Toy Fair 08: Inspiring Growth, Dangerous Book for Boys Spinoffs

By Laura Hazard Owen
February 21, 2008
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On Tuesday, Publishing Trends visited Toy Fair 2008, held from February 17-28 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York. Though Toy Fair reported a 30% increase in buyers since last year and three times as many reporters on opening day, we thought the halls seemed pretty empty.

Not surprisingly, most of the buzz centered around tech-y toys like Hasbro Playskool’s $300 Kota the Triceratops Dinosaur (“comes complete with leafy greens that the dinosaur will ‘munch’ when ‘fed'”) and Fisher-Price’s Kid Tough Digital Camera, or revamped versions of old faves, including Ty’s Beanie Babies 2.0 and Fisher-Price’s Elmo Live. But in the old-fashioned world of books, we noticed a few new things:

  • Dangerous Book for Boys-branded “Illusions,” “Card Tricks,” “Sleight of Hand,” and “Magic Kit” sets, packaged in retro metal tins, from University Games. (Sorry for the blurry picture–a University Games rep chased us away from the company’s booth when she saw our digital camera; the games aren’t being released until Christmas.)


  • Also from University Games: New additions to their line of Eric Carle games for 3- to 8-year olds.



  • Not for kids but prominently displayed at Playmore Inc.’s booth: The never-dying Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise (now including, um, pet food) expands with a new line of word search puzzle books. The books below are dummies, but the rep told us that the hidden words in the finished books will be based on the true stories in the books and “very inspirational.”


  • Finally, the obligatory shot of adult reps self-consciously riding children’s toy cars, at the PlasmaCar booth.

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On Kindle: A Non-Publishing Perspective

By PT Editors
January 2, 2008
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Since its release last November, the Kindle has kicked up debates about everything from the future of reading to Jeff Bezos’ quest for world dominance.

More than anything, though, it seems that people just can’t get over how darned clunky-ugly-retro the thing was.

Core-77, a networking site frequented by industrial designers, responded to the Kindle design debate by opening up a one-hour design challenge/forum, asking readers to show the world their vision of the perfect Digital eBook.”

The results ranged from classic (aka Sony Reader-esque) to innovative (the winning ” eScroll“) to irreverent (Walkbook Sports). Designers focused on functionality and form, and explored the notion of what a digital book should do. Some features from proposed designs:

  • Tri-screen with touch screens – To turn the pages, users just simply touch the screen diagonally.


  • Users can select the book they want to read from the cover and highlight and take notes by using the stylus.


  • Pocket-sized or smaller so that it fits in the palm of your hand


  • Customization options that allow users to distinguish the book as their own.


  • One designer noted that a current problem with ebooks is not being able to write notes on them, his design included a pen that allows users to write notes on pull-out wipe-away “paper” which is then recognized by the ebook and saved as a note on the page.


  • Integrated speakers that allow users to hear books in audio


  • Book spine printout – printable sticker spines for the sleeve of the cover that can be stuck on your e-book shelf when you’ve finished reading.


  • Subscription based readers that automatically download monthly collections for a low annual fee (think the Oprah book club, or New York Times best seller list, or Phillip K. Dick award winners).

Check out all of the designs on the Core 77 forum: http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?p=87713#87713

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Manga Matures

By PT Editors
December 11, 2007
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With three words—“Japan is over”—Al Kahn, CEO of 4Kids Entertainment (responsible for bringing Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Cabbage Patch Kids to the mainstream in the U.S.), sparked a bit of controversy at ICv2’s pre-Anime Festival Conference on Anime and Manga: Inside the Otaku* Generation last week. “Nothing new has come from Japan in ten years. Kids there are tired of manga. They don’t want to carry around a three pound book anymore. They’re more interested in devices. Pretty soon, there won’t be any physical media, just digital,” Kahn said. Rich Johnson, Co-Publishing Director of the new Yen Press (manga/graphic novel imprint of Hachette), begged to differ, saying that, like the U.S. comic book market that was proclaimed dead ten years ago and which has made a comeback, manga is cyclical.

Of course, Kahn and Johnson come from two very different manga worlds, the world of Pokemon (mega-properties, mainstream penetration, household names) versus the manga niche (growing manga/graphic novel shelf space, establishing a category in the U.S.) and both are right. Of the current top 100 licenses in the U.S., only two come from anime/manga (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh), but, on the niche front, the learning curve for manga buyers at big retailers is pretty much over.

More tidbits from the panel (which included reps from VIZ, FUNimation, Anime News Network, Pokemon, BN, Tokyopop, Del Rey Manga):

  • Manga shelf space at major retailers is not growing as fast as it did at the beginning of the boom 6-7 years ago, but buyers understand now that graphic novels and manga are not only for kids. Liza Coppola (SVP, VIZ) said they send about 3000 spinner racks to key accounts, creating their own shelf space.

  • Manga/graphic novel titles published in the U.S.:
    2005: 1088
    2006: 1208
    2007: 1468 (projected)
    2008: 1731 (projected)

  • Yen Press published With the Light, manga about raising a child with autism, in September and according to Rich Johnson, it’s done well. Considered a little “off-beat” in the U.S., a manga title about a serious or mature issue is standard in Japan.
  • Panelists credited Sailor Moon (released as a manga title by Tokyopop in 1997) for the boom in girl readers of manga, not only because of its strong female protagonists, but because it was one of the first manga titles of any kind to be sold in mainstream bookstores and not just the dark, exclusionary, female-unfriendly comic bookstore realm. Girls read shojo (girl manga” such as Fruits Basket, Sailor Moon, etc.) and they also make up about half (and sometimes more than half) of the readership of the boy-focused, violent, or gruesome manga.
  • Also, the panel on marketing manga to girls expressed cautious hope for the future of shojo on tv as the tween girl demographic is more more likely to be found texting or on MySpace than in front of the TV.
  • All anticipate a boom in OEL (original English language) anime/manga in the next few years as the U.S. kids who’ve grown up with it graduate from art school and/or start writing their own.
  • Even though the collector quotient of the anime/manga fanbase is still going strong (Liza Coppola mentioned the enthusiastic response to a 5000 copy limited edition series of Naruto last year) like most digital media illegal downloads are posing a considerable threat to the anime industry.

*Otaku: obsessive fans, particularly of anime/manga.

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Bookview, December 2007

By PT Editors
December 1, 2007
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PEOPLE

Deb Futter has moved to Grand Central Publishing as VP, Editor-in-Chief. She was VP, Deputy Editorial Director at Doubleday. Michelle Rapkin has joined Hachette’s Center Street imprint as Executive Editor, reporting to Rolf Zettersten. She had been VP, Director of Doubleday Religion before leaving there in 2005. Amy Pierpont has been named Editorial Director at Forever and Senior Editor at Grand Central. She had been at Clarkson Potter.

Reed Boyd VP, Sales Director International and Special Sales, has left Random House but may still be reached at rboyd[at]randomhouse.com.

Daisy Kline has been named Director of Marketing and Brand Management at Scholastic Media. Ann Forstenzer has joined Scholastic as Director, Cross-Channel, reporting to Jazan Higgins, VP, Cross-Channel Strategy. She had been at Learning Resources. Chris Stengel has joined Scholastic as Associate Art Director.

Douglas Pocock, EVP Egmont USA, which will launch in January 2008, has hired Elizabeth Law as VP and Publisher. She was previously at Simon & Schuster. Egmont will be distributed by Random House.

Angela Bole is moving to John Wiley & Son’s Professional & Trade division as Events Manager. She was previously at BISG. She may be reached at angelabole[at]gmail.com. Karen Forster, previously at SPi Publishing, succeeds her.

Following Neil Bogaty’s desparture for Adobe, Michael Smith has been named Executive Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Prior to joining the IDPF Smith was at Harlequin Enterprises where he managed eBook and book production services.

Deb Brody has been named Executive Editor at Harlequin. She had been most recently at McGraw-Hill. . . . Furaha Norton has moved to The New Press as Editor. She was most recently an editor at Vintage/Anchor. Joseph Williams is the new CFO of The New Press. He previously held positions at The New York Times Company, the Reader’s Digest and McGraw-Hill.

After 21 years, Nancy Hall closed her business last summer but has reopened as The Book Shop, Ltd., offering full-service book development. Contact info@thebookshop ltd.com or 917-388-2493.

Kevin Hamric has been named VP Sales & Marketing for the Quayside Group. He was at The Taunton Press. Mike Hejny has left Motorbooks, which was recently acquired by Quayside.

Darcy Cohan has joined Chronicle Books as Director of Publicity. Cohan was most recently Publicity Manager for Avalon Publishing Group and, prior to that, ran her own publicity firm. She replaces Andrea Burnett who is returning to her own pr firm.

Judy Pray has moved to Clarkson Potter as an Editor. She was at Black Dog & Leventhal. . . . Ann Treistman has joined Skyhorse Publishing as Senior Editor. Most recently she was a freelancer at STC and Abrams Image.

Scott Lubeck has joined NewsStand as VP and General Manager of its newspaper and magazine digital publishing service division. He was most recently at Harvard Business School Publishing.

Alex Clark has been named Deputy Editor at Granta. She had been Deputy Literary Editor at the New York Observer.

Krupp Kommunications (K2) announces that Tiffany Alvarado has joined the agency as Senior Account Executive. She comes to the agency from Planned Television Arts.

PROMOTIONS

HarperCollins announced that Larry Nevins has been promoted to the newly created position of Chief Supply Chain Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Digital Operations. He joined the company in 2001 as SVP of Operations and Supply Chain and established the Digital Publishing Services department in 2005.

Sanyu Dillon, Associate Publisher and Director of Marketing at Random House, has been named VP.
Rachel Bender has been promoted to Director of Consumer Products at Scholastic. Abigail McAden has been promoted to Publishing Director, Paperbacks for Scholastic Paperbacks and Point. She was previously Editorial Director for Point. Cheryl Klein has been promoted to Senior Editor, Arthur A. Levine Books. She was previously Editor. AnnMarie Harris has been promoted to Senior Editor, Licensed Publishing. She was previously Editor.

Lizette Serrano has been promoted to Associate Director for Trade Conventions, Conferences, Events and Author Programs at Scholastic. She was previously Senior Manager. Barrie Reinhold has been promoted to Associate Manager of Sales and Marketing Operations. She was previously Assistant Manager.

Beryl Needham and Kathryn Popoff have both been promoted to VP, Merchandising, at Borders, reporting to EVP Merchandising and Marketing, Rob Gruen.

Michael Homler has been promoted to Editor at St. Martin’s, reporting to Charlie Spicer. . . . Erica Sanders-Foege has been promoted to Senior Editor, books at The Taunton Press. She had been Editor.
Laura Pillar has been promoted to Director of Publicity at Goldberg McDuffie. In addition to continuing to work on general non-fiction and fiction titles, she now heads up GMC’s Business Division.

Leslie Hulse has been named to the new role of VP, Digital Business Development at HarperCollins. Rachel Chou has been named to the position of VP, Online Product Development and Operations. Both report to Carolyn Pittis. And Mumtaz Mustafa has been promoted to Art Director of Avon Trade and Rayo. Milan Bozic has been promoted to Art Director of Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks.
Michael Campbell has been named Director of Sales and Marketing at Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company. He was Corporate and Specialty Sales Manager and replaces Mike Jones who’s moving to Keen Communications, LLC.

Recorded Books announced the promotion of Scott Williams to President. He replaces David Berset, who has left the company “to pursue other interests.” Williams joined Recorded Books in 1992 as a Public Library Sales Representative.

Promotions at American Booksellers Association include: Jill Perlstein has been named Director of Member Services; Kristen Gilligan has been named Director of Meetings and Events; Mark Nichols has been promoted to Senior Director of Publishing Initiatives; Dan Cullen has been named Senior Director, Editorial Content; Meg Smith has been named Chief Marketing Officer; Len Vlahos has been named Chief Program Officer, and will continue to oversee BookSense.com.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The 20th Independent and Small Press Book Fair will take place on December 1-2 at the New York Center of Independent Publishing (NYCIP), at 20 West 44th Street. More than 100 presses from the U.S. and abroad will exhibit. For more information contact the NYCIP at 212-764-7021, visit www.nycip.org, or e-mail Christopher de la Torre at christopher[at]nycip.org.
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In conjunction with the Book Fair, the New York Center for Independent Publishing hosts its first Mini-Rights Fair on Friday, November 30th at 2pm. This event is designed to provide publishers with information regarding sub-rights and foreign rights sales. Activities include an educational panel and a keynote address from Pat Schroeder, President of the American Association of Publishers.
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On December 13 from 6-8 Peter Mayer and The Overlook Press will be honored at the NYCIP Annual Benefit. Ed Victor will present the Poor Richard Award and Sara Nelson will host. Please contact nycip@nycip.org for further information.
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Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Eat, Drink & Be Literary program starts again in January, with George Saunders talking on January 17, and Deborah Eisenberg on February 7th. For details go to: http://www.bam.org/ events/readings.aspx

DULY NOTED

What has briefly been called Direct Group North America will now be known as Bertelsmann Direct North America.
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A memorial service for Jane Pasanen will be Friday, November 30 at 3:00pm, at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street, New York City. Pasenen was founder of the Chelsea Forum.
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And from Workman comes The Bad President Countdown Calendar. It contains 488 days of quotes and quips that will make you laugh and/or cry right through January 20, 2009, when George W. Bush vacates the White House. If you’d like a free copy, send an email to James Wehrle (james[at]workman.com).

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ad:tech – Content Gets Respect, But Users Rule

By PT Editors
December 1, 2007
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Whether the topic was social networking, user-generated videos, blogging or podcasting, publishers among the record-breaking 10,276 marketers attending November’s ad:tech conference heard renewed respect for content from the panelists reporting on the latest developments in online marketing.

Pam Horan, President of the Online Pubishers Association, kicked off her panel on “Publishing in the Digital Age” with a chart showing that consumers now spend almost half their time online with content, up 35% from four years ago (to see the accompanying graph, subscribe today). Horan credited much of the increase to the surge in popularity of social networking, which OPA includes in its content category.
Of course, users prefer their content free—and that isn’t always a bad thing for publishers. Vivian Schiller, SVP and GM of NYTimes.com, reported that search referrals increased 133% after the Times abandoned TimesSelect, its paid subscription model in September. When Times management found that most of its monthly 13 million visitors were coming from search engines—and not getting access to what they sought—they calculated that advertising could deliver more than the $10 million they’ve been getting annually from their 227,000 paying subscribers.

What users want was the theme for almost every panel. “Marketing strategy is no longer about getting people to come to your site. It’s about configuring your content so that people can get it wherever they want,” was how Nada Stirratt, EVP, Digital Advertising at MTV Networks Digital, described the new paradigm. MTV now makes it easy for people to embed its content on Facebook pages, for instance.

“Data+behavioral+context will win” is how Larry Harris, President of Ansible Mobile, summarized what marketers need to know now. The personal data that Facebook users provide on their pages is its real value. As if to confirm this, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used ad:tech to announce its new ad program, a service designed to offer “targeted ads to Facebook users in a social context.” Beth Comstock, President of integrated media at NBC Universal Integrated Media offered Realage.com, a site recently acquired by Hearst, as an example of how to inspire trust by delivering value for data: the site calculates your “real age” based on what you enter about your health and lifestyle.

But how can marketers use data to deliver the right book, CD or downloadable file to the right person at the right time? Mark Taylor, Chief Marketing Technology Officer at Wunderman, says you just need to be able to answer three things: Has a visitor been there before? How long ago and how often? And where did she come from? And, he claims, any Web analytics tool (like WebTrends) already has these answers. Publishers who use them should be able to change their content for every single visitor for every single click. And it pays off. Musician’s Friend saw a 28% increase in purchases when it took the first click a visitor made as an indication of interest and greeted that visitor with a landing page specific to that interest on her next visit. Lloyd’s TSB saw a 40% uplift when it tried something similar.

Behavioral targeting no longer stops at the end of one website either. Agencies like Tacoda and Revenue Science offer networks of websites of as many as 130 million users who can be targeted with behavioral ads based on what a user looks at on just one of the participating sites. Visit Victoria’s Secret and see if you don’t find lingerie ads following you around the Web.

Several panels tried to anatomize what makes viral marketing work. Entertainment? Emotion? Usefulness? Shock? They can all work, but, Josh Warner, President of Feed Company, an agency that specializes in creating viral videos, prefers going after the “how did they do that?” response. Feed’s “never hide” campaign for Ray-Ban generated 10,000 comments on YouTube. Viral panelists preferred the term “talkability” to viral. “You need to get the conversation started, and then include your message in it,” said Warner.

But click for dollar, search remains the most effective method of getting results. $7 billion was spent on search in 2006 and spending is projected to rise to $16 billion in 2011. Tim Mayer, VP of Product Management at Yahoo Search, recommended an easy (and free) way to improve your search results: publish your sitemap. Another tip: optimize the metatags on your images and video. Google rolled out its universal search interface in May and now delivers results that blend data from text, image and video tags. Given a choice between text-only or text-plus-image search results, a searcher is 10 times more likely to click on an image, according to Bill Macaitis, VP of SEM/SEO at Fox Interactive.

Two areas will soon move from fast growing to explosive over the next year: mobile and podcasting. “This is mobile’s moment,” said MTV’s Stirrat, who, with 35 channels of mobile content, is arguably the largest producer for this space. Michael Byle, GM for Global Mobile Monetization at Yahoo, agreed. “There are already 2x as many mobile phones as PCs worldwide. This will grow to 3x by 2010.” What do mobile users want? Communication, pornography, games, ringtones, instant answers, directions, directories, and coupons. Byle recommends treating this market as a direct response channel: keep your message simple (Starbucks emphasizes location, Subway menus) and make sure landing pages have multiple points of contact: call, email, locate, coupon. Watch to see whether Google’s just launched Android platform will dominate the mobile space.

Compared with mobile, podcast listeners are proving less fickle: they have longer attention spans and stronger loyalties. Larry Rosen, President of Edison Media Research quoted an Arbitron poll that found that podcast listeners are divided equally between men and women, tend to be better-educated and higher-income consumers—and they don’t skip ads. Podcasts work best as marketing tools when embedded in a blog. Specialized podcast directories proliferate, but iTunes continues to drive 90% of podcast traffic. NPR launched its first podcast in August, 2005 and it now has 235 NPR and partner podcasts and 11 million monthly downloads according to Bryan Moffett, Sponsorship Operations Manager. NPR has developed a sponsored advertising program that in its initial tests has increased sponsorship awareness from 2% to 65%.

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How They Do It: The B&N Publishing Empire De-Mystified

By PT Editors
December 1, 2007
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Barnes & Noble’s first forays into the publishing business back in the ’40s (when it put out a series of college study guides) and in 1991 (when Len Riggio started publishing under the B&N name) came to pass with little outcry from the industry. As publishers expanded their markets to include non-traditional outlets, Riggio’s response was to add more stores, more square footage, and more publishing. In 2001, it acquired SparkNotes, then Sterling the next year, and launched B&N Classics in 2003. When it began selling SparkNotes exclusively at its stores in 2004, questions of monopolizing certain categories arose from other publishers and retailers.

But no alarms have sounded for its latest sortie, Quamut. The lack of outcry from the publishing industry could be because Quamut (which means “how to do it” in Latin) comes in peace, and with the potential to help other publishers make money too. It doesn’t threaten to displace a brand (i.e. CliffsNotes with SparkNotes) or usurp a category (i.e. Sterling and the how-to market). Rather Quamut marries the best of both, and online to boot.

With nary a press releasee, Barnes & Noble recently rolled out the ad-sponsored website that gives away free how-to articles which can be downloaded as a PDF ($2.95) or purchased as a six-page laminated chart at a B&N store ($5.95). The “lifestyle charts” cover five categories from House & Home to Money & Business. Currently, B&N sells 102 of the 1000+ charts at stores. Dan Weiss, President of Quamut, reports they’re “flying off the shelves.”

Though much of the content comes from outside sources at this point, either from freelancers or a few select publishers, the rest comes from the vast storehouse Quamut has at its disposal through Sterling, Spark, and B&N Publishing. Weiss estimates the breakdown to be about 60/40 and, as Quamut grows, it’s likely re-purposed content will fill the majority of the charts.

Essentially, B&N has come up with an enviable model of synergy, monetizing every step in the customer’s experience of Quamut through online ad revenue, selling books and charts published in-house, or selling books from another publisher. Take “How to Make a Mosaic Frame.” The 222 word step-by-step tutorial online comes from Lark Books, a Sterling imprint. On the lower left side of the web page sits a column with links to buy related books from B&N, natch, all of which incidentally are published by Lark or Sterling. Google ads run along the other side of the page.

Even if the customer buys nothing at Quamut.com, B&N wins. Other publishers could benefit too if Quamut decides to expand its publisher partnerships when the official launch comes this Spring. Above all, Weiss says that “very high quality content from a trusted source is most important.” For those who trust fellow consumers most, there’s Q-Wiki, a user-generated component.

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A Miracle In Almere: The Business Case for RFID in Retail

By PT Editors
December 1, 2007
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First there were the presentations in Frankfurt, then others in New York, for B&N and the Book Industry Study Group, followed by a blitz of press coverage. The subject? The ground-breaking use of item-level RFID tags on all books in a bookstore located on the outskirts of Amsterdam, something that to date has only been done in a number of libraries in North America and the UK. This Dutch initiative, however, may well mark the beginning of a revolution in book retailing, distribution, and warehousing worldwide.
The goals of BGN, the largest bookstore chain in the Netherlands, were not about technology, but rather all about the retail business. Namely to: 1) expand customer self-service, 2) improve inventory accuracy, and most of all, 3) increase sales.

Leap-frogging what was expected to be the first use of RFID tags in book retail – to indicate the contents of cartons, crates and skids – BGN asked its distribution partner, Central Bookhouse, to affix RFID tags on the back cover of all volumes destined for the new store in Almere. In eight months, the program has been so successful that BGN is bringing it to all 16 of its retail stores over the next year. PT (via Lightspeed’s Jim Lichtenberg) recently had an opportunity to visit the store and watch the process live.

Almere is a new bedroom community of 125,000 outside of Amsterdamn. The bookstore is part of a shopping center and sits behind a huge, two-story wall of glass. In a back room, a young staff member picks up a box of 60 books and passes it through a small tunnel in a specially constructed reader – like a car through an EZ Pass toll gate. Irrespective of their orientation inside the box, all titles are read with 100% accuracy in a matter of seconds. Each is simultaneously entered into the store’s main inventory database, and in the event that the book has been ordered by a customer, an SMS message or e-mail is instantly sent directly to the customer indicating that the book is now in the store and ready for pick-up. As many as 1600 books, delivered each morning, can be logged into the store in about 10 minutes.

Once entered into inventory, books are shelved in the appropriate case. Pushing a small cart equipped with a computer, another staff member passes a hand-held reading device along each shelf and promotional table, matching titles to case or table numbers. This data is wirelessly transmitted to the central computer system, available to customers and staff alike. Thus, inventory of some 38,000 books is taken two to three times a week in a couple of hours while the store is open.

When customers use the several kiosks to enter title, authors or subjects, an Amazon-type screen pops up showing the matching title, books by the same author, and books on a similar subject, indicating whether each of these volumes is currently in the store and where. (The POS software continuously updates the inventory and location data as books are sold.) If the title is not available, a screen pops up asking if the customer would like the book to be ordered – special orders alone have increased by 8-10%.

“We never imagined that success would be so quick,” explains Jan Vink, BGN Director, who watches over every aspect of the operation. He has been on his cell phone all morning addressing problems in a new store in Maastricht, the second BGN store to be RFID enabled. “It’s not easy, but so far so good,” notes Vink.

PT thanks Lightspeed’s Jim Lichtenberg for this report.

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International Bestsellers: Comebacks and Debuts

By PT Editors
December 1, 2007
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After a four year sabbatical from novel-writing, the prolific and provocative Juan José Millás returns this month to sweep the Spanish bestseller lists. A slim novel at just 135 pages, Laura and Julio takes place in the author’s unusual world of the Borgesian double, exploring the idea of the original versus the copy with the levity of his earlier work that has made critics call him the Buster Keaton of Spanish literature. Laura and Julio, a married couple in their mid-thirties, lead a life of order and routine until they become friends with their neighbor, Manuel, an independently wealthy son of a diplomat who lives a chaotic writer’s life. While Julio is at work as an interior decorator, Manuel and Laura get to know each other better at home, so much better in fact that Laura becomes pregnant. As this happens, Manuel is hit by a car and falls into a deep coma. Always fascinated by Manuel’s messy life, Julio enters his neighbor’s apartment and begins living as Manuel, copying his every mannerism, speech pattern, and aspect of dress to perfection. One critic calls it “a very economical novel with no lack and no surplus, no element that does not serve a determined function, and that is precise as a Swiss watch.” Judging from his past success and this exceptional new novel, Millás is moments away from becoming the next big Spanish “discovery.” Since publication in October, rights have been licensed to Italy (Einaudi), Brazil (Planeta), Portugal (Temas I debates), and Greece (Modern Times). Contact Elena Ramirez (eramirez@seix-barral.es).

Across the Iberian Peninsula, a Catalan Trainspotting has pulled into Barcelona . Critics are buzzing over Ketchup (Columna), the second novel by reporter Xavier Gual, and one of the first attempts by a Catalan writer to capture not only the street slang of disaffected Barcelonan youth, but their violent frustration as well. Coming of age in the sterile outskirts of Barcelona makes Miguel (Miki) want to do anything but follow the predictable path of school, work, and death prescribed for him. Instead, he starts selling drugs with his friend Santiago (Sapo), another disaffected suburbanite, and along with a group of neo-Nazis, they terrorize the junkies, dealers, and transvestites of Barcelona. Raw dialogue alternates with snippets from all the people and places that influence Miki’s life decisions: his teacher, the nation’s president, a police officer, the directions for a video game, a partier from Ibiza. Gual named the novel after the American condiment because he says ketchup is “an unnatural, manufactured product that, on top of being a symbol of America that suggests a certain kind of life, is a sauce that distorts food and makes everything taste the same.” The unprecedented novel even warranted a new marketing ploy from Columna which sent out a CD book trailer to reviewers for the first time. For rights information, contact Ella Sher at Sandra Bruna Agency (ella@sandrabruna.com).

Further south in Italy, an unlikely novelist has taken up residence in the top 20. Silvio Muccino, the 24 year-old heartthrob who became a movie star when he co-wrote and starred in Come te nessuno mai with his brother Gabriele, made his fiction debut last month with Tell Me About Love (Rizzoli). He found another winning writing partner in Carla Vangelista, an Italian screenwriter. Sasha, the 20 year-old son of drug addicts, meets Nicole, a 40 year-old ex-psychologist housewife with marital problems, when their cars crash in the middle of the night and they discover a dog has been hurt in the accident. At the veterinarian hospital, they feel a mutual platonic attraction and exchange phone numbers, but don’t talk again for many months. Meanwhile, Sasha falls in love with a girl he met at the rehab community where he grew up. When Nicole calls Sasha to check on the dog, she also gives him advice on how to seduce the girl and Sasha finally wins her over. Much time passes before Nicole contacts Sasha again, but when she does, she finds out Sasha’s girlfriend has been a bad influence, leading him to play poker and run with a bad crowd. Both Sasha and Nicole realize they cannot live without the other. Written in chapters that alternate the perspectives of the lovers, the novel has sold over 180,000 copies. Contact Anna Falavana (Anna.Falavena@rcs.it).

Stories told by two narrators from opposite sides of the track seem to be all the rage in Europe these days. Muriel Barbery uses the device to look at social issues in France in the follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Craving. The Elegance of the Hedgehog takes place in a chichi Parisian apartment building whose residents span the spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds. The building’s 54 year-old autodidact caretaker, Renée, clearly finds herself at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, but her intelligence and perceptiveness place her far above the wealthy residents and she must be careful not to offend them with her knowledge. The other narrator, Paloma, must also deal with an unexpectedly developed intellect. A brilliant twelve-year-old girl with an unappreciative family, she tells the readers her thoughts on such grown-up topics as art, literature, philosophy, and relationships in the vernacular of French kids her age. She is so disturbed by what she observes of the vacuous adult world that she makes the decision to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday with her mother’s barbituates after setting their apartment on fire. However, when a new Japanese tenant, Mr. Kakuro Ozu, moves into the fourth floor apartment, both Renée and Paloma find the status quo irrevocably changed. Rights have been licensed in German, Spanish, Italian, and Greek. For more detailed rights information, contact Anne-Solange Noble (anne-solange.noble @gallimard.fr).

Finally, a new writer has arrived on the crime fiction scene in Norway. Jorun Thørring, a gynecologist, is an unlikely bedfellow with Unni Lindell and Karin Fossum to whom critics are comparing her, but she manages to live up to the stratospheric standards of Scandinavian crime fiction with The Glass Dolls (Aschehoug). In the follow-up to her successful debut last year, Thørring introduces her readers to Aslak Eira, a police inspector of native Sámi heritage who lives in Tromsø, a place known for its brutal winters as well as its wild night life. Eira and his son, Niilas, face prejudice for their indigenous ancestry, but Eira’s sharp detective skills keep him at the top spot at the precinct. In The Glass Dolls, he is assigned a new case as the school year comes to an end at the world’s northernmost university. A murderer who offers young female students a ride in his car during the bitter cold has struck twice, torturing and killing them on their way home. As Eira investigates the crimes, he inadvertantly uncovers the underbelly of university life where women post nude post pictures of each other on the internet to defray tuition costs and tension over provocative fashion divides the campus. As one critic puts it: “Academic insanity, skimpily dressed female students, intense suspense and a Sámi investigator who must get on with his life: Thørring’s second book is even better than her critically acclaimed debut.” Rights sold to Germany (dtv) and Sweden (Natur och Kultur). Contact Eva Kuløy (eva.kuloy@aschehougagency.no).

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Gettign Engaged: ad tech New York 2006

By PT Editors
December 1, 2007
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Internet marketing is back – with a vengeance. Witness the 330 exhibitors and 12,000 attendees – the most ever – at this year’s ad:tech New York show on November 6-8. With a fresh crop of buzzwords every year, ad:tech consistently delivers substantive advice on the real problems marketers face.
“Consumer engagement” was this year’s buzzword — it even has its own blog, www.consumerengagement.blogspot.com. Your web site only has it if it generates an action by the viewer, Ze Frank, creator of ‘The Show” (www.zefrank.com/theshow) explained. “This means just pressing a button, whether it’s leaving a photo or typing a comment.” Commenters are more highly prized than viewers. And those clicks should begin a conversation. As Bob DeSena of mediaedge:cia put it, “A successful conversation is one where the second time you meet me you don’t ask me my name.”

Some email tips: stay away from images at the top of your email; try to turn your logo into a font; ask subscribers to put you on their white mail list as part of the opt-in process; keep emails simple: here’s who we are, what we want to do and what we want to know about you; leverage the “thank you” page in your shopping cart: a DoubleClick survey found that 50% of customers expect a vendor to recommend where they should go next.

In a session on metrics Jim Sterne of targeting.com noted that what you most want to measure is your audience and what they want. Simple questions can deliver the answer: Why did you come here today? What was your experience?

“Who still tracks hits?” Sterne asked. “Or have you finally realized that “hits” means “how idiots track success.” Sterne likes email marketing “because it’s so measurable: transmissions, openings, clickthroughs, forwards, unsubscribes, and sales.” “When someone unsubscribes, pay attention,” he said. When one vendor increased the monthly frequency of emails from five to twelve, sales went up, but so did unsubscribes. The campaigns ultimately proved unprofitable at that frequency and many customers were lost.

In another session, Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop, cited a JupiterResearch finding that broadcast email ranks fourth in performance after lifecycle and triggered-event emails. The best open, clickthrough, and conversion rates come from emails based on web site clickstream data. These campaigns can cost up to 2.5 times more than broadcast—because they involve using web analytic tools to apply data about pages viewed and search keywords used–but they can deliver up to nine times more revenue.

Want to increase revenue per visitor? Jonathan Mendez described how Otto Digital revamped the audible.com home page to improve conversions. They used multivariant analyses to find the mix of features that generated the best results—and increased revenue 55%. Particularly surprising was when they found the mix that generated a 30% increase in revenue per visitor: 98% of that increase was tracked to the inclusion of the Verisign logo. You can read the entire case study at www.optimizeandprophesize.com.

PT thanks New York-based marketing consultant Rich Kelley (richkelley@nyc.rr.com) for this report.

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Content Gets Respect

By PT Editors
November 28, 2007
Comments Off on Content Gets Respect


Whether the topic was social networking, user-generated videos, blogging or podcasting, publishers among the record-breaking 10,276 marketers attending November’s ad:tech conference heard renewed respect for content from the panelists reporting on the latest developments in online marketing. Pam Horan, President of the Online Pubishers Association, kicked off her panel on “Publishing in the Digital Age” with a chart showing that consumers now spend almost half their time online with content, up 35% from four years ago (see graph). Horan credited much of the increase to the surge in popularity of social networking, which OPA includes in its content category. Of course, users prefer their content free—and that isn’t always a bad thing for publishers. Vivian Schiller, SVP and GM of NYTimes.com, reported that search referrals increased 133% after the Times abandoned TimesSelect, its paid subscription model in September. When Times management found that most of its monthly 13 million visitors were coming from search engines—and not getting access to what they sought—they calculated that advertising could deliver more than the $10 million they’ve been getting annually from their 227,000 paying subscribers. What users want was the theme for almost every panel. “Marketing strategy is no longer about getting people to come to your site. It’s about configuring your content so that people can get it wherever they want,” was how Nada Stirratt, EVP, Digital Advertising at MTV Networks Digital, described the new paradigm. MTV now makes it easy for people to embed its content on Facebook pages, for instance. . . .

To continue reading this article, click here.

PT thanks guest blogger and New York-based marketing consultant, Rich Kelley.

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