Sourcebooks has been creative in approaching the digital world, and Raccah herself has spoken regularly at seminars and in other forums on the subject. She is a major proponent of finding e-publishing models with a viable revenue stream for "authors to keep writing and for us to keep publishing--because we add enormous amounts of value for the author and the reader.
"If all content is free," she continued. "All content will be junk." She added that expecting writers to market and publish themselves entirely "will keep them from writing."
She said that pricing e-books at $9.99, as Amazon.com does, leads consumers to think e-books are "worth less than a physical book." Unfortunately, she noted, "The publishing industry is so bad about explaining its role, which is often invisible to the reader."
As to the future of print books, Raccah added, "There are consumable books and books you want to own forever, and they will be different forever." In fact, "e-books are not the future of book publishing. I'm bullish about the future of the book business, but I don't think that lies solely in e-books--it's one part of it. I don't think we've even begun to understand how readers experience or will experience content in new, more powerful ways electronically."
Currently Sourcebooks has some 1,800 e-books available out of its 2,500 titles in print, and it is working on making the rest of its backlist available electronically. E-books account for about 2% of Sourcebooks's sales, up about 10 times this year; the digital channel as a whole represented about 3% of sales. As always, "a subtext of every conversation about digital is what's the revenue model," said Marie Macaisa. In many cases, the answer is that the e-version is "marketing to sell the sales of the physical book."
Digital is not a separate part of the company. "Digital is all around," Raccah said. "Everyone has pieces of digital as part of their job. Having 'new stuff' in one part of the company and having 'old stuff' in other doesn't work. In those cases, the people who aren't involved with the transformation don't try to harm those efforts, but they don't support it, either."
Websites have been "a constant," Marie Macaisa said. "And we're doing more thinking about platforms beyond just a book with a CD. An iPhone app is not just your book on an iPhone. We use the same approach we use with books: we're thinking about content and community and what each platform has to offer."
Sourcebooks authors are using the web in a variety of ways to reach readers. Harlan Cohen, for example, is a big fan of Twitter and tweets regularly. Romance writers for Casablanca have created their own blog separate from Sourcebooks.
Every several months Sourcebooks holds a webinar for authors about new technology and also offers an author tool kit (where authors can send e-postcards of their covers, create a blog and create a comprehensive author page on the Sourcebooks website). Among topics covered: how to do a media interview, how to build buzz, how to get reviews--both print and online--and much more. The goal, Raccah said, is to provide authors with "a supportive environment that helps them to do what they really want to do. Authors need to know about what's happening in the industry."
Lately the company has been focusing on iPhone apps. It currently has seven apps and is in the process of uploading two more--and more are on the way. Their purpose is to drive sales of the book. One example: Gruber's Shortest SAT, a 99-cent app that's based on Gruber's Complete SAT Guide and consists of 20 SAT test questions. The app analyzes the user's answers and recommends areas for the student to focus on. Raccah estimated that sales of the book are up 30% this year because of the app. "After students play it, they go and buy the book," she said.