Differentiation and budgeting are key to successfully entering the booming mobile app marketplace, said panelists last month at the Publishing Business Conference’s “Making the Most out of Your Mobile Opportunity.”
Annette Tonti, CEO of mobile publisher MoFuse, predicted that 2% of the U.S. population will own Kindles by 2013, with 7.5 million active Kindles and $813 million in annual Kindle e-book revenues. But iPhone apps are the subject of most of the excitement and innovation in the mobile app world, even though the number of book-related apps is currently dwarfed by those of e-books on single-use reading devices.
The number of Book apps available in the iTunes Store (27,235) eclipsed that of other kinds of apps for the first time last month, reported app research company Mobclix. But according to a recent report by Dutch research firm Distimo, books still make up less than 5% of the apps actually downloaded.
In this cutthroat environment, “the key is that you understand what your goal is,” said Ryan Charles, Senior Product and Marketing Manager at Zagat. He added that finding out what devices your readers are currently using is also important.
The marketing angle for the $9.99 Zagat-To-Go app, launched in 2008, is to enhance the “core, in-the-moment experience” of readers by helping them find local restaurants and reviews on the go. The app uses augmented reality technology to overlay information about local restaurants on the phone’s realtime camera view.
Chelsea Green’s $4.99 app for Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform takes a “more utilitarian” approach, said Kate Rados, Director of Digital Initiatives. The app includes a “citizen action kit” that connects to Facebook and Twitter and allows readers to look up their Congressmen. Publishers should begin by “looking at the backlist and thinking, if I were a reader, what would I want to carry around with me?’”
One backlist title that made an app-fueled comeback is Perseus’s 2006 YA title Cathy’s Book. The $0.99 app, which blends sample chapters with illustrations, animations, voice-acting, and game-like elements, is more “alternative reality game” than ebook, said Peter Costanzo, Director of Online Marketing, in a follow-up interview. “It’s a different experience entirely from reading a book.” The app turns from an e-book into a fake iPhone, allowing the reader to “call” different characters from the story, it “forces[the reader] not only to interact with the book, but interact with the product itself,” he said.
Ambitious app concepts must be rooted in solid financial planning. Rados recommends that publishers minimize financial risk by forming partnerships with mobile content providers; that way, publishers can share back-end expenses instead of fronting money for development. Rados used as a financial case-in-point the $4.99 “HappyHour” app she worked on when she was at Sterling. Sterling created the app in-house at a cost of over $10,000, but it sold only modestly and is no longer available. In retrospect, Rados said, hiring an outside agency and bringing in a corporate sponsor would have been wiser.
Saving money on the back end helps keep the app price down, a crucial factor when competition is fierce. Costanzo said that partnering with Extended Books helped to keep the price of Cathy’s Book at $0.99. Rados cited HappyHour’s $4.99 price tag as nearly prohibitive; many similar apps are free. A $9.99 price tag doesn’t necessarily meant doom, but Distimo found that the average prices of the most popular book and game apps are $2.49 and $2.82, respectively. Worldwide, app prices have dropped 15% since last year.
One area where Rados does recommend spending real money is marketing, “breaking through all that noise” in the app marketplace by establishing a set budget for promotion. Ultimately, the first step is the most important one when you feel that you have book content that’s distinctive, said Charles. “If it’s something you know no one else has, I think you should feel free to start experimenting—now, rather than later,” he said. Rados concurred. “At least try something. If you’re not experimenting, you’re not learning.”
