Admittedly, yesterday's news could have been much better. In some alternate reality, William Lynch could have gotten on that earnings call and announced that things were so smashingly good for the NOOK tablet business that Barnes & Noble was stepping up production and launching bigger (NOOK HD+ LANDSCAPE) and smaller (THE POCKET NOOK!) versions.
But in this reality, Lynch announced that competing with the likes of Amazon and Apple in the tabletsphere was not working for the retailer, and that while it would continue to manufacture its popular NOOK eInk e-readers (Simple Touch & w/GlowLight) and develop NOOK apps for other devices, B&N would cease manufacturing NOOK tablets and look for a third-party partner to license and manufacture co-branded NOOK tablets.
Publishers that correctly match their marketing strategy to their financial objectives perform better than those that do not. But most people continue to use traditional approaches even when they no longer maximize revenue. See if it is time to set new strategies for your business by answering the question, “How satisfied are you with your current revenue and profitability?” The answer gives rise to three different marketing styles:
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a picture of words worth?
This month's Harper's Index featured a fascinating snapshot (see photo), in just a few lines, of a current trend in book publishing:
Percentage change in the past twenty-five years in the Consumer Price Index: +41
In the price of beer: +40
Of books: -1
On January 1, 2013 I assumed the position of Executive Director of The Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN). As of June 1, 2013 SPAN will formally be known as The Association of Authors and Publishers for Special Sales (AAPSS).
The AAPSS mission is to become known as the premier source of information, education and help for publishers of high-quality content published in printed, electronic or audio form for sale to consumers, non-bookstore retailers and non-retail buyers. AAPSS intends to become the respected brand-name entity that provides high quality, functional and innovative sales and marketing resources that enhance our members’ efforts to grow their businesses profitably.
I guess I'd forgotten. Now that all the the publishing players have settled, abandoning agency pricing and returning to the wholesale slums, the DOJ/ebook antitrust case, which popped up again in everyone's news feeds this week, feels a little anticlimactic.
The DOJ, perhaps simply because it's what it found, or perhaps because there's no one left to pick on, is framing the last defendant standing, Apple, as the "ringmaster" in the price-fixing suit, according the New York Times.
Much conversation and virtual space has been devoted over the last week to the announcement by O’Reilly that they are discontinuing the Tools of Change conference. As the producers of the Publishing Business Conference & Expo, one of the events in the same space as TOC, we have long respected our colleagues at O’Reilly. No doubt, TOC leaves a hole in the market. It's one we're uniquely equipped to fill.
General business theory suggests that a new company is more likely to thrive if it faces less competition. Therefore, entrepreneurs try to launch their businesses in uncontested markets so they can avoid the potential problems usually associated with going head-to-head with an entrenched rival.
However, a recent study has shown that exposure to competition in the introductory stage can actually increase the likelihood of long-term survival. Andrew Burke and Stephanie Hussels (Harvard Business Review, March, 2013, p 24) found that “companies launched in crowded markets had higher odds than others of failing in the first year — but if a company survived during this early period, it had a much greater chance of making it to the three-year mark.”
Your business model is the description of how you make money. Is your model to sell your book through bookstores (clicks and bricks)? Or are you a publisher selling multiple titles the same way you always have? You may have added ebooks to your product line and assumed this was a new business model. It is a variation, not a new model.
If you have not changed the way you generate revenue in the past year, your business model is probably obsolete. And you are not maximizing your revenue opportunities.
Look at Amazon.com as an example. It launched with an innovative business model as an online bookstore. Then it started offering other products (clothing, computers) requiring different distribution networks. Then Amazon began selling digital books, music and movies online. Soon it added its own branded products (Kindle), web services and is now investing millions of dollars in warehouses for same-day delivery of groceries and other merchandise. Amazon’s business model changed regularly over 18 years to meet and create new opportunities.
By now you've likely heard that the Supreme Court has ruled, in a 6-3 decision, in favor of immigrant scientist Supap Kirtsaeng in Kirtsaeng V. Wiley.
In what's being heralded as a win for consumers and libraries, and a loss for publishers, the SCOTUS overturned a previous ruling against Kirtsaeng, who had been buying textbooks printed (legally) abroad—where they cost significantly less than they do in, say, the United States—and then reselling them in the U.S. on eBay and turning a handsome profit in the process.
In a statement yesterday, Wiley's President & CEO Stephen M. Smith wrote: "We are disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided in favor of Supap Kirtsaeng and overturned the Second Circuit’s ruling. It is a loss for the U.S. economy, and students and authors in the U.S. and around the world."
While it’s odd to think of an organization backed by Penguin, Hachette and Simon & Schuster as a startup, Bookish, the new book-recommendation and -discovery site, is essentially that. After two years in development under three CEOs, it’s a new site where users can get recommendations based on titles or groups of titles they know they already like and then, in most cases, purchase them. Like the Random House project Book Scout, the idea, on one level, is to facilitate discovery across the industry, for the good of the industry. And while users can discover just about any book, the books they can purchase directly from Bookish are not limited to those published by the companies who footed the bill.
