Google UnBound Conference, NYC, January 18, 2007

Jim Gerber, Content Partnerships Director, Google Introduction
Pace of change in technology’s capabilities and pricing
Moore’s Law: processing capabilities for a given cost doubles every 24 months
Kryder’s Law: storage capacity on hard drives grows at an even faster rate, doubling roughly every 13 months
Companies like blurb.com create a printed book from blog entries
Technology will no longer be the gating factor in our access to and use of information
What amount of video, audio, multimedia content that an iPod will carry in 5, 10, 15 years?
Trend Implication
Scope and proliferation in the Internet is changing consumer behaviour
Ubiquitous Internet access
Digital natives in younger generations around the world
Average consumer spends 14 hours per week (39% of their time) online
Increasing interaction with media
Reader opinions on newspaper websites
“ Rough Cuts” interaction with book readers prior to book’s publication
Key players are looking to the future
Multiple monetization models
Same content, different user experience
Large quantities of rich data will allow users to “zoom in” to increasingly rewarding experiences
Example: photo with gigapixel camera, zooming in to closer to see increasing detail

Angela D’Agostino, VP of Business Dev & Marketing, Bowker State of the Industry Today vs. 10 years ago
Fiction looks remarkably unchanged (e.g., John Grisham at #1)
Nonfiction in 1995: LIFE (e.g., self-improvement, humour, careers)
Nonfiction 2005: DEATH (e.g., alternative medicine, spirituality and religion)
Bestseller list composition Growth in online channel
Online represented 2% of book sales in 1998 => 13% today
Growth at the expense of book clubs and traditional retail channels
Projected to be 22% of all book sales by 2011 (Forrester)
Characteristics of online buyers
40 million US HH have made an online purchase in the past 3 months (“web shoppers”)
8 million HH spend $500+ in last 3 months (“active web shoppers”)
Books comprise #1 category of for web shoppers and active web shoppers
42% of web shoppers learn about books from book websites (other than book retailers)
35% of web shoppers learn about books from book retailers
On vs. offline growth and decline by category
Growth online, decline offline: Heath/fitness, reference, cooking, sci fi/fantasy
Growth on and offline: Adult fiction, YA fiction, mystery/suspense, bio/autobiographies
Growth offline, decline online: games, sports, recreation, political science
Behaviour of today’s students as predictive indicator
93% of students in 2006 access the Internet daily (Student Monitor, Spring 2006)
32% of students have purchased books online in the past year for non-academic use
Digital books (nil today, but ~6% in 10 years) and “bundled texts and alternate media” growing (22% of 2006 sales; 28% in 10 years); traditional books from 43% to 28% in 10 years
Growth in titles and publishers
Number of books in print has skyrocketed from 62,000 titles in 1995 to 225,000 titles in 2005
New publishers registering for ISBNS: 6,000 new pubs per year in 1990s to 10,000+ today
Growth driven by self-publishing (90% of new publishers)
Online makes it easier to find relevant audiences for niche content

David Worlock, Chairman, Electronic Publishing Services Ltd Observations on the State of the Industry
We must root this discussion in the power of the user, who unbalances decision making in traditional publishing
On the current state of publishing
We lack good ways of describing original network-based developments (“Network publishing”)
We have too many useless expressions that try to bridge format and deliver (“eBooks”)
Collaboration and strategic alliance are key elements (the publisher cannot manage alone)
Diversity and plurality are the distinguishing factors, and influence rights reuse, content remixing, self-publishing
Publishers who are trying to sell direct are experiencing the shock of encountering customers
Publishing on the network works best in narrowly defined market niches, yet commercially the major players get bigger and consolidate
In Worlock’s view of the future of publishing, publishers will
Publish printed works
Online promotion marketing and sales
Author web presence and brand development
Facilitate PoD
Print required quantity and format (e.g., Point Break Press)
Print at a convenient point (ondemandbooks.com)
Encourage invention
Test market, identify authors
Create multimedia platforms
Push appropriate activities out to authors
Leverage networks to encourage search, community, and efficient workflow
Forward looking questions
Can the publisher extend his role as impresario? Or are many publishing acts better enacted by authors?
What role will mixed revenue models play? (e.g., direct sale, rental, advertising-based, sponsorship)
Can publishers create genre-based communities or just recognize them?
Are publishers destined to become rights clearance agencies online or will that element become an automated element?

Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine On Long Tail observations
The long tail is comprised of
Lots of books: 172,000 books published in the US in 2005
A “head of blockbusters”: Commercially successful books comprised less than 1% of ISBNs in 2004
Change arises out of a shift
From expensive distribution channels with limited distribution capacity
To new marketplaces with infinite shelf space and the economics of abundance
Quick review of Long Tail Evidence of Long Tail in books
In 2004, 6% of books sold more than 5,000 copies (as per Nielsen)
Niche titles (<5k units) make up 35% of unit sales
Midlist (5,000-50,000) comprises 42% of unit sales
Bestsellers (50k+) made up 23% of unit sales
Average title sold 500 copies per year
Conclusions for book publishers
Opportunity exists to celebrate the quality and profitability inherent to the LT
Non-economic incentives drive the creation of plenty of books
Need to find a way to encourage and facilitate the consumption of these titles
Need to de-stigmatize the long tail
LT can affect book marketing
Fewer than 2,000 books/year (1%) will get benefit from a marketing budget
Book tour does not reach a sufficiently large audience
Book publicist knows a lot about books and key influencers in the book space (e.g., reviewers, radio shows, interviewers)
Author knows a lot about book subject, but little about book publicity
Therefore, find overlapping space of influencers in book subject area
Profit from the long tail by offering self-publishing services (e.g., Lulu)
Offer free eBooks and digital samplers
Offer free / low-cost audiobook downloads for hardcover purchasers
Encourage discovery of long tail titles via Google Book Search

Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine On blogging as DIY marketing case study
Blogging in parallel with writing
2% of the words in the blog went into the blog
Test ideas, phrasing, and focus on the blog, but write the actual book copy offline
Bridge article (October 2004) to book (July 2006)
Own the meme, feed the meme, be the resource for the best content on the subject
Collaborate with readers: tape distributed intelligence and research
Beta test / peer review
Generate book buzz outside the author’s field of knowledge
Overview of blog activity Marketing tactics Results
Free ARC to any blogger who wants to review it (the long tail of book reviewers)
1,000 copies sent; 900 reviews generated on blogs
Act of asking for the book validates a blogger
Send electronic versions
Free ARC for reader contests
Crowdsourcing cover lines, art, etc
Meetup.com instead of signings
Subtitle and paperback cover created / chosen by blog readers
Results in first year: 180 posts, 120,000 words written, 1,600 visitors per day, 5,000 RSS subscribers, ranked #200 on technorati
Results today: 5,000 visitors per day, 20,000 RSS subscribers

Sell books at a channel agnostic price
Make $3 regardless of format
Advertising revenue models are going to be tough to implement in books
Lacks tradition of media spend habits and effectiveness data
Seth Godin On opportunities in book publishing Economic models Define publishing in terms of finding ideas and connecting people WOM
The enemy is not piracy. The enemy is obscurity.
If books are not available and known, you are going to sell books. We cannot become invisible.
Joining culture of those who love books
Publishers have access to really smart people. The world wants to form communities around those people and wants access to them.
Even books that get bad reviews sell well
Permission: lets you tell your story. Lets you teach consumers.
Chris Anderson has permission to talk to people. His publisher doesn’t.
Authors must participate within community
There are plenty of poets in the world, but nobody gets paid to be poets anymore.
Thomas Pynchon will not be entitled to make $500,000 a year anymore. You cannot be anonymous
By putting an idea into the grapevine, the idea will spread
Flip the funnel and turn it into a megaphone
Give people a tool with which readers can talk about something that matters to them
Every time you sell a book, ship an extra to give away
Publishers can help shepherd a person from obscurity to success
Help authors develop their blog

Unleashing the Ideavirus (Seth Godin)
Print “souvenir” copy made it to #5 on Amazon, despite a free copy online
Eastern Standard Tribe (Cory Doctorow)
Free copies online, but it still sells
Seth Godin On opportunities in book publishing Free digital books Lessons from music industry Other advice
There is no music industry, just gangsters who are trying to take advantage
Live events pay and the long tail works
Entrepreneurs can make a good living via performance
The idea that Van Morrison can make $150,000 a night just sleeping is going away
The more they fight against it, the worse they do
Sell CDs as souvenirs after the concert
What we need to learn is not from the music industry, it’s from the musicians
Will authors show the publishers how to win in the way musicians have changed music?
Prevailing belief among publishers
Book publishers oriented their business to the sale of paper, rather than the books in the form desired by customers
Publishers should promote books by sharing mass volume of communications to consumers and influencers
Publishers have missed opportunities because they define what they do around print books
If you think about it as “I’m in the book business and I need to protect it.”, you are doomed. The model is going away anyway.
“ My message to publishers is this: Either you are going to be the centre of the universe in 5 years, or you are going to be Pluto.”
Books as souvenirs
Ideas are free, book is the souvenir
T-shirts at Disney don’t keep you warm. They hold memories of your vacation.
The book is on your shelf so you can remember it fondly.

Author panel: Cory Doctorow, Author, Blogger, Academic
Released full text of first book under Creative Commons at time of print publication
Suite of licenses created to allow authors and other producers of content to grant permissions to an audience
Audience could only distribute content
30,000 copies distributed within first 24 hours
Upon publication of second novel ( Eastern Standard Tribe ), changed license of first novel to allow audience to change the content
With third novel, high income countries could distribute it freely and developing nations could do whatever they want with the content
First short story collection sold out of its print run in 2 weeks
750,000 copies distributed; 10s of thousands sold
Poor conversion rate by some measures
But not worse than the conversion seen when people pick up a book off the shelf and put it down
Free digital books as promotional tool BoingBoing.net
Under Wired masthead
Give away as much content as possible
Reading novels (substitute for audiobooks)
Imperfections create familiarity and authenticity for readers
You’ll go see your brother’s friend’s band, not because they are great, but because they are associated with your brother’s friend
Gives authors a chance to perform in a way that audiobooks read by a professional narrator don’t
Podcasts

Author panel: Cory Doctorow, Author, Blogger, Academic
Readers are actively engaged in the work
More than an ambulatory wallet
No one has ever succeeded by telling customers that what they want is wrong
Social activity should surround writing
Making a copy and giving it to someone else is a social act
eBooks are made for copying and excerpting into sig files
Readers have a leisure surplus
More interesting stuff available at a click than we have time to discover
So much stuff competing for our attention, that making something 2 clicks away is foolish
Who decided that old newspaper articles were worth charging money for, but new news should be given away free?
Reader engagement Future of eBooks
Factors working against the replacement of print books by ebooks
People who do read books have a deep emotional attachment to print format
Books appeal to people who are purvy for print books
Traditional media will become quaint or become transformed
You don’t read eBooks off the screen
Long form narrative is poorly suited to interruptions from other things on the PC/Internet
Attention conservation principle
Short blogs
Filter via headline, excerpt
How do you make books more relevant to people who sit at computer all day?

Author panel: Cory Doctorow, Author, Blogger, Academic Book search
Should work like web search – no one company should control it, should not be proprietary
When you search the web about a topic, books, along with webpages, should pop up
Distribution
As soon as you let a company like Apple be in charge of exclusive distribution, you are screwed
Edgar Bronfman Sr. went to Switzerland and got the Nazi gold. Edgar Bronfman Jr. went to Cupertino and couldn’t get $1.50 per song
Intershelving old and new books: “Used titles are a gateway drug to new titles”
What can Amazon not do? Have authors sign a bunch of stock and sell via independents
If publishers can get authors to sign before shipping, then there is something publishers can do uniquely
Economic models
My problem wasn’t piracy, it was obscurity
From authors’ perspectives, more fame is more money for speaking, board seats for authors
Why don’t more people care about literature enough to steal books? That’s what we should be trying to figure out.
Books are as hard to copy today as they will ever be. It’s only going to get easier
DRM doesn’t work. If it worked, the software industry would use it.. If it worked, you’d see it on Microsoft product.

Author panel: JA Konrath
Success lies in what you have to offer, not in what you have to sell
How to use audience aggregators (e.g., YouTube)
Publisher mindset Author brand
Define author brand in 3-4 words/phrases
Authors should spend 90% of nonwriting time getting brand out there
Just knowing an author’s name is not enough
Need name recognition coupled with a positive experience, entertainment, information
Book marketing
Top down advertising: kill a gnat with a sledgehammer
Reach a small number of readers by broadcasting to people, most of whom have no interest
Bottom up advertising: reach people who you know are interested
Dropped into 612 bookstores in 29 states
Free signed book to bookseller
Help handselling by reciting short pitch aligning book to 4 bestsellers
Searching for mice or throw cheese in the corner and wait for the mice to come to you
While we are targeting readers, there are readers who are actively looking for you
With an online presence, publishers can give readers entertainment, information, awareness
Stickiness
Low stickiness associated with ad for a book
Content, excerpts, newsletter, free backlist books will be high stickiness
Blog entries from 2 years ago still generate comments
Myspace: Share fans with big name authors
Websites dedicated to single title
More than book trailer; need forums for fan discussion, author talks, screensavers
Distribution
Portable, multiple formats: buy 1 book, all formats
Buy chip with 20 Stephen King books for $30

Author panel: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Memorist Collective
Collaborative promotional efforts across authors
Publicists working together across the houses
Case example
43% of Internet users who are members of online communicate say that they feel as strongly about their virtual community as they do about their physical communities
20% of online community emmbers take action offline that relates back to their community
e.g., buying books
Made lots of friends
Blogged
Joint myspace page, combine individual friends, blog about each other, contest to get introduction to agent
Writing contest with winning memoir proposal being read by editors at 3 major publishing houses
Press release: 2618 Google hits, 8853 blog and myspace mentions
1200 entries, 40K+ blog hits
Announced winner via live podcast
Viral video thanking each entrant personally
13,000+ myspace connections in place for authors’ next books
Compilation of video from drag queen days
Reviews at the end of the clip (mimicking a movie trailer)
Stats MySpace activities Viral video

Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media
Look at killer apps of new millennium: google, eBay, yahoo, amazon.com, mapquest, craiglist, myspace
All information businesses - should we call them publishers too?
Joining software and publishing
Software delivered as a service, not a shrink-wrapped package
Internet as platform, no longer the PC
Uses the network to get better
Take something that someone has done and make it better
Mash-ups: housingmaps.com
Google: every time someone makes a web link, they contribute to search results
eBay: critical mass of buyers and sellers makei t hard for others to enter the market
Amazon: more than 10 MM user reviews
Craigslist: self-service classified ads with few employees
Content as database
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think (E. Schlossberg)
The skill of programming is to create a context in which other people can share
What is Web 2.0? Redefining book publishing
Harry Potter: creating imaginary world…same business as World of Warcraft
Britannica: reference…same as wikipedia
Google is a partner and an enabler of our new competitors

Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media O’Reilly Book Model
Teaching
Reference
Edutainment
Content in searchable database that integrates with Google
Not ebooks: Web-services enabled content database
Buy print book, buy pdf (for less), buy subscription to Safari Books
Rough Cuts = perpetual beta reveals books while under development
60% chose PDF
36% pdf+print
4% print only
SafariU Remix: create customized course materials
Search changes the reading experience
People read less than 5% of any book in any given month
Long tail drives access to older content
23% of Safari views
6% of print book sales
Safari Books Online

Google UnBound Conference, NYC, January 18, 2007

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Google UnBound Conference, NYC, January 18, 2007 — Presentation Transcript

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