Yesterday's BISG Annual Meeting (#BISG11) was awesome! There was so much to learn and share, great data, and new systems and processes. Can't remember the last time I was so excited about metadata and rights management. We're making real progress in areas that will make a difference for the industry. Thanks to everyone who participated and shared!
A couple of people mentioned that in my Year in Review introduction, I'd said something that gave them goosebumps and asked me to put that in print. Not sure that you can replicate the experience but I can certainly tell you what I said. It's what I believe. We are an industry in transformation. This is the most important thing that has happened in any of our professional careers. This is the transformation of the object and idea that we love and value, the book, with all the inherent risks and possibilities. It's now. It's us. It's not going to be our kids or our grandchildren. We're developing the systems, processes, models and relationships that will be the track of the future. And so the work we're doing today is the most important work any of us who love books have ever done. "It’s us” is all of us – every lover of literature, of the culture of books and authors and readers. Every parent, teacher, editor, publishing professional, agent, librarian, bookseller, reviewer, blogger, in short, everyone who cares about the future of books. Sometimes in the day-to-day rush it helps to remember... It's now and it's us. Dominique Ten years ago Sourcebooks formed a partnership with Edward Fiske that would go on to create numerous top-selling books, including the bestselling college guide, the Fiske Guide to Colleges. With the addition of the #1 going to college book and New York Times bestseller The Naked Roommate, and a line of test-prep products with leading expert Dr. Gary Gruber, Sourcebooks has well-established itself as a leading trade college-bound book publisher.
For Sourcebooks, the mission has always been to help students find the right college, support the application and admissions process, including test prep, and successfully transition students into college. Sourcebooks is taking that commitment a step further in creating an education division responsible for managing the company’s biggest existing initiatives, including the leading college-bound publishing program, a Naked Roommate first year experience program, and MyMaxScore.com, an online SAT/ACT test prep solution. Going forward, this group will serve as a platform to launch a host of new innovations that have been in development. “What we’re looking to create together are revolutionary improvements that make a significant difference in the lives of our users: students, parents, and educators,” says Dominique Raccah, CEO and publisher of Sourcebooks. “This involves the very best solutions-oriented content from the best experts, a strong emphasis on convenience and user-control, and increasing motivation and engagement.” Chris Bauerle, Director of Sales & Marketing at Sourcebooks, will be at the Frankfurt Book Fair Publishers Launch Conference on October 10 to speak about how Sourcebooks built an efficient, cross-company digital workflow.
In advance of his session, Chris was asked this question on the Frankfurt Book Fair blog: Can a publisher change its whole way of doing things, continue to deliver high-quality printed books, and gain the flexibility necessary to capitalize on digital opportunities without losing its soul, and a good portion of its staff? And here’s what he had to say: “At first glance, my answer here was YES!, but I think there is much more to the answer than that. I would first take the opportunity to poke a little at the basis of the question. I don’t think a publisher needs to “change its whole way of doing things” at all. The basis of our business is artistic and creative. Publishers are not in the business of just printing manuscripts but of crafting an author’s work into a living expression of an idea—this through development, editing, packaging, positioning, sales, and marketing. These fundamentals stay the same, and the digital transformation allows the opportunity for us to apply our craft in order to reach new readers through a seemingly endless stream of possibilities..." Naperville community members, local authors, and loyal patrons were surprised to learn many things at the “Celeppreciation Party” that Sourcebooks sponsored for our beloved neighborhood bookstore, Anderson’s Bookshop. For example, we all learned that just between Anderson’s and Sourcebooks, Naperville has one of the highest per capita concentrations of book industry people in the country.
But one thing no one was surprised to learn was that Naperville has the best bookseller in the country. After receiving dozens of nominations from publishers, sales representatives, and patrons, Publishers Weekly named Anderson’s its 2011 Bookstore of the year. Anderson’s Bookshop, like Sourcebooks, is an independent business that has stood in the face of adversity and not only survived, but thrived. One of the major reasons we’ve grown together over the years is that we have similar mission statements. We profess not only a passion for books, but the desire to spread that passion and to enlighten the lives of others. In the words of Todd Stocke, V.P. and Editorial Director of Sourcebooks who officiated the event: “…it’s about the people. The people of Anderson’s are the reason you come to the stores for recommendations, and it’s the people suggesting books for your book clubs, and it’s the people who are here when your home and school organization or your kid’s scout troop needs to put up a sign or needs support. It’s the people who bring in the big name authors, even celebrities. And perhaps more importantly it’s the people who bring in the voices you haven’t heard of before, because that’s what makes for a vibrant community…” For Sourcebooks, Borders was our dear friend over the pond (Lake Michigan, as it were), and they were an essential part of our growth and success over the past 24 years.
The news this week is incredibly difficult, as hundreds of communities lose long-standing gathering places for readers. I really wanted today to say THANK YOU to Borders – to their community of booksellers and home office staff over the years – for being such an important part of our lives, and for their dedication to getting books into the hands of so many people for so many years. If you'd like to add your thanks, please feel free to comment below and talk about what Borders' booksellers have meant to you. You can also feel free to post to Twitter, Facebook, Google+. [#ThankUBorders!] To all our friends at Borders, THANK YOU for the enormous contribution that you've made to our lives at Sourcebooks specifically, to books and authors more generally, and most broadly to the book culture that nourishes us all. You have made a world of difference. With heartfelt good wishes, Dominique Raccah and everyone at Sourcebooks One of the ongoing conversations at Book Expo America this year was the growth of ebooks. How fast is the market transforming? Is it cannibalizing the print book market? If so, which part? Or is it expanding readership? And all of the potential ramifications and implications of these questions. I heard people say things like, “yes, ebooks are only a small percent of total book sales now, but you can see how they’re going to be 60% or 70% of the market in a few years.” And I thought to myself, “Really?” The “book industry” is not just one industry; books are purchased by different types of users and for different reasons. So it stands to reason that different parts of the market will transform at different speeds. What currently sells in physical books When you break out broad categories of physical books sold in 1st quarter 2011 (data from Bookscan), here’s what you see: So the single largest category of physical books sold is adult non-fiction which makes up 42% of that market. What’s selling in ebooks On the other hand, when you look at what’s selling in ebooks, it’s primarily narrative. The only real data I can cite here are our own figures and the ebook bestsellers lists from individual e-tailers, which are dominated by fiction (the NY Times e-bestsellers separate fiction and non-fiction, but you can’t infer comparative volumes). For example
These counts were taken at one point in time last week and these lists change hourly. I checked back 3 other times and the results were roughly the same (under 20% of the bestselling titles). This is pretty much in line with what’s being reported by publishers. Here is a chart of Sourcebooks’ unit sales for physical books and the same for ebooks: So while the majority of our physical book sales are in adult non-fiction, the majority of our ebook sales are in adult fiction. So what’s missing in this picture? Right now we’re seeing relatively weak conversion of adult non-fiction to ebooks. While this category of physical books has declined a bit in the last few years (down 1.1% in Q1 2011, per Bookscan), as noted above, it’s still 42% of the print book business. Again via Bookscan, here were the 5 largest categories of adult non-fiction for Q1 2011: Reference is the biggest category of non-fiction and our experience at Sourcebooks is that reference is also the hardest category to get right in ebooks. At Sourcebooks, reference is highly formatted: lots of subsections, sidebars, pictures, diagrams, pull-quotes, etc. It’s highly “browseable,” “dippable,” not necessarily a linear reading experience. All the things that we put in to make the book more experiential as a printed book are the very things that are harder to replicate as an experience in an ebook. And there are so many different kinds of reference books.
The other difficult transformation area right now is children’s books (as distinct from young adult books). E-tailers’ bestsellers lists, publisher-reported data, and our own data are not suggesting strong conversion to ebooks yet for juvenile books, outside of cross-over YA (e.g., The Hunger Games and Twilight). The importance of narrative Stories seem to be at the heart of ebooks right now. Even the successful non-fiction ebooks we’re seeing skew to narrative - memoirs and biography and history. They’re all stories – and they’re all linear reading experiences. Are apps the future of adult non-fiction and/or children’s books? One of the interesting questions being asked today is what can digital look like for illustrated children’s books and reference products? It’s one of the things we’ve been thinking about a lot at Sourcebooks. Although it is still early days, I am inclined to believe that we are likely to make real progress with apps and websites. For example, you can look at the Books bestsellers list on Apple’s App Store and see a lot of illustrated children’s books. That thinking is also why we decided to turn the #1 bestselling Fiske Guide to Colleges into the iPad app Fiske Interactive College Guide. And it’s at the heart of the development work that we’re now doing with our authors and other partners. What do you think? Feel free to jot your ideas in the comments. As always, looking forward to the conversation. Dominique
An interesting article on digital transformation asking the question "As tablet computers surge, will video be publishing's next big hit?" was posted today on publishersweekly.com. As a pioneer in successful commercial multimedia publishing, Sourcebooks publisher Dominique Raccah is quoted:
Sourcebooks publisher Dominique Raccah, no stranger to the potential of multimedia, speaks of "a new era of creative partnership," and says 2011 may be the year in which some publishers begin to look and act "a lot more like film directors" for some types of books than the stereotypical fustian, tweedy book person. In college prep titles, a leading vertical for Sourcebooks, Raccah points to new videos produced for the electronic editions of Harlan Cohen's The Naked Roommate and Gary Gruber's SAT 2400—works that are available for sale as videos, in addition to using the videos to sell the books. The term "reader," as a result, Raccah suggests, is almost insufficient at Sourcebooks, which has sold more than five million "media-embedded" units (remember the book-and-CD combos from the 1990s, We Interrupt This Broadcast and And The Crowd Goes Wild?). Rather, Raccah speaks of her "constituents" and "stakeholders" in the marketplace, and stresses that for many titles, publishers should consider electronic editions more a "type of production" than just a publication. Read the full article at: The Producers: Books and Video in 2011 Last Friday lots of folks from Sourcebooks spent the day at the Spring 2012 Launch.
So what does a “launch” meeting entail? Publishers work in different ways and run different calendars, so this explanation is pretty much from the Sourcebooks perspective, but most will have some form of large group introduction to future titles. For traditional book publishing companies, “launch” is often the first time that the whole company is introduced to the new books. It’s a fairly early look. Among other things, it’s when:
Many of these people have looked at some of these books already, but this is usually the first full-group look at them. The focus for launch is to make sure that you’ve got the right pieces in place. Successful books are made up of hundreds of individual decisions. It’s what makes book publishing such a complicated process. So some of the decisions you’re reviewing are related specifically to what I’d call the merchandising package, including:
This part of the process is oriented around print books, though increasingly we’re talking about alternate-format concepts at this stage and earlier. Yes, print books are still the vast majority of the book business and there are categories for which ebooks are still not an important part of the business. And for each book you review a fairly comprehensive data sheet that includes basic data, initial drafts at key selling points, descriptive information, and competitive/comparative books. The goal at launch is simple: you want the book to create an awesome experience for the reader and a real success for the author. [And it’s heartbreaking every time you don’t…that, by the way, is true for every publisher, but that’s a different post.] So the thing you spend the most time on is the positioning of the book. What is this book? How does it speak to readers? How do we express that? Positioning is more than a title or a jacket. It’s all of the communication around the work. You review other books that you’re going to be competing with in the space. What else is there? What’s not worked? What do we know today that we didn’t know when we bought the book? What’s really exciting about this book? What moves people? You can probably see that there’s a fair amount of fact and data we’re looking at, but also an awful lot of craft. As the publisher, what we’re delivering is a lot of experience and hands-on knowledge of the marketplace. We’re trying to deliver both dollars and “wow” for our partners on the retail end. And ultimately that becomes all about how and where we strike the readers. Having all of the elements aligned at the beginning is how you can really create a successful book - that having the right vision of the book has enormous impact. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of examples of what good versus bad positioning can do for a book. I love launch. It’s new. It’s fresh. It’s filled with joy, laughter and the possibilities that exist for authors. Even something seemingly as minor as a publication date can make an enormous difference in the life of a book. And titling is something we obsess over. Each book matters. Friday’s Spring 2012 Sourcebooks Launch was no different. The room was packed. You could feel the energy. There were moments when the room vibrated. And there were books that lit up the room. And then there were books that needed more work. Books that had real potential but we didn’t seem to have it all wrapped up yet. That’s what launch is for – identifying those needs and opportunities and making sure that what we believe about a book and an author truly come across when we communicate it to the outside world. Ultimately, we want to create books that create awesome experiences for readers. [If you’re an author and haven’t yet viewed Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users video, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSlRd6MnDv8&feature=player_embedded] Books touch you, inspire you, call you to action. This year (2011), we’ve done more of that for authors than ever before in the history of our company. More bestsellers. More awards. More sales. It’s been incredible. And it all starts with these seemingly mundane but incredibly potent data sheets for every book that help ensure that the idea is right. That the title communicates. The format makes sense. The cover direction is distinct. The publicity and marketing group has an angle. The list of these decisions goes on and on. It’s what makes great books soar, it’s why publishers matter – and if you're very lucky, all these little decisions can turn into something that can look like this: It’s been an incredible couple of days... For the first time in the company’s history, Sourcebooks has four titles on the New York Times Bestseller List AND a USA Today Bestseller! It’s really extraordinary for any publisher, but for an independent publisher to have a set of books on the list by a number of different authors is rare (I actually couldn’t think of another example that weren't part of the same series...at least not four). The New York Times Bestseller List for Children’s Picture Books for the week ending March 26, 2011 will feature not one, not two, but THREE Sourcebooks Jabberwocky titles! Olympic gold medal figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi’s debut children’s book, Dream Big, Little Pig!, remains on the list for the second consecutive week at the #3 spot after debuting at #2 for the week ending March 19. 2011. Author Jennifer Fosberry’s My Name Is Not Isabella returns to the New York Times Bestseller List at the #9 spot, after previously landing at the #10 spot for the week ending January 9, 2011. Fosberry’s new book, My Name Is Not Alexander, debuts at #10 on the Children’s Picture Book list this week. OK, I have to say it’s kind of amazing for a Chicago independent publisher to have 30% of the top picture books. One of my bookseller friends told me (at an event this week) “Sourcebooks really seems to have a feel for children’s books.” That’s an amazing compliment! And yes, we seem to really be developing a feel for our readers in this area. And we're working hard to do that (but that's a different post). And then...Bestselling UK author Jill Mansell has matched her success overseas with a double bestseller in the U.S.: Miranda’s Big Mistake has reached #12 on the New York Times eBook Bestseller List and is #86 on the USA Today Bestseller List for the week ending March 26, 2011. Miranda’s Big Mistake is Mansell’s first bestseller in the United States, and the first New York Times eBook bestseller and USA Today fiction bestseller for Sourcebooks. What’s really amazing is that our team envisioned the possibility of having 3 books on the list and then worked hard to make it happen. Look at what happened! These are remarkable times in so many ways. I think there’s a lot to learn from Dreaming BIG! Dominique PS. I walked back into my office (after a trip to New York) and here’s what I saw Thanks, guys! Congratulations to all of our authors! And many thanks to all of our bookselling partners!!! What a great week!
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