Kind of a depressing way to look at trends in the future of publishing…but still some interesting if not completely new stuff. Ned May, Director and Analyst at Outsell, discusses trends in B2B publishing (which is also relevant to B2C publishing, I think).
XML in Adobe Creative Suite: Mark Logic Digital Summit
Oprah Plus Kindle Equals Love
Best Practices to the Rescue
The most recent IDPF BSIG call highlighted the cost of success. Epub adoption has been happening all over the place with some publishers creating only epub and device manufacturers seeing the wisdom of supporting epub, but with this success has come the growing pains of a young standard in the wild.
Does Google Now Own the Long Tail?
Adobe Content Server 4
Nick Bogaty, who used to be at the IDPF and is now with Adobe, conducted a webinar recently to explain how ACS4 fits into the ebook ecology. Adobe is pushing their ACS4 (Adobe Content Server 4) to Publishers who sell direct (host their own content), distributors who provide protected content to retailers and libraries, solution providers, and retailers and libraries.
O'Reilly Webcast: What Publishers Need to Know About Digitization
The Next Big Things—David Pogue at DMC
Next Big Things:
- domystuff.com: list errands/stuff you want people to do for you; users bid on your unwanted job and you hire them
- prosper.com: hooking up good ideas with micro-investors
- kiva.com: loans to people in third world countries
- goloco.com: car-pooling with strangers
- e-petitions: anyone can start petition about anything
- tripadvisor.com: micro-reviews of resorts
- whoissick.com: map of how has what across the country
Big challenges for online marketers:
- Fear of losing control of message or brand
- Fear of the mob/comments—moderate comments
- Fear of resources
- Fear of being smeared by bloggers
Response: you can do it with little resources and generate positive response. It’s about the ideas. Three kinds of blogs: personal, news and institutional…let your people write a blog for your company even if it’s not polished or completely on-message.
Challenges: copyright; things can be made public even if you don’t want it to; you can’t contain it; if you trick your customers, they will never believe you again
Dealing with blogging abuse problem: Tim O’Reilly says what about a blogger code of ethics with a public badge that can be displayed on site?; Amazon’s review of reviewers; Rating the commenters and allowing for filter of low rated comments (i.e. SlashDot)
Missed Opportunities: let customers meet the people that work at your company; employee cubicle videos; design prototypes; customer submissions (ads)
Creative Competition—DMC
Best Effective (and Creative) Marketing:
The nominees
- Sarah Silverman—The Great Schlep
- Blyk: Free phones, texts and voicemail for 16-24 year olds in exchange for viewing ads. Used to deliver new Hornby book from Penguin with 7/10 recipients requesting more info on the book in UK.
- PHON3D: mobile apps that disrupt traditional use models (i.e. guitar tuner, handheld GPS, portable game devices, dictaphone)
- Nintendo Wii: Experience Wii—YouTube Screen ‘falls apart’ as clip is played
- iPhone apps: PhoneSaber, Shazam, Google Earth-derived apps combined with local maps
The winner
Sarah Silverman—The Great Schlep
