3 Billion People – From Listeners to Readers to Writers

This is the fifth post in a continuing series from a technology seminar by Creative Strategies at Thomas Nelson on October 23, 2009.

The printing press turned listeners to readers. Will the Internet turn readers to writers and/or participants? (Creative Strategies Technology Seminar - October 23, 2009)

As I posted earlier, we will have 3 billion consumers connected through smart phones, computers and web-enabled TV in 2010. This creates an unprecedented opportunity in history for people to quickly and inexpensively communicate. If you doubt this will happen, consider the numbers of bloggers today:

• Over 100,000,000 blogs
• 85% of 18-35 year-olds are active posters, commentators and uploaders

The critics will cite the Despair.com wall poster:

BLOGGING: Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.

This blog may indeed fit that description. But still, never before has it been so easy for so many to say what’s on their mind and quickly send it around the world. We can’t ignore the power of the people, because they will be heard more than ever before; no way around it. It’s now a two-way relationship; not just publishers pushing out content.

The opportunity is to harness that powerful network. My next blog will discuss how we as content producers can harness that network.

Digital Leadership

On July 23rd I posted a blog titled R U DigiReady? The blog discussed what DigiReady means, and why we are implementing the DigiReady process at Thomas Nelson. As the post indicates, this is why we are training our folks on DigiReady:

1. Increase Sales
2. Reduce Cycle Time
3. Improve Productivity
4. Better Marketing
   

DigiReady will allow us to simultaneously launch product in multiple formats, print and digital. If you have any questions about the explosive growth of e-books, check out Michael Shatzkin's latest blog. In some cases over 35% of Amazon sales of a book are the e-book format. Apple, among others, is about to enter the market with their own device. We can't be DigiReady fast enough.

Next week we begin training our freelancers and editors on how to create DigiReady products at Thomas Nelson. We are training 16 outside freelancers and 14 internal editors. (That’s in addition to the four internal editors already trained.) Please support them as they learn this new process. Like any change, it takes some time to become the new standard operating procedure. There will be bumps along the way, and we will work through them.

We have completed 14 DigiReady pilots to date. This is what our editors are saying about DigiReady:

“This DigiReady process is the best thing we could do to protect the life of a book. We want these words to reach as many people as possible; this is a simple, easy way to make sure that happens.” Jennifer McNeil, Editor, Nonfiction Trade Group

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

“One of the biggest benefits of making our documents DigiReady is that it enables the elements of the manuscripts to be thought out more thoroughly before they go to Book and Graphic. This structure should really enhance our communication with Debbie and her team on the front end of our process and cut down on style issues with our proofs.” MacKenzie Howard, Editor, Children's Books and Education

“Electronic publishing is an important part of the Bible reference market today, and it will only become larger in the future. Creating really useful electronic versions of our backlist books and Bibles—files with active links for Bible references for instance—currently requires a lot of work for each electronic platform we want to use. The DigiReady process will minimize the duplicated work and produce files that work on a variety of devices with little additional editorial effort.” Michael Stephens, Ph.D. Acquisitions Editor - Bible, Reference, and Curriculum

Thanks in advance to all the Thomas Nelson editors and freelancers that will be learning DigiReady. Your efforts will place Thomas Nelson on the leading edge of publishing today.