How to connect with readers and meet their needs in a digital age was the main theme from the annual meeting of the Book Industry Study Group last Friday in New York City. As BISG executive director Scott Lubeck put it, changes in consumers' reading and buying habits are "disruptive in a positive way... delivering value to the reader and customer is a challenge for us." He said some publishers act as though customers are "all thieves, downloading everything for free" and have "come up with all kinds of ways to treat customers as criminals, and customers react very badly." Instead he counseled trying to "convert them into customers."
Knowing more about consumers comes from "knowing and understanding consumer data," Lueck continued, one reason BISG and the AAP have formed a joint venture to improve the quality of sales reporting.
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In response to digital growth, Kaplan Publishing, which specializes in academic and professional titles, is trying to revamp how it develops products, how it deals with customers, even how it hires employees, according to president and publisher Maureen McMahon.
Like many publishers, Kaplan has tended to publish print products first and produce digital products as an afterthought. Shifting that approach has been "difficult," she said. Traditional publishing is like running a relay race, she continued, while digital publishing is more like a soccer game. "We don't even have the language of the e-book set," she said, adding that staff people use air quotes when talking about e-book covers, pages and pub dates.
When hiring, "experience matters less than a willingness to adapt," McMahon said. Another change in hiring: nowadays Kaplan asks prospective hires for examples of something they taught themselves, something they taught someone else and something they learned from someone else.
Kaplan is trying to emulate Harlequin and Tor, which have close relations with customers. "The level of attention readers expect is escalating every day," she said, and now Kaplan editors spend an average of an hour a day answering inquiries. Since many authors are also developing close relationships with readers, she encouraged publishers to nurture and invest in authors' efforts, often via social media, to interact with readers.
Recently Kaplan experimented with an e-book giveaway to try to get a sense of the size of its e-audience: the company made 95 of its e-books, a third of all e-books it has published, available for free in Apple's iBookstore for a week. The results were striking: downloads during the week equaled nearly 25% of the total print units of those books sold in the entire year. McMahon stressed that this was "one platform, a small number of e-books, and just one week." For her, the lesson was that there is "a large population of readers who are almost our customers."
Thus, it is important for Kaplan to "treat customers as partners in this enterprise. It's the ultimate win-win opportunity.... Publishers are so internally focused."
She noted that students like Kaplan books because they are "portable, simple and can be highlighted and market up." For her those qualities--portability, simplicity and usability--can be touchstones in developing digital products.
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Speaking about his company's ongoing surveys of consumers, Kelly Gallagher, v-p of publishing services at Bowker, said that data showed Kaplan's giveaway experience was no fluke. "Data is telling us that receiving e-books for free is one of the largest motivators for people to pick up and buy e-books, whether it's a sample chapter or another promotional approach," he said. For e-books, online book reviews also are important while social network and personal recommendations don't score as high.
E-books continue to gain market share, hitting 5.8% in August for all books and in an 8%-10% range for trade. Fully 44% of e-book buyers are new to the game, having obtained e-readers and begun buying e-books only in the past six months.
Only 46% of e-reader owners bought their device. Some 47% received their e-readers as a gift, and the others got them for free or as part of a promotion.
Amazon's Kindle is used overwhelming by women: in the second quarter of this year, 68% of Kindle owners were women compared to 58% in the first quarter of 2009. In part, Gallagher attributed this to Kindle advertising, which is focused on women.
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Kate Wilson, founder of Nosy Crow, a new children's book and app publisher in the U.K. that will soon publish its first title, outlined some aspects of how a new publishing company can and needs to operate in the new digital world.
The company considered publishing digitally only but decided to do print as well, although it is marketing print books digitally.
The company doesn't publish anything "unless it's clear who the audience is." The company is putting its striking logo on the front of every book. ("How basic is that?" Wilson asked.)
Nosy Crow is also positioning itself "as mums creating children's reads of interest to other mums."
As for connecting with its audience, "we communicate with customers in ways they want and when they want," she said.
In her former life at several large houses in London, "we spent a lot of time waiting for agents to come up with great stuff," Wilson said. "In effect, we outsourced and paid for outsourcing with advances." By contrast, Nosy Crow is trying to pull together authors, illustrators and others. "We're commissioning music. We're commissioning video. We're less likely to be disintermediated if we're involved in creative."
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In his closing keynote, Ingram Content Group president and CEO Skip Prichard brought some perspective to the digital revolution, saying that "this is an exciting time of change for the industry... I reject the detractors and doomsayers." While many worry about the future of the business and predict the book will vanish, he noted that "books are receiving more media attention than ever before. The novel still makes an impact. Books still have influence. New technology helps reach readers like never before."
He stressed, too, that he believes "the market for books is not fixed. I believe the whole publishing pie can grow." He acknowledged that some businesses will fail as jobs in the publishing world shift from old-line manufacturing and warehousing into editorial and creative and marketing. "The good news is we have some of the most creative minds, and much can be applied to the new social media."
Ingam itself has transformed from a book wholesaler to a service organization helping content reach its destination in a variety of formats and means, he said.
The print book will coexist with the digital book "for years" and will survive because of its "portability, flexibility and durability," he maintained. If the book were invented today, "it might look like a revolution." Among other qualities, the book has "a limitless power source, can be read in the sun, can be read on a plane on the tarmac, looks good on the shelf," and more. Many people "are like me and want it both ways," Prichard said. "I love my iPad, but I still look forward to reading that relic of the past, the good, old-fashioned book."
He concluded: "Let's stop looking admiringly to the past, let's stop handwringing about the present and let's start creating the future."
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Illustrating how fast change is occurring, David Jolliffe, v-p of cross media publishing services at Pearson Canada, told a story about his son's encounter with a typewriter that was in its case in the family garage. Jolliffe tried to describe how the typewriter worked, but his son was baffled. So Jolliffe opened up the case and let his son try the typewriter out. His son's comment: "Cool! A computer that prints right away!"--John Mutter