Last week, the ginormous Book Expo America happened in Washington D.C. Michael went, and we might have all gone except for Katie being so inconsiderate as to be confirmed during that time. I hope Michael will blog on it when he has time, for what he told me was interesting – he had lots of photos, some of which he’s posted – but you’re going to have to wait for the really quite nice photo of Tracy Ullman (knitting book) and the mummified Wink Martindale. As I said in my previous post on this – all the great literary lights! <\/p>\n
Anyway, his report was that the main vibe of the Expo was, of course Oh, I love technologeeeee<\/em>. Well, perhaps not love, just confronted with it, trying to understand and use it, and really desperately trying to adapt to it. <\/p>\n "The Long Tail" is the high concept of the moment, <\/a>and Michael attended the talk given by the idea’s originator and author of a forthcoming book on it, Wired <\/em>magazine’s Chris Anderson. Jim Manney of Loyola Press and the blog People of the Book blogged on this last year, offering a little intro to the concept:<\/a><\/p>\n New marketing ideas don\u2019t come along very often, but Chris Anderson of Wired<\/em> magazine may have one. He thinks that the arrival of online distribution and retail is bringing about a profound change in the way consumers relate to books and other media. Until recently, media businesses were governed by the 80-20 rule: 20 percent of the products would generate 80 percent of the sales. Now, as the marketing of media products migrates to the web, customers are able to find and buy anything they want. Web-based retailers such as Netflix, iTunes, and Rhapsody offer hundreds of thousands of products and sell virtually all of it. They generate more revenue from the products down in the catalog than they do from the best-selling hits.<\/p>\n Plot sales on a graph. You have a spike with your best-sellers on the left. Then sales fall off gradually in a long, long line. Anderson calls it \u201cthe long tail.\u201d There\u2019s a market for everything. If people can find it, and if the price is right, they will buy it. It is, he says, \u201can entirely new economic model for the media and entertainment industries.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n The huge, constant and pressing question for those of us involved in creating and selling product is…in the absence of truly mass media, how do you get the word out to your potential readers, viewers and customers? <\/p>\n A fascinating, frustrating and challenging time to be involved in this.<\/p>\n A bit more on BEA, from Publishers’ Weekly:<\/p>\n From the religion section, which was segregated from the rest of the exhibit floor, along with children’s, by a couple of storeys, and bore the consequences:<\/a><\/p>\n Religion publishers were once again given the choice of exhibiting in the Religion\/Spirituality\/Inspirational section or being in the main hall with most of the general trade houses. This year the RSI section was far from the main floor: located upstairs with the children\u2019s section, several escalator rides away, the area was only lightly trafficked on Friday and Saturday. By Sunday, foot traffic was virtually non-existent.Dave Lewis, director of sales and marketing for Baker Publishing Group, told RBL<\/em>, \u201cEvery time we have a split hall at BEA, we have less traffic than when everyone is on one floor like in Chicago. But we like to support the other religion publishers, so we\u2019ve chosen to be here. All of the people who want to find us eventually do.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n But the good news for religion publishers, in general:<\/p>\n At a Friday (May 19) press conference at the show, the Book Industry Study Group presented its newest statistics, which for the first time included data from small and mid-sized publishers (with revenues under $50 million). Overall publishing sales rose 9.6% over 2004, to $34.59 billion. The inclusion of the smaller publishers made a substantial difference to the picture of the industry, adding $11 billion in sales. BISG is forecasting a 3.6% increase in 2006.<\/p>\n The news was all good for religion\u2014in 2005 the category was up more than 8% in dollar sales over 2004. Said Albert Greco, whose Center for Communications and Media Management at Fordham University prepared the report for BISG, \u201cPublishers got God, and they moved a lot of books. And it wasn\u2019t just evangelical Christian books, it was all sorts.\u201d He added, \u201cSeveral years ago when we first saw this [rate of growth], we thought it was a bubble. But now we know it\u2019s not going to collapse. This is THE growth area in publishing<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n