Stay Ahead Of The Shift

Stay Ahead of the Shift: What Product-Centric Publishers Can Do to Flourish in a Community-Centric Web World BEA, 28 May 2009 Mike Shatzkin

The fundamental premises:

Things will change

It is necessary to have a view of the future to anticipate change

The market and how you reach it will shift in some ways between when you sign titles and publish them for the foreseeable future

You must try new things: it is as important to be nimble and opportunistic as it is to be analytical when you do

For maximum benefit: new things should be tried within a framework of understanding (your “view of the future”)

A lot happens in 20 years

TV 1968-1988 :
Broadcast networks go from totally dominant to highly challenged
In 20 Years…

Music 1980-2000:
Record companies fat from sales of new formats to a total breakdown of the business model
In 20 Years…

Newspapers 1989-2009:
From stable cash cows thanks primarily to classified to endangered species
In 20 Years…

Mass-market paperbacks 1975-1995: from multi million dollar bestseller advances to category strugglers
In 20 Years…

Online access 1989-2009:
From klunky dial-up through a closed online network to the Internet in your hand
In 20 Years…

Books 1989-2009:
From pre-Internet, pre-POD, pre-long tail, pre-SUPERSTORES to now…
In 20 Years…

Books 2009-2029:
That’s what we need to think about today…
In 20 Years…

A point of view: the world of content in 20 years

All in the cloud ; piracy and license control no longer a problem (DRM obsolete); almost all file access of any kind is “tethered”
20 Years from now…

We are all both licensors and licensees

Access through multiple devices/screens (synonymous)

Nugget (more granular) and niche organization for everything: search, content, social community combined

Format- specific publishing gives way to format -agnostic publishing

Community gateways, portals, upstream aggregates

Crowd-sourced content; crowd-sourced editing and curation

Professional and personal super-editing and super-curation

Subscription models common; per-item sales relatively rare

Mass market (cross-niche) content arising from niches (a new “farm system”)

The publishing business has a much larger B2B component

Perhaps: one general trade publisher

c
Aggregates from across the internet universe
One general trade publisher:

Delivers “books” (ebooks, multi-media, group-creations), but mostly POD

Press runs? If there’s someplace to sell them…

Publishing “skills” applied within the niches and the nuggets

Own, manage, administer, or lead a nugget or a niche (or work for somebody who does)
Within the niches and nuggets:

Generate, curate, aggregate content of any kind from and for the niche

Employ skills of selection, editing, formatting for presentation, marketing

For many biggest business: B2B content development for the niche

Not particularly relevant, but many here would ask: “Books?”

Sure, because of POD, new ones “appear” all the time
Books?

More new titles are created by readers than by publishers (might already be true!)
Books?

Press run titles are the exception, not the rule
Books?

And reading on paper is definitely “retro”
Books?

The uncomfortable bottom line on this change: from N to X

Value moves from conte n t to conte x t
From content to context

Ownership of attention will be more important than ownership of content

Value moves to scarcity

Content creation and distribution no longer require scale

Niche by niche and nugget by nugget: community attention (i.e. marketing) does require scale

If you have capital, where is competitive advantage?

So today’s value creation isn’t tomorrow’s

You win today by owning valuable content and shelf space to merchandise it
Today vs. Tomorrow

You win tomorrow by owning valuable eyeballs and mental bandwidth
You win today by owning valuable content and shelf space to merchandise it
Today vs. Tomorrow

The historical revenue model was clear
Today vs. Tomorrow

The next revenue model is not (yet)
The historical revenue model was clear
Today vs. Tomorrow

Transitional decades coming: costs rise, revenue falls

Supporting multiple models: print books, ebooks, and new forms
The Transition

Legacy content (yours and everybody else’s) all being digitized
The Transition

Legacy content (yours and everybody else’s) all being tagged and organized
The Transition

Digitizing of rights databases could be more expensive than digitizing content itself!
The Transition

New screens, platforms, channels proliferate and all create some level of expense
The Transition

Digital natives inventing a future (social networking, uses of links, redefining roles, determining formats of presentation, feedback, mixing of media)
The Transition

Things that happen during this transition

Lines blur among newspapers, magazines, books, games
Things that happen during the transition

Content finds markets and pricing models; markets find (and create and promote) content

Access to audiences remains the key: NY Times and B&N were ; Google and Amazon are ; Facebook and Twitter to be ? For how long?

Darwinian processes (with a boost from technology) create vertical clusters (and do you know Ning?)

The old model still “works”; just for fewer titles (and fewer general trade publishers and fewer bookstores)

Back to the present and near future: change we can feel

Soon: one bookstore chain exacerbates critical mass issues
Change we can feel

Soon: five, then four, then X general trade publishers
Soon: one bookstore chain exacerbates critical mass issues
Change we can feel

Mass market “events”: fewer in number, faster to cycle, and shorter in duration (and not just for books)
Change we can feel

Niche- and self-publishing and blogs as a “farm system”: will become standard practice
Change we can feel

More and more paper books short run and POD
Change we can feel

Ebooks increasingly have content edge: more of it and more timely
Change we can feel

More difficult to launch new titles
Change we can feel

Harder to sustain backlist
Change we can feel

From stable to ever-changing marketing vehicles
Change we can feel

Indispensability of social networks as word-of-mouth device
Change we can feel

What pushes (or nudges) publishers to vertical

Necessity (horizontal marketing and sales channels diminish)
What pushes publishers

New marketing opportunities arising on the web

Costs skyrocket marketing outside known niches

Natural development of “in-niche” relationships

Web sites as a market for content further drive vertical aggregation (across publishers)

Remembering our own fundamentals: what does a publisher do ?

Connects content to markets (20 th century)
What does a publisher do?

Connects databases to networks (21 st century)

Understands communities of content consumers: what they want and how to reach them

Recognizes creative possibilities in not-fully-developed ideas

Coordinates the disparate activities necessary to connect a creator to an audience; sometimes to connect creators to each other

Manages a massive amount of detail

The publisher’s position today to get to tomorrow: pros and cons

books are ultimate “niche” products
publishers are trained niche marketers
skilled at content creation, development
can put a “souvenir” on the shelf
can target-distribute URLs
Pros:

product- and book-centricity
not continuous
(most) not vertically focused
lack resources to experiment
lack a culture of technology or a culture of experimentation
Cons:

What we said when we started:
We’re in an era of rapid change
We must experiment and re-invent
Do that within a framework created by a “view of the future”

The view of the future presented here: Move toward vertical and community

So what’s a publisher’s 21 st century action plan?

First and foremost:
understand yourself vertically!
(BISAC, Special Sales)
The Publisher’s 21 st Century Plan

When you know what your verticals are (or might be):
research your vertical web world

Construct business metrics and track financials by verticals

Have a sensible Web strategy: 1 presence for B2B; at least 1 for each vertical

Create a complete email list strategy: vertical-sensitive and with an author-facing component

Over time: reshuffle your publishing portfolio

Over time: maximize cumulative effects of web marketing efforts

Over time: construct alliances that will enable new businesses and new business models

And if this doesn’t work for you, create another view of the future that does!
But HAVE ONE !

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Stay Ahead Of The Shift

by idealogical on May 29, 2009

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