Hiding in Plain Sight — Is the Subscription Model the Optimal Business Model for the Digital Age?
The half-forgotten subscription model deserves our praise and renewed attention. In the Digital Age, it has become more popular than ever.
Build a Better Mousetrap
The best way to increase D2C sales is to work in increasing the traffic to your site. Without traffic, there can be few sales. Unfortunately, the university press community has paid little attention to building Web traffic.
Bears Always Sound Smarter
Discourse about new ideas in publishing can be broken by the appetite to make exquisitely insightful remarks about things to do not yet exist. To work on truly new things, we have to stop performing the role of the skeptic.
Why Do Publishers Want to Sell Direct?
University presses cite a number of reasons to sell books directly to end-users. The principal reason is to establish a relationship with the customer. But once that relationship has been initiated, what business purpose does it serve?
A Survey of University Presses
A survey of university presses on selling books directly from their Web sites shows that for most presses, sales hover around 1% of total volume, but a concerted effort to improve Web marketing could increase that figure to 3% or perhaps even more.
Everybody Wants a Netflix for Books
There will never be a “Netflix for books” if by that term one means a comprehensive collection. Book aggregations must serve the overarching needs of the publisher to generate revenue and are thus best viewed as simply one channel among many.
Privacy and the University Press
As university presses become more involved with D2C marketing, they are going to confront the need for clearly articulated privacy policies. The time to put those policies in place is now.
Data Detectives: Investigating What is, and What is Not, Measured
Businesses are using more data than ever to inform decision making. While the truly large Big Data may be limited to the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook, publishers are nonetheless managing more data than ever before. While the technical challenges may be less daunting with smaller data sets, there remain challenges in interpreting data and in using it to make informed decisions. Perhaps the most daunting challenge is in understanding the limitations of the dataset: What is being measured and, just as importantly, what is not being measured? What inferences and conclusions can be drawn and what is mere conjecture? Where are the bricks and mortar solid and where does the foundation give way beneath our feet?
Inadvertent Innovation
While we usually think of innovators as visionaries with big ideas that challenge the very assumptions of the way we conduct our lives, many innovations seem to happen almost by accident. The challenge is how to make these accidents occur more often and to benefit from them.
Who Can Rival Amazon?
Amazon is now the most important participant in the business of scholarly books, but it faces few threats. This post hypothesizes about where challenges to Amazon could come from.
Publishing Viewed from Santa's Crystal Ball
Some predictions about the future of scholarly publishing, which acknowledges the continuing central role of the major STM publishers.
Announcing a University Press Research Project
This is an announcement of a university press research project, which includes a link to a survey we hope every book publisher will fill out. The project is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The focus is on how university presses can sell books, both print and digital, directly from their Web sites. The project report will cover current practices and recommend courses of action.
Stage Five Book Publishing: A Guide for University Presses
The five stages of book publishing outlined here describe the arc as publishers move from the traditional model (where print books were sold mostly in bookstores and to libraries) through a range of developments using online media, culminating in new forms of subscription marketing.
Managing Two Companies at the Same Time
Many CEOs of publishing companies find themselves having to manage two companies: the established company and an in-house start-up that is designed to participate in a new paradigm based on digital media. Organizationally this is a very difficult situation to be in, but it is essential if a company is going to persist in the years ahead.
The “M” in STM Publishing
A new report from Simba Information analyzes the medical publishing segment, identifying the key companies and industry trends.