Direct to Consumer Sales

“Word of mouth” is one of the hottest terms in marketing. Nothing works better than a personal recommendation from someone you trust. Every marketing expert loves — and wants — business through word-of-mouth, but nobody has figured out the perfect way to automate and digitalize this vital tool. At Written Word Media, a company that…

Penguin Random House Australia has sold its online book retailer Bookworld to Booktopia, bringing together Australia’s two largest online book businesses. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Booktopia, which will this year reach AUS$90m in sales according to its c.e.o., expects to take operational control of Bookworld in mid-August.

The largest South African trade publisher, Penguin Random House South Africa (PRHSA), has announced the launch of its ebook store. Listing only South African titles, this new initiative will focus on the SA market. The PRHSA store will offer the publisher’s full catalogue digitally, which includes a range of South African fiction, non-fiction, lifestyle, and nature titles.…

Joe Wikert looks five years into the future and sees an industry in which book buyers can choose from a variety of pricing models.

While Amazon continues to tussle with the major publishers over ebook pricing, Humble Bundle has built a name for itself by allowing readers set the price for digital games, comics and books, get them DRM-free, and contribute some of the price to a worthy cause. The first comics-only bundle, featuring Image Comics titles, ran in April, and there have been five comics bundles since then, featuring Doctor Who, Dynamite, BOOM! Studios, Valiant Entertainment and, currently, Oni Press. In addition, its May e-book bundle included several Top Shelf titles. Each one has pulled in more than a quarter of a million dollars.

In the following Q&A Arora discusses predictive semantics and shares a New Year's resolution publishers might want to consider for driving digital revenue in 2014.

The overarching question all publishers must ask, the existential über-question trumping all others, is: Where will revenue and earnings come from in the future?

Concrete data compiled by the book industry experts at Bowker will be released later this week, but are expected to demonstrate that not only is self-publishing continuing to grow in popularity, but also the the recent wave of self-publishing successes are actually fueling the traditional publishing industry as well.

Reading a book is a solitary activity, not a social one. There are exceptions, like reading aloud to a child or a shut-in, but for the most part, reading is something you do by yourself.

The year 2013 will be known as that in which the current cycle of digital transformation will draw to a close. Those organizations that will execute significant changes to core business functions in order to realize new digital opportunities have already done so, or at least begun. Those that have not begun these changes are unlikely ever to do so.