Sourcebooks founder and publisher Dominique Raccah thinks of herself as running two companies: a book publishing house and a mixed media company. And so should every other publisher, Raccah told the audience during a workshop at TOC Tuesday.
The point, she said, is to think in terms of the content you have—or, “what are you expert at”—and how that expertise can be packaged and sold in different forms and at different price points. At Sourcebooks, that includes taking its popular baby naming title and repurposing the information as a high-end $19.95 gift book and a $4.99 iPhone app. That app, Raccah said, “is seriously fun.”
“This is not a regurgitation of the book…This is a lot cuter than the book. By the way, it quacks,” Raccah said.
Which speaks to another of Raccah’s points—that each medium’s needs are different. And the future belongs to publishers who go way beyond digitizing their print books to be read on a Kindle.
As a multi-media publisher, Sourcebooks has also had to rethink its verticals. Old definitions are giving way to categories based on how consumers use information. Think, for example, about how you do online searches. “You don’t type into Google, ‘parenting.’ You type into Google, ‘ADHD,”” Raccah said.
One of the verticals Sourcebooks is investing heavily in is poetry. Its poetryspeaks.com, launched in beta version 120 days ago, is a marketing website where readers can enter contests, hear spoken word verse and talk about why they love poetry.
In an interview after her session, Raccah acknowledged that poetry isn’t usually the first category publishers think of when wanting to boost revenues. But she thought poetry would be an ideal genre for experimenting with community-building tactics that might also work for other types of content. She said she expects to launch marketing sites for other verticals in the first quarter of next year, but declined to say which subjects she’s considering.
As for poetryspeaks.com, Sourcebooks has seen a 55% increase in poetry book sales since it launched the site. Still, we’re not talking about big numbers. Raccah said she looks at the site as more “petri dish” than money maker. In fact, she said, she doesn’t expect the site to ever turn a profit. But, she added, “I tend to be on the conservative side, so things frequently beat my expectations.”
