DBW Insights: Rachel Chou
Rachel Chou, Chief Marketing Officer of Open Road Integrated Media, discusses the changing business of book marketing, new skill sets for ebook publishers by merging publicity, marketing, and sales into a single position, rapid iteration, and collaboration in the publishing industry.
When you’re talking about backlist marketing, there’s a shift because you really aren’t pushing with publicity as your first piece of the launch. You’re really talking about what used to be primarily publicity has merged into marketing. So that notion of getting reviews and working and getting things spread early on has become part of the marketer’s job. Instead of thinking about things as being about a one day lay down or doing a front of table at a store, you’re really talking about looking at it across periods of months or years. The marketer, in terms of the skill set, has to really shift because you’re thinking long term. You’re not thinking in these two week windows.
I think the thing that has become interesting is that I went into the formation of our company thinking that I wanted to bring in a lot of strategic thinkers. People that had been doing larger marketing promotions and partnerships. What’s become clear is that somebody that is nimble and someone that can really be thinking in multiple directions at once and really be on their feet and using the tools that are already out there, the communities that are already out there, is a better strength, a better skill set for me.
You need to be flexible and able to change your course of action.
A joint production of Digital Book World and Astral Road Brand Media: http://www.astralroad.com/
