Publisher Websites: Ineffective Marketing At Its Best

When it comes to the web and the general consumer, all signs seem to keep pointing back to convenience. It’s not a user-friendly interface or personalized suggestions based on previous purchases that keep us going back to Amazon for more. Instead it’s one-click ordering, 24/7 availability, and the ability to order that book you’ve been wanting while you order clothes for your mom’s birthday, DVDs for your dad’s, and the tent you need for camping next weekend for yourself.

Publishing companies have not yet faced this reality when designing their websites. Perhaps direct online sales were a potential market when the internet first became a phenomenon, but today’s reality is clear: Amazon rules.

Amazon holds convenience, selection, and is well known and easy to locate. It is a household name, unlike the majority of publishing companies. Most average consumers probably know at least one or two publishing companies, likely big ones, such as Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, or Penguin. Aside from avid readers, publishers, and niche-specific readers, it is probably safe to assume that a majority of book consumers do not pay attention to the publishers of their books.

When an Amazon transaction can be completed in five clicks and three minutes, few consumers will venture to Google to locate a publisher’s website, click over to the website, find a particular book, and finally click over to purchase. It’s just not realistic in today’s age of convenience.

Unless you are a business lucky enough to not be featured on Amazon, your likelihood of turning much of a profit with direct online sales is slim.

So why are publishers still directing their websites towards an unresponsive audience? I think they just aren’t sure who to target. They’ve realized that it’s essentially a requirement in our internet-savvy culture to have a business website—but that’s as far as they’ve gotten. Unless a company has a very specific niche or a particular deal available to consumers who purchase their books though their website, it seems highly unlikely that online direct sales will ever generate any significant income for companies.

Instead of pumping marketing dollars into creating fantastic websites for selling books, publishing companies need to use their marketing budgets to reevaluate the audience and best use for their web presence.

The Growth of the E-book: It's Only A Matter of Time

The Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, January 20 featured a letter sent in by author and marketer M.J. Rose, which you can find here. For those who don’t feel like clicking over and reading the letter in its entirety, Rose recounts purchasing an e-book in under a minute on January 16—for a title that won’t release in bookstores as a hardback until January 27. What?!

Within the publishing industry, we’re anticipating the growth of e-books. That’s why publishing houses across the world are experimenting with various e-book platforms and even Ooligan has recently decided which of our titles will be our first e-books. The ability to publish an e-book is quickly becoming an industry requirement.

But Rose’s letter got me thinking: what happens to bound books when e-book buyers get perks for switching platforms? Will bound books go the way of cassette tapes, CDs, and records? Will being a digital customer garner additional perks, like advance release dates? If music is any indication, the answer is a resounding YES.

Look at the transition that the music industry has undergone in the digital age: full-length tracks are released online way ahead of an album’s release, iTunes albums frequently include material, such as additional tracks or videos, unavailable on a traditionally purchased CD, and some musicians have gone so far as to make entire albums of material available to stream for free. While you cannot yet purchase an album ahead of a physical album’s release date, consumers definitely get a few perks by being tech savvy.

I anticipate that the transition to e-book perks will take more time than the digital music revolution did, but it will eventually occur. It will take awhile because e-book readers need to skyrocket in popularity and availability. Once a user-friendly, budget-conscious e-reader is released, it will only be a matter of time before e-books have advance release dates and include additional content, such as author interviews. iPods and digital music did not become popular overnight, and neither will e-readers and e-books.

For the record, the Wednesday edition of Shelf Awareness arrived with a letter from Margot Sage-El, the owner of an independent bookstore, affirming that HarperCollins admits that the early release was a mistake on their part, the issue still got me thinking about the future of bound books versus e-books.

Bound books may not become obsolete during our lifetimes, but as universities toy with adopting electronic versions of textbooks and publishing companies release e-books earlier than bound books (though by mistake), it is only a matter of time before the e-book will prevail. One thing is certain: we’re entering an industry that’s in transition and we’re the ones who will define its future.

I dread the day when bound books are a rarity, but have come to realize that I have to be open to e-books. If I can’t embrace it, I have no business being in the publishing industry and might as well start browsing the want ads. But not at Craigslist. That would be hypocritical.

Amazon.com: Good or Evil?

I admit it.

I have a certain affinity for convenience. We’re talking the “point and click, I’ll take this and this and this in my shopping cart, check out” kind of convenience. Thank you, Amazon.com. Two to seven days after a few mouse clicks (unless I chose to spring for overnight shipping), my purchases of choice show up on my doorstep—and I didn’t have to drive anywhere, stand in line, or go to multiple stores to find exactly what I want. And that’s what Amazon is great for. I don’t venture to Amazon.com to browse. I click over to purchase.

From Amazon.com’s reported success, including their best holiday sales season in history (during a nationwide economical slump, at that), it seems that I’m not the only one who finds Amazon’s business model tantalizing. I feel guilty even admitting it, but it is, for better or worse, the truth.

Rather than threatening the publishing industry directly, I think that Amazon poses a greater threat to the independent bookstore. It’s not the readers, publishers, and authors most affected, it’s the storeowner who just can’t pay the rent because readers have succumbed to the allure of convenience and endless inventory that Amazon has to offer.

For the budding author unable to find someone to publish his or her self-proclaimed “next bestseller,” Amazon’s BookSurge is a godsend. I suppose it all works out for the best—author ends up happy, those who care can get their hands on the book, and Amazon walks away with their little share of the publishing venture. Given the number of books I’ve had pitched to me when meeting someone new and telling them I’m studying book publishing, there’s no shortage of this segment of the population.

All in all, I don’t think this aspect of Amazon really hurts the publishing industry. It’s a strange idea that anyone can publish just about anything (edited or not, but that’s a pet peeve for another time), but if anything, everyone ends up happier because of it. Authors get their work published, readers get another book to read, and publishers (potentially) get fewer unsolicited manuscripts to add to their slush pile. Everybody benefits.

When it comes down to it, Amazon isn't the monster that so many people make it out to be. It has its perks and its annoyances, just like any other business. The greatest difference is that Amazon can get its hands on more inventory than any concrete store can warehouse and with that, the Long Tail continues to grow longer.

Children's Publishers Anxiously Awaiting Decision On CPSIA's Potential Impact

In an era where PW Daily and Publisher’s Lunch have become bearers of bad news, be it layoffs or independent bookstore closures, it really feels like the publishing industry deserves a break from the continuous hits. Yet PW Daily recently reported the February 10 enactment of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which requires that all products marketed and sold to children ages 12 and under be tested for lead. With an unprecedented number of toy recalls for lead levels between 2007 and 2008, it is no surprise that Congress decided it was pertinent to pass legislation to regulate every potentially dangerous item.

Now, with the enactment date a mere 23 days away, publishers are facing the possible reality that warehouses of inventory will be rendered useless as of February 10, 2009, thanks to the Act’s retroactive nature. For an industry already on unsteady footing in an economy that continues to spiral downward, the CPSIA could prove to be the next in a series of detrimental blows.

In an ideal world, the book industry’s extensive lobbying efforts will lead to certain exemptions from the February 10 deadline that could limit the number of books sent to the dumpster, but what if the ideal situation doesn’t occur?

While many publishing houses that have books on the shelves of stores like Target have already undergone testing procedures that surpass the requirements set forth in the CPSIA, what happens to smaller presses, such as Ooligan? What about other presses like us who have limited resources to devote to testing?

Books are not known for containing high levels of lead so the hope is that traditional, print-on-paper books will be exempt from the Act come February 10. However, even if publishing companies are granted an extension or exemption from the new law, lead levels and books is now a topic of discussion at the forefront of the industry.

How should this new question be handled? Is there enough of a threat that there should be standards for testing? Should it be left up to individual presses based on their resources and potential for young readers? Or is it an issue that got out of hand with the requirements set forth in the CPSIA? I guess we’ll see in the next 23 days.

YA Publishers Websites: Do They Really Know How To Market To Young Adults?

I began my search for publishing company websites by pulling out my copy of the 2009 edition of Writer’s Market and flipping right to the Young Adult listings. In my own research and our discussions about reaching target audiences, it is clear that it takes a little extra something for a website to catch the attention of the average YA reader, so what better way to analyze a website’s ability to capture a target audience than to examine the website of those companies that cater to that audience?

My final conclusion? Few companies that list themselves as publishers of YA fiction actually seem to know how to capture their target audience in an online venue.

I visited a variety of companies, randomly selected from the list, including Lerner Publishing Company, E-Digital Books, LLC (simply because their name intrigued me), Front Street, Harcourt Children’s, Simon & Schuster, Puffin Books, Peachtree Publishers, Candlewick Press, Big Idea, and Tolling Bell Books.

Surprisingly, E-Digital Books was a huge disappointment. For a company touting technology, their website was very not tech savvy, complete with an outdated design and too much text. I was expecting something more cutting edge. I also couldn’t really see how they characterized themselves as a publisher of YA fiction. Children’s books, yes. Young Adult, not so much.

I also found Lerner’s website to be disappointing. They tried with bright colors, but for a YA reader, their site is way too juvenile with its primary colors. Even clicking on the link labeled, “Grades 6-12,” proved to be boring, only resulting in a blue, white, and yellow listing of all the books Lerner markets to that age group. Tolling Bell Books fell into a similar category—unexciting, boring, and nothing any YA reader would care to peruse.

A few sites did a better job, but I think that even those missed the mark. Front Street’s website is simple and easy to navigate. While they don’t have any showy features, they focus on their books, and make reviews and summaries easy to access. While it lacks animation and special features, I could see it appealing to a certain crowd of YA readers, maybe those labeled as more of the “bookworms.”

Simon & Schuster’s newly released website is a success. They are still working to embrace the technology that YA readers want, but are trying with a new set of message boards and book communities. Their new design is easy to navigate and has the modern, hip feel that teens want in a website. With a little work, their page may become the best at targeting YA readers (of the batch that I looked at, anyway).

For now though, I think the winners are Puffin Books and Candlewick Press. Both take simple designs but punch them up with color and graphics that kids and teens find exciting. Puffin even tries to gear their homepage to kids so much that they needed to add a “Grown Ups” tab to it. Even though they didn’t quite hit the target audience right on, they made it a lot closer than other companies simply by adding that one page.

Candlewick Press’ page design was good, with bright colors and graphics that link kids and teens right to series and book specific pages and sites. When you click over to Stink Moody’s website, you are greeted by a YA website dream—interactive, brightly colored, games, and other age-geared content.

This perusal was a bit of a disappointment. It’s hard to imagine companies publishing books for Young Adults without being able to adequately market them to their target audience online. Maybe I just happened to randomly chose a bad set of companies…I hope so! Anybody have any particularly great YA publishers sites to send me to?

Kids and Reading in the Age of Technology

Right now my "pay the bills" job is as a motor skills and developmental gymnastics instructor. A friend of mine recently chimed in while I was describing it to someone: “Don’t lie! You mean you PLAY with kids all day!” To an extent, he’s right. But on the other end of the spectrum, the serious end, working with kids has gotten me thinking about the status of reading among young children and how we, as future book editors, publishers, and marketers, can encourage reading in an era where kids are plugged into electricity nearly 100% of the time.

Consider this story relayed to me on Friday by my co-worker: While I was teaching a class, she spent 45 minutes playing with the older brother (he’ll be five in February) of one of my students. He typically brings his Gameboy (or whatever it is that is the current version. I’m clueless.) but forgot it on Friday. My co-worker asked him what he usually does besides his Gameboy. His response? “Play on the computer.’ She asked him what he does when he’s not on the computer. “Watch TV.” She finally asked him if he ever did anything that didn’t involve electricity and explained to him what that meant. He said he, “sometimes plays outside, but it’s boring. All there is out there is grass.” What stood out to me was not so much the lack of physical activity (the family is, at least, active members of my employer), but the lack of educational stimulation and reading.

One could argue that maybe he is only one child, but I see enough kids on a regular basis—over 125 per week—that I feel I can safely assert that he is only one of many in similarly “plugged in” situations. A parent recently told me that she thinks her daughter is so verbal because of all the shows she watches, not because of socialization or other influencing factors.

As lovers of books ourselves, how can we make reading and books exciting enough that kids will want to read instead of grouping books with playing outside because they’re boring? Is there a way that we can do this without utilizing the electronics we ultimately want them to learn that it’s okay to turn off? I’m not sure. The duality of paper and technology has worked for blockbuster books like Harry Potter and Twilight, both of which slowly gained followings before exploding in popularity. Can it work for non-best-sellers, or does a book need to be a blockbuster before interactive websites can play a vital role in encouraging kids to read? When parents don’t take it upon themselves to encourage reading, instead fostering technological media, how much harder do publishers and marketers have to work to capture a child’s interest?

The question is not whether or not viral marketing is the way of the future--I think we've all shown that we suspect that by enrolling in this course. The question, I think, is how to discourage constant connectivity while using technology to encourage reading. It seems like somewhat of a paradox to me, and definitely a mixed message for kids. I guess we’ll find out as viral marketing continues to expand. Thoughts?