Publishers have access to a huge amount of data about their titles, but knowing how best to use that data to give your business a competitive edge can be tricky.
Erin Creasey is the sales and marketing director for ECW Press, one of Canada’s largest independents, where she has access to data from sources including SalesData, BookScan, and traditional and ebook retailers. “I’m always looking for the story behind the numbers,” she says.
Publishers and retailers are exploring new ways to package and price digital book content and we can learn quite a bit about this by looking to other content industries. We’re talking more frequently about bundling and subscriptions, but there’s a little less chatter about paywalls and I think that’s because the jury is still out on whether it works for our counter parts in newspapers and magazines. But it’s worth examining now to stay on top and ahead of things.
Things have come a long way for e-singles over the past year. At last year’s Tech Forum, we heard from Laura Hazard Owen of paidContent about the American market for e-singles and then The Atavist talked about their business model. Since then, more Canadian companies have entered the e-singles fray, all trying different tactics in an effort to explore the possibilities of this growing market.
Kobo’s Ashleigh Gardner gave an information-packed workshop at Technology Forum 2013 that covered some important tips and trends for selling ebooks internationally. In this video you’ll learn some pricing basics and how to ensure your ONIX records have all the information necessary to sell your books into as many territories as possible. And you’ll also get country-by-country pricing trends and tax structure tips that will help inform the decisions involved in selling your ebooks worldwide.
This year, at Technology Forum we spent some time getting to know our librarian partners better. We shared information and found new ways to collaborate. This is why I brought Susan Renouf and Ken Roberts in to give an information session on March 6th about the state of e-lending in Canada.
This year, Technology Forum 2013 closed on a particularly inspiring and energized note with Robert Wheaton’s presentation called “Future-Proofing Publishing: Lightweight Technologies Publishers Should Be Watching Right Now”. Robert is VP of Strategic Digital Business Development at Random House of Canada and the fearless leader of the Hazlitt team. His background in inventory management at Indigo and web development in the arts gives him a unique perspective. He has a vision for publishers and on March 7th, he had attractively packaged it in an Indiana Jones metaphor.
Self-publishing has always suffered from PR problems, but its days as the ugly duckling of the publishing world are numbered. Readers are showing a willingness to buy titles from no-name imprints, and it’s becoming more common to hear about traditionally published authors making the choice to go the self-publishing route.
BookNet Canada has fielded a consumer panel in February for the last two years. The results from the panel are used to help inform the data we collect for our study, The Canadian Book Consumer. In the general consumer questionnaire, we ask approximately 750 English-speaking Canadians from across the country how they spend their leisure time, how much time they spend per day on those leisure activities, and, this year, what mobile devices they own (at least the ones that could potentially be used for e-reading).
Last week’s CMPTO meetup was all about going digital, but not in an EPUB sense. As multimedia continues to grow and expand, so do the expectations of the people who consume it. Last Wednesday night we had three fantastic speakers, all of whom were able to shed some light on how publishers might begin to view the new digital landscape and what “going digital” means to each of them.
BookNet Canada is a non-profit organization that develops technology, standards, and education to serve the Canadian book industry. Founded in 2002 to address systemic challenges in the industry, BookNet Canada supports publishing companies, booksellers, wholesalers, distributors, sales agents, industry associations, literary agents, media, and libraries across the country.
