The digital conference that Google hosted on January 18 was definitely in the plus ça change mode: the crowd was made up of miscellaneous enthusiasts, with hardly a senior publisher in sight; the speakers were articulate and clever, mostly male and certain they were preaching to the uninitiated (though those may well be the ones who didn’t show), and much of what was presented wasn’t scalable, at least given current publishing models.
But, that’s not to take away from a lively, informative day.
Some of the nuggets Publishing Trends took away: Only 1% of all hardcovers released gets any marketing budget, according to Wired’s Chris Anderson; Cory Doctorow, who calls people who like traditional books “pervy for paper,” made his new book available to developing nations to be read, downloaded and even reprinted for free, while developed nations must pay for it. He also explained that, in spammers’ efforts to get past web hosts’ filters, they tack text on to their spam messages, including large chunks of his books, which then find their way to new (albeit unsuspecting) readers; according to Tim O’Reilly, research has shown that the typical user of reference works reads only 5% of any book in a given month.
Therefore his multipublisher site, Safari.com, allows students to subscribe and read what they want for limited periods of time and for half the price of the print version. He has seen a fourfold increase in the “tail” of content sold through Safari over that of traditional books, thereby increasing the halflife of many titles. Taylor & Francis, which also has a subscription model, found that when they introduced a day price (which is 10% of the annual fee), it became their most popular offer, though online sales to individuals are still only 5% of the business. And Michael Holdsworth, erstwhile of Cambridge U. Press, showed extensive “tail” sales as a result of Google Books searches (yes, these speakers were believers) coupled with a vigorous POD program.
Seth Godin – the poster child for free downloads whose book Unleashing The Idea Virus has been accessed by a million people – proclaimed that “the enemy is not piracy, but obscurity.” And author Josh Kilmer-Purcell showed how working collegially with other authors with whom he created cross-promotions, competitions and endless online citations resulted in significant blog mentions, Google hits, emailable names, and yes, sales. His likeable, granular approach underscored the theme of the day: whether publisher, author or megasearch engine, the devil’s still in the details.
UnBound: Advancing Book Publishing in a Digital World was sponsored by Google and very capably moderated by The Idea Logical Company’s Mike Shatzkin.
