Heidi Allen Digital Strategy

With the news that McGraw Hill’s profits are down by nearly a quarter I began to look again at the future of publishing

Here are some stats

• McGraw Hill’s profits down by 23 percent
• Reed Elsevier first half profits down 48% announcing it would sell shares to raise money to cope with debt from its acquisition of ChoicePoint
• Wolters Kluwer first half profit falls 8%
• Oxford University Press laid off staff at the beginning of the year due to a reduction in state and library budgets.
• Penguin profits down by 19%
• Kindle sales: between 20-30% of the total Amazon sales on some books and publishers need to get content on the Kindle

To quote Joe Wikert ‘Any publisher that isn’t already worried about this in general is asleep at the wheel‘

I would suggest that publishers haven’t quite reached their threashold of pain yet to fundamentally change their business models and practices, but looking at McGraw Hill’s figures, and other publishing houses in similar positions, that point cant be far off.

The article by Michael Nielsen suggesting that Publishing Companies will become technical experts was very insightful and it seems that those who are going to survive will become just that – facilitators of information, but not necessarily the keepers of it.

Elsevier’s announcement of their ‘Article of the Future’ seems to be going in that direction, although it is not without some criticism, some saying it resembles websites of the past.

Michael Nielsen, Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted:

What’s all this got to do with scientific publishing? Today, scientific publishers are production companies, specializing in services like editorial, copyediting, and, in some cases, sales and marketing. My claim is that in ten to twenty years, scientific publishers will be technology companies. By this, I don’t just mean that they’ll be heavy users of technology, or employ a large IT staff. I mean they’ll be technology-driven companies in a similar way to, say, Google or Apple. That is, their foundation will be technological innovation, and most key decision-makers will be people with deep technological expertise. Those publishers that don’t become technology driven will die off.

Lulu has partnered with Intrepid Media to provide a one-stop-shop for authors who want to self publish.  To put this in context Lulu has over 1.1 million recently published titles, more than 8,000 new titles added each week and 2 million site visitors each month.

Intrepid Media is a site for writers of very description to discuss and critique each others work (think editorial process provided by Publishers in other words).

What was missing in many of the self-publishing models were ways for the authors to promote their work once published, unless they were on a teaching circuit, or the media picked up the book and talked about it.
Now authors who want to self publish get feedback on their work while writing, their book is published in print and electronic form, promoted via social networks, and sold on Amazon, Barnes & Noble amongst others.  There are no up-front-costs.

How is this different from traditional publishing houses? First your book gets published.  Many books don’t see the light of day because to submit your book idea in the first place is no small task (think find an Agent, get to the right Publisher, proposals reviews, changes to your content to fit in with other books on their list) – in other words months before you can even go ahead even if the book is accepted.

Editorial and creative control remains with the author, along with the copyright and ability to chose the price.  The book is not handed over to become part of a Publisher’s book list, there are no tortuous submission protocols, deadlines to keep to, no royalty negotiations, and no contracts with penalty clauses if you don’t deliver.  Instead authors pay a 20% if the book is bought (and nothing if it is not), straight forward, simple. What Lulu and Intrepid Media provide is the ‘how to’ without taking any ownership away from the author.

Lulu’s publishing steps

A clever author can also market his book to a wide international audience using social media without expending too much time or energy.  Iggy Pintado’s book ‘Connection Generation’ – self published, was promoted with a nice ‘personliased’ email to his LinkedIn connections (over 7000) – I was one, I didn’t mind as I’d opted into his network and was interested to see what he was doing.  Iggy’s Facebook page has 1000 friends,  twitter nearly 5,000 followers and…. you get the picture.

Why pay a publishing house (by way of giving up a significant part of your royalties) to use more traditional (I want to write tired) ways of promoting your book. Follow that up with being able to upload your book on Amazon’s Kindle and really, who does need Publishers any more?

Medialoper published an excellent article written by Kirk Biglione “Traditional Publishers Crash (and Burn at) SXSW”

It has made me so cross I have changed my blog theme to Red for the duration until I simmer down. Kirk is right in everything he writes – what a wasted opportunity.

To the panel: Well done for displaying your profound love of books. Right. We love books. Yes we’ve got that. We all do. Even those of us who don’t love books. Now what? There is so much to talk about, so many new things going on and you had a roomful of people who were there and had something to say — maybe because of the very fact they do love books. Must this industry persist in bemoaning its state and navel gazing.

Here’s how the session was advertised

It’s about how participatory culture and the online world interact with good olde book publishing…. Audience members are invited to speak up about what they think book publishers could/should be doing to better provide relevant information and content to blogs, websites, and online communities. Come tell old media what you want and how you want it.

Thankfully there were people on twitter covering the sessions — a phrase which I presume came from the panel kept reoccurring in the twitter stream “Publishing has never been in my lifetime in such a powerless state as it is now.”

Rubbish. There is so much opportunity at the moment we’re swimming in it.

Yes, I agree. Completely unfair of me to judge. I wasn’t there. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m Cross.

Please can I have an invite to the panel next time.

Postscript 20th March: check out Linda Moore’s post “New Think For Old Publishing” on this subject

Blog design at the time of writing: Red, two column, Nikynik Red theme