I was at an event last week where an attendee described the following scenario: She discovered an author on the Oyster unlimited ebook subscription service, she read one of their books, and then realized the author's other books aren't included in Oyster. She was then forced to buy the author's next ebook somewhere else. The end result is the publisher still has no relationship with the reader and Oyster earns nothing from the sale of that next book.
A key challenge to growing your publishing firm is to find new paths to greater revenue by building upon your core strengths without making a radical shift in the way you currently do business. Here are nine strategies for increasing your sales, revenue and profits using existing (or sometimes new) content in current markets, growth markets, and new, "Frontier" markets.
Every digital newspaper, magazine, and book I've ever purchased from an e-retailer share something in common: None of them included a pitch from the publisher to lure me away from the e-retailer and go direct. Not a single one.
This, despite the fact that it's never been easier, or more important, for publishers to diversify their channel strategy and focus on their D2C business, is pretty remarkable. It's even more amazing when you consider that more and more publishers are finally starting to wake up to the importance of either building a D2C channel or fortifying it.
Discoverability may seem like an overworked buzzword, but its importance to publishers has never been greater. As readers shift from purchasing books at brick-and-mortar stores to shopping online, publishers need to find new and innovative ways to get eyes on their titles.
Last Friday Michael Tamblyn, president and COO of ereading platform Kobo, took to Twitter with a 32-tweet manifesto on the Amazon-Hachette dispute. Tamblyn's tweets were meant to sway self-published authors from so heartily supporting Amazon, as many have throughout Hachette's negotiations. (Here's a link to the first in the series, but you can trace the whole monologue on Twitter starting on the morning of October 17th.)
Why are publishers so scared of free and sample content? Sure, most publishers offer at least one way to test drive their content but they could be doing so much more. I think free/sample content is the single most under-utilized customer acquisition tool out there. Here's why… Have you noticed that most newspapers and magazines don't offer a free e-trial? Or if they do, they bury it on their site. Most of these publishers have always offered free trials of their print product, but free e-trials are almost unheard of. If they're concerned about chronic freeloaders, why not just give the first few pages of the replica editions?
There are two kinds of innovation. One is in value creation and the other is in value capture. Many businesses stop the creative process when a good idea is developed, believing that it will generate money as soon as it is implemented. But unless value capture -- maximizing the return on your idea -- is also considered, you can leave money on the table.
In the midst of an industry shift towards direct-to-consumer sales, stronger publisher brands, and deeper reader relationships, BookShout! is uniquely poised to assist publishers as they evolve into consumer-facing companies. The direct-to-consumer ebook platform helps over 2,000 publishers and authors sell their books direct across a variety of devices and channels and tracks valuable readership data after the sale. Following founder and CEO Jason Illian explains what makes BookShout! stand out in a market saturated with ecommerce solutions.
BookPal is a bulk bookseller serving corporations, schools, nonprofits, and government institutions. The company has grown rapidly since its founding in 2005 and has landed on the Inc. 500/5000 list for the past three years. In part, BookPal's recent growth is due to its efforts in the ebook space; the bookseller launched a new ebook distribution platform and a mobile reading app for Android and iOS in July. Below BookPal president Tony DiCostanzo explains how the retailer's unique role as bulk seller of both print and ebooks has helped streamline distribution for large publishers and independent authors alike.
Publishing companies most often to track performance via financial measures such as changes in sales and revenue. But viewed in isolation, these metrics may have little connection to your long-term commercial success.
The problem with this process is it measures something you cannot control -- sales and revenue. If you could control them, then reaching goals would be a given. But you can only influence those metrics by the actions you take.
