ENTRIES TAGGED "data"
Do publishers have the right people on the bus?
A classic text provides some helpful and timeless advice
I know from talking to many of my clients that most have read Jim Collins’ book ‘Good to Great’. I have also been inspired by his research into what makes great companies great. Many of you will recall an article I wrote on applying the lessons of Jim’s more recent book ‘Great by Choice’ to publishing. Thus inspired I recently read his earlier book ‘Good to Great’ for the first time.
In ‘Good to Great’, Collins and his research team discovered that the great companies didn’t ask what product or which strategy first. They instead asked who. Who do we need on our (company) bus for a successful business journey? Company owners Hewlett and Packard, for instance, consciously built their future by hiring outstanding people even before they knew what they’d be making or what direction they’d be driving. Whenever they found these people they hired them even without a specific job in mind. Hewlett Packard became one of the great American success stories and outperformed the stock market by many times. They were one of many cases that emphasized having the right people is the most important element for an organization to achieve greatness.
Building an ebook business around analytics
What happens when a web publishing business enters the ebook space?
AskMen, “the leading online magazine for men,” has just launched an ebook publishing program, using the PressBooks Publisher Platform to manage the front-end catalog/website, and back-end ebook production. In the year-and-a-bit since PressBooks launched publicly, we’ve worked with many traditional book publishers, big and small. But what’s most interesting to us is non-traditional book publishers entering the ebook space, because they have the flexibility to approach book publishing in whole new ways.
Especially interesting to us are successful web publishers, mainly because web publishers have the most direct understanding of their readers, and reader behaviour. This skill, and approach, will be critical, we believe, as book publishing evolves. Web publishing is an analytics-driven business. In the ebook world, timely analytics are very hard to come by. And generally, analytics is not something most book publishers prioritize in their business. We believe this will change, as book publishing becomes increasingly digital.
In the interview below, I explore the issue of web vs. ebook analytics with Emma McKay, managing editor of AskMen’s online magazine, and the leader of their ebook publishing program.
Author platforms and the Black Box Effect
A report from Author (R)evolution Day
If you’ve spent as much time reading author blogs as I have, you may have noticed a disturbing pattern. In nearly every “here’s how I did it” post in which the author explains her route to greater visibility and sales, there comes a point when something happens that the author did not plan for or expect, that puts her over the top.
I call this the Black Box Effect: the degree to which authors are still mostly in the dark about what makes their book marketing and platform-building efforts succeed. For authors to take full advantage of this incredible time in publishing we need to reduce that effect, which means we need better data, and better tools to help capture and measure the data that already exists. So I went to Author (R)evolution Day last week to see how far along we are in chipping away at the edges of that black box.
Will retailers start playing Big Brother with our content?
New services will test the boundaries between retailers and publishers
One summer morning in 2009 countless Kindle customers awoke to discover that Amazon had remotely deleted a couple of George Orwell books from their devices. There was much debate about whether this step should have been taken and Amazon eventually noted that “we are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”
That’s a smart adjustment, but how much control should an ebook retailer have over the content it distributes? Should the retailer be allowed to alter any of the content?
The five things you need to pay attention to at TOC 2012
Publishing startups, data, and ebook quality are among TOC 2012's key topics.
Tools of Change for Publishing chairs Kat Meyer and Joe Wikert reveal their top recommendations for things to see, do and watch at the upcoming conference.
A study confirms what we've all sensed: Readers are embracing ereading
BISG's Angela Bole on results from the "Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading" study.
In this interview, Angela Bole of the Book Industry Study Group reviews results from the "Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading" study. She says the data looks good for publishers, assuming they can develop the right business models.
Sensors, data, UI and the future of publishing
Tweets and related information from Tim O'Reilly's Silverchair Strategies 2011 presentation.
In a recent keynote address, Tim O'Reilly looked at how sensors, data and interfaces will shape information delivery.
Publishing News: Publishing startups bet on curation and apps
A look at three publishing startups, Romenesko retires, and Jer Thorp discusses data at the NYT.
The TOC Sneak Peek webcasts continue, Poynter gets a part-time employee while Romenesko plans a new blog, and Jer Thorp talks about being a data artist at the New York Times.
Publishing News: Rebooting online news presentation
Ben Huh has a fling with news, checking in on the Twitter archive, and readers can now fund authors directly.
In the latest Publishing News: Ben Huh dishes on news organizations moving in the right direction; one year later, the Library of Congress' Twitter Archive is still being built; and the Unbound.co.uk publishing platform launched with some big-name authors.
Publishing News: How to improve ebook marginalia
Improving ebook note tools, ask for data and you'll get it, the ABA partners with On Demand Books
Pete Meyers suggests ways to improve ebook note-taking tools, publishers can actually get consumer data from Apple, and the American Booksellers Association wants its member stores to have Espresso Book Machines.