Bait 'n' Beer

In our first exciting episode posted yesterday  (bit.ly/ltZswi), I discussed things that were, in my judgment, receiving a disproportionate amount of discussion and attention from the publishing community. We seem to have a desire to discuss cool, sexy and more futuristic topics than those that are essential to getting us from here to there. The difference between the two is that  the more practical matters involve a lot of hard, 'dirty-fingernail' work in the belly of the beast that are not sexy at all.
 
Today, I'll point to a handful of things that are critical for us to be figuring out (and in most cases doing NOW) to position ourselves for success now and in whatever future unfolds. None of these is a silver bullet, but taken together and shaped to individual publishers' specific situations, they can help keep us moving ahead as the ground continues to shift without betting the company on some specific outcome. All bear discussion in search of workable solutions that are more broadly applicable than only to the Big Six.
 
And they are:

• Discovery Metadata has finally become fashionable as Laura Dawson (www.ljndawson.com/ ) and others have preached incessantly that in a world where hundreds of thousands of books are published each year, the only way most will be found is via online search, where metadata is critical. While most publishers (or at least their distributors) have bought into the argument, too many still relegate the tasks of managing this important function to entry-level staff or (worse) to the IT crew. As a result, there's a lot of bad metadata out there, resulting in lost opportunities for discovery and sales. (As an aside, I'm not willing to write off more traditional channels, particularly independent booksellers and libraries, as  important sources for discovery. Publishers ignore them at their peril.)
• Workflow and Content Management My friend Brian O'Leary (magellanmediapartners.com/ ) has written extensively and with great wisdom about the necessity of developing workflow and content management tools to create "agile" content that can be identified and used in multiple forms. What's critical about this is that it makes your titles (and portions thereof) flexible and readily adaptable to almost any scenario or Future of Publishing (tm) outcome. Changing traditional workflows is hard (as Brian says, "like a heart transplant") and often faces internal resistance, but limiting ourselves to traditional workflows and content management systems will likely be fatal. So opt for the heart transplant.
• Solving the Supply Chain/Distribution Conundrum If you accept the inevitability of much less physical shelf space for printed books, big changes are required. Smaller initial print runs dictated by smaller initial orders from booksellers suggest movement toward short-run printing and Print on Demand as a solution, something many publishers have been reluctant to embrace. With several POD providers (Lightning Source (www.lightningsource.com/) and Edwards Brothers, up until recently a traditional offset printer (www.edwardsbrothers.com/), most prominently) having built virtually worldwide networks for local Print on Demand orders, this becomes a logical solution for many, with the happy result of sharply reducing inventory (and working capital) requirements, lowering shipping costs and mitigating returns. In addtion, where it makes sense, publishers need to figure out how to manage Direct-to-Consumer marketing, sales, fulfillment and customer service. (Warning: This is a lot harder than you think. Approach with caution and seek professional help.)
• Rights, rights, rights. Digital publishing has stood traditional rights management on its head and we desperately need to resolve how contracts work to maximize sales and income to authors while treating publishers fairly. Territorial rights make no sense in a digital age, yet unwinding that system is problematic for any number of reasons. This is to say nothing of rights for "chunks" of larger works. While BISG (www.bisg.org/) and others work on standards for identifying rights globally (hurry up, please), publishers need to get their internal rights organized and standardized to maximize their income as well as that of their authors. Too many sales are lost because "that book's unavailable due to rights issues".
• Hitting all the channels Related directly to the rights issues above, in a world of lower prices for books (generally) we must find ways to reach all potential buyers, making certain that we are selling through every reasonable channel domestically and reaching out specifically to international markets. Time and again we hear of increasing demand for English-language books (and translations) around the world, and as mobile reading grows this demand can only increase. Are you set up to market your titles in India? In Latin America? If not, figure it out.
• Business models, financial managment, and capital formation I know, I know...you don't want to hear about it, but we need to acknowledge that much of the old model is broken and new models need to be explored and developed. While not everyone may wish to push the envelope as far as the models developed by, say, Richard Nash's Cursor (thinkcursor.com/), ORBooks*(www.orbooks.com/), or  Open Road Media (www.openroadmedia.com/), or to try MacMillan's "zero inventory" efforts for long-tail titles with Lightning Source (www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/), we should all be watching them closely, learning their lessons, and adapting the pieces that work to our own businesses. WIth respect to financial management, you don't have to sell out to "the suits" to collect your receivables on time, to manage your inventory properly and to understand that cash flow is much more important than profits. We have been, as an industry, notoriously bad at business management. If we're to attract investment capital needed to change, survive and prosper, we have to do better.

And finally,

• Quality of the work (And let's stop calling it 'content', dammit; "content" comes from boiler rooms...books come from the heart.) We are, at bottom, a creative business. We are fighting for share of mind against hundreds of alternatives and if we do not put our best foot forward with regard to the titles we acquire, the care we give to the editorial process, and to the production quality of both our print and digital books, we won't (and don't deserve to) survive and prosper. When I see a poorly conceived, apparently unedited or copy-edited, badly designed book, that is produced (whether in hardcover, paperback or in a digital edition) in what is obviously the cheapest possible way, I fear for our future. Resources are limited, but if we can't produce consistent quality, then let's reduce quantities until we can. Nobody wants to buy a bad product.

All of these things are hard. Many involve a tremendous amount of what Fran Toolan of Firebrand Technologies (www.firebrandtech.com/ ) calls "hamster work". But in my judgment, these are much more important to our futures than reaching for "the new shiny".
 
So let's shift the conversation, a least a little, away from what's easy and fun to talk about toward getting things done.
 
This concludes the lesson.
 
*Disclosure: I am a shareholder and director of ORBooks.