Book Widgets – Increase Book Sales by 9%

From an earlier blog, you might remember that the #2 source of consumer book awareness is online media. Traditional media such as print, radio and TV are basically dead accounting for less than 5% of book awareness today.

One of the best ways to build title awareness online is to use a book widget. In fact, Amazon.com reports that titles utilizing book widgets on average sells 9% more books.

So, what is a book widget? Book widgets are an online tool that enables Amazon-like search-inside-the book capability any where on the web. You can place a widget link on any site, and readers can get an easy preview of the book. And, the widget can have other functionality such as a buy button.

Check out this widget for The Noticer. It is in the upper right hand corner of my blog. If I can do it, anyone can do it!!

Did you know that our Ingram CoreSource relationship includes the automatic creation of a book widget on every title placed in their system? Yep, a book widget that is already paid for that can be placed as many places online as you want.

Advantages to the Ingram book widget, such as The Noticer widget:

For authors or retailers

1. Lets anyone put sample pages of the book on any web page.
2. 9% average growth in sales for books with preview capability compared to those without it.
3. Encourages the viral spread of the titles.
4. Customizable buy button (if using Ingram’s widget).

For fans/readers/media

1. Put a sample of a Thomas Nelson book on any of your blog posts or social network profiles.
2. Share the preview with friends or colleagues.
3. Search inside a book to look for specific topics.
4. Change the buy link to go to your favorite store or remove it all together (if using Ingram’s widget).

Go to www.thomasnelson.com/consumer/widget.asp and search by the title or ISBN for the product you want.

Ingram is not the only widget available and sales improve no matter which widget is used. We have hundreds of books on Ingram’s widget, but Issuu’s widget is easier to customize, but requires someone manually uploading a PDF of the book.

To see all that we have with Ingram, go to http://thomasnelson.insidethecover.com/ and search by “Thomas Nelson”.

For more information on widgets, contact Dax Edwards at dedwards@thomasnelson.com.

Why XML Is Important

This blog is probably most interesting to the editorial folks at Thomas Nelson, because it will affect their jobs more than others’ jobs. Marketing will be the next most affected; XML will be an important tool to help them market our books. Finally, sales will love it, because XML will drive greater volume across multiple formats.

But you ask, “What is XML?” It’s Extensible Markup Language, of course. And then you ask a bit more irritated, “What is Extensible Markup Language and why do I care?” Here is why you care: XML allows us to create content once, and then nearly simultaneously turn that content into many different formats. We are more consumer-friendly. By launching all those formats, we sell more of our content more quickly.

Yep, we will be able to “tag” the content once, and then make a printed book, e-book, Iphone app, Ijournals and other formats that might be interesting to our changing consumer much more quickly. While there are many advantages to XML, here are three big advantages:

Multi-formats - Ability to produce multiple formats quickly, as indicated above.

Marketing – As online marketing continues to drive book awareness, XML allows for fast retrieval and delivery of relevant content to promote the book in a variety on online communities and marketing tools.

Productivity – Productivity gains come in several ways. For traditional books, Debbie Eicholtz finds that she cuts her department’s processing time on a typical trade book. It is too early to tell how much productivity can be gained, but it could be as much as 40-50% in some functions. Most companies consider an annual 4% productivity gain a good year, so even if the savings is a fraction of the 40-50% throughout the process it’s a good thing. That, however, is just the start. With XML, it is also much less expensive to create other formats.

So, how does XML provide all of these benefits? XML identifies all the content components in a manuscript. XML is “format agnostic”. That means it identifies the content’s components, and then can feed those components to the various tools that create other formats much more easily. Or, maybe we want to publish a custom or new book on Christian parenting. If our books are in XML, we could quickly create a new product based on searching the exsiting titles in Thomas Nelson's catalog for related content. There will be much we can do with XML. If you want to learn even more click on this blog for additional information.

Note that we have to “tag” the content to gain the advantages of XML. And, this is where there is some extra work for our editorial folks. Editors have to spend more time initially to prepare a title’s content. This is accomplished by simply working in the editor’s currently preferred native format of Microsoft Word. The editors apply more structure to the document. The additional structure allows the publishing process to easily separate the content from its presentation. This separation is important for simultaneously accommodating the different displays, for example, for various e-book formats.

We have had several successful pilots preparing our content in format-agnostic XML. Bryan Norman, Michael Stephens, Jennifer McNeil and McKenzie Howard have all participated in pilots for the company. It is additional work for them, but we are beginning to see the benefits. Many thanks to these pioneers for leading this important initiative.

The day is coming when we will be 100% XML on new titles. In addition, we have a company in India converting many of our backlist titles to XML as well. Why do this? Because more and more our consumers want our content in other formats besides the 600 year-old book. The consumer is always right.

Two Publishing Companies

“You have to run two publishing companies today; what publishing was and what publishing will be.”

That came from Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks. I think she was quoting someone else; wish I knew so I could given them due credit. Others also discussed how their publishing companies are changing:

Marcus Leaver - President, Sterling Publishers
Josh Marwell - President of Sales, Harper Collins
Dave Thompson - VP of Sales Analysis, Random House

A key take-a-way from the publishers and Mike Shatzkin: Publishing’s future is about owning very distinct narrow verticals, which can be described as very specific BISACs. If you do craft books, for example, you may be able to own the crochet vertical but someone else may own the beaded jewelry vertical.

To “own” the vertical you must own the community; the place where the crochet community can meet to share ideas, interact with the crochet leaders and acquire the leaders’ content in what ever format the consumer wants it: e-book, iapps, online, audio, software, podcast and books.

The successful “authors” will be those that can relate to the community, regardless of format. In many cases, it will be the authors that know how and have the desire to utilize social networking.

If you stop and think about that for a moment, the implications of “going vertical” are huge relative to today’s business model. I think, however, Thomas Nelson is already starting to adapt in some ways to this emerging business model.

To make it most relevant to my Nelson colleagues, consider how the presenters outlined how this might change your “traditional” publishing jobs.

Editorial

1. Product development cycles are going from 12-18 months to 2-6 months. In today’s world, it’s much easier to become irrelevant quickly; can’t wait 12 months for a book.


2. Acquisition editors need to look for authors that not only have great content, but an affinity for building a community with their audience; especially online.


3. Editors are not making books; but building content in format neutral XML. Sourcebooks has gone 100% XML.


4. More data analysis on what to publish; balancing it with the art of publishing.


5. Publishing fewer books; about 25% seems to be the reduction this year.


6. Editors are more engaged in the social networking aspect of the content, blurring the lines between marketing and editorial.

Marketing & Sales
I suspect marketing and sales becomes much more vertical specific. Nelson has already started to do that by grouping publishing, marketing and sales around groups of BISACs.

Marketing and sales are adjusting resource allocation. The change in focus can be seen in where these publishers say they are and are not spending their money.

Generally, this is where they are not spending money or spending much less:

1. Catalogs – Going to web-based e-catalogs with much more functionality and flexibility. This makes sense when the product development cycle is now just a few months. Print catalogs have been error-filled for decades, and it will only be worse with a shorter product development cycle time. It is interesting what HarperCollins is doing with e-catalogs to help buyers.
   
2. Trade shows – You just don’t need them with today’s consolidated, shrinking market and communication possibilities. Only foreign rights may need them, and most publishers are even questioning that.


3. Sales Conferences – Most going to Web Ex. Just too costly to fly everyone in from the far reaches. If publishers are flying reps in, they are only doing it once per year.


4. Author tours – Biggest waste of money. We all knew it, and now the community is online any way. Author tours are being replaced with webinars that can be measured to a direct sales impact. Webinars work, especially when the vertical community knows about them.


5. Traditional print, radio and TV media – These are dead. Random House’s survey confirmed other organizations’ surveys that these are ineffective medias for creating book awareness.


6. Print galleys

So, where is money being spent?

1. Holistic TITLE/CONTENT SPECIFIC vertical marketing plans that focus on social networks, community building and store placement. Sterling increased per title marketing spend by 66% in the past two years by doing away with so much stuff that no longer matters.
2. Digital and online medias
3. Increasing travel budgets in two ways: (a) Editors spending more time out with consumers, again blurring the marketing line. Editors have been too insular for two long and their historical format is becoming less relevant. (b) Sales people visiting accounts more often.
4. Strategically providing more free content
5. Partnering with related vertical sites and online communities
6. Lot’s of young people tweeting on key brands
7. e-galleys

Will all of this change happen over night? Nope. As Dominique Raccah said, we will be running two different companies at the same time. My hunch is that owning narrow verticals will change how publishers are structured; some employees will adapt and others will have a much harder time. Perhaps more on that in a future blog.

What do you think?

Codex/Wildfire Author Web Site Research

In 2001, the Codex Group surveyed nearly 21,000 book shoppers. The objective was to understand author web site effectiveness among book buyers. Attached is the ECPA handout made available by Wildfire Marketing.

Some of the findings:

1. Visiting the author’s web site is the #1 way book readers get to know their favorite authors.


2. Fans will almost always visit the author’s web site, before a publisher’s site with a web page on the book.


3. Book shoppers who visited an author’s web site bought 38% more books from a wide range of retailers than those shoppers that did not visit an author’s web site.

These are the three essential elements for an effective author web site, according to Wildfire Marketing:

1. Offer Free Value – A solid sample of how the books can improve the reader’s life.


2. Create a Reader Community – Utilize tools such as blogs, forums and e-newsletters.


3. Capture Contact Information – Allows authors to stay in touch with their readers and proactively build relationships.

In addition, there are specific factors that must be considered for fiction and non-fiction book web sites. Download the ECPA handout for specifics.