In the last few days several stories have reminded me of a question I’ve been meaning to ask all publishers.
I think it is a question that’s especially vital for small and medium publishers.
What’s more it’s one that acts as a good acid test of your digital strategy and where your thinking is on the future direction of publishing. And the question is:
Who Is Your Digital Publisher?
What were the stories? We lets start with the news that Taschen announced that they have appointed a digital publisher move along a little to the news that Penguin’s new digital publisher is a former music industry professional and let’s round it off with the news that Canongate have lost their Digital Guru to Random House.
What these stories all have in common is that companies, large and small are making clever moves to grab the digital bull by the horns, moving away from just have the TECHNICAL CAPABILITY to produce and sell their books in digital formats towards putting someone in place with an editorial or creative vision for how to exploit the medium.
Most small companies can’t afford to put someone on this full-time, that much is probably a given (although if you can, then you should), but someone really should be devoting at least a third, if not half, of their time to the issue.
AND they need to be considering more than just contracts, conversion, distribution and price. That part of the job is now routine, essential and commonplace. It doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done or that your digital publisher shouldn’t be doing it, but it does mean that your digital publisher needs to be looking at more. At how to create value, draw and keep attention and how to drive revenue from digital publishing.
So tell me:
– Who is your digital publisher?
– What IS their role?
– What does this say about your strategy?
Via Eoin Purcell’s Green Lamp Media blog
“… companies, large and small are making clever moves … ”
I say they are a bunch of Johnny come latelys considering how much water has flowed under the bridge since they were well warned of the impending changes in the industry.
Sorry Eoin I should have started my reply by saying it is a Very Interesting article and thanks 🙂 It is good for someone like me to have someone inside the industry pull together the progress in the industry into one or two articles instead of having to hunt it all down myself. Mighty ! 😉
For some of us, it’s all about being the digital publisher. Paper falls a long way down my list of things to do, although it’s important to many of my authors.
When I read about bringing in publishers from the music business, I tell myself, ‘maybe they read also.’ With eBooks, even more than with paper books, it’s all about the books.
Rob Preece
(digital) Publisher
Cheers to Penguin and Random House for seeing how much the music industry professionals have to share. It makes sense for publishers and writers to learn from their (fairly) recent experience of “going tech”.
Bringing in people from the music industry may seem silly at first glance, but it’s truly brilliant.
Thanks for sharing!
I don’t write for money, I just want people read and comment my novels. So, this is my digital publisher:
http://www.publixo.com
I use Polish version of thet site, the English one has just started.