Unlike most publishers out there who are just publishers, I am also a book distributor. We deal directly with the bookstores in Singapore and the region. Now, everytime we distribute a new book, the author always ask the question: Are you putting up the posters in the bookstores on my new book?
I decided that I will answer the question here in my blog so that we can move beyond posters when comes to marketing a book. While it is true that having a poster on your book displayed in the store is a plus point, but the fact is that not all bookstores allow you to put up a poster without their permission. Most big chain bookstores do not accept posters now. The reason is simple. If every publisher gives a poster to every bookstore for every new book, the bookstore is not a bookstore anymore, it becomes a Poster Shop. You see the problem?
As a distributor, what happens in the retail store is not within the control of the distributor. We don’t call the shots at the bookstores because we don’t own the retail space, the bookstores do. Now, if the option for posters as a marketing tool is out, what alternatives do you have? By the way, if you can only think of posters, you are not catching up with times, you belong to the old economy, sad to say. Even, if the poster is there, it will not last you one week, if you are lucky, two weeks later it is taken down. So, what happens two weeks later? Your book will be lost forever and no one will buy it anymore, because that poster is no longer there? You see, this is a short term solution and not a clever one too.
For a book to sell, you want to generate continual awareness. Yes, you can try advertising in the newspaper but since the money we make from books is little, most authors do not have a budget for it. It is just not worthwhile to place an ad to sell one book. What then is the solution?
The internet is again the solution. Have you considered doing a book trailer or a video ad on your book and post it on Youtube? Once you got the video, you can post it on your site, facebook, etc and it is generating awareness for your book 24 hours a day. Have I done one before? I did, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6YKafGFOU
Oh, if you are a non Singaporean reading this, you may not understand the content of the video because it is done in Hokkien, a local dialect in Singapore. It started as an experiment and I never thought I get more than 50, 000 hits! Hits means eyeballs! Hey, not really a viral video but it is a great success to have so many hits! No publishers dare experiment something like that, but I did it my way.
Now, another option is to load sample chapters of your book on your site for people to browse. I used to think I was very clever to give sample chapters in pdf file for people to download for certain books but now I just discovered, it is not hip anymore. The new thing is ISSUU. What ISSUU? http://issuu.com/
ISSUU converts your pdf file or a word document into an online e-document that allows people to view it online. No downloading needed. View it directly on your webpage like watching an embedded Youtube video. COOL! The best thing is, IT IS FREE! Converting a pdf file into something for online view used to be troublesome and costly. Most people convert to Flash format and if you know nothing about Macromedia Flash, you are dead. So, here is a FREE solution that do it so beautifully that you cannot resist trying.
So, this means now, people can browse sample pages of your book online without first downloading the pdf file! In addition, if people like it, they post it on their site and when more people post it on their site for others to view, it travels and that is where awareness of your book is generated. So, say goodbye to posters, lets welcome ISSUU. I got no time to write anymore on this, i need to convert my sample pdf files to ISSUU now!
In the internet era, every author must have an author’s website. I have seen many websites created by authors but there is little content on it except for a short description of the book, a book cover image, some info about the author and maybe some info on where to buy the book. In short, its a static site for web display purpose.
If you want to create a website for your book, what are the elements that must be present to make it effective? If not it is going to be another site out of the millions out there which will never be found and read. Some other considerations are – what is your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy, what are the keywords that you want people to search for so that they can see your site on google listing? For instance if your book is about innovation, can your book site be found on the first 2 pages of google if someone search for “books on innovation” or other keywords that you think are important. This is critical consideration. How to do it, I will try to cover in my future postings, but in the meantime, there is a very good article on how to create an author’s site that I want you to read. Go to this link download the file and read it before you set up your site:
This is a very clever video produced by DK in the United Kingdom, one of the biggest publishers in UK.
The book publishing industry is perceived to be a sunset industry. With the launch of Apple iPad, Kindle and many other E-book devices, people are telling printed book publishers like us that we have to accept the death penalty of traditional book publishing, pack our bags and look for a new job elsewhere. But is the future for us so full of gloom and doom?
I have been a book publisher for more than 17 years, but I have never seen myself as a ‘printed book publisher’. I see myself as a content creator. I see myself as a knowledge and information provider. Well, maybe because the books we produced over the years are more non-fiction based. The book is just a medium where knowledge is packaged, shared and accessed. The printed book is the default medium because, it is cheaper to print books than to do in any format and it is what people want (maybe until now).
If the future is one where people prefer to have content on mobile and e-devices, so be it. We just have to change and convert our content to these growing e-devices. But is it easy? Are we talking about content conversion with just a click of a button? Of course not. This is where the problem comes and those who can overcome the challenges will stay in the business and those who can’t shall be become the hugry ghosts of the printed world.
What are the challenges faced by publishers in the digital revolution?
1) You got to think in color, images and interactivity.
2) You got to think in bite size information
3) You got to think what is the best way to teach and deliver knoweldge to the end users given the fact that now you got a variety of media to use – texts, images, videos and sound.
These challenges are not easy to overcome and here is why:
1) Publishers often think in black and white – in the printed world, color means high costs, more work and expensive. It is not economical to print a full color book for just 1000 copies and expect to break even should the book fails. But you can afford to print in black and white and take a risk on the title and you may not lose your pants. Images are expensive too and run into thousands of dollars, if you buy from photo stock libraries unless the publisher or author provides its own images. So, images are NO NO. Videos and sounds? NO NO — few publishers know how to shoot a video and many don’t even know how to record his own voice into the computer. The closest thing may just be the web-cam. These are not just the tools that a typical publishing company plays with. These are toys that belong to the video production companies.
2) How to think in bite size when experience tells you that a book with few pages will get few customers.
3) Did I hear multi-media and animation? What is that?
You see the problems?
Are publishers prepared for the digital world? The answer is NO. The mindset, the skills and the hardware are missing. Why is that so? Because, those who sing to the digital tune and the developers are mainly not from the publishing world. They are techno geeks. They forgotten to rope in a publisher like me to board their bus. So, now publishers are stranded.
Publishers are not the only one who are left behind. The authors who are the kings and queens of content did not board the bus as well! The author’s mindset still resides in the printed world, few authors are ready for the digital world. How many authors really blog? How many authors know how to build a website and promote themselves and sell their book on the internet? How many authors have created a book trailer or shoot a video of themselves talking about their book? But, you may say, that’s the publisher’s job. You are wrong.
Authors today have to think multi-media to embrace the digital world. My view is that few authors are there yet. The author of the future cannot think and write for the printed world and leave the conversion of the content to suit the digital world to the publisher. This does not work. Let me give you an example. We have produced a number of e-books on CD-Roms using an e-book publishing software. We also received many enquiries by cookbook writers who are looking to self-publish their own recipe books. Now, the problem with recipe books is that it must be printed in color. And to print in color means it is expensive and it does not make economical sense if you do a small print run of anything less than 3000 copies. As an enlightened publisher, I happily proposed the idea of doing an e-cook book because now you can put in as many color images as you want in it and it does not really increase the costs of produciton, you can make less than 1000 copies for your ebook and still it is a viable project and best of all, the reader can print any page he or shes likes and bring to the kithchen and cook the dish! Now, you can even film yourself cooking a few recipes and it’s like having your own cooking show like “Yan Can Cook” series on CD-ROM. Wow! you can become a star chef now!
Now, this sounds really fantastic to me! But few cookbook authors are as excited as me! The authors tell you– but people like to hold the book and flip the pages!
My point is that the technology has arrived but the content has not really arrived. There is a gap. The content creators have not really caught up with people who created these devices. Direct conversion of printed content to the digital world, will not work in the long run. We need new content creators who can think digital to make this work.
The fear is not if these digital devices will wipe out the printed texts, but are publishers and authors able to be equipped and be ready to transform itself to become the Content Warriors of the digital world.
(Copyright Rank Books. No reproduction of this article is allowed without the permission of Rank Books.)
In this category, you will get to read all the thoughts and views of a publisher who has been in the business for more than 17 years. Topics covered: authorship, book publishing, e-publishing, self-publishing and book marketing . This category is maintained by Mr KC GOH, publisher from Rank Books. www.rankbooks.com. All postings are not edited before they are published. I think, I write and I post.
