Audience Development

Email has become a critical marketing tool for book publishers, particularly as marketing teams have placed greater focus on connecting directly with readers and developing meaningful relationships with them. Email marketing is helping book publishers solve the digital book discovery problem because it provides a channel for publishers to introduce readers to new releases, related…

Editor’s Note: On May 18th, Book Business’ sister brand Publishing Executive hosted a free webinar titled, “Innovative Strategies for Growing & Monetizing Your Audience.” The webinar is available to watch free on-demand and covers a topic that is particularly important for book publishers. As publishers up their direct marketing efforts on their websites, newsletters, and…

What was the pervasive theme of IDPF DigiCon this year? Digital publishing, of course. Data, obviously. But also, libraries. Likely because DigiCon was hosted in Chicago this year, home of the American Library Association, library professionals had a seat on multiple panels throughout the conference and shared their perspectives on issues like book discovery, digital…

Wired, the San Francisco, Calif.-based magazine and digital publication, has launched a book club as a part of its expanding culture coverage. Its first selection is N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award-nominated The Fifth Season, the first in the author’s Broken Earth series, which chronicles the apocalyptic changes to the planet wrought by climate change and centuries…

There are a number of key attributes successful publishers will be known for in the future. These core capabilities will be very different from the ones that have led to the modern empires of the Big Five. Some attributes will remain the same, of course. For example, it will always be crucial for publishers to…

“Audience” is a phrase being used much more frequently in trade publishing circles today. Where once marketing teams had to guess what type of person a book would appeal to, now book audiences are much more knowable. Thanks to the internet, social media, newsletters, and ecommerce publishers have more opportunity than ever to form direct…

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on The Future of Publishing. Netflix released its latest quarter earnings report today. In a Letter to Shareholders (PDF), Netflix CEO Reed Hastings described the competitive landscape the company faces. In doing so he framed the challenge faced today by all publishers, certainly all book, newspaper and magazine publishers.…

Our favorite Woody Allen joke is the one about taking a speed-reading course. “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes,” he says. “It’s about Russia.” The promise of speed reading — to absorb text several times faster than normal, without any significant loss of comprehension — can indeed seem too good to be true.…

If you’re a book lover, Litsy might be the social app for you. The startup was founded by Todd Lawton and Jeff LeBlanc, who previously launched the book-themed clothing company Out of Print. Lawton told me the idea for Litsy came from connecting with Out of Print fans at events like book festivals and comic…

In June 2009 Simon & Schuster created a social networking site for teens, akin to a Facebook for books. The site was called Pulse It, an extension of the Simon Pulse young adult imprint, which encouraged readers to write reviews of Pulse titles, create profiles, and discuss their favorite reads with other users. Over the…