800-CEO-READ Blog: Publishing Industry

A reply to Seth from a publisher: "No. We don't own the trees."

Seth recently critiqued newspapers and book publishers' focus on paper as the vehicle to spread information.

If you think your job is to keep the printers busy, then you see the world differently. You focus on per issue sales, you worry about people sharing a paper (!), you don't count online readers as valuable (even though they're more valuable). You focus on one edition, not a thousand different versions. You focus on having one front page, not dozens based on who is reading.

Reading into the post, he asks why are publishers and newspapers caught up on using paper when there are plenty of other methods (e-books) that are more environmental and consumer-friendly. Of course, transferring to a new distribution system is never as simple as it looks. I ran into a reply to Seth's post from Jesse over at Chelsea Green, a publisher known for their green practices; the reply included four valid reasons for why publishers haven't fully embraced the digital revolution.

1. No protection. The publishing industry is not blind. We've watched the music and movie industries grapple with piracy. A 3MB book file is much easier to distribute than a 2GB movie file--which is getting easier. Do we throw ourselves into the piracy frenzy? (The answer is yes, of course. But not just yet, as there is no widely accepted avenue for purchasing ebooks. A consumer's only option right now for building a digital collection would be--for all intents and purposes--piracy.)
2. No format. The ebook format wars are still in the 'limited skirmish' phase. Open war has not yet begun, let alone been settled. My money is on DRM-free PDFs due to the existing PDF ecosystem and consumers' distaste for never REALLY owning the items they buy. But where's the protection in that? Do we bet our jobs on the honesty of readers? I argue yes, absolutely. But you can see why this thought gives publishers reason for pause.

....

Continued over at Chelsea Green's blog.

We've brought up the debate several times on this blog. We're still holding out bets for when the digital revolution will happen. Personally, none of the e-book readers are user-friendly enough to fill the job yet. I'm still holding out for Apple to invest in an ebook reader. Then perhaps, this conversation will take another turn.

PR Fairy Tales - Inc. magazine article

In the current issue of Inc. Magazine you'll find a short article on companies using children's books (or similar formats) to pitch their messages.

PR Fairy Tales: Pitches Disguised as Children's Books

Entrepreneurs have a habit of describing their companies in David-and-Goliath terms. Now, some are taking cues from Eloise and James and the Giant Peach. A mini trend in the world of public relations has companies replacing their run-of-the-mill press releases with promotional materials that look and feel like children's books.

We occasionally see corporations buying large quantities of children's books for their employees, and recently Roy wrote about the Conservation International and Random House re-release of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax for Earth Day.

In which children's books do you find inspiration? Would you consider pitching your employees or clients with this format?

"When it unveiled the Windows Home Server, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) released Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?"

A Book Publisher's Manifesto

For all of you interested in what the future of publishing will look like, Sara Lloyd has begun posting her essay on the topic over at the digitalist (the digital team at Pan Macmillan's blog). Because of it's length, she's posting it in six parts. Today's installment was part two.

From the introduction posted yesterday:

Crucially, we will need to work out how we can add value as publishers within a circular, networked environment.

One of the key perception shifts that publishers need to make, then, is about the book as 'product'. Whilst the book continues to be viewed as a definable object within covers, as a singular 'unit', publishers will continue to limit their role in its production and distribution, and this is a sure fire way for publishers to write themselves out of the future of content creation and dissemination.

This is a conversation we have quite often here. While we were handing out books at an author event recently, a gentleman walking by turned to us and said, "no one reads books anymore"--and, keep in mind, this man was there to see the author of the book speak. It's that sentiment that causes so much panic in our industry about the possible demise of the printed book, and I think that that panic sometimes clouds our vision of the future and what great possibilities it holds. So far, Sara Lloyd's essay has provided a very thoughtful and sober view of the situation. I'm looking forward to the next four posts.

And, speaking of the future of publishing, you can now browse inside HarperCollins books on your iPhone.

BookExpo America

Each year, in late May or early June, thousands of authors, booksellers and publishers convene for the annual BookExpo America. This year BEA is in Los Angeles. It's quite a sight.

The tradeshow floor opens on Friday morning. And the races begin! Inviting in the herd of BEA goers waiting impatiently outside the door ready to snatch the best galleys (the publishing word for a bound manuscript) and loot.

This month's Fast Company depicted the history of BEA:

"The Modern Era's Second Worst Promulgator of Intelligence Reduction"

The following is my letter to the editors of Fast Company Magazine on Elizabeth Spiers recent column in their publication. You can read Spiers column here. Kate wrote about it earlier in the week, and I couldn't let it pass either.

***

I write to provide a needed counterpoint to Elizabeth Spiers April 2008 Not So Fast column titled "Library of The Living Dead."

I will start where she ends, agreeing in fact with Spiers' ultimate conclusion: Business books are self-help, by their very definition. The implication that business books fall strictly into the "I'm OK, You're OK" segment of self-help is where Spiers and I diverge. A book publisher recently shared research with me that showed the number one reason people buy business books is to find a solution to a problem. Sitting at the educational crossroads between "I know nothing about this," and "Let's hire a consultant," business books contain a high value proposition for the twenty dollars and two hours spent. Not, as Spiers says, to abdicate responsibility for the choices they make. Instead, it takes a great deal of personal awareness to look for answers from those who offer experiential lessons in books.

The packaging of those lessons receives the majority of criticism in Ms. Spiers column and I am always dismayed by the problems pundits have with this aspect of the industry. Human civilization is built upon stories and when an author chooses a fable as the delivery device, the writer is making the lessons more accessible to a wider audience.

The "12-step-ification" is a crutch that bloggers, business magazines, and book publishers certainly use alike, in the same way celebrity authors are used to garner attention and sell product. This is simply product marketing through concreteness and social proof.

The bestseller list as a guide to the "best" in the category is just another form of social proof. My optimism for the category would bring me to highlight Gallup's research-based StrengthsFinder 2.0 or Jim Collins' insightful and wonderful written Good to Great as evidence that some books that make the bestseller list really deserve the title.

In the case of John Kotter, we have the benefit of choosing either his current top-selling fable, or his 1996 book "Leading Change," which has sold over a million copies. Both books tackle the same content, but offer options for the reader to choose his method of consumption.

Ms. Spiers overall indictment of the entire business book category is an easy mark and one that could be applied to any genre of media. Her elitism about what constitutes good reading compounds the problem further. While I can appreciate her hyperbole as a method to communicate some criticism about the genre, a more subtle treatment of the subject would, I believe, be more effective.

Beyond that, Fast Company is a magazine that has always supported business ideas. A simplistic column like Spiers' goes against the very DNA of your publication. The mantra "WORK IS PERSONAL" matches well with Thoreau's or Emerson's definition of self-help. The publication of this column leaves me wondering just how that mission has been served.

Kindle supply and demand

There's a message from Jeff Bezos on Amazon's home page describing the company's success with the Kindle. According to Bezos, Amazon sold out of the device within the first 5.5 hours after its announcement, and have been struggling to keep up with manufacturing. Some customers have waited up to 6 weeks to receive their order.

I have to say I'm slightly surprised to learn this; the only people I know of to have bought the Kindle are those of us at 800-CEO-READ (we have one). Jon posted his impressions of the device here: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007546.html.

Have you purchased or tried the Kindle? What do you think?

Good morning from TOC

Kate and I are at the kick-off of the O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference in NYC. People from all over the world are here for this year's conference; the MC just told us that attendance tripled over last year's inaugural conference in San Jose (Todd and Dylan were there).

Today there are two articles in major newspapers about the future of publishing:

New York Times: HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web

Wall Street Journal: Publisher Tests Selling by the Chapter

We'll try to update more over the next few days. Unless we're busy playing with all of the new gadgets in digital publishing.

Medici Effect Available For Free Online

Frans Johansson's Medici Effect is now available for free as a pdf download from his website.

It is an interesting experiment for him and his publisher Harvard Business School Press to see if you can give it away and improve sales of a two and a half year old book. Love seeing this kind of experimentation.

Frans wrote a series of posts filling in for us in September 2004 introducing everyone to the book, what sucks about business books, and what he was reading:

9/13/04 -The Medici Effect
9/13/04 -As Summer Fades Away...
9/14/04 -Inside The Medici Effect
9/15/04 -The Style of Writing
9/15/04 -#1: Business Books are often too long
9/16/04 -#2: Example are too well-known
9/17/04 -Unfair Advantage and The Apprentice
9/17/04 -#3: They are often dry
9/17/04 - #4: The Main Point Keeps Getting Repeated
9/19/04 - Some New Books

Suzy Welch earns big advance

Booksellers and industry insiders alike were astounded a few years ago when Elizabeth Kostova's book The Historian went to auction and sold for $2 million to Time Warner, and the movie rights went to Sony for $1.5 million. What made Kostova's accomplishment so remarkable was that The Historian was her first book, a 600-page, historical fiction tome. (And very good, if you've got the arm muscle tone.) It's not uncommon to see a celebrity or established, mainstream author get a book published in a snap, but it is a surprise when a newcomer can sweep up the industry.

Still, seven-figure advances like Kostova's aren't common, for celebrity or debut authors, fiction or nonfiction. That's why it is big news in the New York Times this week that Suzy Welch, the former HBR editor and the wife of Jack Welch, has agreed to sell the rights to her new book, "10-10-10," to Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for a seven-figure advance. The premise of the book is this:

"Based on an article Ms. Welch wrote for O, the Oprah Magazine, in 2006, the book offers strategies for making decisions in which people think about what the consequences of a decision will be in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years."

The Historian was a run-away best seller; it'll be exciting to see how Welch's "10-10-10" does.

Embracing the future of travel guides

The New York Times must be reading our minds because just yesterday Todd and I were discussing the future of travel books, and today there's a great article about what travel guide publishers are doing to anticipate and incorporate changes in the industry.

A few approaches mentioned in the article:

• Specialized guides are available online - you can get an entire guide to pubs and inns in the UK, without the other information available in more comprehensive guides. And, you can get a version that connects to the GPS in your rental car.
• Dorling Kindersley (DK) has made all of the content in its Eyewitness Travel guides available online at traveldk.com
• Lonely Planet plans to have all of its guides online in two years, but currently offers individual chapters available for download at a few dollars each.
• Several publishers allow web site visitors to create and print out or order customized guides. Others are getting their stuff into the backs of airplane seats.

Todd and I were discussing the dilemmas of choosing the right book(s) for your travel needs. For instance, you could create a customized guide to New York City with the maps of certain neighborhoods, history on the art in the museum you're visiting that day, and a subway map with certain stops highlighted. But, Todd pointed out, what do you do when it's 4:00, you're in an unfamiliar neighborhood, famished, and you want to eat at a great New York restaurant? Or, as I pointed out, what happens when you're on the Brooklyn Bridge and you want to know how many years it took to build?

Many travel guides boil down the history and cultural information that comes in handy when you're out and come across something new, something you didn't plan for when putting together your guide. Or you only visit sites in the chapters you've printed, and miss out on something cool right around the corner. Some of the spontaneity is lost.

On the other hand, when you're lugging around an iPod, a digital camera, a cell phone, bottled water, and a couple of kids, do you really want to carry a book? And, chances are, you'll need a couple of books, just in case one works well for, say, transportation, and the other works well for selecting restaurants and accommodations. And then there are the books you pore over before the trip and leave at home when you go...

Several publishers are looking at these strategies as a game plan for if (or when) the print publishing industry collapses.

"'We want to be in a position where, if the business suddenly collapses in five years, we have a plan -- unlike the music industry,' said Martin Dunford, publishing director of Rough Guides, which is part of the Penguin division of the media company Pearson, based in London."

But that big IF isn't looming on the horizon at this time:

"So far, the digital media revolution has been much less turbulent for guidebook publishers than for record companies, which are fighting rampant online copying. Sales of travel guides, while flat in some traditionally stalwart markets like Britain, have been growing strongly in developing countries and in the United States -- despite a weak dollar, which has made overseas trips more expensive for Americans.

Travel publishers sold 14.8 million books in the United States last year, up 11 percent from two years ago, according to Nielsen BookScan. Still, guidebook companies may have missed an opportunity on the Internet..."

Check out the article. I know I'll be visiting DK Travel and Lonely Planet's web sites to see what I can do for a little trip I'm planning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/business/media/03guides.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Kindle packaging

All opinions on Kindle aside, have you seen its packaging? Pretty spiffy.

* Image from Bad Banana Blog.

Following up on predictions from publishers

It's always interesting to go back and see what the publishing community predicted would do well in a given season. Last May, Publishers Weekly had a great piece about trends in business book publishing. Todd blogged about it in June. From the article:

Business book publishing is no different than what it purports to cover: it is all about either anticipating or (ideally) creating trends. As technology, market forces and consumer preferences change locally and globally, business must react and innovate to stay competitive. The management of people, of course, is key to keeping up, and that's where business management titles come in. Our preview of some selected fall titles demonstrates that there is no handy consensus as to what the near future requires in terms of managing a business.

While you might argue fairly that business book publishing is about more than trends, we certainly do keep our eyes peeled for books that address the issues facing businesses today.

The article featured eight publishers who talked about trends they noticed in publishing, and the books that promised to be big this fall. Just browsing the list, I see that at least McGraw-Hill, Crown, Kaplan, and Portfolio (with Seth Godin's book) were right on. I have a feeling AMACOM's book, One Foot Out the Door, could be a sleeper success this winter.

Have you read any of these titles? What do you think?

Hudson Booksellers Best Books of 2007

With 66 bookstores in airports all over North America, you may know Hudson Booksellers from your travels. They have now decided that it is time to help busy travelers select the books they sell, announcing their picks of the best books of 2007. It's a pretty long list, with selections in the fields of fiction, non-fiction, children's, and--aha!--business! The business titles selected are:

* Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner
* Microtrends by Mark Penn
* The No Asshole Rule by Robb Sutton
* The Black Swan by Nasim Nicholas Taleb
* Wikinomics by Don Tapscott

You'll notice two of the books, Wikinomics and The Black Swan, were also on the FT/Goldman Sachs Award shortlist, and The No Asshole Rule won The Quill Award in the business category. I think it's a great idea to put this list out, and the categories here should cater well to different kinds of travelers. They even offer two additional categories to extend the list for more voracious readers. One is called "Books We Love", and the other is "Newsworthy/Noteworthy". If you'd like to see the titles in the other categories, you can find it on their website. You should also begin seeing the list posted in their stores beginning December 1st.

Demystifying the Best-Seller List

The Best-Seller List is one of the most fascinating and confusing aspects of the book publishing industry. Almost every time we work with a business book author, a conversation comes up about what being on the list means, and how a book can "hit" it. Having a best-seller can really make an author's success and drive future sales of the book, and future sales of future books...while at the same time many truly wonderful books will never hit the list.

Sunday's New York Times had a great article about the its Best-Seller List: "Books for the Ages, if Not for the Best-Seller List" by Clark Hoyt. One question we're often asked is, How many books do I have to sell to make the list? It's a tough question to answer because the list is such a complicated beast. Booksellers report their sales in different ways, long-standing best-sellers might be taken off the list to give new books a chance to shine, and even books with very high sales numbers might not make the list because of timing--especially when several big books hit the shelves at the same time. Hoyt explains some of these discrepancies:

There are usually differences between the Times list and others, often, apparently, because of timing or because different lists put books in different categories. USA Today, for example, combines all books -- fiction, nonfiction, paperback and hardcover -- into a single list. No book is ever banished as an "evergreen," meaning "Night" can be found at No. 129 this week, nine spots below "The Official SAT Study Guide." But "for what The New York Times is doing," Sorensen said, "it's very accurate."

Why banish a book just because it has been around a long time? The Times wants a list "that's lively and churns and affords new authors the opportunity to be recorded," Hofmann said.

I encourage you to check out the article if you're at all interested in how certain books end up on that list in Sunday's book section of the newspaper. While the article doesn't go deep into the science of the bestseller list, it does show it has been set up to generate an interesting list that is a reflection of real sales and consumers' current interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21pubed.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Name your own Big Idea Book.

This month's issue of Wired had an activity that we, and business book authors and industry folks, got a kick out of. It was concocting a best selling book using Wired's "Patent-Pending Big Idea Book Generator."

With this patent-pending Big Idea Book GeneratorTM, we provide the title, subtitle, and premise. All you need to do is pick a random object to serve as a cryptic representation of your Big Idea on the cover (we chose a peanut) and, well, write it. Hey, that's what ghostwriters are for!

Ever wonder how people come up with titles like "Freakonomics," "The Long Tail," or "The World is Flat" ? They probably didn't use this calculator, but there is something to say about the science of the best seller title.

Your title needs to both summarize your Big Idea and introduce a new term. It sounds tough, but we've made it easy.

You can put together your main title and subtitle, and then choose a premise for the book. Using their suggestions, here's an absurd combination I came up with:

Title: Innovation and the Meme: A Transformative Measurement of Dynamic Change in Everything. Premise: How Hidden Wisdom Transforms the Power of Unconscious Thought.

Great! Now all I have to do is write the book. [smiles]

What did you come up with?

Financial Times Asks "What Is Best Business Book of All Time?"

In conjunction with their Business Book of The Year Award, The Financial Times is asking the question: "What is the best book of all time?" They solicited suggestions from a wide variety of business executives, including GE's Jeff Immelt and Ebay's Meg Whitman. The editorial staff then created a short list using the same criterea as their yearly awards. The finalists are:

• Barbarians at the Gate, by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (1990)
• The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker (1966)
• Good to Great, by Jim Collins (2001)
• The Innovator's Dilemma, by Clay Christensen (1997)
• The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776)

You can cast your vote and leave comments if you think they missed the mark with their selections.

Greenspan Starts Strong

Publisher's Lunch reports today that Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence had sales of 128,000 copies in its opening week, according to Neilsen's Bookscan.

That is a great start for the book, but people will be watching closely to see if the book can keeping that momentum into the next three or four weeks.

Do It Wrong Quickly - Marketing in the Age of the Web

A little background...Pearson, a major international publisher of educational and resource materials, puts out some of the best books on Internet marketing, technology support, and learning HTML and multimedia software. (And they're not paying me to say so.) You've probably seen Pearson's many imprints on your resource books -- IBM Press, Financial Times, Prentice Hall, Peachpit Press, Longman, and Wharton, among many others. Peachpit's Quickstart guides, for example, give non-technicians the basic tools to make heads or tails of programs once mastered exclusively by programmers and graphic designers. As much of our creative work becomes do-it-yourself or stays in-house, it's almost necessary to start a reference library. Over the next few months I'd like to recommend a few titles to get you started.

As we're thinking about ways to expand our online presence, Todd and I have been talking a lot about the best ways to approach new projects. It used to be that we decided to do something--print a new brochure, redesign a web site, incorporate a new technology--and then presented a plan to a designer. There might be some initial back-and-forth about needs and goals, but what the designer came back with in the end was essentially a finished product. We had to be sure we knew exactly what we wanted before we asked (and paid) for it. Today, though, there's a lot of wiggle room. Especially online, we can try and fail at something new without taking a significant hit (or any at all, sometimes).

A few weeks ago Todd wrote about a book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres:

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007328.html.

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007292.html.

This week I opened up Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (IBM Press). The subtitle might make you think "Um, where have you been?" but the author, Mike Moran, actually gets at something close to what Ayres talks about in Super Crunchers. Using a bow-and-arrow analogy, Moran suggests that the archer with three arrows has a higher chance of success than the archer with one. In other words, it's great if your shot in the dark hits the bull's eye, but chances are it won't every time. On the other hand, if you take three shots at the same time, you might not hit the bull's eye, but you'll score more points--and learn more along the way.

I'm probably not doing justice to the author's message, here, but I think that the important thing to take away is that it no longer makes sense to expect that even a carefully thought-through, well-executed marketing campaign will hit the target in today's world. In fact, Moran believes that the new marketing means getting away from the plan-then-execute approach, and starting to try lots of approaches at the same time. In addition to systematic ways of assessing your online marketing (conversions, metrics), you have to listen better to your customers. He talks about the social media phenomenon, incorporating multi-media approaches in your message, and creating deeper relationships with your customers by engaging them in a conversation.

As Moran puts it, "whether change gets your blood pumping or leaves you in a pool of sweat, marketing is undergoing a revolution more profound than any of us are likely to see the rest of our lives." Do It Wrong Quickly is a friendly invitation to that revolution.

More on the digital vs. paper debate...

We often get into philosophical debates here on everything from what constitutes a sport to the evolution of the book industry. Many times, these conversations are conducted through a string of emails. Rebecca introduced you to one debate. I thought you might like to see it unfold.

Here's a piece of the digital vs. paper debate -- featuring Jon, Rebecca, Todd and Dylan. It's lengthy and poses interesting questions and points about business books and reading in general. I did edit bits and pieces to trim it a bit for your -- the reader's -- sake. And so it begins:

Todd opens:

I saw this on the Apple Keynote:

32% of the music released in 2006 was digital-only (no CD was released)

Think about a similar phenomenon in publishing and what that would mean...

We all think. Jon responds first:

I still don't know if there's that strong of a connection between these types of publishing. Downloading a song and carrying it around makes sense. Downloading a 300 pg novel doesn't. How will this change?

Maybe language will change based on technology. Maybe people will start using less words, more images/sounds/etc. Then a 300 pg novel could be reduced to a much shorter presentation with generally the same message.

Sort of like Kanji, but much further.

This leads to much bigger questions - Is this beneficial? Is this progress? Will it lead to an even greater sense of illiteracy?

Thanks for the happy morning thoughts, Todd!

Keep reading...

Dylan brings it back around:

As it pertains to business books, I think it would mean one of a few things.
That someone had invented a good digital interface to read long format (book length) content on.

That someone had invented a print-on-demand process to bind books in peoples homes and businesses. I say this because I don't think people want to print off a 200 page book on individual sheets of paper. I think they want it nicely bound...

Now, as it pertains to business thought, I think 32% of it may already be digital. It's on blogs and in online magazines. I think our one big strength now is that businesses want speakers in person, they want to hand out that speaker's nicely bound, hardcover book to the attendees so they take a piece of that experience home with them, and they will therefore need the book in bulk.

And, Jon pulls in the Huffington:

Also, try interpreting this article as "The Velocity of Books."

Rebecca responds:

I'm not sure if Todd views it as a good or bad thing. He poses a good question: What could it mean? I think Jon hit the nail on the head with his questions:

This leads to much bigger questions - Is this beneficial? Is this progress? Will it lead to an even greater sense of illiteracy?

Consider the article that came out a few weeks ago. 1 in 4 people did not read a book last year. That doesn't mean they read a digital book instead of a paper one. It means that fewer and fewer people are reading. I'd venture a guess and say that more and more people are listening to music.

Now I'm getting a little philosophical, but I feel that while pictures and sound can get messages across, exposure to the written word triggers processes in the brain that can't be replicated by any type of technology.

I also wonder about the socio-economic impact that more digital technology is going to have. iPods and computers are expensive. Sure, poorer people still buy them, but if more and more moves to digital, how will some groups of people be able to afford maintaining complex devices?

And even if I'm wrong about this, and books really are going to go away, I have the same question as Jon--is this progress?

Dylan returns with:

If Todd was implying that bulk book sales will disappear, at least as far as business books are concerned, I think I would disagree.

I think what Jon suggests will, and definitely is happening, and I agree that we need to find our place in that new paradigm. But I think there is something else happening as well. More business books are being published now than ever, and a new kind of one as well. I think that as organizations speed up communication and start moving in new directions, it will be even more important to gather everyone in one place once or twice a year and focus on big new concepts and ideas to move forward with. I think this is especially true as the younger generation enters the workforce, people start working more often from home, etc. This is where the business book fits in, and where our more traditional bulk business is, and will be for some time. Keep in mind I'm thinking of this only as it pertains to our business, and not society as a whole. I think we must prepare ourselves for the eventuality of a decline in bulk book sales, but the trends seem to be in the other direction at the moment.

On a larger cultural and societal scale, I definitely agree with Rebecca's comments and Jon's question. I'm almost positive that fiction, history, and business or "perspective" books will continue to be published on paper. I do wonder who will be reading them. Will only professionals in these fields read them? How will people buy them? Is there still a place for independent bookstores selling recently released works?

An album is much different than a book though. The recent developments in music have made it more portable. The problem of the portability of ideas was solved by Gutenberg in the 1400's. I think they are moving in opposite directions, or that music is finally finding what books already provide for ideas and literature. If a really good ebook reader comes out, with the interface, portability, and feel comparable to a book, that may spoil my argument. People have said that will happen for over a decade, but people have also said we'll have flying cars soon since the 50's.

I also don't find the fact that one in four people didn't read a single book last year all that surprising. I think that that MSNBC poll, done 50 years ago, would have shown many more non-readers than today. I will have to look that up.

Dylan researches:

Here's what I found. I only spent about an hour on this, and only referenced the internet and one DVD, so this is obviously not conclusive.

Statistics from the National Endowment of the Arts

Percentage of adults that read a single book.

1992: 60.9%
2002: 56.6%

I couldn't find any definitive statistics older than that online. The AP poll from the MSNBC story reported that 73% of adults read a book last year. ... I don't know if this question is the most important one to ask though. I think we should be looking at active readership. Is reading 1 book a year all that different from reading none, or one every other year? Is it "active readership"? More importantly for our purposes, how much would it support the publishing industry if they had read a single book?

You could argue, I suppose, that reading breeds more reading, so if we could get everyone to read one book it could help. Moving on though...

In David Schwartz's [editor's side note: David Schwartz was the son of the founder of our sister company and local independent Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops chain] interview with I Remember Milwaukee in 1995, he cited statistics that said around 15% of the population actively read and bought books at that time. According to David, that was up from around 3% when he started working with his father at the bookshops in the early 50's. He didn't mention where he got those statistics, but I would never doubt David's knowledge of the publishing industry or people's reading habits. Considering that there are simply more people today, that should mean significantly more readers that could potentially buy books. (I should note that I didn't remember David's actual statistics. I just remembered him referencing them, so I watched my copy of the show tonight to get those numbers.)

According to that same NEA study from 2002 I referenced above, however, literary reading had dropped a larger percentage when the study was done.

1992: 54.%
2002: 46.7%

...Another good development is the consistent drop in adult illiteracy. Unfortunately, I could only find statistics up to 1979.

From the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States

Year ----- Total
1870 ----- 20.0
1880 ----- 17.0
1890 ----- 13.3
1900 ----- 10.7
1910 ----- 7.7
1920 ----- 6.0
1930 ----- 4.3
1940 ----- 2.9
1947 ----- 2.7
1950 ----- 3.2
1952 ----- 2.5
1959 ----- 2.2
1969 ----- 1.0
1979 ----- 0.6

That's where it ended. What do you think?

A big push for digital books? Not quite yet...

There was an article in last week's issue of BusinessWeek called "Amazon Does Downloads, Sort of: Why its push into digital delivery of books, movies, and music seems halfhearted."

Here at 800-CEO-READ, there is an ongoing discussion about, you guessed it, whether digital will eventually take over the book industry and books as we know them will go away. We all agree that the physical book will never go away - it's too bound up in our culture, and it's still the most portable way of carrying ideas around with us, not to mention the fact that experts overwhelmingly agree that reading printed matter is easier on the eye than reading a screen. But we are seeing more and more cool technology when it comes to books. Todd and Dylan got to see a prototype of an electronic book at the Tools of Change Conference, in June.

The author of the article, Scott Kirsner, looks into the e-commerce side of the digital debate. Despite the fact that Amazon has acquired Mobipocket (an online, digital- book-seller), and even though it is expected to open a downloadable music service, sell an e-book device called the Kindle, and offer NBC TV shows through Unbox, a movie-download service, Amazon has been awfully timid in venturing too far out into the possibilities of selling digital content.

"Amazon's toe-in-the-water approach may seem odd, considering how it helped pioneer online shopping in the mid-1990s. You might think that fulfilling orders for digital media would be more efficient than pulling CDs off shelves, boxing them, and handing them over to UPS for delivery. But as long as digital music and e-books come with heavy restrictions on how and where consumers can use them, the market will be limited and rights holders will have the power to shake down sellers. That's O.K. if you're Apple Inc. and see music as a "door opener" for iPod and iPhone sales. But for Amazon, there's still much more money to be made shipping real stuff."

Yes, heavy restrictions will continue to make downloadable content more difficult to acquire--and whether it should be is another conversation--but the last two words of that passage stuck out to me. "Real stuff." Not only do many industries still depend on real stuff--for manufacturing, packaging, shipping, stocking, and so on--but buyers have shown that they still want tangible, material objects for their money.

I suspect, however, that Amazon's plunge into selling digital content isn't too far off. And it's more likely to be a swan dive than a belly flop.

No Asshole Rule Wins Quills Awards (Business Category)

The Quill Awards, which they self-describe as "first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of all the groups that matter most in publishing--- readers, booksellers and librarians", were announced this morning.

Bob Sutton's No Asshole Rule won the business category from the finalists of Small Is the New Big by Seth Godin, Women & Money by Suze Orman, Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, and Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough Jonathan M. Tisch with Karl Weber.

The awards ceremony takes place October 22nd.

Where Did The Book Reviews Go?

The most recent issue of Fast Company makes me think the magazine has dropped their coverage of business books.

Booooooo.

A New Season begins - August 2007 Books

I know it is only a few of days into August, but we are starting to see and think about the fall.

Jack is quoted today in a Bloomburg News story about Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. He is a little more positive about the book than might be evident from the quote. We'll be featuring it as a Jack Covert Selects this month.

I have been reading a really interesting book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. I am writing a couple of posts now about the book and we'll be reviewing it this month as well.

Here are couple other titles making an August release:

• Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent by Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra, and Ramit Sethi
• What Made Jack Welch Jack Welch: How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Leaders by Stephen H. Baum with Dave Conti
• Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill At A Time by Kevin Eikenberry

More on Harry Potter

BusinessWeek has an article about the logistics of delivering 12,000,000 books in two days. To quote

"If all the trucks that delivered Deathly Hallows were lined up bumper-to-bumper, Scholastic says, the caravan would stretch 15 miles."

Fascinating stuff!

Potter Phenomenon

We can't ignore the publishing highpoint that took place over the weekend. The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday at 12:01AM generated sales of 8.3 million copies in its initial day on the market. It is a record, one previously held by its immediate predecessor Harry Potter and The Half-Blooded Prince, which sold 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours.

Using an average discount of 40%, Deathly Hallows generated about $175 million in its opening day, while the top grossing movie this weekend did $34.8 million.

What is it about fables?

The New York Times interviewed John Kotter yesterday and reported on his business fable Our Iceberg Is Melting. These numbers set the stage:

Since its release last September, "Iceberg" has sold some 224,000 copies in hardcover (Leading Change [his prior book] has sold more than a million copies in 10 years), and been translated into 10 languages, with 10 more foreign editions in the works.

When I reported on the Publisher Weekly best-seller numbers, Our Iceberg Is Melting was the surprise on the list. I had no idea the book was doing so well.

The idea for the fable version came from reader Holger Rathgeber. In preparing for a presentation, Rathgeber became inspired by the drawing on the cover of Leading Change. The picture shows penguins jumping from one iceberg to another, so Rathgeber had everyone create penguin masks from construction paper during the workshop. Rathgeber sent Kotter a sample of the materials and Kotter was immediately taken.

So, Kotter rewrote Leading Change as a fable with the penguins and sent a draft out to friends in 2004. Requests started to roll in for copies of the book. Kotter decided to self-publish and went on to sell 15,000 copies. Publisher St. Martin bought the rights and published it in 2006.

I have to tell you I don't understand the popularity of fables like this. They are meant to appeal to a large audience, and that is the trouble for me. The messages these book convey are too simplistic. I guess this leaves me in the minority given the success that many of these books have.

My only solace lies in the fact that since the mainstream release of "Iceberg", we have sold twice as many copies of Leading Change as we have the fable. I guess our customers want the full version as well.

The business of the book business

Random House (a piece of that German giant Bertelsmann) recently crunched their publishing numbers with New York magazine. The numbers:

There are 1,500 Random House employees in New York.
Every week they unveil 67 new books (around 3500 books/year).

Annual revenue: $2.3 billion ($230 million is profit).
2/3 of which comes from paperbacks.
80% of profit is driven by their backlist of 33,000 books.

Only one of every eight books is really profitable.
Understandably so, when author advances range from $7000 to up to $10 million.

Paperback math:
Customer buys a book for $10.

Retailer gets $5.
Random House covers their space and staff with $2.
The author is paid $1.50.
Printing costs are $1.

And the remaining 50 cents is profit.

*If RH was to generate profits solely on paperbacks, they'd have to sell 460 million books to earn $230 million in income.

**Thanks to New York Magazine for giving us the breakdown.

Posted by Kate at 9:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Bet On Longer Attentions Spans

Monocle, a very cool and hip European magazine, has an video interview with Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the CEO of Lego. When asked how his company would deal with children's lack of time to play with their product, this was his response:

Playing with Lego is like reading a book,. Books, people have said books would die. We had media saying kids would only watch TV or only watch movies, but everybody needs that deep experience of getting engaged with something. I think that is what Lego provides. We need to insist that someone will read a book if it is great; we need to insist that someone will find an afternoon to build with Lego if the set is really great.

I think he is right. Mark Penn in his upcoming book Microtrends says the same thing--bet on longer attentions spans, not shorter ones.

P.S. Dan Pink and A Whole New Mind also gets a mention in the interview.

Could Carnegie do it today?

Back around the early 1900s, Andrew Carnegie set out to build libraries -- 2509 libraries, in fact. 1689 of which were built in the United States.

The folks over at Freakonomics point out that publishing was a completely different animal then than it is now. They ask, if Carnegie hadn't built libraries, could Bill Gates do it today? Or would book publishers fight back?

Meet the author (online)

Most authors have a web site and/or blog where they discuss their experiences writing and publishing the book, touring the country with it, and upcoming events. The author of How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything in Business (and in Life), Dov Seidman, invites you to visit his web site here:

http://www.howsmatter.com/

Holy Shit.

I am listening to the keynotes at Tools of Change.

Manolis Kelaidis is talking about his bluebook project. He has prototyped a book that will interact with other devices.

He used his finger, pressed on a song title in his book, and his computer started playing the song.

Applause followed.

[I will post video as soon as I can.]

Tags: toc2007

TOC - Business Models that Guarantee Profitability in Publishing

Bob Pritchett, CEO of Logos Bible Software, is talking about their direct to customer business model. They have 500,000 users and about 20% of those are returning customers. Their business involves developing electronic versions of religious texts from both acquiring rights for existing publishers and developing original content.

They have a five part process for launching one of their electronic products:

1. Launch Products
2. Take Orders
3. Cover Costs
4. Start Production
5. Ship and Charge

They put all of their products up on their website and gauge interest before they put them into production. And interest is a customer giving Logos a credit card number. Using this system, they don't put a title into production until they have guaranteed to cover their production costs. Customers who enter early is the process get a good discount (30%) and the discount drops as more people commit to the project. Each project is a guaranteed success and any additional sale is hugely profitable.

They have also tried "community pricing" as well. Their customers are allowed to bid on potential projects. Their bid represents how much they would be willing to pay for the proposed project. Each project has again has a project breakeven and once the "auction" shows the project can be done, users are offered the lowest price which allows the project to make money and the product is priced at the highest revenue generating point based on the data. I think it is very clever and there is much better information at their site.

Tags: toc2007

Print on Demand Workshop from Day One

There was a great session on Print on Demand yesterday. Here are some quick notes:

Ingram's POD service, Lighting Source, shared these stats from their service:

500,000+ titles available
14,000,000 printed thus far
1.3 million printed each month
average print run - 1.8 copies

Coming from a manufacturing background, I tend to take some things for granted and Phil Zuckerman from Applewood Books made a great point:

Price and content are important, but what really matters to resellers is availability.

The constraints of large press runs in offset publishing play havoc with decision-making. Traditional printing still makes sense in many instances, but the folks who are combining it with POD are finding a whole new set of possibilities around how to manage inventory.

Cambridge University Press has brought back to life thousands of titles and have doubled the revenues from their backlist over the last ten years.

Knowing when and where that will come from is hard to say, but again that is the beauty of POD. At Cambridge, they had a little over 1400 titles that did not sell in 2005 that went on to sell $1.5 million in 2006. These were all incremental sales not possible in the past.

There is also an angle that allows for quick updating of books.

Our favorite bald guy

If you're an author, you'd probably enjoy these 10 questions with our favorite bald guy.

To get you started, here's the first question:

1) With 172,000 books published in 2005 in the US alone, it seems like everyone is doing it now. Is a book still a good way to distinguish my ideas?

A book is just a vessel, something that holds your ideas. It used to be that the act of getting published was a Dip (see my new book for details). Getting through it meant something. Getting an editor to take the time and the trouble and the money to turn your book from manuscript to bookstore was not just a seal of approval, it was a source of scarcity. Because published books were relatively rare, it mattered.

On to #2.

2007 Quill Nominees

At BEA, the 2007 Quill Award nominees were announced.

What titles were eligible?

Eligible titles for the 2007 Quill Awards were those published between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. Nominees were chosen by the Quills/PW Selection Committee, comprised of Publishers Weekly editors, who drew upon industry expertise, PW starred reviews and PW Bestseller Lists to nominate five books in each of the Quills 18 categories. The PW staff's unique overview of the thousands of titles published each year helped to insure that nominated titles share the Quills' commitment to bring today's leading literature to the reading public.

Runners in the business world are:

1. Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas
   
   Seth Godin; Portfolio


2. Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
   
   Suze Orman; Random House/Spiegel & Grau


3. The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
   
   Robert I. Sutton; Warner Business Books


4. Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
   
   David Shipley and Will Schwalbe; Alfred A. Knopf


5. Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience
   
   Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber; John Wiley & Sons

For the full list, head here.

What Publishers Are Saying Readers Want

It is always interesting to hear what publishers think readers are looking for. Publishers Weekly runs a feature each year on the trends in business books. Here are the quotes from the publishers featured in the May 21st article:

"A major issue facing businesses today is the war for talent. As the baby boomers retire, there is a smaller pool of talented, skilled workers. In this business environment, retaining and motivating good employees will be critical for corporate success. At the same time, executives have become skeptical of the promises of quick fixes offered by recent business books. They want substantive information that offers real solutions to complex problems." - Hank Kennedy, president and publisher of AMACOM

"It is remarkable how brand-name books and brand-name authors are standing out in this crowded marketplace. When the market is glutted, there is flight to tried and true, known and proven. Often the books have a distinctive title and have become the dominant book on their topics." - Steve Piersanti, president of Berrett-Koehler

"There's a growing awareness that managers have to pay more attention to their subordinates--really listen to them and address their needs. The new generation of 20- and 30-somethings can't wait to go out and set up their own shops, and in order to keep that talent, companies have to keep that talent, companies learn what makes them happy and motivated and act on it. Today's management style has to be flexible and not take employees for granted--it's not the 1950's anymore." -Rick Wolff, editorial director of Business Plus (formerly Warner Business)

"This morning when I was reading The Wall Street and saw the business books bestsellers list, it was a flashback from 30 years ago with Lee Iacocca at #1. People are looking for advice from proven authorities." -Steve Ross, president and publisher of Collins (former senior vice-president and publisher at Crown)

"People will always want to read about the accomplishments of successful people, especially if they have broken new ground or created a whole new industry. " -Lauren Marino, executive editor at Gotham Books

"It's very clear that readers --whether business students or professionals already embarked on successful careers--want books that will give them the up-to-date knowledge and skills they need to compete in today's global economy. And it's not just a matter of knowing another language or the customs of a country. They want books that will give them actionable advice and the innovative and perceptive ideas they'll need to build a world-class organization." -Maureen McMahon, Vice-President and Publisher at Kaplan

"We believe the era of the globalization of the management book has arrived. Look at the appeal of global brands. Readers want to know how Google, Toyota, and Starbucks do it." -Herb Schaffner, publisher of business and finance at McGraw-Hill

"[He sees a rebirth of internet related management and strategy books.] There was a big wave of these books in the late 1990's--bestsellers like Customers.com and Unleashing the Killer Ap. Then the Internet bubble popped and the whole genre disappeared for about five years. Nobody cared. But now we're back to seeing bestsellers aimed at managers who want to apply the lessons of the new Web 2.0 companies like YouTube and MySpace." -Adrian Zacheim, publisher at Portfolio

So, do you agree with them? Are these the kinds of books you are looking for?

Title for A New Book

Richard Florida of Rise of the Creative Class and Flight of the Creative Class is looking for some help on the title for his next book. Some of the ideas include:

• The Wealth of Place
• Who's Your City?
• Where
• Location Factor
• Why Place Matters
• Geography is Destiny
• What's Your LQ (Location Quotient)

I suggest in the comments that they keep working on it. I don't think they have found the right title yet.

Book Videos

In a time where book reviews are disappearing from major newspapers and magazines, one of the larger publishers Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS) is trying out online videos on books. Next month is the premiere of their new website Bookvideos.tv that will aide consumers in their choices and direct them towards Simon's books.

The website will introduce books based upon "personality" rather than publication date (paid subscription to the WSJ required; article: Book Channel Bound for Internet). Videos will be two minutes in length and cover how book ideas are sparked and details on the author's life. Due to appear are bestselling S&S authors such as Mary Higgins Clark, Zane and Sandra Brown.

And, S&S is letting consumers use the video in a manner of their choice.

Publicity and no book.

Mignon Fogarty, of the popular podcast Grammar Girl, is writing a book due out next year through Henry Holt & Company. Typically in the publishing world, a book precedes the audiobook (or in some cases is released simultaneously).

For Mignon, this wasn't the case. Oprah called, booked her for a show and Mignon and her publisher sped to produce an audiobook before the show aired. After the show, the audiobook quickly rose to the number one spot on iTunes.

As John Sterling, the president and publisher of Henry Holt put it:

“We didn’t break out Champagne because we weren’t selling tens of thousands, but we certainly broke out the sparkling water. We are accustomed to working with product cycles one measures in months, but in this case we were working with a product cycle of days and even hours.�

Talk about speed in the publishing industry where 15 months is the average turnaround time for a book. Check out the full article here.