Editor's Note: Tweet Dreams
One night recently, I woke suddenly, due to a horrifying dream about … do I dare admit it? … Twitter. The dream made no real sense; I was tweeting—or posting, for you non-Twitterers—quotes from various people in the book publishing industry, one quote after another, but I couldn’t post them fast enough. I have similar work/stress-related dreams quite frequently, but I was amazed that I had one about Twitter—tweeting is one of the simplest things I do. So why the tweet dreams?
I realized it was because it’s new and outside my comfort zone. Twitter links you to all kinds of people—some you know, some you don’t. Your friends and possibly your frenemies. Your tweets are permanent and reach a sizable audience, depending on the number of followers you have. I am an editor, used to contemplating about and filtering everything I write and publish. Twitter is supposed to be fast, spontaneous.
I realized that, like me, you, as a book publisher, have lots to adapt to in this way. I also realized that the quotes I was dream-tweeting were real (if not word for word), and most were about change in the industry. I decided not to recreate my tweet dream by actually tweeting these quotes, but I thought they were worth sharing, so I dug them up out of my many notebooks and decided to share them here, in print, where no bizarre dream is waiting for me. I hope they stay with you as they’ve stayed with me.
“Listen, listen, listen. There’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth.”
—Eric Qualman, author, “Socialnomics,” during his presentation at BookExpo America (BEA), regarding the importance of connecting with your audience through social networking communities
“Books are strangely social.”
—Qualman
“I think the idea that the Kindle will be the only device [out there] is silly. The danger is the development of a monopoly, in that someone is sitting between [publishers and consumers].”
—David Steinberger, president and CEO, Perseus Books Group, during BEA’s CEO panel
“If 1 [percent] to 2 percent of sales are e-books … then 98 percent of our business today is the print book.”
—John Sargent, CEO, Macmillan, during BEA’s CEO panel
“Rather than fight it, you’ll see smart publishers following Amazon’s lead into genres and topics that otherwise might have been ignored.”
—Clint Greenleaf, founder/CEO, Greenleaf Book Group, in his Guest Column for Book Business
“I tried to tweet, and then I had a tweet ‘body double,’ which didn’t really work for me.”
—Marcus Leaver, president, Sterling Publishing, during Book Industry Study Group’s Making Information Pay (MIP)
“Successful digital content programs should be driven by market opportunities, not by technologies.”
—Andrew Brenneman, founder/president, Finitiv, in his Digital Directions column for Book Business (May)
“The time has come to ask ourselves: Are we still being well-served by the printed catalog?”
—Josh Marwell, president of sales, HarperCollins, during MIP
“As publishers, it’s very important to know what we are good at and do more of that.”—Marji Ross, president and publisher, Regnery Publishing, during a panel discussion at the Publishing Business Conference & Expo
“I think this Google settlement is a phenomenal thing. It is the world’s biggest book deal, and we should celebrate it.”
—Pat Schroeder, former president/CEO, Association of American Publishers, during the Publishing Business Conference & Expo keynote panel
“Lost in the doomsdayer debate about publishers’ future is that their unique role as intermediaries has always been about discovering and promoting talent and content—rather than printing and distributing.”
—Peter Olson (senior lecturer of business administration, Harvard Business School, and former Random House CEO) and Bharat N. Anand (Henry R. Byers professor of business administration, Harvard Business School) in their Guest Column for Book Business (June)
“Publishers need to be personally and organizationally engaged with the [social media] tools they are asking their authors to use. There are no wallflowers at this digital dance.”
—Carolyn Pittis, senior vice president, global marketing strategy and operations,HarperCollins, in her Guest Column for Book Business (May)