By Scott Walker, President, Brain Candy, LLC

In my last post, I explored the concept of value co-creation with audiences and suggested it as a way for publishers to explore new methods for reaching consumers and increasing the value of their intellectual property. This post will provide a great case study of one author’s attempt to literally co-create content with his fans.

In 2006, author and podcaster J.C. Hutchins began publishing podcasts of his 7^th Son technothriller trilogy. He had shopped the property around to different literary agents but failed to secure a publishing deal. As a result, Hutchins began offering free audio installments of his books as a way to raise awareness and establish a devoted fan base. His efforts paid off, and each podcast garnered thousands of downloads. Hutchins kept up the podcasting into 2007, when he secured a publishing deal with St. Martin’s Press for the first book in the trilogy, 7^th Son: Descent.

However, plans called for the book to be published in 2009, and Hutchins struggled to find a way to maintain his audience during the interlude. Given his other professional obligations, he knew he couldn’t single-handedly continue to publish enough content to sustain his fans until 7^th Son: Descent was available.

So, how to solve the problem of sustaining interest in the meantime?

Inspiration for the solution came from the short film anthology, The Animatrix, which was based in the world of the Matrix movie franchise. Nine different creatives were invited to tell their own original story within the Matrix world, using their unique vision and animation styles. The anthology explored both existing characters during the Matrix timeline as well as introduced new characters and storylines that exist before the Matrix timeline.

Hutchins decided to apply this approach to his own trilogy: “The Animatrix was an interesting narrative that took place in the gaps of the Matrix trilogy. I wanted to use that same philosophy of inviting professional creatives to come play in the 7^th Son world.”

Hutchins began by inviting seven other popular podcaster novelists to write and record short stories set in the 7^th Son universe. His plan was to publish them on his site through the existing 7^th Son podcasting channels. Hutchins offered each of the podcasting novelists $100 for their contribution, with the agreement that Hutchins would not commercially benefit from the contributed podcast.

In order to remove additional hurdles for the author-podcasters, Hutchins scoped the chronological boundaries for the contributed podcasts and provided the following guidelines:

• Contributed podcasts would take place during a two-week period in the 7^th Son timeline when the U.S. experienced a crippling nationwide power outage.
• None of the main characters from 7^th Son could be used by the podcasters.
• Authors could write about anyone in the U.S. who experienced the power outage.
• There was a minimum word count but no maximum (essentially a short story in length).

Hutchins also reached out to another group of podcasters he describes as “great verbal storytellers.” These podcasters were invited to contribute much shorter works, possibly as small as a five-minute audio clip).

To help encourage contributions that would dovetail into the existing trilogy, Hutchins provided these invited contributors a single page of information that would be sufficient for podcasters who had never read 7^th Son: Descent to still be able to participate. The page included key plot points from the novel, headline news and common knowledge that any character in the 7^th Son world would know.

Additionally, Hutchins aimed to have every accepted podcast maintain world continuity and be able to be viewed as canonical within the 7th Son world. While this added to the workload of reviewing and editing submissions, the result was a more official feel to the project. Acceptance carried a much greater weight for the 7^th Son: Obsidian contributors.

During the process of ramping up the podcasting collaboration, Hutchins realized he wanted to do more, and he wanted to include not just other podcasters but potentially any existing fan of the 7^th Son podcast. Hutchins named this participatory anthology of audience-crowdsourced content 7^th Son: Obsidian.

Following the same philosophy of lowering the bar for contributing, Hutchins set up a phone number for fans to call to leave in-world voicemails of fictional characters surviving the crisis of the blackout. As with the podcasters, Hutchins provided guidelines for submitting additional audio and video files.

With the infrastructure in place but the public launch date still weeks away, Hutchins “primed the pump” of contributions by directly courting selected fans and friends with a simple invitation to participate in “something very cool” connected with 7^th Son. Cryptic invitations were also sent out on various social media platforms, with the simple offer to contact Hutchins via email to participate in a cool project related to 7^th Son. He included no details about how they could participate.

For those who emailed Hutchins, he provided details about the project and began working out deadlines for the submission. In this way, Hutchins managed to aggregate a lot of contributions – some from professional podcasters, some from regular fans – well before the public launch of 7^th Son: Obsidian.

Much like with the seven podcast novelists, Hutchins constructed the invitation in a way that allowed fans to meaningfully contribute to 7^th Son: Obsidian without having to read any of the novels. He gave the same narrative boundaries to fans as he gave to the seven podcasters, plus some guidelines specific for contributing video. The same non-commercial understanding applied to all contributed content.

Hutchins launched 7^th Son: Obsidian in May of 2008 and began accepting submissions from anyone. Guidelines and rules were published on his website, giving anyone the opportunity to participate. Since Hutchins did not have a mailing list at the time, he promoted the project on his blog, in his podcasts, and by encouraging word-of-mouth promotion among his audience and friends. Part of the appeal for fans was the opportunity to actively contribute official content to a storyworld they were already excited about. Instead of just talking about the 7^th Son world, they could literally tell the next story in that world.

Hutchins set up a page on his website with the same guidelines and rules, and with the exception of the month of September, he published multiple installments each week through mid-October. Installments might be pure audio or video and may consist of a single work or be a compilation of several accepted contributions.

By the end of the project, Hutchins estimates he received well over one hundred submissions from fans, with more than half of them being audio-only submissions (and most of those came through the recordings left on the phone number Hutchins set up). The majority of submissions came after the public launch of the project.

Although Hutchins was responsible for managing the project, confirming that accepted submissions maintained world continuity, and the production of the 7^th Son: Obsidian installments, he did accept help from a fan (Shawn Bishop) to assist with reviewing some of the audio submissions.

The project was well received by Hutchins’ fans, as evidenced by both their willingness to contribute to the 7^th Son world and their interest in the resulting anthology. Downloads of the anthology installments within the first two weeks of publishing consistently fell between 8,000 and 10,000, though audio downloads were always higher than video downloads (Hutchins muses that if the project were launched today, the audio/video downloads numbers would likely be reversed).

Out of pocket expenses for Hutchins were well under $1,000. He used free software already on his Mac computer for media editing/producing (iMovie, GarageBand), and he used free services like k7.net to manage voicemail submissions and YouSendIt to receive large digital files from fans. He offered each of the podcaster novelists $100 to write and record a short story, but not every contributor decided to collect. Finally, Hutchins spent roughly $50 on stock footage he integrated into some of the video installments.

So, for less than $1,000, Hutchins was able to produce a fan-created multimedia anthology of official 7^th Son content and publish multiple weekly installments over a 6-month period. This content remains on his website, serving as additional ways for fans to enter and experience the larger 7^th Son world.

Aside from the obvious benefit of keeping his audience engaged until 7^th Son: Descent was published, there are some important takeaways about this project that apply to any participatory invitation to audiences:

1. Hutchins encouraged a higher degree of participation by creating a collaborative sandbox with only a few rules and limits on creativity. Importantly, the sandbox didn’t require contributors to be intimately familiar with the 7^th Son trilogy podcasts.
2. Hutchins recognized accepted submissions as official 7^th Son world content.
3. Hutchins made the rules of participation very clear from the beginning, and he provided parity for participation in the form of payment (to the seven podcasters) and credit (to the fans).
4. Hutchins ensured there was a critical mass of quality content of at the time he publicly launched the project and invited all fans to participate.
5. Hutchins put a hard deadline on submissions, adding to the attraction of participating before the project stopped taking contributions.

Regardless of the details of the participation, Hutchins acknowledges the value of inviting fans to contribute officially to an entertainment property. Importantly, he recognizes the value his fans brought to him: “The real heroes here are the people who created the content for 7^th Son: Obsidian. They were the ones building the stories. I was just curating and publishing.”

7^th Son: Obsidian achieved several goals. Primarily, it met a business need to maintain a connection between Hutchins and his audience between his podcasts and the release of 7^th Son: Descent. It also pushed at the boundaries of collaborative entertainment within the podcasting space by allowing audiences to extend an existing podcast world in new mediums. It was produced on a very low budget that Hutchins could fund himself. Finally, it gave Hutchins’ fans a chance to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime, unique opportunity to add their voices to the 7^th Son universe.

Hutchins acknowledges the challenge he had juggling his other projects and professional obligations while managing the 7^th Son: Obsidian project. Still, he’s excited about the prospect of another collaborative anthology:

The most important insight I learned during Obsidian was that by providing a welcoming and fun environment, my fans could create without fear. That’s the best kind of collaboration, and I look forward to revisiting the model in my upcoming creative projects.

Value co-creation with audiences can take many forms and use many practices, but at its core is a connection between the creator and an audience. Once established, that connection can produce some surprising and wonderful experiences for everyone involved.

“One of the many joys of managing the 7^th Son: Obsidian experience was watching the roles of author and audience absolutely reverse,” Hutchins said. “With the proper encouragement – not just from a project curator, but from an entire fan community – it can be relatively easy to empower everyday folks to pick up a phone or a video camera to help tell a larger story.”

Scott Walker likes to play in the collaborative sandbox of entertainment, building bridges between creatives and audiences. His most recent project is Shared Story Worlds, a site focused on participatory commercial entertainment. Scott is also a member of the StoryWorld Conference Council.

Want to learn more about inviting your audiences to create value with you or about using transmedia storytelling and cross-media strategies to extend your brand and intellectual property? Then, join us at StoryWorld, the only major gathering of industry leaders, decision makers, and transmedia specialists, to explore new business models, innovative partnerships, and fresh revenue streams.

By Emily Williams, Co-Chair, BISG Rights Subcommittee

The home site for BUSINESS MODEL GENERATION brags the book was “co-authored by 470 Business Model Canvas practitioners from 45 countries”.

Setting out to write a book about innovative business models, the originating authors – Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur – wanted to use the chance to create an innovative model for book writing. They started out by building an online hub, generated ideas, then followed a transparent writing process that allowed the community members to make suggestions or additions, which were incorporated into the final product.

The book was self-published in September 2009. With no marketing budget and sales exclusively through the BMG website, it sold out its first print run of 5000 copies in two months. A second run of 10,000 copies was sold through Amazon and managed to crack the top 100, despite a price point close to $50. Agent Jeffrey Krames then took on the project and sold world rights to Wiley, who published a (much more affordable) paperback version in July 2010 and licensed rights abroad.

From Self-Pub to Spain’s Biggest Publishing House

Roger Domingo, the editorial director of Planeta’s Deusto business imprint, bought world Spanish rights to the book. He decided that this innovative model of authorship demanded an equally innovative model of translation. He reached out through the BMG hub and put out a call for any Spanish-speaking members who wanted to collaborate on the translation.

The collaborators weren’t working from scratch, any more than the collaborators did on the original edition. “​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The book was translated into Spanish by a translator we’ve worked with often,” Domingo explains,​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​”and she was paid her usual fee and gets her usual cut of the royalties. We then posted the translated text on Google Docs so anyone who wants to comment or improve the translation can do so. We’ve shared the draft with everyone who volunteered.​​”

In the end, there were 18 collaborators on the Spanish translation when Domingo wrapped things up on December 20th. Asked what he hoped to get out of the collaborative process, Domingo pointed to the nature of the project and the reach of the web.

“Our intention is to be coherent with the spirit of the book – if the original edition was collaborative, it seemed logical that the Spanish translation should be as well,” he said.​​​​​​​​​​ “I also really believe that it will improve the translation, especially thanks to the contributions from the Latin American collaborators, who will be able to tell us if there’s something that is understood ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​differently there.”

Recruiting collaborators only through the BMG hub limits the number of potential participants, but Domingo was optimistic that the comments they did get would be genuinely useful. “We’ll try to include all the comments – assuming they’re relevant,” he said, “which we think they will be in the majority since the collaborators are all experts on the subject and use the book in their day-to-day work. Once the collaborators have sent in their comments, we’ll decide which to include in the final edition. When the book is finished we’ll send a copy to everyone who collaborated.”

Breaking the Translation Bottleneck

This project was interesting to me because I’ve been on the lookout for web-enabled ways of sharing the burden of translation. Language is still the biggest natural barrier to the spread of books across borders. There are some automated tools for getting the gist of ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​short passages (Google Translate is impressive), but nothing nuanced enough to ensure an accurate, readable experience of a book-length text – and less so the better the original writing is. Humans are still the best mediators but, as little as most translators are paid, the cost of translating a book is still substantial.

Domingo’s experiment solves the most significant problems of 1) creating a quality and stylistically coherent translation, and 2) making sure the person who does the main work of translating gets paid for it. It does this, however, by following the traditional model where a publisher buys rights and advances the money for the translation. Reaching out to the BMG community is a way of spreading the word about the book and getting useful feedback – a good first step, but not an approach that will revolutionize the way books find their way into new countries and languages.

Lessons from Manga

There is a model for a truly reader-driven translation model. It is manga.

Before manga were introduced into the US by publishers, fans created their own “scanlations” – they scanned, translated and posted their favorite manga online (for free!) so they could be read (for free!) by non-Japanese speakers. For years this was a genuinely populist movement and was tolerated by publishers as it helped create an advance fanbase for manga and allowed them to gauge interest in specific series. As the popularity of manga grew, however, the number of professional, publisher-created translations skyrocketed, and some of the scanlation sites morphed into straight P2P download sources, generally pirate scans of editions already published in English. At this point, the industry began to push back.

The power of that big, dispersed fanbase working for free is irresistible though, and there were other attempts to monetize it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The MIT Media Lab teamed up with Toshiba to create Manganovel, a short-lived endeavor to create a legitimate forum for scanlations, where the manga were being legally translated and the collaborators could get some form of compensation. The idea was the site gave willing fan translators access to lesser-known manga that didn’t have a shot at professional translation. The translators could pick projects they liked, and the translations would be rated by the community so the cream would rise to the top.

Manganovel didn’t attract a big enough community to survive. Still, the idea is intriguing.

An Idea in Search of a Platform

There are many territories where genre fiction is at the same stage manga used to be in the US: there is a small group of highly motivated fans – of romance, or science fiction – but not a big enough market to support a large number of professional translations. Because the market is limited, there are a lot of authors on the other side whose books don’t get picked up for translation by publishers in those territories. So the question becomes: is there a way for these books to draw on the energy and expertise of the fans to create translations that would allow them to find a wider audience?

Working within a genre, it seems possible to create a platform – on a smaller scale than Manganovel, maybe, with a leaner operation – that would give readers a place to discover new books, and give authors a chance to connect with fans…and possibly with someone willing to create a translation in return for a cut of the sales.

Now, it is not my intention in any way to devalue the work of professional translators. I’ve worked as a translator and know it is a craft, an underpaid and underappreciated art, and often a tough slog. But it can’t be a bad thing for there to be more outlets for books to be matched with willing translators, and if the internet has shown us anything it’s that we should never underestimate the power of a crowd of willing and talented amateurs.

Every other aspect of publishing is being opened up to new models of creation and distribution through the internet. It seems unlikely that translations would be the lonely exception. The missing piece, as always when it comes to books and translation, is figuring out how everyone gets paid!

Emily Williams is co-chair of the BISG Rights Subcommittee and a former literary scout who currently works as an independent publishing consultant.

A few weeks ago my company, The Perseus Books Group, released an app for the iPad called JFK: 50 Days. It’s meant to be a companion product to a large coffee-table book called JFK: Day by Day (Running Press), which covers the 1,036 days John F. Kennedy was President. We describe it as a companion because the app is focused on fifty select moments from the book to mark the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s election to the White House.

But what’s in the app that’s not in the book is more than an hour’s worth of incredible video, most of which is rare footage culled from the archives of NBC News, featuring JFK, Jackie, and other members of the Kennedy family during the early 60s. Thanks to the technology of the iPad, we’re confident the experience of both viewing and reading about these historical moments is truly gratifying.

So how did this all come about?

Well, during a meeting with the folks at NBC News it was brought to our attention there were tons and tons of Kennedy footage in the vaults and they suggested we do a project together relating to our book. Naturally we loved this idea and immediately got to work. The first thing we needed to do was figure out just what this should be because digital projects featuring video and images are always a challenge due to large file sizes. As a guide, we turned to the print version of the book, which is fully designed and has a particular look. Since this was going to be a companion product, we determined an app was the logical format because it would allow us to essentially keep the same design while maintaining a similar layout.

With that decision behind us, we forged ahead spending hours and hours viewing old clips in the NBC News archives division located at Rockefeller Center. It took about a full month to complete and as the lead producer of this project, I can honestly say it was quite an amazing experience and absolute privilege for our team to have been given the chance to take this unfiltered trip through history.

While all this was taking place we approached Vook about working together to program the app using Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite, since they were chosen by Adobe as a BETA tester for this new platform. If you’ve downloaded Wired or The New Yorker apps for iPad, which also uses this software, then the various ways to navigate JFK: 50 Days would be familiar to you. We felt it was the best option to present the fifty days in chronological order and as far as I know, this is the first book-related app using this approach.

(Here’s a video example courtesy of NBC.)

The structure of the “50 days” concept helped keep us focused since there was so much archival footage to watch. Even after we made our final selections there were still a number of choice moments that we just felt could not be left out of the app, so we decided to represent those pieces in montage form, which appear at the end of the app as bonus features. These montages are probably my favorite part of this project because they challenged us to string together unique pieces of forgotten history in a way that captured the essence and emotion of those moments in time.

I really hope readers come to appreciate the quality of the video because all the archived footage presented in JFK: 50 Days was painstakingly restored to deliver visuals with striking contrast and great sound. Believe me, this is not easy to do when working with film that’s fifty years-old! But I feel the time, effort, and care we put into the clips really shows.

JFK: 50 Days was officially launched on November 15th with a segment on The Today Show. About a week later, David Gregory, moderator of Meet the Press, (who was kind enough to film the introduction for the app), agreed to promote it at the end of his program. There’s also a terrific TV commercial airing on NBC to raise awareness in the marketplace.

As you might imagine, all this has been simply fantastic to see and everyone who has been a part of this project is thrilled by NBC’s support.

I’m happy to report JFK: 50 Days was #1 in the Books category of the App Store for two weeks and reached as high as #14 in paid apps overall. With the 50th anniversary of JFK’s inauguration speech coming this January we’re gearing up for another wave of promotions. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, if you have an iPad, you can get the JFK: 50 Days app here.

This post was originally published at Bookcurrents.com and has been reprinted with Mr. Costanzo’s permission.

Peter Costanzo began his online career by selling autographed books via the World Wide Web in 1996. In 1998 he was the Online Retail Marketing Manager for HarperCollins’ Online Sales department. In 2000 he worked at Random House as the Online Marketing Manager for the Audiobooks division and in 2001 became Director of Online Merchandising for Steve Brill’s Contentville.com. From 2001 until 2004, Peter was a freelance online marketing consultant for the publishing industry servicing clients such as Walker & Co., FSG, Basic Books, and others. In 2004 he started as Director of Online Marketing for The Perseus Books Group and presently holds that position

My previous post, Collaborative Communities: Transmedia Evolved, described the model of collaborative communities Scott Walker has built with his company Brain Candy, and promised to go deeper into Runes of Gallidon, the “living fantasy world designed for creative collaboration in an online community” they have created as a proof of concept.

Launched in July 2009, Runes of Gallidon is set up as a “collaborative sandbox”: the basic story of a collapsing empire threatened by dark forces was developed internally at Brain Candy, but anyone can submit a contribution to build out the story in the form of prose, games, art, audio, video or any other digitizable medium. All submissions are reviewed by Walker, and those that meet a threshold of quality and legality are posted to the Gallidon gallery and become a canonical part of the world. Users can then rate the submitted works, and the best rise to the top of the ranking.

In order to have a work posted to the site, creators have to sign an agreement allowing their work to be published under a Creative Commons license, which allows Brain Candy to use their work for commercial profit, paying 50% of gross. It also allows the work to be remixed or copied and distributed non-commercially by Gallidon users or anyone else. The creators​ retain rights to the work and can also publish and sell it separately, paying Brain Candy 10% of the revenue they​​​ earn.

Though not part of the written agreement, guidelines on the site encourage creators play by the rules of the world, meaning ​​​​​​​​​​they are free to use characters, objects, or places created by others, but with respect — they can’t “kill, humiliate, degrade, or irrevocably damage” them without asking permission. Walker encourages communication between creators and says any submission that kills off another person’s creation is treated to extra scrutiny.

Artisans, Works, and Ideas

The flip-side is that, just as creators can use other people’s characters, they have to offer up their own creations under the CC license for other authors and artists to play with. Walker says this decision was key to creating a clean legal and revenue structure for Gallidon.

“The solution we came up with was to simply say the philosophy behind the world is to contribute to the world, so that there’s more there to be used as input for additional creative works,” he explains. “To keep revenue sharing simple, we said it will be done at the work level, at the completed creative project level — so characters, places, items, events, anything that is typically non-copyrightable, that is part of a larger work that is copyrightable, those ideas are thrown into the community portfolio when we accept a work, and anyone can grab those ideas. There is no trail of dollars, no revenue sharing that occurs at the idea level. You are rewarded not for coming up with the idea of a character, or a place or an item, but for taking the time to hammer that idea into a quality storytelling or artistic experience.”

Yes, behind this share-and-share-alike doctrine is a real business model. “Gallidon was meant to both provide entertainment but to also solicit entertainment,” says Walker. “The idea is that we are able to expand the property far faster by allowing outside content to come in, under a filtered process, than if we were to try and pay for all of that content to be internally produced.”

Walker is pleased with how well the legal and community framework Brain Candy created has held up. Other parts of the project, however, started off less smoothly.

Attracting a big audience has been a challenge, despite promotions online and at big events like Comic-Con. One of the lessons Walker learned, he said, was that “you’re trying to address two different audiences” with a project like Gallidon. “You’re trying to say, fantasy fans, here is a robust world, rich in detail, across multiple media, to come and discover and enjoy. And oh, by the way, anyone who has a creative bent — illustrator, writer, videographer, whatever — you can also participate by contributing content to the world. Those are two very different messages.”

The Limits of Engagement

The gap in audience engagement caused Walker to make some adjustments to his strategy.

“What we realized was we launched a sandbox as big as a fantasy world, and sprinkled it with lots of different mediums — so we’ve got art, RPG, video, text — and we said here you go, here’s a world. We seeded it with some flash fictions, some short stories, pieces of work on a rather small scale, and we never launched it with what I would call a large tentpole piece of content, a large novel or a graphic novel, or even a series of short films. While that was a conscious decision on our part, I think at the end of the day when you start dealing with collaborative projects and you’re inviting participation, one of the keys to success is to give the audience some initial story line to hang on to, even if that story line initially limits the scope of the world.”

To provide a story of the kind of scope he thinks will make Gallidon more compelling, Walker is writing a full-length book, which he plans to publish on the site in installments, with a POD edition to follow once the book is complete. He is optimistic about the tools he now has at his disposal to sell the book himself.

“The whole mindset of this from the beginning was to see how lean of an operation you can make it,” says Walker. “We launched the company in 2008, and in the last couple of years it’s been fascinating to see the advances in print-on-demand and self-publishing tools and the changing view of what it means to be self-published. This year alone you have the advent of the iPad as a distribution channel.”

The lesson that the audience needs a big, compelling story to fall in love with is an interesting one, and I couldn’t help but ask if Walker wouldn’t like to work with a book editor and publishing house — after all, it is their job to help shape and produce just those kinds of stories.

His response: “I’m not even thinking about working with a publisher on this. I’m going to try to get this thing off the ground myself. It would be wonderful to have a publisher, but I feel like the exercise of trying to get a publisher interested in this type of world, with the revenue share that’s going on, with the Creative Commons licensing… I know all too well, first-hand, the difficulties of trying to communicate the business model behind this IP and I feel like there would be a better use of my time. There might be some licensing opportunities down the road.”

Fan Fiction Running Rampant

Growth may have been measured, but the Gallidon site has attracted creators eager for the chance to get a piece of the revenue in exchange for their contributions, and it already contains works in the form of writing, drawings, photos, role-playing games, audiobooks and comics. There are even a couple of digital games, and Walker sees potential for more collaboration on that front. Film, on the other hand, is more difficult.

“The reality is that this model is not one that’s going to be easily translated into mainstream Hollywood,” says Walker, “because I don’t think the movie industry would be terribly interested in entering into a non-exclusive commercial agreement with Brain Candy for content that’s already out there under a CC license. The CC license itself opens up certain risks that large studios and networks are unwilling to deal with insofar as branding and market control. The idea that you could have fan fiction running rampant in the online community and have it protected in a certain way under Creative Commons where a cease and desist is not available to them — I don’t think they’re going to jump on board with that kind of a model. Which is not to say Runes of Gallidon can’t work, it’s just going to have a hard time scaling like most IP would because Hollywood won’t be able to get their exclusive rights on the content.”

The other restriction the revenue-share model has imposed is the decision Walker made early on to limit Gallidon creators to adults of legal age. “I think there’s a lot of untapped potential [in the YA market] if you’re able to navigate the legal risks,” he says, “and clearly a lot of companies do this on a regular basis, they have children coming to the website. The challenge is when you start to say, you still own that work, or there will be revenue sharing. That is where the legal hurdles get really really high. The easy answer is for creators to stay with adult participation, that obviously solves a lot of issues legally and reduces a lot of legal risk.”

The Bleeding Edge

Walker is aware that the Gallidon model will seem extreme to some observers and says he created the world in part to see how far he could push the collaborative model and still provide a means for​​​​​ creators to be paid for their work. The lessons he’s learned from the project ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​could apply any number of ways to any number of different properties.

“As the owner, you’re free to scope and scale the world,” explains Walker. “We could say, here’s Gallidon, but you can only play on this continent, or you can only play with these characters. It’s a very flexible model and you customize it based on the property and the genre that you’re dealing with. You include the limitations on the IP, whether there are existing licensing models that are going to inhibit what you can and can’t do with audiences. You look at the popularity of it. You look at whether Creative Commons makes sense, you look at whether revenue sharing makes sense.”

“Runes of Gallidon,” he concludes, “is just one example at the far edge, at the bleeding edge of collaborative commercial entertainment.”

Emily Williams is co-chair of the BISG Rights Subcommittee and a former literary scout who currently works as an independent publishing consultant.

Interested in learning more about using transmedia storytelling and cross-media strategies? Join us at StoryWorld Conference + Expo, the only major gathering of industry leaders, decision makers, and transmedia specialists, to explore new business models, innovative partnerships, and fresh revenue streams.

It’s been a few weeks since my last entry, where I discussed Transmedia Production Contracts and offered to share my drafts with you, upon request. Many of you emailed, and I hope I communicated to you that it will take a few weeks to get these deals through the publisher’s attorneys.

Then, when they’ve been beaten up and polished, I will redact the deal-specific parts and email you the forms.

If you missed that article, and want the docs when they’re ready, email me at dmarlett@enkHouse.com. (When you do, please tell me a little about yourself and your role in this new entertainment industry.)

What I’m finding are three basic types of transmedia deals: the production agreement, the co-production agreement, and the license agreement. The Transmedia Production Agreement (TPA) seems to work best with our own stable of authors, where we are producing original transmedia content and/or they are creating it, for inclusion in an original body of work to be released under our enkHouse brand (eg: there is no previously published book or other material upon which our content will be based.)

For previously published work coming from publishers, so far the issue has come down to how involved they wish to be in the creation of the enhanced ebook. If they want to be hands-on, then a TCPA (Transmedia Co-Production Agreement) seems right. If they want to be hands-off, and we are to come back to them with the finished transmedia product, then a TLA (Transmedia License Agreement) is in order.

So far, the larger the publisher, the more likely they want to do a TLA.

Moving past the question of contracts, let’s talk about some specific transmedia projects. One of the original intents of this column was to lift the veil and publicly chronicle the process of one of our own transmedia projects (aka Enhanced Ebook or EEB). My hold-up to-date has been in the picking of the project, as the telling cannot be to the detriment of the launch (aka, driving in competitors), and the publisher must be okay with the revelation of the process.

As our projects with publishers will all be unique, first-of-their-kind initiatives, I am finding it difficult to use them as examples. So I have decided to chronicle the process with one of our own authors, Nick Black, and his amazing novel, See Jack Die.

But first let me share some insights into how our development process works. I receive a large number of emailed manuscripts (where are the gate-keeping transmedia agents!) and try to get through all of them. Not read them all, mind you, but get a feel for them and respond accordingly. It doesn’t take long to get a sense if the story has legs, and if it has sufficient uniqueness to lend itself to an EEB-first campaign.

I will discuss this in detail in future columns, but for now let me say that the key ingredients to me are:

1. Story. Actually it is: Story Story Story. My years of writing and reviewing screenplays comes in handy here. I am fast on story… to see it, or to see its absence. Good transmedia projects have story-game from page one.
2. Writing. Great writing skills and a unique, powerful ‘voice’, with limited developmental edits required.
3. Setting. Unique and visual setting (lending itself to either graphic artists or creative photography, for example).
4. Author. An author who will be collaborative and whom really enjoys the idea of taking his or her audience on a much broader journey than is possible within the confines of a printed book.
5. History. Does this particular work have a history? Was it self-published? If so, does it need significant editing to get it into shape for enkHouse?
6. Production. I get a quick snapshot of how the EEB might look, and what additional content will need to be produced to get it there. Are there existing media available? What is the scope of what will be required? Can it be recouped in the end while still keeping within enkHouse pricing (less than $9.98 retail)?
7. Audience. Who is the target audience? If the EEB is going to require extensive production, the audience must clearly be international.
8. Marketing. How long would it take to get this out on the market? What might the technology be at the time that could lend to the marketing (wow factor)? What might that marketing cost?
9. Cross-media. It needs to be fairly evident that the EEB can be the foundation of a great film or premium cable series. And if the story has the potential to spawn a terrific digital game, all the better. And of course, a print book will also be considered.
10. Competition. Are other EEBs likely coming for this same topic? This is usually not a problem at this early point in the industry, but it is still an important consideration.
11. Subject(ive). Is the subject enjoyable to me? Will it be a good addition to the enkHouse catalog?
12. Gut sense. This is why I’m paid the big bucks (Ha!)

These are not necessarily in priority order, with the exception of the first two. I imagine that my process is similar to a traditional acquisition editor’s process, though for transmedia projects it requires a broader approach; the ability to imagine the alternative media elements as well as what it takes to produce them.

For us, being a digital entertainment company, we are only looking at ‘digital-first’ projects, those which, based on the above criteria, can work better in an interactive medium, and then the print book can be ‘found’ within the multi-dimensional EEB. Secondarily, film adaptations will be pursued. It is all led by the enhanced digital product first; that is the keystone from which the narrower media forms can pull their content.

So, back to Nick Black’s manuscript. He came to me a few months ago with his self-published work, See Jack Die, and a plan for a series of books to come using the same Jack character, and the branding concept of See Jack ___ (Run, Kill, etc.) I read the book and the manuscript for the second in the series, and was immediately hooked. It was a true XJ7, firing on all 12 cylinders (aka, all 12 of the above criteria). Check. Check. Check.

Great talent. Fresh voice. Good story. Well, there were some things that needed further investigation, but on first blush: bingo!

And the fact that Nick is fresh from prison and before that the French Foreign Legion, was of interest…not sure how we will use that later.

Coming from the film side of things, specifically screenwriting, I guess I have an eye/ear/nose for concepts that will translate well to film. It is a zone I am comfortable hangin’ in, and Nick’s series was also particularly suitable for it. I was naturally interested when it was obvious the See Jack series would be ideal for a dark Showtime or HBO series, for example. Or perhaps a feature film. But today, the money is in series, and his story is ideal for it.

One key element I needed to further explore was the ‘author’ himself.

Nick and I talked at length, and being an author with an entrepreneurial spirit, he was on board with letting me do our editing ‘thang’, and to start bringing in the alternative media elements. So it was decided. Nick signed on as one of my managed writers and we entered a Transmedia Production Agreement for his manuscripts. Specifically, we will produce/publish the book digitally, as an EEB, then produce or license the film/TV media rights, and then go to a print book.

(It is also prime for a game, but one thing at a time. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…”)

But before we did any of that, his manuscript needed some story work, and copy and line editing. And before even that could start, Nick had to pull all his self-published stuff off the Internet, etc.

The ‘book’ that was out there was not the same as what it would be when we relaunched it under the enkHouse label. The cover art wasn’t of our caliber, the characters needed polishing, the story tightening, and, of course, it needed editing. So it had to be pulled. The way I figure it, whatever audience he had built via self-publication will still be there later, and they will be the first in line for its reincarnation.

It was a good start, and in early August we were underway…. (to be continued)

Write on,

David

David Marlett is the managing director of enkHouse, a transmedia production company based in Dallas and Los Angeles, focused on enhanced eBooks and interactive apps for the publishing, film and other entertainment industries.

Interested in learning more about using transmedia storytelling and cross-media strategies? Join us at StoryWorld, the only major gathering of industry leaders, decision makers, and transmedia specialists, to explore new business models, innovative partnerships, and fresh revenue streams.

As many of you know, I made a move from academic to trade publishing over the summer. The transition has been fascinating, and I think the last 3 months have been the most exciting in my career as my role has shifted from strategic licensing at Oxford University Press to overseeing all sales and marketing at Bloomsbury. In my new job I have already participated in nearly every imaginable trade business scenario: retailer terms negotiations, international sales & distribution deals, book launches, author tours, agent negotiations, and even a Man Booker winner.

Perhaps most interesting about my new role is that I am one of the few people in my industry who runs sales and marketing operations on both sides of the Atlantic. Seeing how London differs from New York in trade is fascinating, but what has struck me most is the prevailing zeitgeist regarding world English rights.

The proposition that one publisher should NEVER be sold world English rights for a work seems to have become the default position, especially by UK based agents. This default position is a curious one; it can create the short-term benefit of increased cash up front (it doesn’t necessarily mean that, but I agree it can). However, the downside, as seen from my eyes, is far too great – especially for a new author who needs careful brand and marketing development.

THE ADVANTAGES OF GLOBAL PUBLISHING

A global publishing plan cannot only build an author more effectively, but also make it easier for the agent and author to work with an editor and sales/marketing team. No multiple publishers and sub-agents thinking about their self-centered needs – one company to manage, one relationship to build, one place to go when things go right (or wrong). Yet this logic seems to be lost on those who are selling us books.

To wit, Helen Gamons-Williams is an editor at Bloomsbury who has a wonderful ability to bring a book to life when describing it at our editorial pitch meetings. A couple of weeks ago she pitched a novel that everyone in the room immediately wanted to read. It was a unique tale that blended history with a very surprise ending that, if described any further, would ruin this potentially incredible new novel.

Helen made a preemptive offer for world English and German rights. As we have publishing companies in London, New York, Sydney, and Berlin, we can launch titles on a worldwide basis, in English and German, and create a cohesive and coherent marketing/sales/branding effort. Before the offer was put in, Helen knew the agent had an offer for the UK, but she also knew he thought very highly of Bloomsbury and was therefore confident going in with a large offer for world English rights. Our plan would be to roll out this title in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and Germany with one look, one cover design, one title (except in German!), and one global marketing campaign.

The fact that the book had a plot device-driven twist at the end meant that we would want to publish and promote this title in a very calculated and clever way in order to pique the interest of all markets simultaneously – while not allowing the plot twist to become public fodder on the internet months before the book publishes in all of the markets.

This was a hugely important point in our thinking for this title and for our publishing program worldwide. In a global marketplace where customers can order books online in Australia from the US or UK and pay no freight, it is incredibly important to market a title coherently and wisely with a single brand and publish everywhere at the same time (or as close to it as is reasonable or possible given the differences in language).

THE FINKLER ANSWER

"Amazon customers anywhere could buy the book without insipid territorial limitations in rights, look, and feel."

This is how we published, with incredible success, Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question. Jacobson’s Man Booker – winning novel was working well for Bloomsbury before the award was given because we had been able to buy world English rights, we were able to create one cover design, we had one title, and we had been able to sell one ebook across all markets.

In fact, Amazon had given us a promotional banner and placement on the Kindle store precisely because we had one cover and one title. Amazon customers anywhere could buy the book without insipid territorial limitations in rights, look, and feel. As Howard’s face and book were plastered across television, magazines, and newspapers across the world, one single brand, one single look, one single publisher was conveyed to an eager audience.

The result was amazing as The Finkler Question hit; #1 on the UK Kindle store, #2 on Amazon.co.uk for the UK print version, #7 on the US Kindle store, and #3 on the Amazon.com for the US print version. We have even cracked the NY Times Best Sellers list, with Finkler jumping to #14 this past Sunday.

Yes, these figures are a direct result of winning the Man Booker, but I would argue that the Man Booker prize is most influential in the UK. Furthermore, Howard Jacobson is not a household name in the US and Finkler is set in London, not in NY. These factors make me believe we are looking at something else that is helping drive our US success.

I believe that the single coherent brand and look/cover has helped propel Jacobson’s work into the limelight in a way that none of his other books to date have managed to do. Yes, none won the Man Booker (he was nominated in the past), but none published under a single global marketing and sales strategy.

The semiotics of a single cover design uncovers an imprinting effect that carries over from market to market. Howard and the jacket in the UK on the cover of a US newspaper means that the book itself was a symbol of the book – which in turn helped people “see” it when they went to the store or saw it online. The impact factor of having a single look and feel and single marketing plan that is customized for local markets brings marketing back to trade books. Piling books high in stores not only doesn’t cut it anymore as the only way to truly market a book; it simply doesn’t happen enough to rely on.

THE RIGHTS OBSTACLE

So here we are on the precipice of a new way of thinking about marketing and trade books. We are in a globalized world that offers us the opportunity to do actual marketing of titles and to create worldwide and globally impactful sales plans. All we need are the rights to do so.

Which brings us back to Helen and her quest to sign this novel by a first-time author. We made our offer and even raised it a couple of times to ensure we were competitive – but without hesitation, we insisted on world English rights. Over and over the question came back – would we consider UK and commonwealth only? Helen bravely towed the line – it must be incredibly hard to fall in love with a book, want to sign it badly, have the money to do so, but know that strategically you must get the whole baby, not just Solomon’s half-the-child solution.

Helen, like the true mother in the Old Testament tale, kept to her line knowing that publishing this work in pieces would weaken it and the potential of this new author. In the end, the agent signed the book in the UK only with another publisher. I assume they are working on selling this in America, as well as Canada and Australia (assuming they didn’t sell commonwealth rights).

The book is fantastic and the rights will be sold in these markets. The problem will come when the book publishes and this first-time author finds himself at the mercy of 3 or 4 different marketing plans, cover designs, publishing cycles, release dates, and discordant marketing iconography. Let’s just hope for his sake some consistency and coherence prevails and he builds a career deserving of his writing.

For us, we will keep pushing our agenda of building our authors and lists on a worldwide basis and hope the industry catches up soon.

This article was originally published at Black Plastic Glasses and has been reprinted with Mr. Schnittman’s permission.

Evan Schnittman is Managing Director, Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, an amazing publisher that was rocketed into the limelight by one particular set of books for children but has grown into a global adult and children’s trade publisher as well as an incredibly important academic publisher. Schnittman runs the global sales and marketing of all print and digital products as well as licensing and business development deals.

Those who devalue the work of editors ought to consider history. Perhaps the greatest single contribution of an editor to a written work can be found in The Declaration of Independence.

Early drafts of the most important document of the United States of America show a lot of changes in word choice in the process of writing. Thomas Jefferson had a venerable editorial committee: John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who wrote extensive comments in the margins.

In a crucial draft of the Declaration, Jefferson smudged out the word subjects in favor of the word citizens. Archivists have the technology to see the change for the first time, using special spectral technology to decipher the intent of manuscript authors.

Imagine if Jefferson had used the word subjects rather than citizens. For many, it would seem that the United States was merely replacing one tyranny with another, rather than crafting a system of government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” It seems plausible that this one edit changed the course of history. Not all edits have the same effect, of course. But as an IBM study suggests, their value can be measured. 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

Why do organizations devalue editors?

Editors are seen as an unnecessary step in the content process. “All they do is make it hard to publish what we want to publish on the Web.” I’ve heard it many a time; a few times from a person pointing the finger squarely in my direction. As much as I try to show that I’m just trying to help, that my efforts are just trying ensure that my company’s brand is represented in the best possible light, it doesn’t work. Somehow editors are viewed as an extra cog in the machinery. “When we go to a lean six sigma process, we will be able to eliminate editors.” That is just the latest in cost cutting models editors have had to defend themselves against.

Anyone who has ever written anything for publication can cite chapter and verse about how they have been saved by a good editor. Even if editors don’t make changes, having a second set of eyes with a different perspective on the audience allows writers to relax and create better work. But measuring their value is another story.

How to measure the value of editors

Because editors are often seen as unnecessary, we at IBM conducted a study to demonstrate their value for some of our marketing pages. We took a sample of unedited pages with high traffic from across our various business units and ran them through Dave Harlan, the editing lead for the group that creates a lot of our marketing content. We then ran an A/B test, where we served the unedited versions to a random sample of users and the edited versions to the rest of the users. We then measured engagement (defined as clicks to desired links on the page) on those pages over the course of a month.

The results were astonishing.

The mean difference in engagement was 30 percent across the set of pages. And the standard deviation was one percent–we got a 30 percent improvement on the desired call to action for the pages across the board. 

Now it was just one test and it needs to be replicated before we draw strong conclusions. Your mileage may vary depending on the quality of your editors (Dave is exceptional, by all accounts). But we can provisionally conclude that well edited pages do 30 percent better than unedited pages.

What would 30 percent better engagement do to your bottom line? I’m going to let you draw your own conclusions about how 30 percent better engagement might affect your business. But let’s put an end to all the talk about editors being unnecessary.

This post was originally published at Writing For Digital and has been reprinted with Mr. Mathewson’s permission.

James Mathewson is the co-author of Audience, Relevance, and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content, and editor in chief of ibm.com, where he sets standards and delivers education to improve the effectiveness of IBM Web content. He has trained 1,000+ IBM writers, editors, and content strategists on Web content quality and SEO techniques.

CASE STUDY

Exporting Sidebars from InDesign to ePUB

ePUB TOOLKIT

• InDesign CS4 to export
• Springy Archiver to open the ePUB file
• Dreamweaver to edit the CSS
• Adobe Digital Editions to preview

LAYOUT CHALLENGE

One of the requirements of producing an ePUB file from InDesign is that all content must be anchored and threaded. Put another way, any design elements, art, or sidebars you want to export from InDesign to ePUB must be anchored in the text, and all of the text must be threaded in the correct order. A simple anchor requires nothing more than hitting return, pasting an element to the return, and adding space above or below the return. A simple text thread will also work.

Here’s an example of sidebars that are to the side of the main text flow, but because all of the text boxes are threaded together, the export to ePUB will still work fine:

However, not all layout grids are so straightforward.

Recently, a grid in InDesign presented a challenge for me when I thought about the export to ePUB. In this particular layout, the sidebars (1) floated outside the text margins, and therefore (2) required the “text wrap” palette. Could this layout be optimized for ePUB export?

Here’s the layout:

And here’s the “before” – the ePUB result when the text in the sidebars were separate from the text flow:

Of course, since the text was not threaded, nor were the sidebars anchored, the sidebar text was pushed to the beginning and end of the ePUB file.

SOLUTION

Here’s the after – the ePUB result when the sidebar boxes are anchored into the flow of the text:

It worked!

The issues are that (1) the text wrap will not take effect before an anchor; therefore, the anchoring position must be carefully considered and (2) the text wrap must be applied to the anchoring box, not the sidebar element itself. Using “object styles” can apply the text wrap quickly to the anchoring box.

QUESTIONS

Another aspect of this issue is that multiple sidebars in an ePUB file are not ideal. In a print layout, sidebars are called out in order to give design interest to the layout and highlight interesting information. Most of the time, the design of sidebars makes them look separate from the text and the text flow makes it possible for the reader to skip them.

In the ePUB file, the sidebars break up the text flow. The design tools available in print are stripped away (reversed text, sidebar tints, text wrap) and we are left with sidebars that look like part of the running text, resulting in running text / sidebar / running text / sidebar. It makes for a jumpy reading experience.

In this particular case, the content cannot be rewritten due to deadline restrictions; therefore, this is the way the content will be presented. But it brings up interesting questions regarding digital production: Should content intended for print be re-written for ePUB reading? Are there better ways to set off sidebar content in an ePUB file besides text size, indents, and white space?

One option suggested by Lindsey Martin, via the #ePrdctn group on Twitter, was a vertical rule to set off the sidebars.

Here’s the code:

border-color: black;

border-style: solid;

border-top-width: 0px;

border-bottom-width: 0px;

border-left-width: 3px;

border-right-width: 0px;

padding: 0.75em;

I accessed the ePUB file in Springy, opened the “template.css” file in Dreamweaver, and pasted this code into “div.sb-box” and “div.bt-box” — these styles were built upon the export from Indesign to ePUB.

And here’s the ePUB result:

It worked! The sidebars are now easier to distinguish from the running text around it.

The next step in the QC process would be to view this file on multiple eReaders.

RESULTS

This case study demonstrates a layout that works for both print and ePUB export. The results are not ideal.

I, personally, would choose to ask editorial to rework the content so the sidebars would not interrupt the text flow so much. But since this is not an option in this case, the resulting ePUB is regarded as satisfactory. Sales numbers will determine if the ePUB version of this book “works” for the consumer as opposed to the PDF ebook version.

SAMPLE CREDITS

Welcome to Horneytown, North Carolina, Population: 15 by Quentin Parker, published by Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.

Aliens in America by William J. Birnes, published by Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.

FROM PRINT TO ePUB

The goal of this column is to explore the various challenges we at Adams Media have faced in everyday situations in transforming our InDesign print workflow to include an ePUB export process, and share the results and any best practices I uncover. The workflow for digital production is being created as we go along, and no one has the perfect, one-size-fits-all solution or all of the answers. Groups like #ePrdctn, hosted by Lindsey Martin (@crych) on Twitter, are working out digital production issues as we go along, and that group is the inspiration behind this column. Digital Book World also hosts the #ePrdctn group on LinkedIn.

Colleen Cunningham is the Senior Book Designer for Adams Media, a division of F+W Media.

We decided to conduct a survey. We asked for sales data from 124 developers that market applications ranging in price from 99 cents to $79.99. This survey was conducted on apps that ran the gamut of popularity, from wildly successful to barely breaking three figures. Developers were anywhere from funded companies with multiple titles under their belt, to first time, single-person authors. Both regular app developers, as well as game developers were included. This mining of data was intended to cover the entire iPhone app industry as a whole, without allowing outliers to skew the data too much in one direction.

The list of apps surveyed is broad, and there’s at least one eBook in the mix, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, a lightly enhanced version of Tolle’s NY Times Bestseller, published by WisdomTitles.com in partnership with New World Library.

The book, first published in 1997, has been translated into over 30 languages and the English edition is available from Amazon in Hardcover ($16.29), Paperback ($8.49), Audiobook ($26.37), and Kindle ($8.49), the latter of which has text-to-speech enabled. It’s also available via Audible.com ($15.00 or $7.49 with new membership), and BarnesandNoble.com has the eBook for $1.50 more than the Kindle edition.

Being featured by Apple is the greatest contributor to spiking sales. The level of Apple promotion, as expected, reflected what sort of increase the developer would see. Areas such as “New and Noteworthy” produced slightly less gains than “Staff Favorites” or “What’s Hot.” Generally speaking, it is safe to assume a 2-20X sales spike following being featured, with the effect lasting roughly a week or so before returning to average numbers.

–Alex Ahlund

According to Ahlund’s data, The Power of Now iPhone app sold 1179 downloads over 223 days at $13.99/download, for $16,494.21 in total revenue.

The app received an arguably atypical amount of exposure as an APPLE “STAFF FAVORITE” in August 2009, and an iPhone Apps Plus “BEST” in November 2009; its last update, version 3.1, was on August 20, 2009, plus WisdomTitles.com’s website is a very targeted niche play. Interestingly, Tolle doesn’t appear to be promoting the app anywhere on his own site, despite being listed as a Featured Author at WisdomTitles.com, which is also hosting a Reader’s Club for him within their WisdomReader Community. (NOTE: The link to the Club isn’t currently working.)

Assuming a typical 50/50 revenue share (after Apple’s 30% cut) between WisdomTitles.com and and New World Library, they each made $5,772.97 on the app, a rather modest incremental revenue stream for such a high-profile book, assuming development costs and Tolle’s royalty share were similarly modest.

It’s also a perfect example of why Apple is effectively printing money in the App Store, and why the iPad was built on the iPhone OS and not the Mac OS.

As new devices like the iPhone and iPad continue to blur the lines between eBooks, apps, audiobooks and the mobile web, publishers will need to have an agile content strategy and consistent pricing models to ensure they’re maximizing their own opportunities in each sales channel, and not simply feeding their intermediaries’ profitable long tail. There also needs to be more clarity on development costs and consumer demand, lest we find ourselves in the sequel to the CD-ROM Era.

And, of course, it always helps to have the author fully onboard and actively marketing all formats of their work, especially when they have their own high-profile platforms that could potentially disintermediate their publisher completely.

In her excellent, practical article A Clear, Easy Roadmap for Change, Edwina Lui gave a great summary of a model for effecting change.

But what is the nature of that change for us in this period of turmoil? Is it just a case of creating e-books of everything and optimising your workflow? Do you throw precious resources into creating multimedia iPad works (check out The iPad Won’t Save the Publishing Industry from Itself for a scathing take on this)? Or do you take the Mike Shatzkin worldview, accept that you won’t be able to sell content at all in the future and go for amassing community eyeballs, then think about how to monetise them later (OK, I’m taking this to its extreme, I know)?

Digital is the challenge to our industry, but selling digital content is not the only response to that challenge. I don’t know what your business will look like in five years; I don’t even know what mine will look like. I do believe that if they are not different in nature from how they are today they will most definitely be smaller.

At Osprey we are experimenting in a number of different directions and on a range of scales – some projects are digital, some are diversifications of other kinds. My mantra is “more bigger experiments” – bigger doesn’t mean more expensive, it means more challenging to the status quo.

We have a strong presence in one niche, military history, and we’re rapidly developing a following for UK heritage material of a particularly eccentric kind under the Shire brand. There are other niches in the works, some of which may be surprising; suffice to say that our focus is on specialist, enthusiast niches where participants have a real hunger to pursue their interest and authors have a hunger to be recognised by their peers. That hunger drives customers to tell us what they want, to tell us when we get it wrong, when we get it right. It allows us to build strong relationships with people, to develop partnerships with other organisations working within our niches where we can join together to create something new and different.

One of our biggest successes in the last two years came out of a partnership with a game developer; we created a lavish print product in a sector where there had been very little lavish print and a lot of unprofessional online and photocopied material – the gamers were crying out for a lovely product and we were delighted to create it for them.

We thought hard about what Osprey could be as a digital product; at its heart it is an amazing encyclopedia of military history currently published in around 1500 books. So we’ve created an online database, initially of our artwork to help us make the inevitable mistakes at minimum cost, and we offer memberships which give access to the artwork, discounts off physical purchases and exclusive offers on products from other companies. We sell books direct to consumer and have done so for many years. We have sold a few e-books (all our books are highly illustrated so until now it’s been PDF) and created a small number of iPhone/iPad apps. We have tweeted title acquisition meetings.

Publishing and the Permanent Crisis

In their HBR article about the recession, Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis, Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky talk about fostering adaptation (about ‘developing next practices while excelling at today’s best practices’) not from initiatives dreamed up by the top management team but from the ‘accumulation of microadaptations originating throughout the company in response to its many microenvironments’.

The keys are the words ‘many microenvironments’ and ‘throughout the company’.

If you perceive that your only environment is that encompassed by your current supply chain then you’re only going to adapt to changes in that environment – so the response to the digital challenge viewed in this way would be to create and sell e-books. If you put the consumer at the heart of your thinking you can consider instead each group of customers you serve and what they might want on top of what you already provide, how they might want you to serve them differently in the future. More to the point, you can ASK them, listen and respond.

The best way to ensure that experimentation takes place is to push leadership out through your company. Those closest to the consumers are those best-equipped to come up with the ideas for future experiments. One of the experiments beginning at Osprey right now is a digital-only project in a new niche which was conceived and is being driven by two of our marketing team.

Leaders need to let go, to accept that we don’t know best. Our role is to create the environment in which a sense of urgency around experiments is engendered, to accept and allow failure, to encourage iterative improvement and speedy adaptation, to facilitate information flow throughout the organisation: to orchestrate a process of improvisation, a dance in which the aim is to fail better, cheaper and faster so that we can all work out what will succeed.

Rebecca Smart is President and Managing Director of Osprey Publishing, the largest specialist military history publisher in the world. She has worked at Osprey for 11 years and was instrumental in creating its online membership scheme which delivers existing content to fee-paying subscribers alongside discounts and other exclusive features. Osprey’s web community is extremely active, with customers participating in the creative process by contributing content and feedback.