link.me

link.me is a brilliant new concept to hit the publishing world. Quick Response (QR) codes are being integrated into the world of books to strengthen the relationship between the publisher and the user, creating an interactive reading experience that will offer real time links to information relating to the content of the book. Link.me is a Mobile Marketing CRM/CMS platform that could potentially create a new future for the bookselling landscape.

The Content Management System (CMS) enables the delivery of rich media including pod casts, videos and blogs to the reader's phone. The Content Relationship Management system tracks usability status, including the user's location, reading preferences and preferred device type. This is very much a consumer focused strategy - something the publishing world is lacking in comparison to the methods used by its competitors. Link.me can therefore be used to create, manage and disseminate content that is highly relevant to its users' reading habits. Knowing that a user is a consumer of a certain type of book, using a particular type of device in a specific location will enable link.me to send out relevant messages to tailor to each user's personal tastes and reading experience. This will include information about author activities, tour dates, literary festivals and so on. There is a huge potential here to find out as much about the reader as is necessary to profile the right kind of books to the right kind of people, to increase author exposure and also publisher exposure, building the relationship between those who produce the books and those who read them. The accessibility element of the link.me concept is the reason that this could be a huge success. People want information at speed, at ease and on the go - this is a way to target reading audiences in this interactive manner, to build up an understanding of what the user wants and how to cater for this.

Link.Me is currently working with Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, Penguin, and Random House. This is an exciting time for the publishing industry, and I am very keen to see how this interactive development takes hold. Direct marketing strategies are the way forward in this industry - finding out what the reader wants and producing the content to match.

The Amazon takeover continues

Responding to Amazon's takeover of The Book Depository, editor in chief of The Bookseller Neill Denny says: "British book retailers, and publishers, are now increasingly threatened by a competitor with almost limitless pockets, intent on customer acquisition at almost any cost. Amazon's range of secretive activities across the book trade threatens to gravely weaken one of Britain's most important creative industries, and the government does nothing."

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh Amazon you just never stop! The ambition of the retail giant to take over the publishing and selling of reading material is limitless. Taking over The Book Depository is simply the next step in their plan to dominate bookselling. Getting involved are the Office of Fair Trading, but it turns out that no competition laws have in fact been breached. According to Amelia Fletcher, OFT's chief economist "following a thorough investigation we are satisfied that this small increment to Amazon's position does not raise competition issues." Although Amazon does face competition from various online retailers and bricks and mortar outlets, it is in a very strong position at the moment which is worrying to the bookselling industry. This is a strategic merger between the two bodies, but is also linking in to the Amazon ethos and development of its niche publishing strategy which is being implemented by its imprints, namely The Domino Project. The idea behind The Book Depository is based on the concept of selling "less of more" rather than "more of less". This focus is something I find important in publishing and the marketing of its product. Create a focus, an identity and get good at publishing a particular type of content. Consumers will then come back to you for that particular product because they know you are good at producing it. The imprint is the best way to create this focus, to build up a strong author base, a great consumer following and produce content that a particular market is craving.

This is what Amazon is all about - finding out what the consumer wants, refining its products and sticking to a particular product that will cater for a specific group of consumers and their needs. From this point they can expand this outlook, but a niche concept creates the right kind of focus needed to capture audiences and keep them. The merger of Amazon with The Book Depository sees the strengthening of these interests - getting good at one thing and perfecting it.

The Seductive Package

Is it all about packaging these days? Aesthetics seem to be taking on a more and more prominent role in the packaging of content. A recent article entitled How Steve Jobs put the seduction into technology talked about how 'Apple reshaped the personal computer from a wobbly, Professor Branestawm-like contraption into a kind of digital jewellery.' Jewellery. The domination of the Apple product in the marketplace is very much an aesthetic concept. Although the products are amazing at what they do, their initial pull is very much in the seductive nature of the package: sleek, sophisticated, sexy. Yes that's right, sexy. Sex sells, so put that into product development and you're onto a winner. Mashable recently documented the release of the world's most beautiful thermostat:

'Tony Fadell, the man who oversaw 18 generations of the iPod, announced the first product of his stealth startup Nest Labs Tuesday: a sexy, world-saving … thermostat.'

Turn up the heat on this one (or turn it down - I was trying to be clever with my words there).

So reverting back to the publishing industry and the world of books, how does this concept translate? Does it translate? The Kindle, the iPad - making reading sexy? To be quite honest, I think reading should just be reading, it doesn't have to be sexy, well depending on the content perhaps. But it seems that the juxtaposition of a print book and a digital reader does cause conflict to many a reader and how comfortable they feel reading content off a digital screen. What has to happen to make this more mainstream? Although the popularity of the e-book is continuously growing, I can't help but think that there is a better way to showcase an e-book. The sexy sleek iPad may suit a trendy digital magazine reader, but I feel that the Kindle falls short. This could just be a personal distaste for the eReader, but there is something missing. The move from a print book to an eReader is a big jump, skipping out the smell of a book, the feel of a book and the sentimentality of an artefact. So is there a mid point that we could go back to? Maybe something with the look and feel of a print book, but with an inset of digital 'pages' - a somewhat paradoxical instrument, but something I would find more aesthetically pleasing and intriguing than a simple eReader. Hmm.. I'll give it some thought and get back to you.

Amazon Publishing

So Amazon is not only dominating the online retail market, but now it wants to specialise in the creation of its products, namely books. Amazon has become its own publishing company, creating a number of imprints, particularly The Domino Project, devised by Seth Godin who is working with Amazon to roll out a series of manifestos for use in the business sector as thought-provoking manuals for various industries and their companies. This is an imprint that will publish books to target a niche audience and cater for a particular business with a set requirement; this is very much consumer-focused publishing, something mirrored in numerous business models across the publishing demographic.

Similarly, the Unbound Project caters directly to the consumer; what they want, they get. The model works on a bidding concept. Readers will bid on the author and the work that they want to see published; if enough people back the bid by pledging various amounts, then the book will be published and those who pledged will be rewarded for their donation with free signed copies, author lunches, and so on. The landscape is becoming highly focused on what the readers want, and using the imprint as an identity to cater for user needs and their reading habits, taking a great deal of autonomy away from the publisher in a user-centered environment, which once saw more power in the hands of the publishers.

It has been revealed that Amazon is now giving authors access to the highly coveted Nielsen Book Scan database which records book sales and details of consumer behaviour and reading trends. This is another example of the strengthening of the relationship between the author and the reader, leaving the role of the publisher slightly out of joint, misplaced even. The publisher needs to reassert their role in the world of digital publishing, to find their strength in this new field of book production.