Reaching Readers Online

Slide 1: Four Things for 2008. Peter Collingridge MD, apt www.aptstudio.com

Slide 2: Who Are We?

Slide 3: Today 1. Case Studies: Building authors and communities online (x4) 2. Where we think publishing is at 3. Four Things for 2008 4. Questions

Slide 4: 1.1 Case Study: Stephenie Meyer Author Series Teen vampire novels Outselling HP7 in USA Obsessive fanbase

Slide 5: 1.1 Case Study: Stephenie Meyer

Slide 6: 1.2.1 Case Study: www.canongate.net Community and 1997-2002 Publishers “at last - a publisher’s site that feels like a cool club stocked with well-read friends, rather than a lazy corporate exercise” The Guardian 5/5 - The Book Lover’s Guide to the Internet

Slide 7: 1.2.2 Community 4th Estate / Press Books Fifth Estate (2006) Simple, achievable Flawless execution

Slide 8: Community Fifth Estate

Slide 9: 1.3 Building an James Frey author online Anita Shreve Elizabeth Pisani Mitch Albom Jeff Howe

Slide 10: Jeff Howe WIRED Editor CrowdSourcing Lead Random House Business Books, Summer 2008 “Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

Slide 11: Coversourcing Connect marketing to audience Raise profile Media coverage Community Debate Innovation Sell the book?

Slide 12: 1.4 Case Study Life of Pi Single Book Sites Salam Pax The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Hey, Nostradamus! Londonstani For One More Day The Long Tail

Slide 13: The Long Tail Chris Anderson

Slide 14: 2008 Where do we see publishing at?

Slide 15: 2008 Snapshot

Slide 19: 2008 but yet....

Slide 20: 2008 there is hope... online

Slide 21: 2008 indeed...

Slide 22: But... From where we are, the web is the future of it’s not all bad the book. news. In fact.... And publishing And bookselling And marketing books. You just need to try much, much harder.

Slide 23: 2008 2008 is crunch time for publishing, on Summary many (if not all) fronts - Relevance - eBooks - Self-publishing - Free distribution - Amazon / Waterstones - Apple - Polarisation of high street

Slide 24: Four things

Slide 25: One Identify (or hire) and empower the digital natives in your organisation. Listen to them. Trust them. Learn from them.

Slide 26: Two “How do I want to change the way I talk to people?’”

Slide 27: Three Start a blog (for your most valuable, popular property)

Slide 28: Four Get a digitisation strategy.

Slide 29: Summary Best thing ever for finding readers & What is the web? making more money out of them. And giving them what they want. Try to do it well, with an open mind. But do it with passion.

Slide 30: thanks all images by russell davies http://flickr.com/photos/russelldavies/ hello@aptstudio.com russelldavies.typepad.com

Slide 31: # Comment by anon @ 1:40 pm, January 12, 2008: |Edit This What should I talk about? Paint a future of what the world might look like if we don’t engage now? How many comparisons to other companies / cultures that might tell us what the future looks like? www.aptstudio.com/TimesEmit How nobody is yet investing enough in UK publishing to really understand what the potential upside could be. How differentiation continues to be all and yet we insist on aping and homogenising. And by the time someone is really making money out of a community or brand, it might be too late to catch up. I’d be as apocalyptic as possible. I think even the publishers who have bought into the idea of this are unsure how brave or committed to be. Anything you can do to move the debate on beyond one where we’re all paralysed by the speed of our own irrelevance and just prefer to keep our head down til the Tsunami hits. Please do anything that really get them talking / thinking at least… # Comment by Lindsey @ 3:47 pm, January 12, 2008: |Edit This Let’s face it - last year’s seminar was atrocious and showed how far behind a lot of the industry are. Most publishers won’t fully embrace digital until they are completely convinced it’s worthwhile and risk-free. And you’re never going to have a brilliant campaign/community/or content unless you take a few risks. Perhaps you can persuade us to experiment and take some chances. And even if things don’t go to plan and aren’t successful it’s not the end of the world, you’ll have learned something that will benefit you in the future. Persuade publishers to stop playing it safe and get involved. # Comment by George @ 10:43 pm, January 10, 2008: |Edit This I’d be interested in discussion of building communities from scratch versus leveraging existing communities and networks - quite different challenges in my experience.

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