Why Scott Lubeck will be good for the future of the Book

In my opinion, one of the bigger pieces of news in the book industry last week, passed by very quickly and very quietly. The appointment of Scott Lubeck as the new Executive Director of BISG barely made a ripple in Twitter and the Blogosphere. But, I'll bet that two or three years from now, when we look back at this appointment, we'll all understand how important a date it was.

In this huge industry transition that we are all feeling, many of my colleagues in the industry have attempted to define what publishers are and why they are important. Most of these arguments center around editorial and marketing value added services. While I agree that these are hugely important, I have not yet read anything that talks about how publishers are the managers of the content supply chain.

The content supply chain is a dirty, ugly, frustrating, and expensive part of the business that facilitates the movement of money and product. Ordering, billing, shipping, status, returns, and product information movement, are things that publishers and readers simply take for granted. But without it, there is no business, and no money for anyone.

Until very recently, the content supply chain meant only the movement of physical product, and the processes involved were largely sorted out among the key industry players. For the last 25 years, publishers, distributors, retailers, wholesalers, and data aggregators have scratched and clawed at standardizing almost every piece of this complex operation. Much of the credit for this accomplishment belongs to BISG for facilitating standards and driving consensus among its members.

But now we are in a new era. The product being supplied is still physical, and it is also electronic. The number of partners involved in the content supply chain is exploding to include many who have never been involved in books before, and have no knowledge of standards used in the book industry. Many believe that the cost of doing business should be far cheaper as there are no "trucks" or "warehouses" or "printing" involved. True, BUT, there are now no standard processes for content delivery, or storage, or distribution, or security or display. It's a complete "wild west" again, and most of what's happening now is largely manual, very time consuming, and very expensive.

All of this means that the book industry needs to largely re-invent the content supply chain, and we don't have 25 years to do it. This means that we need to bring together people who are familiar with the old supply chain, with people that understand the issues involved with the new supply chain. This is where Scott Lubeck comes in.

There are many people in our industry that are regularly seen as pioneers. People who see the future run out ahead of the rest of us, and start clearing a path for the rest of us to follow. Often those pioneers get wounded or killed in the process, but the best of them keep on moving forward.

If there was ever a pioneer in the field of digital publishing, it is Scott Lubeck. Now, my guess is that many of you have never heard of him, but this is a man who has been working diligently in and among us for a very long time. A man who has held senior publishing and technology positions inside publishers and for publishing services companies. He's been an editor, a press director, a CIO and a General Manager.

One need only look down the list of his resume to see his legacy as leader and entrepreneur in a culture of change. He has been on the leading edge of digital publishing technology as far back as 16 years ago when he was the director of the National Academies Press - where they were the first press to put their full publications online for free.

Scott may not have a pedigree from the current locus of big publishers and big retailers that have determined the current supply chain best practices, but I think that this is a real advantage during this time of great change. There is no doubt that the locus of publishing is moving, and right into Scott's wheelhouse. BISG will need to bring in a whole new set of constituents, and once again hammer out the unglamourous details of how to make money and product move smoothly and efficiently, and to bring down costs.

I applaud the BISG board for recognizing this trend and recognizing that they need a leader who has a skill set that is different from prior directorates - one who will be able to build on what BISG has built and lead it into new directions that will better serve the entire industry.

Innovation - 5% Planning, 95% execution

Thomas Edison might not appreciate my application of his famous quote about invention, but I do think that invention and innovation are very similar concepts.

For the past two years, dozens of conferences like today’s BISG Making Information Pay (MIP) event and the ECPA Leadership Summit earlier this week, and our own event a month ago, have been focusing on the interesting changes being made in the publishing industry by a few key companies. Looking back now, it seems that those few have been very impressive on multiple fronts. Not only did they focus on an innovative idea, they acted on it, and made it real. The simple fact that they planned and executed the development of an idea seems to be the real victory. Virtually all of the speakers at MIP today were speaking about things that they had DONE, not things that they were planning to do.

And execution seems to be what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. In my estimation, successful companies have a culture of execution. They don’t just talk about doing things, they actually do them. And then, they review the results and improve the process. In today’s MIP event, Carolyn Pittis explained that this was certainly the case at HarperCollins.

Size doesn’t matter in this either. O’Reilly Media, self considered the third largest computer book publisher, is widely viewed as the most innovative publisher in the business. The reason isn’t because they simply talk about their ideas; it is because they demonstrate them! Michael Cader of Publisher’s Lunch and Publisher’s Marketplace showed in today’s MIP that very few resources are really necessary to create very innovative services.

Other publishers we work with like Island Press, The University of Chicago Distribution Center, the University of Nebraska Press, and Southern Illinois University Press, also have cultures of execution, even though they have limited resources. These companies continue to drive themselves forward, not worrying about whether others are or not. This type of self reliance is refreshing and exhilarating to be around, and I applaud these companies for their efforts. They are truly Firebrands!

What I think is so impressive about these companies is that execution of a new idea can be a nerve wracking and risky move. When we launched Firebrand, I was privately wondering right up until the night before the launch whether it was a good idea. Fortunately, by that time the plan had so much momentum that my private worries were overwhelmed. Now looking back, I’m very pleased that was the case!

Will Kindle help Amazon Command the Self Publishing Marketplace?

Yesterday a friend asked me about the proprietary nature of the Kindle. "Why would Amazon want to only have content in its own format?" I didn't have a good answer. My first inclination was that the use of only proprietary formats of ebooks might be simply a functionality prioritization, and that in a later release, Kindle will be able to handle other forms of e-content.

This afternoon I was cleaning up my desk and ran across the business card of someone from BookSurge - and that got my gears grinding.

BookSurge is an Amazon company that helps people self-publish their books. They offer editorial, marketing, and print-on-demand services for people who (for whatever reason) won't get published by an established publishing house. This is a burgeoning market and one where BookSurge has many competitors.

In fact, according the the Under the Radar Study by BISG back in 2005, aggregated sales of books from publishers who (individually) have less that $1 Million in annual revenue, is estimated to be nearly $3 Billion per year. That's a pretty big market to service, especially if you have way of taking a significant chunk of that $3 Billion for yourself.

From BookSurge's website, they even say the following:

Not only can BookSurge help you create a high-quality, highly marketable book, we can also provide you with exclusive tools and resources to help you gain exposure, develop an audience, and build readership for your work.

Exclusive tools? Like maybe we can distribute your titles through Kindle, and we won't take any from other self-publishers? That's a pretty big exclusivity factor for an author thinking of self-publishing.

food for thought.

And Here comes Random House!

Harper gets off to an early lead, bringing their 'widget' out first. But here comes Random House!

Their slicker, more functional 'widget' is now out of the shoot. So the race is on!

We've been working on a test with the Random House widget on our eloquence site. If you want to take a look at it in real life, click on the "Look Inside" link on this eloquence page.

Take a look at the way Random House has documented their widget to aid people in using it for the first time. It also has multiple features not found in Harper's. Some of the features include, displaying multiple sizes, searching for text strings inside the widget (using a Google text search), and offering ways to buy the book, and/or place the widget on your own social networking site.

Now that the widgets are out, we have a new race in the content distribution world. Whether to deliver .PDF's to search engines, or to have the search engines come to you!

It's a wild west like atmosphere out there when it comes to content distribution. I think that my friends at BISG better get their lasso out and try to corral all the players out there to get some standards in place, or no one will know what to do.

I know that Random, Harper, Ingram and others are all trying to create networks that communicate with the Google's, Amazon's, Yahoo!'s and Microsoft's of the world, and there is no clear standard emerging - yet. And there are a lot of details to work out... how much to show, where can the book be purchased from, etc.

No one has really figured out a universal monetization scheme for electronic content, but everyone knows that there is demand for a look inside like program. I am sure that several small schemes will emerge, hopefully enough to justify the expenditures in all this technology.

The Independent Bookseller

Last year, I worked on behalf of the BISG office on a survey of bookstores. The survey was ostensibly about the kinds of data that bookstore buyers needed in order to make their purchases. The main hypothesis behind the survey was that publishers should focus their efforts on giving buyers the specific data elements that they need in order to make informed decisions. Part of the survey was done via an online form, and part was phone interviews with buyers. In this process, I personally spoke to buyers from 30 independent stores to get their views.

Buyers don't look at title information, the way that techies (aka product information evangelists) like me, think that they do. And, because the online form was geared around the original hypothesis, the results that came back were, unsurprisingly, useless. So, the formal survey failed, and the results were never published. However, what I learned in my phone interviews - while anecdotal from a statistical point of view - was profound to me in its simplicity.

I found two significant things during my conversations:

1. Independent bookstores that had not been put out of business by the rise of the chain stores, online retailers, big box retailers, and price clubs, were in fact, thriving.
2. The buying process is incredibly personal. Bookstore buyers, for the most part, rely heavily on the recommendations of their sales reps, the recommendations of other independent bookstores, and the feedback from their customers.

And, to a great extent, these two elements are tightly intertwined. The reasons behind these findings were equally interesting and insightful. They also gave me great confidence in the role of the independent store in the ecosystem of bookselling, and in fact, book publishing in general.

I also think that publishers can learn alot from some of these simple lessons. So, let's dive in and look at them.

Why are many independents thriving? Generally speaking it is because they have questioned the assumption that their mere presence in the community was important to the community. They have turned themselves from a business that simply received customers to a business that went out and got customers - or better said, they have gone from businesses that are generally reactive, to businesses that are generally proactive. The successful stores are the ones who are understanding and leveraging their own unique strengths in their communities.

Many of the independents I spoke to talked about their roles in the creation (and supplier) of local book clubs. Many work with and through the internet, using mass email mailings, RSS feeds, and targeted recommendations to keep themselves relevant in their customers minds. Others talked about the events they put on - especially related to authors. One very successful independent store owner, told me how she combs industry publications every week, looking for new deals that have been signed, and then proactively contacts the publisher to set up an event - even before a book has a publication schedule. Many also move these author events to venues outside the four walls of their store, so that they can bring more people into listen to what the author has to say.

Most of this transformation is eloquently described in one of the final chapters of (my favorite business book of all time), The Art of Profitability by Adrian Slywotzky. I highly recommend this book to anyone.

But, probably the most profound thing I got from my interviews was related to how personal this whole business is. Buyers at stores look through all the sales catalogs for the titles that catch their eye, but almost all (who have reps they trust) trust the recommendations of their reps. They will buy books recommended by their reps, even if they didn't see the fit of an individual title when they browsed the catalog. Equally true, they might bypass a title, that they thought might work, but the rep was lukewarm on.

And, what catches their eye? Many different things, but some are pretty obvious. Is there any connection to the geographic region of the store? Is the author from a nearby town? Does the author have some other connection (a brother, cousin, parent, or life history) to this particular community? Is the publisher putting any marketing muscle behind the title? Generally, buyers are looking for books that they can get behind personally, that their patrons will love.

It was incredibly powerful to hear time after time how important the rep was in this process. "They know our store, and they know the books". "If they say that I have to have a particular title - even if I disagree - I always buy one or two." Generally the feeling was that the rep helped the buyer cull the catalog down to those titles that the store needed, and equally important, help the buyer decide which titles they didn't need.

The importance of a title to the publisher was also a recurring theme. One buyer told me how they would heed the advice of an email that came from the VP of Sales at Random House, where he picked his favorite titles for the season. Other publishers signal their own picks by highlighting a national advertising campaign, or by publicizing the initial print run. Others, signal it through the position in the seasonal catalog. It seems clear that any help, buyers can get culling through the masses of titles being published (6,000 +/- per week) is greatly appreciated.

So what are the lessons for publishers?

1. Sell your books to the reps, and treat your reps like gold. They are the ones initiating grassroots demand for the title. In the age of the internet, the grassroots is where the power is.
2. Present as much information about the author as possible. Authors are the stars, and if the author has any type of connection to an individual community, their books will sell.
3. Layout your seasonal catalogs to make it easy for a buyer to get an understanding about whether the title will work for them. Most buyers I spoke to said that they spend less than 10 seconds on any given catalog page, so the title really needs to grab them. Leave alot of white space in a consistent place on the page so the buyer can markup the catalog.
4. Publishers need to identify and reach out to communities other than the bookselling community. When the list comes together, each title should be analyzed for the communities that may want it, and those communities should be marketed to directly.
5. As evil as it sounds, rank your titles, and make sure that the entire bookselling ecosystem knows which ones you are really behind.

comments? email me at ftoolan at qsolution dot com.

Data Certification and the End of EDRP

Last week I attended (by phone) a meeting of the BISAC Metadata committee on the subject of Data Certification.

As background, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), parent organization to BISAC, has the strategic objective to put in place a centralized title metadata certification program, much like the ones in place in the UK and in Canada. Michael Healy, Executive Director of BISG was in attendance at this meeting, and it was chaired by Richard Stark of Barnes & Noble who is the chair of the Metadata committee.

Michael has laid out his notions about the program in a draft document, and the committee discussed this document at length as well as several other related issues.

Some of you may recall that when the idea of certification came up in the past, I was vehemently against it. This was because it looked like a private company was going to be doing the certification, which to me represented a strong conflict of interest. Now that it has come up again, this issue has been resolved, and all certification - in whatever form it turns out to be - will be the responsibility of the BISG office. Given that stipulation, I am in favor of such a process.

At present, we have a 'de facto' certification process in place and it is known as Barnes & Noble's Efficient Data Receipt Program (EDRP). EDRP has been a tremendous boon to our industry as it forced B&N's top 100+ customers to take a hard look at the quality of information that was being presented on upcoming titles. 'Forced' is not too strong a word, as the threat of financial penalties for sending poor title information hung over publishers heads like the sword of Damocles.

In the two or three years following the introduction of EDRP, the entire publishing industry saw the benefits. Not only were buyers at B&N better prepared, the information on BN.com, Amazon.com, and every other retail site visibly improved. Publishers found that fixing their process around presenting data to B&N, fixed it for the entire trade. B&N deserves a tremendous amount of credit for this.

In more recent times, however, B&N has looked to expand the program, and from all indications - they may have hit a point of diminishing returns. The newer EDRP system made publishers take 'educated guesses' at some data points like carton quantities, which seemed to undermine the process. Additionally, few if any publishers where actually ever charged back real $ for their misdeeds. Now there are indications that the EDRP system may be discontinued for an indefinite period of time.

So, back to certification. As I said before, I am in favor of this, as it keeps some kind of bar in place for publishers to reach in order to communicate good information about their titles to the trade. And, with the waning EDRP, we need this program in place sooner rather than later. Otherwise, data quality will start to slip again, and all of us who evangelize on the subject will soon lose our credibility. Many of us that evangelize on this issue know that improving data quality happens one publishing entity (Publisher, Division, Imprint, Distributed Press) at a time, and often one person (inside each entity) at a time.

I feel that a program like this may hold very little weight with publishers unless there are some strong motivations for publishers to pay attention. Michael feels strongly that we cannot discuss 'carrots' or 'sticks' in our meeting, because legally it could put BISG in a conflicted position. However, without that discussion - even if it is constrained to be outside the committee, I don't feel this program will last very long.

In the Canada and in the UK, successful certification programs are in place due to the fact that one company (in each market) with enough clout to get publishers attention, said that publishers must comply. In the UK, it is Neilson BookData who controls much of the distribution of bibliographic metadata in the UK and Europe. In Canada, it is Indigo, who refuses to work with publisher data that is not certified by BookNet Canada.

So, hopefully, a major entity with enough clout will emerge in our market and get behind the program and keep our hard-won improvements in data quality on a positive trajectory.