Self-Published Authors at Toy Fair 2012: Approaches New and Old

By Elisabeth Watson
February 22, 2012
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Author Clay Rice cutting out a booth-visitor's portrait

Compared to the buzz over Toy Fair 2011’s co-located digital conference, Engage!, the “tech-mood” at Toy Fair 2012 was more subdued yet also more universal. The year, Engage! (now Digital Kids) will be setting up shop on its own in Los Angeles from April 21-25, and at this past week’s Toy Fair, digital components and companions seemed such an integral part of each exhibit, that it might have been difficult to justify an entirely separate show.

Overall, self-published authors and “book-related” start-ups enjoyed more visibility at Toy Fair 2012 than in past years.  Several of these new self-publishing endeavors are very reminiscent of digital start-ups, albeit digital start-ups with one book or series of books as the basis for all their material. For all these entrepreneurs, though, multi-media and digital interactive platforms are part of the original concept for what a book—and business—will be, and don’t fall under the category of marketing techniques as much as they do under original publishing efforts.

One such author (and veteran marketing and branding expert), Lou Hughes, says he was inspired to create the character Olly Oogleberry after revisiting classic children’s books with his own children. Olly Oogleberry (an alien) exists in a picture book, but also in a simultaneously created online platform with fan discussion boards and video sharing, web video series, and an extensive line of Olly merchandise. Twitter and Facebook are fully integrated throughout the site and the little blue alien has 12,000+ followers on Facebook. Other independent publishing ventures, such as Super Sprowtz, and Zylie the Bear, are taking the same approach of using an original book as the basis for a multi-media “universe”, but put less emphasis on the individual author.

Though the self-publishing trend for Toy Fair 2012 did seem to be about elaborate, fully integrated social media strategies, PT met at least one self-published author new to the toy fair who has a traditional print book, very traditional content, and a marketing strategy at once very analog and very effective. Clay Rice is a third-generation silhouette artist (yes, the kind with scissors and black paper). His 2010 picture book The Lost Shadow (illustrated with his black paper-cuts), winner of Moonbeam and IPPY awards, was initially published with a small local publisher in South Carolina. When Rice realized he himself was selling the majority of all copies sold, he bought the rights back from his publisher and began to self-publish. As a professional artist, he tours the country and cuts silhouettes in toy and bookstores, bringing along custom-made floor displays. He “can sell up to 80 copies in an afternoon” and then leaves stores that host him with a fully stocked floor display. “In about two months, most call back to reorder,” he said. Doing just this, he’s been selling between 10,000 and 15,000 books per year “just out of the trunk of my car.”

Rice now has an agent, but said he’s biding his time for a multi-book deal. At Rice’s Toy Fair booth, his wife spoke to potential buyers and gave out materials covering the kind of publicity packages they offer to host-venues, while he himself sat and chatted with people sitting in a chair adjacent to him as he cut their silhouettes free-hand. While PT was there, at least one person a minute would stop dead in their tracks and retrace their steps to see Rice “sketching” visitors’ profiles with his scissors as casually as other artists sketch with a pencil. He then presented each “subject” with a signed copy of The Lost Shadow with his or her hand-cut silhouette glued inside the front cover. Watching Toy Fair visitors wait in line to meet a self-published picture-book author is no small thing, and Rice’s paper-and-scissors publicity may have been one of the biggest attention-getters we saw at the Fair this year.

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Taking the Tactical Approach: Tools of Change and Publishers Weekly’s Executive Roundtable

By Lorraine Shanley
February 17, 2012
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Tools of Change co-hosted a TOC Executive Roundtable with Publishers Weekly on Monday that was attended by about seventy industry insiders.  Moderated by John Kilkullen, formerly of Nielsen and IDG, it began with Magellan Media Founder, Brian O’Leary, offering a thoughtful argument for the industry to tackle the large issues confronting publishers in a large scale, strategic way, with research money pooled in order to determine and bolster that strategy.  Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, took a tactical approach, telling publishers how — and why — they should redesign their processes, using experimentation to figure out, incrementally, what works.  What was refreshing about the five hour conference was the remarkable number of questions that were lobbed to the speakers — more than half the audience grabbed the mic at some point during the day.

Ries encountered the most questions, perhaps because he engendered the most controversy.  In the course of the afternoon (and based in part on his publishing experience as an author), he told the assembled that:

  • Every author should be a “demand expert” about the potential customer for the book
  • Posting early drafts – and jacket designs — online allows people to read and respond, which is useful for the author, and breeds loyal potential customers (aka readers);
  • People who buy early don’t need discounts, but they should get updates and revisions (and revisions should happen routinely)
  • Finding out what percentage of readers get through what percentage of a book is a good predictor of the book — and the author’s — future success.  Even if it will never compete with Amazon’s sales and data, selling books off an author’s site allows the author/publisher to test hypotheses and collect useful data on customers
  • In nonfiction especially, it is possible to use readers’ feedback to improve information in the book

In an afternoon keynote address on Tuesday at Tools of Change, Ries reinforced the importance of these points by stressing the idea of analytics and paying attention to the feedback loop early-on in the process. Through the idea of customer focus groups and pre-orders, Ries argued that publishers could better predict sales of their books by being in more direct contact with their readers.

Despite multiple criticisms of the book publishing industry, Ries also stated that “Books play a big role in creating significance that causes people to change their lives.”

Throughout the informative program on Monday, presenters and the audience brought up interesting sights and tools.  Below are several mentioned:

  • Zite (an audience favorite): An app that builds a magazine interface based on keyword/category searches by aggregating articles based on interests (like Pandora for articles).
  • Pinterest (Brian O’Leary wondered if it would become “the new Amazon”): A social media site where users can create “Pin Boards” with links and favorite images from other websites.
  • LeanPub: Self-publishing ebook platform that allows authors to publish early in their writing process so they can get feedback from readers.
  • iLearn: Web-based educational tool using blended learning models.

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WebVisions imagines the future of user experience (UX)

By Rich Kelley
February 16, 2012
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Khoi Vinh, cofounder and CEO of Lascaux Co, demoing Mixel, his new iPad app, to design critic Alice Twemlow.

Should Portland, Oregon be our touchstone for the future or the past? “The dream of the 90s is still alive in Portland” sings the anthem for the hit TV show Portlandia, celebrating the city as a cultural cul de sac stuck in another age.  Then there’s WebVisions, a tech conference that originated in Portland twelve years ago and came to New York for the first time in January. Its charge: to explore what tools and principles will define our interactive experiences in the future. And with a panel on Portlandia, a soundtrack exclusively filled by local bands, and many speakers from Portland–it was also about Portland as a colonizing meme.

The brainchild of Brad Smith, founder of Hot Pepper Studios, WebVisions believes that whether you are using a webpage, a mobile device, or a tablet, everyone today competes based on who delivers the best experience. User experience (UX) was the connecting theme throughout two days of presentations about web and mobile design, digital media, and technology. As UX designer Whitney Hess put it, “User experience is the establishment of a philosophy about how to treat people.” Collectively, the speakers demonstrated that delivering a great user experience involves many components: interface design (what you see), interaction design and user research (what you should do, what you do, and what happens then), and information architecture (the data structures and navigation that support and organize what you experience).

Nathan Shedroff, author of Design Is the Problem and co-author of Making Meaning:  How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences, kicked off the conference in futuristic fashion with “Make It So: UX Lessons from Science Fiction.” Shedroff has been researching the connection between science fiction on film and television and UX for several years and the result will be published in Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction, coming from Rosenfeld Media later this year. One of the most striking examples of the UX/Scifi  intersection occurred in 2000 when Douglas Caldwell, an engineer with the U. S. Army Topographic Laboratory, was dragged by his son to watch the movie X-Men. Caldwell was stunned to find that the life-size 3D map the mutants were using to plan their attack was an advanced vision of what he was charged with developing: the ”sand tables” military personnel use to mimic the terrain on which planned military maneuvers take place. Caldwell credits the scene with leading to the development of the Xenotran Mark II Dynamic Sand Table.

Cyborg anthropologist and UX designer Amber Case, founder of Geoloqi, entertained attendees with a tour of the history and current state of ambient computing. Wearable computers date back to the 1960s and Steve Mann ’s notion of a wearable wireless webcam (1994) seems to becoming a reality with the recent reports of “HUD Google glasses” being in development. Geoloqi focuses on developing apps that integrate a user’s location, the time of day, the user’s speed of movement, his or prior actions (clicks, subscriptions) and a user’s friends into a shared experience. During lunch at WebVisions volunteers downloaded GeoLoqi’s app MapAttack and formed teams to play a real-time game in which players used their cell phones to gain points by being the first to capture “geofences,” GPS-defined areas, in Central Park.

As conference sponsor and publisher Louis Rosenfeld noted in an interview with PT (see interview here): “User experience is really about good communication.”  Whitney Hess drew on her experiences as an independent UX designer who specializes in startups to talk about “Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX”. Much like Donald Norman, Hess collects examples of good and bad design and she encourages the thousands who follow @whitneyhess on Twitter to send examples they find. Principles like contrast, emphasis, movement, texture, harmony, and unity becomes more understandable when illustrated by a web page (her presentation is on Slideshare.net) For a design to succeed, according to Hess, it must deliver a good experience. Hess went beyond visual design principles to develop her own ten principles of experience design:  Stay out of people’s way; create a hierarchy that matches people’s needs; limit distractions; provide strong information scent;  provide signposts and cues; provide context; use constraints appropriately; make actions reversible; provide feedback; and make a good first impression.

Hess quizzed attendees to see if they could identify a company based on its published design principles. Few could. Hess urges every company to craft its own design principles based on business goals, user needs and brand attributes. Crafting your own design principles helps you distinguish your design from your competitors—you’ll know if it’s working if it helps you to say “no”. Best time to use your principles? How about when prioritizing features, during design critiques, or when you’re trying to resolve conflicts.

WebVisions featured one panel with two bona fide New York design celebrities: “Design + Entrepreneurship” brought together Alice Twemlow, author of What Is Graphic Design For? and cofounder of the Design Criticism MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, and Khoi Vinh, co-founder and CEO of Lascaux Co. Vinh had been design director of NYTimes.com for four and a half years when, two years ago, he left to start a new venture. He spent $10,000 of his own money to develop the prototype for Mixel, a free app for the iPad that Vinh calls the “first social collage app.” Designed to encourage artists and non-artists to create and share art, Mixel encourages users to upload artwork and then “remix” it in collages with other people’s art, Mixel tracks how often  the artwork has been remixed and where on the Web it appears. Vinh’s insistence that Mixel’s users be “real people” led him to require a Facebook login, which has upset some artists, but many find the app “stupendously addictive.”

Vince Porter of the Oregon Governor's Office of Film and Television; Carrie Brownstein; Claire Evans, Portlandia blogger; Fred Armisen; Blake Callaway of IFC

The highlight of the second day was a panel on Portland’s most famous recent export, Portandia,and featured its two stars, Fred Armisenfrom Saturday Night Live and Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney and current lead guitarist/singer with Wild Flag. The show began its second season on IFC in January. The first season consisted of just five episodes and was shot in August-September 2010 for a budget of less than a million. Lean and location-based, Portlandia also raises the question: isn’t all comedy about interaction design? Armisen and Brownstein write all the sketches. “We get a real benefit from having a nimble crew,” observed Brownstein. “For the second season we did 170 locations in nine weeks.” “The whole friendship thing is a lie, an affectation,” noted Armisen on his relationship with Brownstein. “We don’t enjoy anything we do. It’s more an obligation.”

Mozilla UX designer Crystal Beasley offered her own collection of practical UX tips. Basing her talk on “common things I have heard come out of people’s mouths when heading for a bad UX design,”  she crafted “13 Signs Your UX Needs an Exorcism.” Some of the highlights included:

  • “I’ve got this really great idea for a site.”This is the sound of a solution in search of a problem; start with peoples’ needs and frustrations
  • “I’ve got this really great idea for a feature.” Features add complexity. Make sure you’re optimizing for tasks that 80% of users need and use A/B testing to make sure.
  • “I think the button should be on the right.”Test with real people to escape your biases.
  • “I don’t want the user to do the thing they want to do.” Why? Fighting your users never wins. Time to rethink.
  • “Maybe we need a FAQ.” The most important information should be obvious.
  • “Let’s split this up into different steps so it seems smaller.” Don’t lie. Make the flow smaller. Every field you ask for reduces conversions.
  • “Make it red so it will really stand out.”Red does stand out. That’s why you should only use it for error text and critical system warnings.

Beasley’s presentation is available on Slideshare.net.

Delivering a great user experiences assumes some effort has been spent on user research and usability testing. But In his keynote address, “Beyond User Research,” Louis Rosenfeld drew on his ten years as an IA consultant to lament how dysfunctional organizations are in how they do research. Too often the quants (analytical folks) and the “quals” (creative/marketing folks) work in different silos. Silos cause organizations to not only overpay for research, but waste time and energy in duplicated efforts and  miss the combinatorial effect of a joint effort.  Web analytics can inform the user experience. “Use natural language questions” when doing analysis, Rosenfeld urged, to focus on what’s important: who searched and when? What did they search for? Where did they search?  “Add what people are searching for to whatever personas you are creating.” Land’s End saw no need to add sku numbers to its website until it noticed that customers were entering the sku numbers from its print catalog into search in order to find exactly what they wanted. Rosenfeld’s presentation is on Slideshare.net.

PT thanks online marketing and content development consultant Rich Kelley (@rpmkel) for this report. Rich is also VP and Strategic Partner with the new startup Your Expert Nation.

 

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How a 21st century publisher thinks: an interview with Louis Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Media

By Rich Kelley
February 16, 2012
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A ubiquitous sight at WebVisions was the Rosenfeld Media book cart which offered for sale all 8 of the books published to date. One of the conference sponsors, Rosenfeld Media specializes in books about user experience and Louis Rosenfeld, its founder and publisher was the first day’s keynote speaker. Editorial Contributor Rich Kelley sat down with Rosenfeld to understand how his experience as consultant, speaker and author informs his five-year-old publishing program.

As an author you’re best known for writing, with Peter Morville, O’Reilly’s Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, first published in 1998 and now in its third edition and still the best-selling book on information architecture. Did your Master’s in Library Science help in writing that book?

Absolutely.  Library science is not about libraries. It’s about librarianship. It’s about helping people find information. What I learned is that you need different taxonomic approaches for different kinds of searches. You don’t take approaches from physical spaces and apply them to digital spaces. Dewey Decimal may work for libraries, but not for corporate intranets. There you might try a folksonomic approach: user-generated tagging. How many library science books have sold 200,000 copies? Information architecture is a Trojan horse from the world of libraries.

Why did you choose to focus your publishing program on user experience?

What distinguishes a publisher is its audience. I went into this business because I wanted to depend on who I knew rather than what I knew. Your network can never be commodified. My network was in user experience. People knew me based on my writing and consulting. That’s why I’m in this field. I like it and it’s growing and I believe in it. What makes Disney theme parks so different from competing theme parks? It’s the user experience. Their lamp shades have mouse ear trim on them.  Also our topics are evergreen. Backlist sales have really stood up. Take Storytelling for User Experience — it’s not going to change. The technology changes but our authors are not writing about the technology. They’re writing about what you do with the technology. User experience is really about good communication.

What do you think it means to be a 21st-century publisher?

The term publisher has a lot of baggage. For most people it still connotes books more than anything else. That’s why so many publishers currently are struggling: because they see themselves as being in the business of books, not in the business of providing whatever it is books provide. Is it entertainment? Information? For us, it’s expertise. But if all I sell is expertise in book form I won’t be in business for very long.

Customers have different needs in their career life cycle. A customer who buys a book now is going to be further along in three months and is going to need more depth that other formats of expertise can provide. If you’ve gone to all the effort to identify high quality experts and you’ve built an audience and you’re putting them together why would you only want to leave it there in books? Why wouldn’t you want to look for other opportunities to serve both communities—the experts and the consumers of this expertise?

What other opportunities?

For us we’re looking at an information ecosystem. It has books. Ours are typically 200 to 350 pages.  But we’re starting to look at whether there’s a market for the 180-page book, a different type of book. We also have sixty- to ninety-minute-long virtual seminars which we do through Adobe Connect and then we sell the recordings. We’re partnering with the best company doing these already with a similar audience, UIE, User Interface Engineering, Jared Spool’s company.

Another form is daylong workshops. The workshops are public. We do a road show in six cities a year. Myself, our other authors and experts who are not our authors. Usually three different daylong workshops with three different experts in every city. These are full day workshops very interactive, very engaging. A lot of hands-on work, hands-on exercises.

By the end of this quarter we’ll be launching two other initiatives: first, inhouse courses. A lot of these workshops can be taught inhouse. Say Hewlett Packard comes to me and says they need someone to teach them how to do mobile prototyping. We’re going to have a catalog of 30 to 40 courses that are high end, high quality user experience courses. No one else has put this together. There’s no current goto source for inhouse workshops.

The other initiative: light time-based licensed consulting. Not so much about deliverables but about expert guidance. Basically, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last ten years.

I see all of this as part of a service design. We’re going to consciously design all these things to fit together.  We’ll have loss leaders in books and virtual seminars and we can promote our workshops, training courses and consulting on top of that. I’m hoping some reasonable percentage will upsell to bigger ticket items.

And yet, you’re something of a virtual publisher yourself. For instance, you don’t have an office.

Why do I need an office? I work out of Brooklyn Creative League’s space. I have one fulltime employee. I do no editing. Every book gets a freelance developmental editor. Most of my competitors don’t do this. Almost everyone I talk to who’s done a book with another publisher has been unhappy. I have to eat my own dog food. I tell authors not to give me a complete proposal. Send me an idea and we’ll work on it. It’s almost like an Agile process. We’re both learning and I get to shape the book for the audience. I then place it before a board of editorial experts and I get three or four of them to do an evaluation of each proposal — before I sign them. You design the best you can up front so that when you try to execute, you have a good plan. That’s what a proposal is.

One of the requirements in our agreement is that within two months of signing the author and I sit down and develop a marketing plan. I’ve never sent out a press release. Why should I? We know the audience. We’re going to reach our audience through conferences, through social media… We try to get our authors to view their books as dialogues, not monologues. We have 70,000 followers on Twitter. We give a lot of books away. We give a free book to a tweeter who encourages one of our authors to finish his book (@RosenfeldMedia gives a free book to a tweeter once a month). The book is the most effective way to promote the things that go beyond the book.

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Watch This: O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Live Stream

By PT Editors
February 13, 2012
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The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference kicks off today with expert panelists sharing insights into how digital technology is transforming the publishing industry. The conference runs from February 13-15 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City, but if you’re unable to make it to Manhattan, the conference will be live streaming keynotes and other content to the channel below:

Watch live streaming video from oreillyconfs at livestream.com

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Trojans? Spartans? Who is triumphant in the war of the ereaders?

By PT Editors
February 3, 2012
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With the holiday sales war over and all new devices already out on the market, much of January consisted of tallying up the sales numbers and looking to new developments in the new year. There have already been some big announcements: Apple’s digital textbook publishing, a possible spinoff of the Nook from Barnes & Noble, Kindle’s growing lending library, and global expansion now that the Kobo deal has been finalized with Rakuten.  Now that many more devices—ereaders and tablets alike— are in more homes post-winter holidays, these service expansions show that each platform’s ecosystem  may be just as, if not more, important than the features of the device itself.

So who is starting off 2012 reigning supreme? Read on to declare your own victor.

 

“Through an arrangement with Google, independent booksellers began selling e-books a year ago. Although they work on the Kindle Fire, the Nook, iPad, and most smartphones, booksellers continue to field customer questions about whether they sell the Kindle. ‘What we have learned is that it’s a lot more about the device than we originally thought,’ American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher told The Bookseller last month. ‘We’re aggressively in the process of trying to develop a device that our members can sell as well.’”

— Judith Rosen, Publishers Weekly (1/9/2012)

 

“On the retail side, the relationship with Rakuten should offer new e-commerce channels for the e-bookseller and the devices are already available through Rakuten-owned subsidiaries Buy.com and Play.com. It also won’t strain existing bookseller and retailer relationships, promises Humphrey, who says Kobo devices will continue to be sold at outlets such as Best Buy and Target in the United States and WHSmith in the UK. “In fact, we expect to have an even bigger presence with our retail partners in the coming year.””

— Edward Nawotka, Publishing Perspectives (1/17/2012)

 

“But would Barnes & Noble want to associate themselves with any and every publisher? The New York Times and People are well-chosen: not only are they both national brands, but readers of the Times seem likely to buy more books, just as readers of People are likely to pick up more magazines and other media.

This is why the Times is paired with the e-reader and People with the tablet; it’s not just formatting. It’s a bet on developing a relationship with a customer. Regional papers and hobbyist magazines may not attract as large an audience nor turn its members into continued high-value customers.”

— Tim Carmody, Wired (1/9/2012)

 

“While a number of analysts made predictions that Amazon’s $199 tablet would take a bite out of iPad sales — Morgan Keegan’s Travis McCourt thought the Kindle Fire could cost Apple as much as $1 billion in holiday sales — it looks as though Apple’s iPad business emerged unscathed.”

— Zach Epstein, Boy Genius Report (1/2/2012)

 

“The Kindle Fire is crushing standard Android tablets in market share after only three months, according to data collected by Flurry Analytics. Measured in application sessions on Android from November 2011 to January 2012, the Kindle Fire went from a 3 percent market share to 36 percent, while the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a brand that has been on sale for over two years, dropped from 64 percent market share to 36 percent.”

— Casey Johnston, Ars Technica (1/31/2012)

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People Roundup, February 2012

By PT Editors
February 1, 2012
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PEOPLE

The Weinstein Company and The Perseus Books Group announced a new publishing duo to lead their Weinstein Books co-publishing venture — Georgina Levitt as Publishing Director and Amanda Murray.  Levitt was previously Associate Publisher of Vanguard Press and Murray was mostly recently Senior Editor at S&S.

HarperCollins announced that Angela Tribelli has been appointed to the newly created position of Chief Marketing Officer, General Books Group. Tribelli, who comes from NYC & Company, will report to Michael Morrison, President & Publisher. Her first day is February 22.

The J. Paul Getty Trust has hired Kara Kirk as Publisher of Getty Publications, effective April 13. Kirk most recently served as Associate Publisher at MoMA in New York. Prior to that, she had been the Getty’s General Manager of Publications.

Callaway Digital Arts, Inc. developer of interactive mobile applications for children and families, has expanded its management team, including Lisa Holton, who has been named Vice President of Content Development. Holton’s most recent executive post was as President for Scholastic Trade Publishing, where she managed the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. CDA will buy some projects from Fourth Story Media (FSM) and Holton will continue to work on some projects initiated while at FSM.

Meanwhile, Robie Rogge has resigned from The Met Museum, where she was most recently Publishing Manager.  She has been at The Met since 1970.  Her last day is Feb. 29., and she will then set up her own book production company.

Steve Kasdin has joined Curtis Brown, Ltd as Director of Digital Strategy to supervise its e-book program. Previously, Kasdin worked as Senior Kindle Evangelist, and before that, with the Sandra Dijkstra Agency.

Ileene Smith will join Farrar, Straus and Giroux as VP and Executive Editor on February 15. She had been Executive Editor at large for general interest books for Yale University Press since 2005. Joy Peskin has been named VP, Editorial Director of FSG Children’s, reporting to Simon Boughton. Previously, she was Associate Publisher at Viking Books for Young Readers.

John Mahaney, long time Executive Editor at Crown Business, has joined Public Affairs as a Contributing Editor, focusing on acquiring economics, finance and business books.  Crown announced that Amanda Cook has been hired by Crown as VP and Executive Editor.  She was Executive Editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Cook will continue to be based in Boston.

Corinna Barsan has been named a new Senior Editor at Grove/Atlantic Books. She was previously Senior Editor at Other Press, where she worked since 2006. Grove Editor Amy Hundley has also been promoted to Senior Editor and Rights Director.

Emily Williams has joined B&N as International Content Manager, Digital Products, reporting to Patricia Arancibia, Director, Editorial & Publisher Relations for International Content. Williams was most recently Digital Content Producer for Publishers Marketplace. She may be reached at ewilliams@book.com.

William Kiester, Publisher of Fair Winds Press, is leaving after five good years to pursue a new venture, Page Street Publishing Company. He can be reached at williamkiester@gmail.com.

Carrie Thornton has joined HarperCollins as Executive Editor, It Books. Previously she was Executive Editor at Dutton.

Kate Folkers has joined Perseus Group Worldwide as Senior Marketing and Client Services Manager, reporting to Chitra Bopardikar, VP of International Sales.

Tim Ditlow, who joined Brilliance Audio in 2008, has moved over to Amazon Publishing Children’s Group as Associate Publisher for the Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books. He replaces Brian Buerkle who has gone to Kingfisher.

Earlier in the month Dan Farley, most recently President of Macmillan’s Children’s Publishing Group, was named Executive VP of Business Development for Swoop That LLC, a San Diego-based company with course search technology for college students to find the cheapest prices for textbooks.

Open Road announced that Betsy Mitchell will work as Strategic Advisor for sci-fi and fantasy, and will “spearhead” their acquisition and publishing of backlist sci-fi and fantasy titles. Mitchell retired from her position as Editor-in-Chief at Del Rey Spectra in December.

Susanne Woods will join Interweave Books as Editorial Director at the end of the month, overseeing the book group’s editorial and design teams and leading the strategic and creative.

Nicole Judge has joined Free Press in the new position of Marketing Director, overseeing direct-to-consumer marketing efforts. She has been at HarperCollins for the past 7 years, most recently as Associate Director of Marketing for Harper and Harper Business.

Brett Sandusky has joined Macmillan New Ventures as Product Manager. He was most recently Director of Product Innovation at Kaplan.

Lindsay Guzzardo recently joined Amazon Publishing’s romance imprint, Montlake, as an Associate Acquisitions Editor. Previously she worked at Guideposts Books and NAL.

 

PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES

Libby McGuire, formerly SVP and Publisher of Ballantine Bantam Dell, has been promoted to EVP and Publisher and continues to oversee the hardcover and mass market publishing programs.

At Viking, Julie Miesionczek has been promoted to Associate Editor, reporting to Rick Kot and Amber Qureshi. Maggie Riggs has been promoted to Assistant Editor, reporting to Wendy Wolf and Josh Kendall.

Norton’s Alane Mason has been promoted to VP, Executive Editor. She has been at the company since 1999.

Barnaby Dawe, Marketing Communications Director at News International, has moved to corporate sibling Harper UK, in the new position of Chief Marketing Officer, reporting to Victoria Barnsley.

Lucy Cummins has been promoted from Associate Director of Art to Art Director at S&S.

At Egmont USA, Greg Ferguson has been promoted to Senior Editor.  He was previously an editor.

At Penguin Press, Virginia Smith Younce has been promoted to Senior Editor.

 

DULY NOTED

The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc. (JVNLA) has expanded its services and are interested in partnering with agencies managing a backlist where original publication rights or eRights were either reserved by the author, or have reverted back to the author.  Over the past two years, JVNLA has, its press release states, “cultivated a number of relationships with a variety of players in the eBook marketplace and continues to expand its understanding of this arena as new players emerge and opportunities evolve.”

****

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, the San Francisco-based independent publisher started by former Jossey-Bass President, Steve Piersanti, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The company plans on holding a multitude of events to mark the occasion, including a celebration on July 17, 2012 at which the top 10 bestselling BK authors will speak and be honored and a day-long “Community Dialogue” to engage BK authors, readers, service providers, and other stakeholders in planning collaborative actions to support the BK mission of “Creating a World That Works for All.”  For details go to http://www.bkconnection.com/20thAnniversary.asp

 

UPCOMING DATES

January 28–February 2, 2012
New York International Gift Fair
Javits Center, New York, NY

February 1–3, 2012
Professional Scholarly Publishing 2012 Annual Conference
“Prospering with Digital: Making Investments Pay”
Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC

February 1–6, 2012
Taipei international Book Exhibition
Taipei World Trade Center, Taipei, Taiwan

February 11–18, 2012
Havana International Book Fair
“To Read is To Grow”
San Carlos de La Cabana, Havana, Cuba

February 12–15, 2012
American International Toy Fair
Javits Center, New York, NY

February 13–17, 2012
Social Media Week
Conferences taking place simultaneously in
New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Miami,
Rome, Paris, Toronto, Tokyo, Sao Paolo, London,
Hong Kong, and Singapore.

February 13–15, 2012
O’Reilly Tools of Change for
Publishing Conference
Sheraton Hotel & Towers, New York, NY

February 20–25, 2012
The Jerusalem International Book Fair
International Convention Center, Jerusalem, Israel.

February 22–25, 2012
Centenary College Art Association Conference
LA Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA

February 27–28, 2012
Niche Magazine Conference
The Hutton Hotel, Nashville, TN

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EPM’s Content Licensing Network Acquires Publishing Trends Newsletter

By PT Editors
February 1, 2012
Comments Off on EPM’s Content Licensing Network Acquires Publishing Trends Newsletter

New York, NY: February 1, 2012—EPM Communications, Inc.’s Content Licensing Network will incorporate Market Partners International’s Publishing Trends into the Network’s flagship publication, Content Licensing. Content Licensing reveals the latest trends, deals, and deal-makers involved in licensing media and entertainment properties across traditional and digital platforms.

The Content Licensing Network, which launched earlier this year, is run by EPM, publisher of The Licensing Letter, the most respected publication about the $147 billion consumer products licensing business.

Market Partners will continue to contribute articles, research, and news to Content Licensing and will operate PublishingTrends.com as an independent website, offering insight into the book publishing business.

“Combining Market Partners’ knowledge of the book industry with our expertise in film, music, videogames, social media, and other content areas gives the Content Licensing Network the breadth to help members assess the opportunities new digital delivery options offer across all media,” says Content Licensing Publisher Ira Mayer. “Our members will know who the decision-makers are — and how to reach them — as well as how to prioritize which new media to pursue, what the negotiating points are, and how content is being licensed for advertising and promotions.”

“When Ira approached us about using an article that had recently appeared in Publishing Trends for the first issue of Content Licensing, we were excited to be part of EPM’s launch,” says Lorraine Shanley, President of Market Partners International.  “Market Partners has had a long history with the company — including having taken over one of its newsletters (Subrights Letter) several years ago, and sharing occasional reports in each others’ publications.  In the course of conversations about Content Licensing’s mission, Ira broached the idea of Content Licensing acquiring Publishing Trends’ monthly newsletter.  Though we had never considered selling, the prospect of Publishing Trends becoming part of the larger media landscape that CL reports on made a lot of sense.”

For information on membership in the Content Licensing Network, which includes a subscription to Content Licensing, visit www.epmcom.com/contentlicensing.

Contact: EPM Communications, Inc./Content Licensing Network—Ira Mayer, 1-212-941-1633, ext. 27; imayer@epmcom.com.

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Publishers Launchpad at DBW

By Lorraine Shanley
January 26, 2012
Comments (1)

Over the three days of Digital Book World this week, 12 startup companies were given a chance to strut their stuff in a series of sessions called Publishers Launchpad, which had new companies pitch their business ventures in short presentations back-to-back.  The first session was part of Monday’s Publishers Launch Children’s Publishing Goes Digital conference, and the second two were integrated into Digital Book World, which is a joint effort of F+W and Publishers Launch.

The DBW sessions featured companies that are both outgrowths of other companies, like ACX, which is a division of Audible (itself a division of Amazon) that allows publishers to source talent – and then remotely produce – audiobooks, and those like Small Demons, a startup still in beta, which offers in-the-book wikipedic resources to enhance the user’s experience. Other companies, like Cookstr, have had success in the marketplace as a database of cookbook recipes, but are now expanding into new categories like sports, gardening, and other verticals.  Vook, which started out as a company devoted to creating ebooks with embedded video, and now offers a cloud-based epublishing platform. BookRiff, one of the cleverer startups, allows readers to build their own libraries, but offers publishers a turnkey system that ensures metadata, permissions and payment will accompany any books, chapter or chunking of content.

At the Children’s Publishers Go Digital Launchpad, some of the presenters were well known in the industry, like Oceanhouse Media’s Michel Kripalani and some were better known by their celebrity authors, like Vancouver-based Loud Crow, which does Sandra Boynton’s well regarded ebooks.  Others, like Storybird’s Mark Ury, help young writers and, increasingly, their teachers, to create and share their stories and art.  Genera Interactive, a company with offices in Spain, Brazil, London and New York, has several arms to it, including a robust interactive bookstore for kids, Playtales (formerly TouchyBooks).

What all the companies had in common was a willingness to evolve with the market, while maintaining their commitment to the creator, and end user, otherwise known as The Reader. The complete list of Publishers Launchpad participants includes, in alphabetical order:  ACX, The Atavist, BookRiff, Cookstr, Ganxy, Genera Interactive, Loud Crow, Oceanhouse Media, Semi-Linear, Small Demons, Storybird, Subtext, Vook, and Zuuka.

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Just Kids: Publishers Launch Children’s Publishing Goes Digital at DBW

By Kimberly Lew
January 24, 2012
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Kicking off the week of the Digital Book World conference was Publishers Launch Children’s Publishing Goes Digital day, where speakers from the children’s book community discussed how the market is changing in the digital era. Representatives from start-ups and traditional publishers and authors, as well as trends analysts, were on hand for the January 23rd event, which was emceed by Market Partners International’s Lorraine Shanley.

“Content is King,” Russell Hampton, President of Disney Publishing Worldwide, pointed out in his presentation, which is easy to appreciate, given  Disney’s ownership of all its own content (and beloved characters). Still, content is also key for Oceanhouse Media, which doesn’t own any of its own content. “Brands matter. Authors matter,” said Michel Kripalani, President of Oceanhouse Media, as he explained that the company’s design philosophy is to stick to the original content of the book, with  enhancements used for educational purposes over entertainment. Even Fancy Nancy author Jane O’Connor humorously announced that rather than be called an “author,” perhaps she should be called a “content provider” from now on.

Youth Markets Alert President Ira Mayer encouraged publishers to think about how their customers are going to “live a book across platforms,” especially given a landscape where most teens are device agnostic. Scholastic‘s Deborah Forte also warned that, while it is important to consider devices for digital products, publishers also had to keep in mind that they must be careful not to get locked into one ecosystem. “It’s important to note,” Forte said,” that the Apple iBooks Author was not designed to sell apps and books, but to sell Apple products.”

On the research front, many figures from RR Bowker and YouthBeat focused on families and how relationships between parents and children are shifting. While YouthBeat’s Amy Henry showed that there are fewer traditional households,  with working,  single or divorced parents, she also demonstrated that parents and children are showing increasing common interests,especially in categories like music, a once-divisive sticking point. Also, as Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher and Bookigee’s Kristen McLean revealed in their presentation, 72% of parents of children 7-12 years old buy their books based on recommendations from their children, signifying that parents are listening to their children more than ever.

Though much of the focus of the day was on trade publishing and consumer content, the Education Meets Digital panel was illuminating in showing how schools are using digital in their classrooms—and how all types of children’s media can participate in providing content. Neal Goff, President of Egremont Associates, mentioned that schools should and can implement “BYOD” or Bring Your Own Device, which would take advantage of the prevalence of smart phones and tablets already in students’ possession in the classroom. Capstone Digital’s Todd Brekhus also pointed out that the movement from centralized IT to individual devices can allow teachers to be more creative with what materials students have access to, though the biggest challenge Brekhus pointed out will be “shortening the sales cycle,” as funding for school materials requires a district wide, top down approvals process.

What emerged as the biggest challenge facing publishers was discoverability in an increasingly cluttered digital space. Lori Culwell, Founder and Marketing Consultant of Get Creative, Inc., talked about the importance of Facebook ads for exposure at a low fee, and Simon & Schuster’s Lucille Rettino and Justine magazine’s Jana Kerr Pettey talked about the opportunities that group author events offer. Todd Brekhus presented Capstone Digital’s myOn Reader, which was described as “Netflix for reading in schools.” By assessing a student’s reading level, myOn Reader recommends appropriate books for students and allows them to access the books digitally. One marketing ‘Don’t’ that Alloy Entertainment’s Josh Bank shared from experience was that publishers need to be careful about aggressive cross-promotion, as people have complained when they are being marketed products outside of their specific fandom.

As far as what the future of digital books for children will look like, authenticity remains key. Many “newbie” content developers from the Publishers Launchpad panel pointed out that all the bells and whistles must be used meaningfully. Loud Crow’s Calvin Wang demonstrated how their animation mirrors that of print books to make them complementary, not mutually exclusive. Wendy Bronfin and Kevin O’Connor of Nook said that ebooks with audio are amongst the Nook store’s children’s bestsellers. Sesame Workshop’s Jennifer Perry listed the qualities that make the best ebooks for preschoolers, and ease-of-use was on the top of list for making visuals easy to understand and straight-forward navigation. (See Paid Content’s article about her presentation, along with Bowker stats.)

More than anything, however, the day-long conference demonstrated how  digital content and marketing present a myriad of opportunity for publishers. . “At the beginning of 2011, digital was an option,” said Zuuka’s Woody Sears, “but by the end of 2011, digital was imperative.”

For more information on the speakers and the schedule for the Children’s Publishing Goes Digital event, click here.

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