Shaping the Future of Publishing

On December 30, my article “Use Clay to Shape the Future of Publishing” was posted on the BookNet Canada blog. The original is missing the proper links and some blockquotes so I’m going to post it again here.

Use Clay to Shape the Future of Publishing

As I reflect on 2009, there is one author who continually comes to mind as a thought leader for the publishing industry, and that is Clay Shirky. 

In March, I attended the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) in Austin, TX. SXSW is an uber-geek fest where the best of the best come to geek it up and muse on the state of the internet, culture, and technology. Us plebs listen intently, take notes and then report back to the unwashed masses via our blogs, Facebook and twitter streams. 

Ok, it’s not as stuck up as that, but it is an expensive conference to attend and, as an attendee, one expects a certain, exalted level of thinking.

The panel that disappointed me the most, and which let to a firestorm amongst the online book geeks, was New Thinking for Old Publishers. 

This panel was nicknamed “No Thinking for Old Publishers.” As much as Clay Shirky was the heavy weight on the panel, he was not the main attraction. The audience was full of bloggers and book lovers intent on spreading the word about exciting developments in the publishing industry, intent on hearing directly from the editors, publicists and publishers who they so rarely have access to. 

But to say that it was a disappointment is an understatement. It was a disaster. 

What resulted from the disaster of that panel was a grassroots movement to create a better dialogue on the future of publishing. I experienced that better dialogue at BookCamp Vancouver, a self-organizing conference on books and technology. 

Here’s a little about how BookCamp Vancouver originated.

In my post-SXSW rant, I vowed to organize a panel in Vancouver. That panel quickly became a full conference. With generous sponsorship from SFU and BookNet Canada, the organizers were able to offer free registration to 300 people. (Organizers included me, John Maxwell from SFU Master of Publishing program, Morgan Cowie from BNC, Sean Cranbury from Books on the Radio and Nick Bouton from Protagonize.)

We wanted a different conversation than what we usually heard at book conferences. As an internet marketing consultant, the last couple of years have no longer been about convincing publishers that digital is here. It made no sense to have any rah-rah “ebook” conversations or to bring in big headline speakers. What made sense was to bring together the book geeks and the tech geeks to talk directly about the problems.

The sessions at BookCamp Vancouver included such topics as “Using Open Source Models in Publishing”, “The Optimal Use of Social Media for Authors and Publishers”, “The State of the Electronic Book,” and “Making Content King.” 

It was my first book conference that was attended by people in the book industry as well as those in the technology industry. And I was thrilled. 

But back to Clay Shirky.

The problem with the SXSW panel was that there was too little Shirky. This was also the case with the former BEC conference: there were too few people involved outside of the publishing industry to offer insights into where the industry could go in terms of technology.

As publishers scramble to catch up, to figure out ebooks, to work with ONIX, others have been steaming ahead—readers, in particular. 

In January 2005 while working at Raincoast, I attended the Blogging for Business Summit in Seattle. At that time, I felt that the publishing industry was behind. 

In April of 2005, I started SoMisguided.com to talk about books, online marketing and technology. It took me until November 2005 to launch the Raincoast blog and podcast program. Desperately trying to ride at least the tail of the online crest, in retrospect we were ahead, Raincoast became 1 of 3 publishers internationally who were podcasting and blogging. 

We all have our Cassandra moments. 

Since 1997 when I got my first hotmail account, and then signed up my friends, I have been watching the culture of reading change. I was, and continue to be, obsessed with reading culture and the information revolution. Such is the case with Clay Shirky, and it is particularly evident in his March 13 blog post called “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.” It was Shirky’s post that led me to buy his book Here Comes Everyone and to attend that SXSW panel. 

In “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,”  Shirky manages to take 20 years of conversation about the digital nature of our culture and distill it into something that people in the newspaper industry are willing to hear and understand. Book publishing folks, please read this article.

Why? Because book publishers, like newspapers, are content producers and we have taken similar approaches to digital copies and electronic sharing of content. 

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ‘90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.

There is no general model for newspapers, or books to follow. The internet has broken the model and there is no one-size-fits-all fix. 

Print and the web are alternate modes of distributing information. We have internalized that this is happening, but what’s missing is for each house to create an individual, cohesive plan. Publishers need to go back to their business models and create new plans and new models for new realities.

A few folks in the publishing crowd are sentinels. They have been saying for years, “Hey look what’s going on, people are sharing, participating, writing and publishing their own books.”

“These people are crazy, are you seeing this?”

“Don’t they know how much work is involved in writing and editing and producing a book, and then distributing it to stores.”

This type of response to those observations is part of the problem. 

Industrial production destroyed the viability of scribes. Such is the case with digital, it has destroyed the old economics that worked for how books are produced, distributed, sold and read. We need new models because the core problem publishing solves—“the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public—has stopped being a problem” (Shirky). 

Instead of investigating how to drastically change and adapt, we’ve stuck to our old business models, which has left us arguing about what Google can and cannot index, what the price of ebooks should or should not be, and whether we should or should not have someone on staff dedicated to Facebook and Twitter.

Yes, old systems are going to break before new systems are in place. Such is the case with revolutions. We are publishing in a time of experimentation where nothing will work, but anything might.

Whether it’s keeping our nose to the grindstone, burying our heads or navel gazing, we have forgotten to look up. 

Look up now, to that to top left corner of ceiling  and think about all the “yes, buts ...” you’ve said over this conversation. Where are the “yes, ands ...” How can we work this year on creative planning and reinventing our businesses? 

Jay Rosen recently interviewed Clay Shirky and one of the discussion topics was of research done in the 70s and 80s by social scientists who studied how newspapers, such as Time, Newsweek, CBS, NBC, made decisions. 

Their common observation was that the sociology of the newsroom was based, not on the best way or the journalistic way to do something but rather, on what the production process demanded. 

They discovered that as newsrooms internalized the production routine, their decisions accommodated that routine. They eventually believed that they were doing things that were required or necessary rather than recognizing that they were making decisions on what the production routine demanded.

In publishing we have reps selling in the books from tip sheets and advances, we produce catalogues seasons in advance, we store and ship products between warehouses, the number of pages in a book is divisible by 4 to accommodate printing presses. 

What happens when the production routine changes?

If the entire business is shifting and the nature of how the public informs itself and acquires reading material is changing, then why are we not changing at the same speed? 

What if you had to start from scratch? How would you make more money than you spend (yes, on every book)? 

This is a new year. A time for new beginnings. We can’t reverse the flow of time. Micropayments, subscriptions are not the answer. Set aside ebooks.

Stare at that top left corner of the ceiling more often this year.

Innovate. Read some Clay Shirky. Create your own future.

Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Harebrained Ideas
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Buying gasoline futures business launches

On April 3, 2006 I wrote a longish post about a crazy idea I had: buying futures of gasoline.

The game of finding lower-priced gas is just a diversion from the pain of having to buy it in the first place. Maybe we kid ourselves that we make out ahead of the game. Maybe we do make out ahead by playing the game. I don’t think that matters, I haven’t seen a lot of gas companies go out of business.

At the same time all the gas companies are trying to find ways to keep customers loyal. They offer a commodity product and try to differentiate it with fancy tech-sounding additives. They have a schizophrenia. They want customers to pay at the pump for convenience, yet they also want customers to come into the store to stock up on chips and pop. But it’s a gas station. People pull in for gas or to use the bathroom. That’s about it. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of opportunity for building the business based on the site.

Now I have an idea for how gas stations can make their customers loyal: selling gas futures. What are gas futures? They’re essentially price speculation in the present on the future price of gas. It’s what commodity traders do all the time. Buy at one price and exercise at another.

Now someone has gone out and done it, Springwise reports. A company called MyGallons (ouch, I guess they’re doing business only in Imperial-measuring countries?) has launched that lets its members buy gas in bulk today at today’s prices, then decrement their account in the future. Sounds close to what I described, but not as interesting and not strategically with the same benefit for gas stations.

Also, the comments on the Springwise post make MyGallons’ reputation look a little smelly, so buyers beware.

So what do you think? Would you pay today to lock in a price for gas that you could redeem tomorrow?

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Online Strategy • Harebrained Ideas
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Marketing Tip: Respond to Email and Phone Calls

If someone contacts your company via email or phone, respond.

I know this sounds elementary, however, last week I was looking to hire a web design company and I was astounded at the number of companies who never returned my phone call or email.

James and I were talking about how this affects our perception of a company, and we shared tales of bad experiences about company sites without contact information and companies who insist on filtering people through online contact forms but who never respond to those email. It was quite the rant.

And then, over the email transom came this great tip from The Guerilla Marketing Association:

If somebody from among those 40 or 50 million people on the Internet takes the time and trouble to write to you, take the time to write back.

Designate people within your company to respond to various topics. Design your Web site to route e-mail to the appropriate person.

Internet experts say that rapid and certain response is probably the single most important factor for building a die-hard audience, just the kind you want.

So if you want to stand apart and generate positive feelings about your company, simply answer the phone and respond to emails.

Posted by Monique Trottier | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Underwire Newsletter • Online Marketing Tips • Harebrained Ideas
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Buxfer is cashflow management software on the web

Today I came across the Buxfer website and liked the product. The name could definitely use some work, since it doesn’t pass the simple tell test (Say the name and someone hearing you shouldn’t have to ask you to spell it.), but I liked the clean graphics.

Most of all, I liked the idea of making your money visible, and had the following thoughts:

• Buxfer looks to me like a personal cashflow manager. The team behind the product don’t call it anything, so I’m calling it a personal cashflow manager, which is a brilliant idea. I want one!
• I wonder what the pay-to-play-more version will look like? What kind of pricing will it feature? (About $15 / month seems about right to me, though you could also have tiers at $9, $20 and $40 for graduated features.)
• What they should do is make this a small business cashflow manager. I know from experience that it’s hard to manage the cashflow of a small business. There’s a huge market opportunity available for someone who does it right. I’ll pay for it! Cashflow management at the moment is a DIY Excel proposition that works but is far from elegant.
• Why can’t my bank do this for me? They already have me logging into their website to manage my accounts. They already have all the incoming and outgoing account management functions. Why don’t they offer an added software service to manage my account in a more relevant and valuable way? In fact, that would open a huge host of services they could offer. And I’m not talking about unlimited ATM withdrawals.
• I’m going to try to change something with this idea.

What do you think? Any love for Buxfer or suggestions for cashflow management tools?

Update: I ought to mention that there are some options available apart form simple DIY Excel spreadsheets cooked from scratch or from templates. Freshbooks is hinting at providing additional (un)accounting functionality to go with their leading invoice management software. But until they do, the industry standard is Quickbooks from Intuit, although their online edition is only available for Windows users on Internet Exploder (boo!).

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Internet Marketing • Online Strategy • Harebrained Ideas
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The Death of TV in 3 parts

One of the ongoing conversations I often have with clients, friends and colleagues surrounds the current volatile media climate. We’re swimming in more and more mediated information, communications and creative work than ever before, yet the overall landscape is shifting under our feet. Everything seems to be in flux.

The Internet is touted to kill all other media, yet this has never happened before with new media and hasn’t happen now. The usual grand pronouncement that overstate the new in the near term and understate the new in the long term abound. We are awash in people telling us what’s happening, yet there seems less clarity than ever.

Here are a few other salient characteristics of the current discussion.

• A tremendous confusion exists between communications delivery mechanisms (over-air TV and radio signals, wireless Internet, wired TV and telephone lines), presentations modes (audio, video, text) and content created for a specific transmission mechanism
• on TV: sitcoms, dramas, policiers
• on radio: documentaries, radio plays and call-in shows
• on the web: short videos, blogs, podcasts and video podcasts
• Content and services are become divorced from delivery mechanisms. We can watch TV on the web, talk on the phone on the web, watch radio call-in shows on TV, listen to podcasts on radios, watch web videos on our TV.
• Content is become unbuckled from a schedule, shifting to being available on-demand for users to draw it rather than being sent out at a specific time only. Subscriptions are oriented to the content and not the carrier technology or channel.
• Copyright legalities are challenged by the practices of new technologies that make perfect replication simple, cheap and necessary.
• I hear or read people prognosticating on media everyday and often I wonder if they’ve ever tried the thing that they’re supposed to be an expert on. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, P2P networks, blogging and whatever else comes along have to be practiced to be appreciated. In a kind of return to the 4-H motto: Learn To Do By Doing.

Into this conversation I was lucky enough this week to find a presentation by Gary Carter called The Death of TV. Here is Part 2 and here is Part 3. His point about communication devices moving through stages of domestication is lucid and wonderful. His clarity once he arrives at digital transmission and storage technologies makes me wish I’d written some of his speech. To whit:

This is the world of digital television, digital networks, digital everything. Power, in this environment, is certainly not a push, but it’s probably not, in fact, a pull: it is distributed equally, in all parts of the system, acting in all directions simultaneously. In fact, power is a peer-to-peer distributed network. The audience, having been first the recipient of the camera’s gaze, and then its subject, took control first of the means of production, and now, finally, of the means of distribution.

Media has become totally personalised, in all its aspects. It has moved into ‘my space’. The artist formerly known as the audience has become—to use MacLuhan’s prediction from the early ‘70s—the prosumer. To quote Andy Warhol just before his death: “My prediction from the Sixties finally came true. In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, in fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.”

Or, everyone will be famous to 15 people.

So go, read that full text of Carter’s speech if you’re at all interested in the conversation on our current mediated communications. And if you’re reading this, you already are.

Thanks to MIT Advertising Lab for formatting and posting the text of the speech.

Strangely, the 4-H Club motto seems to have changed over time and now seems to be the odd, vague, Orwellian To Make the Best Better.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Harebrained Ideas
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Experimenting with the hCard Microformat

Over the past few months I’ve been paying a bit of attention to the growing momentum behind microformats on the web. What are Microformats?

Designed for humans first and machines second, Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Learn more about Microformats.

Basically they’re a more advanced way of marking up some common content on the web. Things like people, reviews and calendar events. See them all here.

The one thing I thought they were missing were recipes, an almost perfectly standardized type of content that would benefit hugely from being standardized. Imagine no longer wondering how many millilitres are in a cup. Instead, choose your measurement standard and the recipe is translated into that system. Imagine not having to wander through recipes matching what you have to what’s called for. Just search for the recipes with your ingredients. I digress.

To try my hand at getting started I chose the easiest and most useful Microformat - contact information - and used the hCard creator to make myself an hCard. Simple, I thought. I liked it.

Then I tried to add my personal contact information to the Work Industries contact page. Oh. Not so simple.

I’ve got my James Sherrett vCard working to show my information and image. But what I want to do is create a keen way to download my contact information like they have on the Habaneros contact page (click on the contact details link then try the card link: presto!).

Anyone have any pointers? I feel like I’m one simple step away from getting it yet I’m at the end of my technical tether.

Beyond my technical flailings though, I want to point out that my experience with Microformats illustrates the problem on the web: it’s too hard. There’s too much friction to doing it. For Microformats (or any website or web application) to catch on and provide the benefit they promise, which would be a great thing, they have to offer lower friction. It’s simply too hard to do many things today. See the diagram at the top of this post. Do you understand it?

I’m even kind of a nerd about this kind of thing, I use an FTP program, and I’m stumped.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Web Content • Harebrained Ideas
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YouMail makes voicemail speak in multitudes

Remember my Harebrained Idea for the ‘I’m busy’ Voice Mail? Well today I read on the Under the Radar blog that a company called YouMail has developed a product that does kinda what I was looking for, and more.

YouMail is the new voice mail for cell phones. Among many features, it allows you to record unique voice greetings for anyone who calls you, based on their caller ID. Individualize your voice greetings for friends, family or important callers while maintaining a standard greeting for work and unknown callers.

Check your voice messages from any phone or via the web and forward favorite messages to anyone via email. Have fun with the already infamous DITCHMAIL feature that hangs up on unwanted callers after your custom greeting for them is played.

So it’s kinda what I was looking for, but not quite. I still want to be able to send certain calls to a custom message based on my situation, not based on who is calling. I want the system to work based on me, not based on the technology.

Oh well. It’s a start.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here

Filed under: • Harebrained Ideas
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