Great Hosts We Will Be

Thomas Nelson is starting a learning experience which will result in a paradigm shift. We had Jon Dale in this week beginning his year-long engagement with our publishing groups. While we learned a lot from Jon, there was one resounding message Jon communicated:

We have to shift from not just being great content providers but great hosts too.

What does that mean? It means we still have to publish great content, but that’s not enough. To thrive in the future, we have to host online communities where our content’s raving fans can congregate to share their passion for our products, and our competitors’ products too.

It’s a brave new world.

R U DigiReady?

“Just ask yourself, what will publishing look like one hundred years from now? For Thomas Nelson to thrive then and now, digitally-ready content is the centerpiece of good business, good stewardship, and good strategy.” Bryan Norman, Senior Editor Nonfiction Trade Group

Thomas Nelson is about to start a very important initiative called DigiReady. DigiReady is a new process we will be implementing in editorial and Book and Graphic Design that allows for all titles to be published simultaneously in print and any electronic format.

Here’s why DigiReady is important:

Increased Sales – Today 17% of our Amazon sales are in e-book format, when we have both versions available on Amazon simultaneously. This percentage has been increasing monthly. Currently a new title is not generally ready for digital-release on the Kindle for weeks costing the company valuable sales. Today a new title has to go through a completely separate conversion process. DigiReady will allow us to make more digital sales more quickly starting the day a title is launched in its print format.

Reduced Cycle Time – The DigiReady process will cut between 2–12 weeks off of the time-to-market for a book. The quicker we can get a book to market, the sooner we can start selling it, and the faster we can recover our investment.

Improved Productivity – The DigiReady process will allow us to reduce a title’s digital conversion costs. It will also allow us to create derivative and bundled products much less expensively.

Better Marketing – DigiReady allows our marketing people to quickly send snippets or chapters of books to partners that can promote our book, such as online communities, web sites, and retailers. This will be very important for getting our books noticed quickly on Google and Amazon.

Our editorial staff will be going though initial DigiReady training on August 20 with a follow up session in early October. Basically, our editorial folks will be learning to apply styles to their MS Word manuscripts prior to sending them to BGD, allowing these many benefits to the company.

The company has done 14 DigiReady pilots so far. Like any new process there is a learning curve; the more you do it the better you get at it. For an average trade book, it takes an additional 3–4 hours over the life of the project for the editorial staff to make a book DigiReady; longer for more complicated books and shorter for simpler books.

The training will be conducted by Debbie Eicholtz and these brave editorial folks who did the pilots:

• Jennifer McNeil
• MacKenzie Howard
• Bryan Norman
• Michael Stephens

They will also be our subject matter experts. I want to thank these folks for leading necessary change at Thomas Nelson so that we can quickly capture the digital opportunities available today for our content. The team has plans for making this training fun.

Like any new process or technology, there will be problems. The important thing is to make those problems learning opportunities, and share them with others so we can all be DigiReady as soon as possible. We have set up a page on Sharepoint where folks can share their learnings.

Thanks in advance to our editorial and BGD folks who will be at the center of making Thomas Nelson DigiReady. I would ask that the rest of the company support our editorial staffs as they learn DigiReady.

Finally, none of this would be possible without the deep research and solutions from Bob Edington and the Internet team. I appreciate their hard work and service.

You will see and hear much more about DigiReady in the next 30 days. Please send me your questions. We can all learn together.

Google Book Search – The Good, The Bad, The Relevant

Perhaps you have heard of Google Book Search. Here’s what’s good about it, what might be bad about it, and how we as publishers still remain relevant.

What is Google Book Search? It is an online repository of all books that Goggle can get their hands on – from scanning library copies to digital or analog titles provided by publishers. In fact, Thomas Nelson is providing Google all the titles we can and we have started to be able to track sales to books we have in the program.

Here’s why Google Book Search is good:

Book Awareness – Every time someone is looking for information on a subject, Google’s powerful search engine looks at everything including books in the online repository. A book, instead of an online site, may be exactly what the searcher was looking for leading to a purchase. In other words, Google’s search engine acts like a big marketing machine, but we do not pay Google any marketing dollars in this scenario.

APIs – API stands for Application Programming Interface. Google’s API allows any site to implement a “Google Preview” button. It allows anyone any where to view our books right on their web site. Social networks, blogs, publishers and retailers can have the Google preview, which expands our marketing efforts.

Reporting – Google Book Search provides detailed data that can tell marketers a whole lot about who is interested in our books. For example, we will be able to see exactly what cities in the US are engaging in searches that lead consumers to our content. We can see the words consumers are using to find our content. This and other information Google Book Search provides us will help us to target our advertising dollars, such as relevant online communities for ads, etc.

There is, however, another side to Google that has some publishers worried. Some feel that Google is becoming their biggest content competitor, even though no more than 20% of the content can be viewed for free. Consumers can find the content they want quickly and never have to buy the product. – This is especially true for a generation satisfied with a few snippets of key information; perhaps not wanting to read an entire book.

How do we publishers maintain relevancy? We have to acquire, produce, organize and present content in a way that maximizes the consumer experience; better than Google can. Think about it…Google presents a listing of the various content around a set of key words. It is not organized for maximum effectiveness.

How do we publishers maximize the content’s effectiveness?

1. Choice: Give the consumer a choice. Make sure we are producing content in the format the consumer wants; book, e-book, video, audio, online, etc.
2. Media Rich Products: Produce media rich products that combine the various formats for the most impactful consumer experience.
3. Web-ready: Make sure all new titles are tagged in XML and ready for multiple format distribution.
4. Know Thy Customer: To do the above, you must really know your customer. The online communities we are starting to build will allow us to do that. (I will blog on that soon.)

Understanding the consumer, acquiring relevant content, and presenting it in its most compelling format is what we do as publishers. If we keep up with the technology, devices and online opportunities we will continue to be relevant. Our future is bright.

Wanted: Content Producers

Bob Edington and I spent several days this week in San Jose, California (aka The Silicon Valley) and Seattle, Washington. We met with some very smart people that have access to the people and companies driving the newest technologies and how those devices will impact content. The implications to Thomas Nelson will be substantial over time.

While there were many insights learned, two really stood out: Three Screens and Media Rich Content.

Three Screens
Many device and software makers are focused on the same thing - maximizing a media rich content experience on the three screens that are/will be wired to the web 24/7:

1. Computer
2. Smart Phone
3. Television

Content in the future must be portable and presentable on any device 24/7; in whatever format the consumer wants it. There will be a major proliferation of these devices in the next 18 months and we can expect to see prices drop tremendously. Compared to the new devices in development, the Kindle will seem like those large cream-colored cell phones of the 80s.

Media Rich Content
What does media rich content mean? - Content presentation formats seamlessly integrated appropriately for the three screens. These are some of the content presentation formats:

1. Text
2. Video
3. Audio
4. Web links (Blogs, communities, author sites)

Text will seem so boring; already is to our kids. Combining these content formats in different ways for different devices will allow the customer to consume the product the best way for them.

100% web enabled devices are going to have a huge impact on what we do. Content is quickly portable among the three screens. Oh, and wait till you see what Google can do with all of this in my next blog.

How many of our authors and publishers are thinking about making media rich products? We could continue to publish just text, but text-only will limit the audience and the message’s impact; especially with consumers under 30 years-old. I am not saying books will go away, but more and more there are more interesting ways to present the content.

As one very smart person said, book publishers need to start thinking more like content producers and less like book editors. What do you think?