Major, Major Market trends in Publishing part 2

Last week we presented two major market trends in book publishing.
Trend #1."Books are not dead...they're just shifting in how they are published and where they can be purchased."

Trend #2."eBooks will eventually outsell printed books"

Here are the next 3 major market trends (and we close with this.). Again, aside from the Manila International Book Fair exposure and observations made two weeks ago, the trends we cite below are from the MarketSquare presentation of Jim and Ellen Elwell, senior executives of Tyndale International, one of the largest Christian book publishers in the world.

Trend #3. "The democratization of publishing through new methods"
Anyone who is an aspiring author, or a writer whose manuscript submissions have been rejected by established publishers can now turn to Print on Demand or Self Publishing methods of, well, publishing.

With Print on Demand services, an author can order super small quantities (as low as one or two copies--one for your mother and one for your cat) with a turn around time of 24 to 48 hours. In the Philippines, there is Central Books (central.com.ph) which can turn your manuscript into a book in 10 days. Their website boasts of having published more than 500 titles since they introduced their service two years ago. The minimum print run is just 50 copies and service packages start at just P5,000 plus cost of printing. 

Then there is Self Publishing. According to the Elwell's almost 3/4 of the books that were published in English in 2008 were self-published. In the U.S. there are bookstores that are dedicated to displaying and selling self-published books. Boulder Book Store in, well, Boulder, Colorado practices the "micro-distribution business model" and offers authors different packages to display and sell their books. According to Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab (niemanlab.org) the Boulder Book Store "charges its consignment authors according to a tiered fee structure: $25 simply to stock a book (five copies at a time, replenished as needed by the author for no additional fee); $75 to feature a book for at least two weeks in the "Recommended" section; and $125 to, in addition to everything else, mention the book in the store's email newsletter, feature it on the Local Favorites page of the store's website for at least 60 days, and enable people to buy it online for the time it's stocked in the store.And for $255 — essentially, the platinum package — the store will throw in an in-store reading and book-signing event."

In the past few years in the Philippines, many of the well-known business and "inspirational" gurus, like Francis Kong, Bo Sanchez, Josiah Go, Francisco Colayco and Dr Ned Roberto (your Sr MRxer) have taken the self-publishing route with much success.

Self-publishing has become democratized because of the internet. Now you can turn that manuscript, powerpoint presentation, or speech (have it transcribed) and turn it into an e-book. Sell it on various websites through affiliate marketing or just give it away as a free download on your own website and you're a published e-author! Another route is Amazon.com's self-publishing company, CreateSpace.com. There are no set-up fees and you can self-publish not just books, but also audio and video. In the Philippines, Vibal Foundation (vibalfoundation.org) offers authors assistance in turning their books or manuscripts into ebooks. Apple's iPad also has between 45,000 to 60,000 ebooks now available for free or for a fee.

Trend #4. New Methods of Marketing.

Authors are leading the charge not only by self-publishing their work but also self-promoting their books through social media particularly Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Before writing this article through Google docs, we received an email alert from Bo Sanchez's Facebook page. It was an invitation to "Like" his Truly Rich Club page and get a free chapter download for free. The thing is, Bo doesn't even know that he's done this. He has a "Social Media Marketing team" dedicated to posting  such offers, blogging about his books, populating other websites and blogs with comments about his books, uploading videos on Youtube, etc etc. The result is over P1.8M in sales every month (which funds his many ministries and charities) from digitally publishing and monetizing his book, Truly Rich, on his membership site, TrulyRich.com. (See also IM-BC.com)

Our Rx for our friends in the publishing industry:
1. Create, develop and implement a digital marketing strategy. Embrace the new technologies and the new trends.
2. Put together a social media marketing and internet marketing team who can leverage on these new methods of marketing.
3. Study further and learn from the case studies that we mentioned in the past two weeks.

WE welcome your comments and questions. Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or DrNedmarketingrx@gmail.com. God bless!