Joe Wikert's DisruptorFest

Is your content strategy optimized for Millennials?

Unless your organization is a startup it’s highly likely you’re using a strategy and business model that’s worked for many years. That same strategy and business model might span multiple generations. Even though you’ve embraced the latest technologies and devices, are you also meeting the needs and expectations of the younger generation?

Here are four key points you need to consider:

Ownership – Remember the days when Steve Jobs suggested that consumers want to own their music, not rent it? That’s probably still largely true for anyone over 30 but Millennials have grown up with Spotify and Pandora. And if they’re willing to rent songs, which get consumed repeatedly, why do we think they’ll insist on owning a book they’ll only read once? The content streaming/rental segment will continue to grow like crazy, largely driven by Millennials.

Consumption – When Amazon launched the Kindle in 2007 Jeff Bezos talked about the concept of “information snacking”, where more short-form content is consumed, potentially at the expense of long-form reading. I’d argue that the iPad has done more to promote info snacking than the original Kindle but there’s no doubt that short-form content consumption is extremely popular. Whether it’s quick Facebook updates or 140-character tweets, Millennials have grown up in an era where communication brevity rules. Storytelling will never die but publishers of longer-form content need to make sure they have a model and products to remain relevant as Millennials become an even larger portion of the target market.

Value – What’s the value of digital content? The answer to that question largely depends on the age of the person being asked. Results of a recent survey note that the younger generation expects digital content to be free. That’s not terribly surprising given the lax file-sharing environments most of them have grown up in. Regardless of whether you believe we just need to better educate Millennials on copyright law the simple truth is they place a lower value on digital content than older generations tend to. Btw, part of the blame for this lower valuation belongs to publishers – when their digital offerings are just the print product on a device, oftentimes with even less functionality than the print version (e.g., inability to share, resell or simply give to someone else), why wouldn’t consumers place a lower value on the digital version? 

Privacy – Despite all the times Facebook has been criticized for their official privacy settings, policies and monetization techniques, I’ve never heard anyone under 20 years old complain. Parental guidance is frequently required to prevent Millennials from posting things today they’ll regret tomorrow. Millennials have grown up with social tools and they generally love sharing. Just compare an 18 year-old’s Facebook page with that of a 40 year-old and you’ll see the difference. Most of the privacy advocates have gray and thinning hair while Millennials will probably always be more liberal when it comes to sharing updates and content.

How does your strategy stack up in these four areas? You may have ignored them up to now because your current customers are older. Have you stopped to consider that those current customers will continue to age and there will be fewer of them in the future?

Why Amazon Firefly is important

At any given point in time it’s easy to assume that search engines have evolved as much as they’re ever going to. Sometimes it’s hard to avoid falling into the logic that was allegedly uttered long ago by Charles Duell: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

Putting the gimmicky eye candy called “Dynamic Perspective” aside for a moment, there’s another element to Amazon’s recently-announced Fire phone that everyone in the content industry needs to focus on: Firefly.

On the surface, Firefly also feels like a Fire phone gimmick. In reality, it’s a next generation search platform and likely to be the first significant Google challenger. I’m not suggesting Google will disappear or feel the pain anytime soon, but Firefly will force them to evolve.

Firefly lets you snap pictures of objects so you can buy them from Amazon. It’s the next step in showrooming, the process brick-and-mortar retailers loathe. Publishers need to look beyond Firefly’s ability to enable one-click purchase of a physical book sitting on a table. Rather, publishers need to consider how Firefly will eventually enable the discovery and consumption of all types of digital content as well.

Let’s say you’re at the ballpark watching the Pittsburgh Pirates play. You snap a picture of the beautiful city skyline, looking out from behind home plate in PNC Park. You’re curious to learn more about the park, the team or maybe even the city itself.

Instead of clicking the camera button, click the Firefly button on your Fire phone. Rather than just getting a photo you might not ever look at again, your screen is filled with search results. These aren’t just the website links you get from Google though. You’re looking at all sorts of free and paid content you can consume now or later.

All the usual suspects are included here. You’ll see links to books about the team, park and city. But you’ll also have an opportunity to buy the program, print or digital, from today’s game. And maybe there’s a link to purchase a digital edition of today’s local paper or just portions of it (e.g., the sports section, just those articles covering today’s game, etc.) The results could also include articles about the team/park/city, accessible via either a trial subscription or maybe they’ll ultimately be free thanks to the ever-expanding reach of Amazon Prime. 

Don’t forget that all these results won’t just appear in random order. Amazon will develop a search algorithm as sophisticated as Google’s, but with the benefit of all Amazon’s “customers who viewed x also viewed y” data and capabilities.

Most importantly, don’t forget the power of paid placement in these results. Amazon has generated plenty of revenue from publishers for placement and promotional campaigns. Firefly will open the door to an enormous number of new ways Amazon can charge publishers for premium placement in those Firefly search results.

I haven’t forgotten that you’re sitting at a baseball game and the last thing you want to do is flip through search results and spend time reading content on your phone. That leads me to another model I suspect we’ll see from the Firefly search platform: save for later.

Web searches today focus exclusively on the here and now. You search, find what you need and you move on. Firefly opens the door to a lengthier relationship between user and search results.  You can’t be bothered with all the Firefly details when you’re trying to watch the baseball game. That’s why you’ve configured Firefly to save those results for later retrieval. They could sit in a holding area in your Amazon account, similar to your Amazon Wish List, or maybe they’ll be delivered to you via email. The more likely scenario is that Amazon will do both, of course. Amazon knows the value of data and reminding customers of what they like, so expect to see plenty of notifications about these potential one-click purchase opportunities.

None of this functionality exists today, of course. And most of it won’t be available when the Fire phone ships in July. But rest assured that these and plenty of other innovations will eventually be available through the Firefly feature. Amazon’s #1 goal is to get consumers to buy things and Firefly is a huge step forward in making those transactions happen more frequently and conveniently.  

Your personal index of everything

Google is terrific but it doesn’t help me answer the question, “where did I read about that?”. I’m running into that question more frequently these days, partly because I’m reading so many short bursts of content from so many sources.

It’s not just website content. I’m talking about emails, e-magazines, e-newspapers, ebooks, etc. In short, I need help indexing all the digital content streams I’m consuming every day.

Over the past few years I used a service called Findings that did some of this, but it was an approach that required me to actively curate the articles and excerpts I wanted to preserve and share. I need something that automatically ingests and indexes everything I see, not just what I’ve highlighted. And it has to happen with no clicks, copying or curation required by me. Just index everything I see.

I want a tool that watches all the emails I read every day, keeps track of the content of the webpages I visit, has access to the magazines I read in Next Issue, sees all the content I consume in the Kindle app, the Byliner app, etc. When privacy advocates read that sentence their heads will explode. That’s OK. They can choose to live without this service but I’ll be more efficient because of it.

It’s obviously a concept that requires opt-in from the user. It also requires the ability to tap into content streams from proprietary apps, not just browsers. And it needs to follow me across all my devices. Whoever develops it will help solve a problem that’s only going to get worse in the years ahead. I hope they do so soon because I’d love to start using it today to build my index of everything for tomorrow.

Digital content’s “Quadricycle” era

This month marks the 118^th anniversary of a milestone in the life of Henry Ford. It’s not the Model T, which is 106 years old later this summer. I’m talking about Ford’s very first vehicle, the one that came before the Model T and was called “The Quadricycle.”

The Quadricycle doesn’t get much attention these days. Sure, it has a page in the Wikipedia and lives on at The Henry Ford museum, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. When we think of the first commercially successful automobile we think of the Model T, not the Quadricycle.

I’d argue that we’re in the midst of our own “Quadricycle” era in the digital content world. We might think we’ve come a long way with the latest formats and devices but we’re still in the very early stages of digital content transformation.

Product names are generally a good indicator of where a new concept is on a timeline. We struggle with how to name a new product so we try to extend the name of something it’s related to. Quadricycle is a great example because everyone knew what a bicycle was back then and this new contraption sat atop four bicycle wheels. Early cars were also called horseless carriages, another example of how the name of a new concept often starts as a modified version of something everyone is already familiar with.

So when books, newspapers and magazines entered the digital realm they became ebooks, e-newspapers, e-magazines or digital replica editions. Up to now, our vision for these digital versions has been boxed in by the characteristics of the physical (print) versions. That’s also why we include worthless features like 3D page-flipping in most reader apps.

Ford’s original Quadricycle didn’t have basic features like brakes or a reverse gear, but it was the ultimate minimum viable product. He was so focused on revolutionizing transportation that the invention he built in his shed turned out to be too wide to fit through the door opening.

At some point this new method of transportation got renamed the automobile and the car, neither of which have any connection to horses or bicycles, which were two of the more common modes of earlier transportation.

When will the same thing happen with digital content? When will the term “ebook” feel as funny and old-fashioned as horseless carriage or Quadricycle?

When will digital books, newspapers and magazines stop looking like nothing more than print under glass?

Keep in mind that 12 years passed between the Quadricycle’s invention and the rollout of the Model T. Sometimes these things don’t happen as quickly as we expect them to, but what’s important is to realize that today’s state-of-the-art digital books, newspapers and magazines will definitely be perceived as quaint and antiquated in the not-too-distant future.

Making apps a core part of your digital publishing strategy

On May 15, 2013, Apple celebrated 5 years of the App Store and released some astounding statistics.  Over 50 billion apps have been downloaded and that number jumped to 60 billion just 5 months after that announcement. That’s an average of 800 apps downloaded per second! With Apple paying out $15 billion to developers and December alone recording $3 billion in sales, do publishers need more reasons to look at the app store seriously? Let’s not forget, we haven’t spoken about the Google Play store yet, for which numbers are difficult to come by.

But aren’t customers tuned to buying books from iBooks and apps from app stores?
The answer is no. 10 to 30 times as many books are sold on the app store as compared to iBooks. The iBookstore pales in comparison to the Appstore in terms of traffic. So why would you place your wares in a store that has no footfalls? App Stores have changed the way we buy and install software and this begs the question: Aren’t ebooks software in a sense?

What’s the most important benefit of using apps for publishing?
It’s a common notion among publishers that apps makes sense only if you want to plug in some “interactivity” into your book. But there’s so much more to publishing books as apps than just this. Apps give you direct access to the consumer so it opens the doors to promotions, up-selling and cross-selling. It creates a channel to sell direct and increase margins. With the ever increasing focus on direct-to-consumer methods, apps can help publishers build a relationship with their readers despite the control exerted by dominant ebook retailers. With 90% of book sales driven through word-of-mouth marketing, engaging with your influencers is becoming increasingly important.

Aren’t apps expensive to build and maintain?
Yes, apps are expensive to build and maintain. This is where the Papertrell platform comes in. With an easy to use, feature rich, do-it-yourself app publishing CMS that simultaneously builds for all device platforms natively, Papertrell dramatically reduces the cost of app development and maintenance. It’s a platform that’s built for scale: an interactive app can be repurposed from an ePub file in under 48 hours. The platform also supports tools to import and repurpose from InDesign, PDFs and even blogs.

What about distribution? Isn’t it a complex ecosystem across multiple device platforms?
Manually managing titles across app stores is a complex process. The Papertrell platform takes care of end-to-end app distribution, publishers can now automatically submit or update to 7 different app stores with a single click. This also makes managing price promotions and meta-data management simple across multiple app stores. Publishers have a choice of distibuting as a paid app or as a “collection” of titles within a Shelf app with in-app purchase or subscrition as a payment option. The Shelf is fully cusomtizable with a host of features like banners, collections, a fully-featured EPUB and PDF reader, a cloud synced library, offline access, social reading with Facebook and Twitter integration.

What about updating content?
One of the most important features in Papertrell is the ability to quickly respond to customer issues related to content. App stores are notoriously slow in reviewing apps and this can sometimes kill the chance of an app being successful. A Papertrell app can be updated instantly without the need for time consuming app store reviews and will still work in an offline mode.

Can any type of book be converted to an interactive app using Papertrell?
It’s important to define what we mean by interactivity. Most content apps use audio, video and animations to add interactivity, but Papertrell uses a completely different approach. The idea is use existing book assets and repurpose it into a usable, interactive app without relying too much on “bells and whistles”. There are many instances here and here where this principle has been effectively applied. These are examples of books that contain no multimedia but the products have been repurposed into commercially successful apps by simply “gamefying” the content around usage, for example, unlocking chapters based on the quiz result. This is how “interactivity” is defined in Papertrell.

How scalable is app production in Papertrell? Can the process be automated?
Papertrell automatically ingests content from EPUB and other digital formats into a structured content dictionary using pattern recognition methods. Once the content is mapped, and a template is created, an app can produced from a subsequent EPUB in the same series in a matter of seconds. Here’s an example of a series that was produced using automation. This makes it incredibly easy to quickly make changes to the design and look and feel. The structured content dictionary also helps in reusability as new titles can be easily produced by remixing content across a series.

What sort of publishers are best suited for Papertrell?
Papertrell provides a robust platform for publishers who want to build a direct-to-consumer sales channel. Today this pretty much covers every type of publisher: trade, educational, comics, graphic novels, STM, Illustrated, non-fiction and even B2B publishing. With a range of options available to reach out, acquire, sustain and nurture readers, Papertrell provides depth and breadth in terms of features and flexibility to suit any requirement. Whether it’s creating highly engaging and interactive interpretations of books, social reading, ebook promotion and bundling or direct selling and subscription, Papertrell can play an integral part in your digital publishing strategy.

This article was written by Arun Benty. Arun is responsible for Papertrell's business development and product strategy. He is also the Co-founder and Director of Business Development at Trellisys.net, Papertrell's parent company. He has guided several globally recognized app projects for publishers including HarperCollins and Hachette including The SAS Survival Guide - a Webby Award winning app.