sort of a bricks-and-mortar take on Tor.com‘s store, or the book equivalent of Nese’s impressive selection of 500+ sodas not produced by Pepsi or Coca-Cola.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

You are not your iPhone, not your Kindle

tin robot by Dirty Bunny
tin robot by Dirty Bunny

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it.”
—Max Frisch

That an author needs to establish their own marketing platform nowadays has pretty much become a given, but I’ve seen many complaints about how difficult and time-consuming it is, and of course there’s the predictable flood of marketing gurus pushing all kinds of technology-enabled solutions to make things “easier”.

Some are well-intentioned and worthy of consideration, like the next-generation “social publisher”, Cursor, and the new, marketing-centric Writer’s Digest Conference. Others are just quick cash-grabs, like the brazenly opportunistic Twitter Boot Camp and 140 Characters Conference, my favorite description of which came from Loren Feldman: “biggest circle jerk of nothingness“. (NSFW!)

As Twitter’s still feeling the effects of last week’s crash, and Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed have shown, focusing on specific tools is the wrong approach, and limiting your platform development to your online presence is a recipe for disaster.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Get Serious About the Business of Publishing

Why so serious? by laverrue
Why so serious? by laverrue

A book’s success is too important to entrust to somebody who doesn’t have a stake in it. Editors are already fierce enough advocates to have persuaded their bosses to let them acquire the books in the first place; why not let them keep on advocating?

–Ron Hogan, “Hey Editors! Less Max Perkins, More Billy Mays“

Hogan, GalleyCat’s Senior Editor, makes a valid point — that an editor’s name should theoretically have some pull with readers — but it’s undermined by the tiresome meme that social media will be publishing’s savior, and a misguided sense of entitlement, implying that publishers are preventing editors from establishing an influential public voice of their own.

Social media are excellent tools for building personal brands — the jury’s still out on where they fit within the corporate picture — and their primary appeal is that they’re free for anyone to use. Just like authors are expected to build themselves a platform before seeking out a publishing deal, editors should be doing the exact same thing for themselves.

It’s not rocket science, it’s free, and no one’s permission is required.

No matter who your editor is, or what their influence (or lack thereof) with readers might be, though, when it comes down to it, the best, most passionate promoter of a book is going to be its author.

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