This morning I gave a talk to some Chinese businessmen on publishing. Mostly on ebook publishing. Right now, the big publishers are facing serious competition on many fronts. The Unique Selling [Proposition] (or USP) of a trade-publishing house is its ability to print large numbers of physical books cheaply and get them into lots of …
Continue reading ‘If you think publishers are stressed now …’ »
Matthew Ingram posted an interesting article a few days ago: Journalism’s biggest competitors are things that don’t even look like journalism. The point is that people have more options today. Think of all the things you used to get from the newspaper. Classified ads. Information on style trends. Political opinion. Social opinion. Local news. National …
Conversion rates on mobile aren’t very good, at least in part (I suspect) because nobody wants to fill out a form with one of those silly keyboards on a smart phone. Especially if you have autocorrect! Argh. However, a lot of people like to shop on their mobile device. They may be at a store, …
As I’ve said before many times, Apple and Amazon are not friends to subscription publishers. They either don’t understand the subscription publishing model, or, understanding it, they want to undermine it. The problem is that subscription publishing relies on a relationship between the publisher and the subscriber. It’s not a one and done thing like …
(No, I’m not shouting. REAL is an acrostic. Read on.) I was speaking with a publishing colleague recently about the need for a digital strategy. I came up with a generic list — something any publisher could do — but it didn’t scan, so I worked on it until I could put it into a …
For the simple reason that there is no publishing industry. This article — Is Print Really Killing Publishers? — makes the point very well. There is no such thing as “the” publishing industry, only publishing industries. “Digital transformation” is a chameleon term in the publishing industries. It can be about web sites, digital editions, apps, …
Continue reading ‘There is no digital transformation in the publishing industry’ »
Beware the flashy trends, especially when they are mostly promoted by developers who want you to spend money with them. A few years ago everything was “develop an app.” If you weren’t developing an app you weren’t one of the cool kids. You wouldn’t be allowed to sit at the right lunch table. You were …
In optimizing your website, sometimes you want to test something simple, like a red button vs. a blue button, or one kind of product image against another. You should be testing those sorts of things — often. Other times you want to test a complete redesign. Those are also worthwhile, but it’s harder to know …
Continue reading ‘Tweak the failing page on your A-B tests and test again’ »
Please don’t misinterpret this post. I am not saying the idea I’m going to describe is a good thing, but I do think it’s a possible way to make a lot of money by doing something slightly questionable. Or perhaps despicable. You decide. I despise personality tests. Myers Briggs, the little online “are you conservative …
How many more of the breathless predictions about the tablet are going to fail? It’s been obvious for a long time now that the tablet isn’t going to save the magazine. In fact, it’s been a money pit that publishers have been all too willing to waste their time on — for very little return. …
Continue reading ‘So much for the tablet saving everything’ »