Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog

The Evolution of Content Consumption

Eric Shanfelt's article in the latest issue of Publishing Executive magazine is called Publishing in a Fragmented Online World.  Here's the excerpt that got me thinking:

How can we get our content to our readers however they want to get it?  Does a reader want to get our latest content by visiting our web site?

These questions are intertwined and I'd argue the answer to the second one is "no."  Are you familiar with that saying that, "the best camera is the one that's with you"?  The same logic applies to reading.  A book is great, my Kindle is nice but my iPhone is always with me so the bulk of my content consumption happens via that small screen.

Here are some of the more noteworthy ways my reading habits have changed over the last few years:

iPhone, not the Kindle.  OK, I prefer to read a lengthy book on my Kindle, but that's about it.  A year ago I liked the Kindle for newspapers.  But then the NY Times offered the same content via a free app, so I dumped the Kindle subscription.  I've been paying for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on my Kindle but I'm about to cancel that one too now that I can get it for free via another app.  So the Kindle has quickly become a long form content-only option for me now.

Apps, not browser access.  And since I'm consuming more and more content on my iPhone, this has become a critical distinction.  It's also why I say "no" is the answer to Shanfelt's second question.  To me, the iPhone Safari browser is for emergency use only.  I don't want to access your website that way even if you've "optimized it for mobile access."  A well-designed app is always going to offer UI touches you just won't find in a mobile UI view of your website.  I'm much more likely to access your content if it's available as an ap than I am if I have to use my browser.  There's a reason the phrase, "there's an app for that," is so darned popular!

Far less RSS.  My RSS reader used to be my first and last stop of the day.  Now I rarely use it.

Short form, not long form.  I'm an info-snacking addict.  The Kindle enables it but the iPhone perfects the experience.

More Twitter, less blogs.  18 months ago I was a non-believer in the Twitter revolution.  Now I use it throughout the day.  It has its flaws and one day something will replace it, but it's a nice solution for now.  The time I used to spend reading (and writing) blogs has shifted to Twitter.  I find myself less attracted to the long form writing in blogs and more to the short bursts of Twitter.  FWIW, I used to write 4-6 posts for this blog every week and now I typically only write one, but I also write anywhere from 3-10 or more tweets per day.  Despite that, traffic continues to grow modestly and nobody has complained so it seems like the right approach.

Have you seen similar trends with your reading habits?  Different trends?  No change whatsoever? :-)

A Blog-to-Book Critic

Caroline McCarthy of CNET posted this article today about the blog-to-book phenomenon.  While she points out several noteworthy blog-to-book disappointments, I can't help but wonder about the successful ones she didn't mention.  Her article focuses on highly visible trade titles and perhaps the hit rate is less there than in my world of mostly technology-oriented books.  Nevertheless, we're thrilled with the success of several of our blog-to-book titles including Naked Conversations, Lifehacker (which is currently in its second edition, Upgrade Your Life) and our most recent offering, ProBlogger.

Having seen a few of these work so well it's clear author platform is vital, but there is at least one other key ingredient required as well: the reader's hunger for something beyond the blog.  Think about your top 10 favorite blogs.  After reading their latest posts how many times have you wished for something more, not just the next series of posts?  How many times did you leave that site or RSS feed and think, "gee, I wish that blogger would come out with a book"?  If you're like me your answer is "rarely."

Most of the blogs I read on a regular basis leave me quite satisfied and I rarely find myself wishing for more.  Additionally, I generally love the short bursts of content each blog offers and probably wouldn't have the same reaction if the material was presented in chapter-length pieces instead.  IMHO, that's the main reason why it's hard for some of these wildly successful blogs to cross over into the bookosphere.

Booksquare Strikes a Nerve...In a Good Way

Kassia Krozser does an excellent job with the Booksquare blog.  It's one of my favorites.  So when I saw the title of one of her recent posts, Why Publishers Should Blog, my antenna went up.  Now that I've finished reading it, I'm both disappointed and inspired.  No, I'm not disappointed by what Kassia has to say -- I think she's absolutely right.  I'm just concerned that my blogging efforts for the past 3+ years have been misguided.  But there's hope.

Kassia's post talks about the similarities between publisher catalogs and publisher websites.  Unfortunately, most publisher websites aren't much more than the catalog in HTML format.  Where's the personality?  Who are the people behind the scenes making these books?  Where's their passion and vision?  And yes, while most readers probably care more about the author's passion, vision, etc., what's wrong with the publishers, editors, marketers, etc., participating as well?

My blog isn't connected in any way with a Wiley website/catalog.  That's true for most publishers and publisher blogs out there.  Even the ones with links to their blogs from their publisher websites are nothing more than that...simple links.

I don't want to read too much into what Kassia is saying, but I got inspired by interpreting her message as, "hey, you've got the catalog site, and maybe you've got a blog or two; why not integrate them better so that visitors get a real feel for who you are and how that ties into these books?"

Btw, if my blog magically wound up getting integrated with the imprint websites my group publishes into (highly unlikely), that's not going to change a thing.  One blog and one point of view won't make a difference.  What we really need are for representatives from all the various departments of a publishing house (e.g., publisher, acq editor, dev editor, marketer, etc.) to come together on this, and that's like moving heaven and earth.

Nevertheless, when I think about a publisher's website that not only features the usual catalog content but also a high likelihood that I'll bump into the publisher, editor or other people associated with the book I'm interested in, well, that would be be highly appealing to me.  I could see a site like that evolving into more of a social network for the publisher, their authors and customers.  One central location where all the players could have meaningful discussion and debate about a book.  How fun would that be?

Any publisher thinking about overhauling their website ought to give serious consideration to the social networking aspects of what Kassia is suggesting.  Nobody's there yet, but the first publisher or two to create a model like this will be the envy of the industry.

P.S. -- Speaking of publisher blogs...  I recently stumbled across a fine one called Books on the Nightstand.  It's written by a couple of Random House employees and should be on any booklover's RSS feed list.

Blog to Book and the $300K Advance

The New York Times recently ran this article about the latest book-to-blog success story, Stuff White People Like.  The blog was launched in January, quickly ran up the Technorati Top 100 list and is currently in the 40's-50's, depending on when you look it up.

Converting a blog to a book isn't exactly new, but paying the author a $300K is pretty bold, especially when you're talking about a $14 book.  The article notes that Random House would have to sell about 75K copies to earn back that advance.  That's a pretty healthy sales number but I question whether even 75K copies will earn back the $300K author advance.

Let's start with the $14 cover price.  The typical discount to retailers is 50%, but I could see this one going into more mass outlets than usual and probably being part of some other deeper discount promotions.  Let's assume the average discount is about 55%, which is still probably conservative.  That leaves the publisher with 45% of the cover price, or $6.30 per copy.

The author's royalty rate is unknown and there are other factors that could come into play on this part of the calculation.  So, rather than speculate on this variable, let's just look at the author advance divided by the publisher's net revenue against the 75K units cited in the article.  Using the $6.30/unit from above, sales of 75K copies would produce $472,500 in publisher revenue.  Divide the $300K author advance by the $473K publisher receipts and you get 63%.  In other words, Random House would have to pay the author a royalty rate of 63% (against net) in order for the author to earn out that $300K advance after selling 75K copies.

That seems pretty darned unlikely to me.  And although this blog has a lot of momentum right now, a $300K advance seems extremely rich and highly speculative for this one.  I'll be curious to monitor the book's sell-through results in Bookscan when it comes out later this summer.

Fractal Press Interview with Navanit Arakeri

I recently stumbled across an interesting new publishing venture called Fractal Press.  The headline on their website says "We Publish Blog Anthologies", which sparked my curiosity.  I was fortunate enough to catch up with co-founder  Navanit Arakeri for the following interview:

JW: At Fractal Press you're planning to produce a print book on personal finance using the best of the blogosphere.  Where did this idea come from and how has it evolved?

NA: The general idea is to build multi-author books based on valuable existing content in the blogging community.  Our approach is heavily inspired by Art de Vany and Nassim Taleb. The idea first came up when we approached the question: "What can we do if we don't know anything?"  So it was essentially a risk-management issue and the problem of acting under uncertainty. Fractal Press is one instantiation of the general framework that emerges from studying this question.

Positive-skew (low-downside, potentially high-upside), massive diversification, and power-law (long-tail) environments were what we were looking for. I initially pitched the idea as "Fallible Publishing" that involved diversification across as many dimensions as possible (multi-author books) and benefiting from the massive bottom-up tinkering going on in the blogosphere.

As we worked with the idea we realized that there are plenty of other benefits that emerge when we work with content in the blogosphere. For instance, it has been shown that artists who worked on their pieces without any monetary incentives show more "flow" and enjoyment of the process when compared to artists who worked on similar pieces but with monetary incentives. Bloggers write on topics that they care about, while we play a minimal role in terms of editorial direction, heavy-handed changes, or monetary incentives during the creating process -- we believe this vastly improves the author-publisher relationship and makes it much less adversarial than is usually the case.

We also realized that we offer a pretty unique way for bloggers to monetize their content without compromising the design and aesthetics of the blog.  I've written about our fallible approach in general in a post on our philosophy and another on editorial control.

JW: How can personal finance bloggers get involved in the project and how will they be compensated?

NA: Personal Finance bloggers can simply email me at navanit@fractalpress.com, or they can install our button to help us find them.

We have been fortunate in that we already have some of the top Personal Finance bloggers appearing in our anthology. These are folks who have been featured in The New York Times and write regularly for major online financial channels in addition to blogging. We are currently moving forward based on recommendations from them. We also use rankings from del.icio.us, technorati, and other blog tracking tools to help us make decisions on which blogs to follow up with.

Bloggers will be compensated like regular authors based on a percentage of the proceeds from the sales of the book. Given our approach to risk management, we can afford to be particularly generous with our authors. A traditional publisher has to pay the bills while they wait for an author to finish the book in a year or so, we don't have that problem since we use existing content and can get a book out much more quickly.

We donate the proceeds from the first 100 sales to charity.

JW: Are you planning to leverage the blogosphere for PR and general visibility in the market?  Can you share any of your marketing plans with us at this point?

NA: I think this is where our understanding of uncertainty, particularly the mathematics of information cascades will come into play. One of the best features of having so many contributors in an anthology is the large number of "seeding" points that can trigger an information cascade. Our approach will resemble a "starburst" release akin to releases in the movie industry.

We are also experimenting with other ideas such as the new Kindle and ebook platforms that are being introduced. Essentially, we hope to leverage the digital medium to drive sales in the real world.

JW: Is it safe to assume you're running this project through a print-on-demand vendor?  If so, which one and when do you expect to have books available?

NA: Yes, print-on-demand is the best way to manage the uncertainty in this business. We're working with Lightning Source, a print-on-demand provider based in Tennessee. We are also looking into other providers and keeping an eye on the competitive landscape.

We expect to launch the Personal Finance anthology by the end of April. It should get easier and quicker after the first book is out when we'll be able to streamline our processes and focus on building momentum.
JW: Are you planning follow-up books to the personal finance one?  If so, are you sticking with the financial area or venturing into other sectors?

NA: We have many other topics in mind including productivity, fitness, and entrepreneurship. There are some fantastic bloggers in these areas. We're also looking into working with particularly prolific individual bloggers who have great content that can be molded into a book.

Based on our focus on diversification, we will venture into as many sectors as possible . In the future our decision-making around this will be influenced by the success of our past books and our ability to leverage existing information cascades.

Joe2Go Fully Loaded!

All the archives from Publishing 2020 are now available in PDF or Kindle format via this page.  Feel free to download the free PDFs or get the 99-cent Kindle versions from Amazon.

Thanks again to Jim LaRoche and his BlogBook service for pulling all this together -- he did a fantastic job and I highly recommend his service.

The Newest Kindle Download: Joe2Go!

In a lunchtime post today I mentioned that Jim LaRoche was working on another feature for my blog's new Joe2Go option.  I couldn't mention it then because it wasn't ready at the time, but it is now and it's pretty cool.  If you own a Kindle you can grab the 2007 Publishing 2020 archive for it via this link.  Granted, it's 99 cents vs. the free PDF you can get via this link, but hey, it's for the Kindle (and Amazon insists on a minimum price of 99 cents)!

I'm pretty sure this is the first blog archive to be offered on the Kindle platform.  Yes, I'm aware of the blog access Amazon sells for the Kindle, but I haven't seen any other blog archives available for it.  Please correct me if I'm wrong...

Once Jim gets the 2005 and 2006 archives assembled they'll also be made available as Kindle downloads.

Joe2Go: Take the Publishing 2020 Blog With You

It was three years ago that Robert Scoble and Shel Israel "nudged" me into the blogosphere.  I've had a great time with the Publishing 2020 blog but I've often wondered how accessible the older posts are for a new visitor.  Sure, I've got a search widget and monthly archive links in place, but there are over 900 posts and 2,00 comments to sift through.  This site is just begging for a more usable archive solution.  Thanks to Jim LaRoche and his BlogBooks service, I finally have the answer to the problem.

Jim started with my 2007 posts/comments and created an archive of the entire year.  You can find it here, as a PDF file that has been formatted to look and feel just like my blog.  All of the internal and external links are also preserved, making it a very useful document.

Jim is currently working on archive PDF files for my 2006 and 2005 posts and comments.  I'll make a follow-up post with links when those are available.  He's also doing something else with these archives that I hope to post about in the next day or two, so stay tuned...

If you've got a blog with a sizable archive I recommend you check out Jim's BlogBook service.

Grand Text Auto and the CommentPress Theme

Grand Text Auto is "a group blog about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art."  I stumbled across it in this Blog Herald article by Anne Helmond.  One of Grand Text Auto's authors, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, is using the blog as a peer review platform for his upcoming book, Expressive Processing.

Several books have been built around a blog before, of course, including our group's own Naked Conversations.  What I find interesting in the Expressive Processing project though is their use of a WordPress theme called CommentPress.  The typical blogging tool/platform was designed for much broader use than just book authoring and editing.  That's why it's so awkward at times to comment on or read comments about book content that is being written on a blog.  Questions like "what paragraph does this comment refer to?" are pretty common, particularly since all the comments appear at the end of the post with no linkage to a section in the post/chapter itself.

CommentPress does a great job addressing this issue.  Take a look at Expressive Processing and you'll see what I mean.  For example, this particular passage called "Audiences and Processes" had 5 comments when I wrote this post.  All 5 of those comments are tied to the second paragraph, hence the number 5 just below the comment bubble next to the second paragraph.  Click on that bubble to display the comments tied to that paragraph.  As you scroll down you'll notice that the comments box remains anchored on the screen so it's always right there for easy access.

If you're writing a book on a blog or know somebody who is, be sure to tell them about the CommentPress theme.

Blurb Choked While Slurping My Blog

Huh?  That's right.  Blurb choked while slurping my blog.  Blurb offers a "blog to book" service and even Stephen Wildstrom of BusinessWeek is hyping the site.  I've been looking for a way to package my blog content into a book and Blurb seemed like a great solution.

I downloaded their BookSmart software and pointed it to my Publishing 2020 blog.  It started to slurp (their word, not mine) the blog and then it apparently encountered a hairball.  BookSmart showed a list of posts that mysteriously ended about a year or so ago.  I figured I'd continue to see what this partial slurp looked like and was even more disappointed...

The content got poured into a book but it was a bit of a hodgepodge format.  Some posts and comments flowed well while other posts ended partway down a page and each short comment that followed was given a page to itself, resulting in loads and loads of unnecessary whitespace.  Then there were the images...  It's hard to say what happened to all those book covers and other graphics I've featured with each post, but they got cropped and distorted in all sorts of ways.  I eventually gave up and shut BookSmart down.

In Blurb's defense, I did notice the word "beta" on the BookSmart splash screen...although it quickly disappeared and "beta" doesn't appear anywhere on their home page.  Regardless, I tried BookSmart version 1.9.2, so perhaps Blurb will get these issues resolved by the time version 2.x.x comes out.

Can't someone create a simple blog import tool (that works!) where the finished product is a PDF?!