This week I had the privilege of meeting academics, authors, publishing folk, and of course readers of romance at What Is Love? Romance Fiction In The Digital Age, hosted by the Library of Congress and the Popular Romance Project. If you’ve never been there, the Library of Congress is beautiful, truly a monument to books. I have included some photos here. There were a lot of fascinating conversations taking place, both in the building an online. There were discussions on the romance canon, the romance community, and the timeline of romance from the science and history of love to where romance fiction is headed in the future. The panels were lively and sparked great discussions. I got the opportunity to hear and meet people I hadn’t before, including Eloisa James, whose poetry roots rock, and Beverly Jenkins, certainly a force to be reckoned with! The conversation was online as well using the hashtag #poprom on Twitter. To get the full Twitter conversation, check out the compilation that Kiersten Krum put together on Storify, you’ll get a sense of the conversations we had and some of the best quotes from the day. I had the opportunity to give a talk at the conference on the Transformation of the Book (you can check it out on Slideshare here). One of the things that I’ve found really interesting about the digital transformation of the book is how fundamentally different it is from other media transformations. And part of that is due to heavy romance readers, who were early adopters of ebooks and ereading devices. That’s right, the romance reader has had a significant impact on the shape of the transformation of the book and they continue to do so. In 2010 romance books were about 19% of all ebook sales, and today they are about 24% — a bigger piece of a bigger pie.* When ebooks first started to take off, there was a lot of talk and a lot of concern that ebooks would “kill print.” You can see from the data that ebooks are by no means killing print; in fact, print books are still 77% of the book sales market.** There is more in the deck. And of course there was a sneak preview of Love Between the Covers, a documentary about romance books and the romance community. Even more fun is that Love Between the Covers features our very own romance cover designer Dawn Adams and our Editorial Director Deb Werksman, both doing what they do best! I can’t thank the Library of Congress, the Center for the Book, and the Popular Romance Project enough for giving me the opportunity to participate in such a dynamic and interesting conference. I think John Cole, the Director, Center for the Book at the Library of Congress has it exactly right when he said that romance fiction is “one of our culture’s most popular yet least appreciate or understood genres.” *Nielsen, 2015
**from the Book Industry Study Group 2014 Annual Report Friday, our friends at TedXNaperville hosted an Adventure at Sourcebooks. The theme of this year’s TedXNaperville was The Tipping Point. We are obviously part of an industry undergoing transformation and so were excited to be part of this event.
Our Editorial team talked about the publishing process: who does what at a publishing house, how retail works, how marketing and publicity work. Lots of specific information and loads of questions!! I talked about the different kinds of impact that digital has had on book publishing. Here's some of what we talked about: 1. The ebook transformation * who is the ebook customer? * are print books dead or dying? 2. How book retailing is changing 3. Different authors’ career paths 4. Authors and publishers creating new revenue streams together You can see my presentation entitled: The Book in Transformation: A Publisher Vision for the Future on Slideshare: TEDxNaperville Visits Sourcebooks from Dominique Raccah The TedXNaperville lineup of speakers is here: http://www.tedxnaperville.com/current-conference/ Some of the the ideas shared at TedXNaperville were livestreamed and can be seen here: http://new.livestream.com/tedx/tedxnaperville2014 Hope you enjoy! Dominique I recently had the great honor of accepting the 2013 Luminary Award from the Committee of 200, a membership organization of the world's most successful women entrepreneurs and corporate innovators dedicated to fostering, celebrating and advancing women's leadership in business. (This really is the most amazing group of people you may not have heard of). The Muriel Siebert Entrepreneurial Champion award goes to a female entrepreneur who has created an innovative new product or service with global implications.
When they asked me to give an acceptance speech, I thought I'd talk about the importance of books and the transformation that has so changed our industry and Sourcebooks. A lot of the people in the room asked me to share the talk, so here it is. Thank you to all of you who have been a part of this journey so far! It's been amazing!! Committee of 200 2013 Muriel Siebert Entrepreneurial Champion Acceptance Speech – October 25th 2013 The women in this room are brilliant and extraordinary. I’m certainly more than a bit overwhelmed to have been presented with an award from all of you. So first let me just say Thank YOU! Thank you for this award but particularly thank you for being. Thank you for being strong, thank you for being outspoken and committed, thank you for being role models to me and to the thousands of other women (and not a few men) whom you impact every day. In short, thank you for being yourselves – writ larger than life!! I believe in books. And my story is very much one of following your passion (through all the surprising turns that takes). Today, I’m part of a revolution in reading and therefore in books. We call it the digital revolution. I started Sourcebooks at the beginning of another revolution 26 years ago…that was the desktop publishing revolution. A Mac, a Laser Printer and off I went. Starting out And it was a real challenge… My first idea was pretty limited. And it probably didn’t help that the first banker I met didn’t see women as real entrepreneurs, a problem I know other women entrepreneurs in this room have experienced. There was my first real success (round about year 3), a book that sold 25,000 copies, directly followed by the distributor who refused to pay me and said succinctly “I don’t have to pay you. You’re little. Sue me.” Probably the most notable memory from that period was hanging up the phone after that call and slipping to the floor sobbing in the living room. I still remember it. It’s that visceral. And the only thought in my head was, “How do I tell Ray (my husband) I’ve lost the house.” And do you know what he said? ”We’ve just paid for your graduate school. You’re pretty good at this. Let’s do it again. Now you know how to do it.” And so I did. It was hard…resilient making. It’s what I see when I look at my council or any of you in this room—tough, resilient, women who have kept going in the face of challenges and some pretty long odds. Breakthroughs and taking risks Now fast-forward 20 years, and all those challenges (yes both the failures and the successes) turned out to be pretty good training for another revolution. This time it was the digital revolution of the book and being an entrepreneur who knew some things about walking into uncertainty turned out to be real training for what has become my greatest passion. I call it the promise of digital and books. The promise of digital and books As I said, I believe in books. Reading a book is one of the few times that we allow another voice deeply into our being. For days, weeks, sometimes even months, we walk in another’s shoes, see life through a different pair of eyes and maybe even sometimes (surprisingly) learn something new or change our minds about something. Books are a powerful and in some ways unique force for creating a different, greater YOU. Books are one of the few places that girls, like the girls we were, can discover what more life can offer. And what I saw in digital was the promise of bringing books and reading to more people than ever before. When I got into book publishing, people in the industry told me, about 5% of Americans go into a bookstore in an average year. For me, that was staggering. “What about the other 95%?” I thought. Yes, some go to libraries, but how do we touch everybody? How do we create a nation of readers? The promise of digital is to have any book, the book that you most need available to you, RIGHT now on whatever device you happen to be carrying, from your smallest phone to your big screen tv. It’s any time, anywhere, any device. What more can digital books be And today, digital is transforming the landscape for books. eBooks have grown the number of books that are being published and consumed. Far from being dead, with digital books, people are buying and reading more books than ever before. And by the way, they’re buying both print and digital books… And the question we’re now asking is: What MORE can digital create for books? And here is what’s exciting: We’re working to create books that are:
You know, we lose children at different times when it comes to reading. Can we create a greater bond between kids and reading? What happens when we really make books become "Mine"? If children can't read, they can't learn. We have to help create that bond younger and more deeply. We now know the importance of children knowing how to read well by 3rd grade; it's mission critical for us all. What you’ll see next are books like you’ve never seen them before. Our first experiences of books come from children’s books and textbooks, but our children will have new and different experiences with books. For them books will be interactive – content itself will be touchable, social, experiential, smart and deeply personal. Books will become not more mechanical, cold, impersonal but just the opposite. Books will talk to you and help you. Books will be connected and connecting, becoming something quite new that we’re just beginning to understand. What digital gave me was the gift to rethink my business…to rethink the limits that I had unknowingly imposed on Sourcebooks just by being part of an industry…to rethink all that we could do. My favorite fictional character likes to say: “Tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift.” Digital was a tremendous test for our organization. We got to rethink every part of our world, how we worked with our content partners, our authors, our brands and licenses and to extend what we could create that was of value to them. And how we worked with our retail partners, from the products we gave them to how we marketed with them and what we could create together. Digital changed everything. And the impact of seeing yourself in a bigger way changes everything. Last night our French author Jennifer Yerkes accepted the Gold Medal for A Funny Little Bird at the most prestigious juried show in the world of illustrated children's books; 6 years ago we weren’t even in children’s books. When we push beyond who we know ourselves to be, it changes every aspect of what we do. I want to thank my tribe And so we come full circle. I want to thank my tribe…All the people who believed not just in me but in Sourcebooks – the authors, agents, my family, my friends, all of you (who have so inspired me for years!). Just a quick note here about the partnership we’ve built with authors. The creative people that we work with are, in the end, the reason we do this work. And our authors continue to amaze me. Their smarts and commitment, their drive, ambition and willingness to think beyond boundaries has inspired me to take risks and to drive beyond the boundaries I thought were there. In some ways, the people who have helped me the most were our customers. From Barnes and Noble, to our local bookstore Anderson’s, to Apple, to our friends and partners at Readerlink…to many many bookstores, to Walmart, Indigo to library partners far and wide. And to the dozens (literally) of individual booksellers who helped me rethink Sourcebooks at every stage of our development. There are authors, booksellers and colleagues all over the world who have repeatedly shown us the way. They have viewed us as a force for innovation and allowed us to try new things (even when some of those new things didn’t work). And of course our team – the people of Sourcebooks who are actually the recipients of this award. Their drive, their willingness to learn, their innovative attitude and hard work, that’s what makes everything possible. It’s exciting to have a 26-year-old company that is a startup once again—new challenges, new things to learn, and a whole lot of fun. Thank YOU! This morning, we announced that Sourcebooks has acquired Simple Truths.
Here are 11 interesting things about Simple Truths: 1.Their philosophy is "less is more." These are books that can be read in 30 minutes or so. As Mac Anderson, their founder, likes to say "Not everything, but the most important things." In past years there have been a number of faster approaches to business and motivation titles as our world had gotten faster paced (see for example, GetAbstract and SoundView Executive Book Summaries). Mac’s approach strikes me as having the most heart and reach. 2. Mac Anderson is a remarkable entrepreneur who founded McCord Travel (1979), Great Quotations, Successories (1988) and Simple Truths (2005). 3. As with any book publisher, their authors are the key. And Simple Truths has numerous bestselling authors:
4. And they have created numerous bestsellers:
5. Companies like Disney, FedEx and Southwest Airlines have all used Simple Truths books. 6. Movies are an integral part of their marketing. Over 100 million people have watched Simple Truth's inspirational movies. In fact over 30 million have watched The Dash. 7. Theirs is primarily a direct to consumer model (their books are largely NOT found in stores). Their website gets 1.3 million unique visitors a month. They have 1.2 million customers (which is pretty amazing). 8. They are #669 on the Internet Retailer Top 500 (part of the second 500 list), which is the list of the largest retail websites in the country. There are few book publishers on that list. 9. The free Simple Truths app ties to both movies and books. 10. For Sourcebooks, we've always been interested in how Books Change Lives. It's fundamental to what we do and think about. I thought Dan Green's story about Simple Truths' book Finish Strong was a great example of how a small, easy to read book could influence a lot of people. 11. And then there's the Simple Truths team (who know a lot about how to have fun): check out their Harlem Shake. We're all looking forward to a lot of fun moments together... Ultimately what was most meaningful to us at Sourcebooks was that Simple Truths has (and will continue to) reach and touch a lot of people. That’s what books are meant to do. We’re excited to create what’s next together. Coverage in the News: Publisher’s Lunch (paywall) Crain’s Chicago Business Publishers Weekly Publishing Perspectives Media Bistro The Bookseller Next Thursday (Thursday, May 30, 2:00 pm - 2:50 pm) I’ll be moderating a panel at Book Expo America entitled: The Future of Ebooks and Ereading.
I’ve invited some of the most knowledgeable people in the field to answer the questions that we really have about our transforming book ecosystem: Michael Cader: entrepreneur and creator of Publishers Marketplace, Publishers Lunch (the industry’s “daily essential read,” now shared with more than 45,000 publishing people every day), Publishers Launch Conferences (with Michael Shatzkin) and the recently launched, Bookateria. Jason Merkoski: author of Burning the Page: The eBook Revolution and the Future of Reading. Previously Jason was a development manager, product manager, and the first technology evangelist at Amazon, where he helped to invent technology used in today’s ebooks and was a member of the launch team for each of the first three Kindle devices. Andrew Savikas: CEO at Safari Books Online. Previously, Andrew led the digital publishing and ebook program and strategy for O’Reilly Media as VP of Digital Initiatives, and was a Program Chair for the Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Michael Tamblyn: Chief Content Officer at Kobo, responsible for sales, publisher and industry relations, content acquisition, and the merchandising experience across Kobo’s web and mobile services. Prior to joining Kobo, Michael was the founding CEO of the supply chain agency BookNet Canada, where he launched the national sales reporting service BNC SalesData. It’s an exciting (and very knowledgeable) set of panelists gathering to talk about what comes NEXT for ebooks. What are YOUR Questions? The book world is changing rapidly: the rise of eBooks, the advent of self-publishing, consolidation in the publishing industry, and the technological turmoil associated with the digital revolution. We are very much in the middle of the digital transformation of the book. So what does the future hold for ebooks and ereaders? And what are the implications for authors, booksellers, publishers and readers? What are YOUR questions about the future of ebooks and ereading? Feel free to add your questions to the comments below. Or you can tweet your questions using hashtag: #ebooksfuture. Looking forward to a GREAT conversation! With warmest wishes, Dominique FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CHICAGO – January 15, 2013—Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, and Sourcebooks, a leading independent publisher and developer, announce the forthcoming addition of two Sesame Street books to Put Me In The Story, the innovative, personalized children’s book iPad app and website launched by Sourcebooks in November. The beloved classic Elmo Loves You will be the first Sesame Street book to launch on the platform. Put Me In The Story, as seen in the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor, takes nationally bestselling children’s picture books by celebrated and award-winning authors, and integrates personalization—creating personalized books that make your child the star of treasured children’s stories. Elmo Loves You is one of Sesame Workshop’s bestselling children’s books, and is being made available for the first time in personalized form. “We are always looking for meaningful ways to enhance parent-child engagement in the digital arena, so we are especially excited to partner with Sourcebooks to create our first personalized storybooks on an app platform. Put Me In The Story increases a child’s engagement and enjoyment by bringing children directly into the story, where they are part of the narrative alongside their favorite Sesame Street characters,” said Jennifer A. Perry, Vice President, Worldwide Publishing, Sesame Workshop. “We built Put Me In The Story to create greater bonding through and with books, and to change how kids grow with books. Sesame Workshop’s mission of using the educational power of media to help children everywhere reach their highest potential is completely aligned with what we’re aiming to accomplish with Put Me In The Story,” says Dominique Raccah, CEO and publisher of Sourcebooks. “We are overjoyed to announce Sesame Workshop as our first publishing partner.” The Put Me In The Story app on the iPad is available on the App Store for free. Elmo Loves You will be available in February as an in-app purchase for $4.99. Custom print book orders will be available at www.putmeinthestory.com, and are priced at $32.99. Recently added to the app and website are My Name Is Not Isabella and My Name Is Not Alexander, the New York Times bestselling picture books by Jennifer Fosberry. About Sesame Workshop Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization that revolutionized children’s television programming with the landmark Sesame Street. The Workshop produces local Sesame Street programs, seen in over 150 countries, and other acclaimed shows including The Electric Company, to help bridge the literacy gap. Beyond television, the Workshop produces content for multiple media platforms on a wide range of issues including literacy, health and military deployment. Initiatives meet specific needs to help young children and families develop critical skills, acquire healthy habits and build emotional strength to prepare them for lifelong learning. Learn more at www.sesameworkshop.org. About Sourcebooks Sourcebooks is creating the next evolution of a book publishing company. We are committed to innovative publishing, to exploring every platform and creating breakthrough models. We truly believe that books have the power to touch people and change lives. Sourcebooks is home to more than 90 enthusiastic book-loving employees who are dedicated to finding new ways to connect with authors, readers, and ideas. We publish over 300 new titles each year, and are honored to have 30 New York Times bestsellers. Sourcebooks is proud to be one of the largest woman-owned book publishers in the country. Visit www.sourcebooks.com for more information, and check out the Sourcebooks blog. CONTACTS: Sourcebooks – Heather Moore, Senior Publicity Manager 630.536.0553 heather.moore@sourcebooks.com Sesame Workshop – Jodi Lefkowitz, Manager, Corporate Communications 212.875.6497 Jodi.Lefkowitz@sesame.org “User interface.” It’s not usually where you start talking about Shakespeare. But it’s where this story starts. This is how we typically teach Shakespeare, whether in high school or in college. The current experience of learning and reading Shakespeare If you ask students about this experience, they use words like “difficult“ and “boring.” And if you watch them actually trying to learn that way, you recognize the problem. The way the book is set up actually interrupts their “flow”—it gets in the way of their immersion. Just think about what happens as soon as you don’t understand a word you read and you’ll see what I mean. Every time you look up a word, you’re interrupting the "reading the play/immersion" part of the process and are starting a different process. “Now what line was that?” you’ll think, “And where am I? What did that mean again?” Educators will tell you this experience is a major hurdle. One high school English teacher said to us that “it takes about 3 weeks to get kids into Shakespeare.” By the way, stage performers say the same thing — it takes time for audiences to get comfortable with the language and at some point (usually 15-20 minutes into the show) the audience “clicks over.” So with all these inherent challenges, we asked can we use technology to make reading Shakespeare easier? We’ve been working with students, teachers and readers on this very question and today we’re launching Shakesperience: A hands-on experience with Shakespeare—an experience that was built to help you more quickly get into and stay in the play, because it was built from the user’s point of view. A quick word about the process of answering that question. We’ve been building these interactive editions for a while, and the process has been incredibly iterative. We put the books into people’s hands, watched what they did (and didn’t do). We asked questions, rebuilt and tweaked some more, and then we tried it all over again.
What we can tell you from working with all these users is that the Shakesperience supports all different kinds of learning:
This is obviously only the beginning for us, but it’s a thrilling start. Just watching people use The Shakesperience has been a real joy. We hope it can transform and energize how students learn, and think it can change the way you read Shakespeare. I’d love to hear what you think. Dominique —Heather Moore
The last few days have been tremendously exciting as Discover a New Love got off the ground, and Sourcebooks took the spotlight in what was big news throughout the publishing industry, the tech world, and romance reader community. The response has been more than we imagined! In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Trachtenberg noted several ways in which he views the announcement of Discover a New Love as being a new direction within the publishing industry, including: “In a move that further thins the line between book publishing and book retailing, Sourcebooks Inc., a leading independent publisher, is launching an online bookstore this week focused on its romance titles… In a decision sure to grab attention, Ms. Raccah said that titles from Sourcebooks will be sold without digital rights management, a striking departure from the protections used in traditional digital book publishing. Sourcebooks digital titles can be lent and moved from one device to another, including Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook.” News of the new initiative reached Bloomberg Television and they invited Sourcebooks CEO & Publisher, Dominique Raccah, to speak about the new project and the transforming publishing industry on Bloomberg West. We also saw great coverage in the following outlets: The Chicago Tribune PublishersLunch paidContent eBookNewser The Digital Reader Marketplace Tech Report Dear Author Smart Bitches Trashy Books USA Today Happy Ever After blog Indie BookSpot And the comments on social media ranging from readers to industry folk were very encouraging (just a few examples): “This is brilliant on a couple of levels…” “the categorization… is pretty freaking awesome” “… found some great deals. Thanks!” “Exciting!” “What a great idea...” A BIG congrats to the Discover a New Love Team, we're off to a great start! by Dominique Raccah About two years ago, I came to the conclusion that we needed to have a decidedly more direct relationship with our readers. I was especially intrigued by watching some of the smart ways publishers in other spaces (most notably O'Reilly and Baen) were engaging with their readers. It also came from watching how e-tailers like Amazon.com repeatedly used their customer information to build products, services and user engagement. Having a direct, ongoing relationship with our readers could not only make solid business sense, it could also help create enormous impact for our authors.
Discover a New Love is our first major project in this direction. Its focus is primarily on lovers of great romance novels, or novels with strong romantic elements. Among other things, we believe it will make us a stronger publisher—one better able to satisfy the desires of our readers. We believe we'll be better able to further the careers of our authors and to provide insights that may prove useful to our retail partners, as well as our authors, their agents and our international publishing partners. We think it will actually help us to create better books and market them in more interesting ways. Specifically we’re hoping to accomplish 3 things:
Fundamentally, we’re interested in one problem: how can we help a reader discover the next book or author they will love? We know people who read Susanna Kearsley love her books, so how do we help more readers to discover her books? (And so on for other authors obviously.) Like many new developments, we expect how we tackle this problem to evolve—starting immediately. Here are some of the ideas we’re starting with:
Discover a New Love is not intended to replace our valued partnerships and promotions with other retailers. Many who know Sourcebooks know we’re aggressive in testing promotions that find both greater readership and value for our authors, so we do and will continue to do frontlist and themed ebook promotions with our retail partners. Discover a New Love is envisioned as another avenue to help readers. If you’re a romance reader, it’s one more platform for discovery (with loads of neat pluses). The data we’ve seen shows that romance readers are heavy users and that they buy from many different outlets. We see this is an expansion and addition to the current space. Discover a New Love is a new model built directly in response to what we’ve heard from authors, agents and readers. Expect a lot of changes from us. This is just the beginning. And we look forward to learning together. Thoughts, comments, suggestions are all welcome. With warmest wishes, Dominique In celebration of today’s anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, Sourcebooks MediaFusion is releasing an enhanced, introductory ebook on the life and music of the famed classical music composer. Johann Sebastian Bach 2Go, along with enhanced products on three additional composers--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 2Go, Ludwig van Beethoven 2Go, and Joseph Haydn 2Go—are available now for $2.99 in the ibookstore.
The classical music enhanced ebooks were designed to give you an introduction to the world of classical music through the composer’s work. In each ebook, you’ll not only discover the life and work of each composer through a thorough introduction to the artist and cues for what to consider when listening to his work, but, more importantly, throughout the text you’ll find embedded audio excerpts of the composer’s work. You can listen to short, representative samples as well as longer pieces by the composer. For anyone from classical music aficionados and devotees to students and newcomers, this interplay of text and audio will allow you to more fully experience each composer’s contributions to classical music, and will become a jumping-off point through which you’ll want to discover more. Sourcebooks has also released Presidential 2Gos from the multimedia book My Fellow Americans, by Michael Waldman (director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton from 1995–1999). Ronald Reagan 2Go, Franklin Delano Roosevelt 2Go, John F. Kennedy 2Go, and George Washington 2Go are also available in the ibookstore $2.99. With these enhanced ebooks, you’ll discover some of each president’s most notable speeches, including the entire text of the speech and a brief introduction by noted political journalist and broadcaster George Stephanopoulos. Most importantly, you’ll be able to hear the heart of the speeches, either faithfully re-created by a guest contributor or delivered by the president himself. |
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