Maintaining Relationships with Readers as They Cross Affiliations
Researchers’ multiple and changing institutional affiliations create tangible challenges, both for the researchers themselves and for scholarly publishers as well.
Researchers’ multiple and changing institutional affiliations create tangible challenges, both for the researchers themselves and for scholarly publishers as well.
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.
Society publishing is surrounded by rivalrous groups, which tend to undermine the societies’ activities. It’s time to renew the development of membership through exclusive products.
In order for publishers to engage in direct marketing, they have to build new infrastructure. Simon & Schuster is hinting at new developments with its use of QR codes.
Publishers can and should explore strategies that are built around users, which is a kind of D2C marketing. However, working on a direct basis has its costs and may make us all appreciate all the efficiencies that intermediaries provide.
The Harry Potter series will now be available as e-books. Among the lessons for publishers is the desirability of direct-marketing.
At some point book publishers will begin to copy the Netflix model of selling by subscription. This changes the nature of the business from one where products are sold to one where publishers attempt to monetize readers’ attention.
As more books are sold in electronic form, they will increasingly be marketed on a direct-to-consumer basis.
Targeting ads isn’t logically sustainable. But will the direct marketing mindset concede its limits in the advertising age?