Only a few hours in, and already the last day of the 2009 TOC conference is proving quite thought-provoking. Two of the three keynote speeches this morning emphasized the role that publishers need to have in marketing books. Both Tim O'Reilly and Nick Bilton stressed that publishers need to have more to do with their authors' online marketing efforts--authors need to be helped. Increasingly, sales efforts are moving online, and that means that our marketing efforts need to as well. It is not fair or helpful to ourselves or our authors to ignore that side of marketing, or to leave it up to the authors.
The ramifications of that, of course, are that publishing needs people who know theind their way around the tech side of things, and can get things done. As O'Reilly said, you can't be satisfied with IT departments who will say "Well, I'll need a specification for that. . . ." Instead, you need the people who have the ability and the drive to build what's needed and to communicate with others to get things done.
O'Reilly also pointed out the profound importance of delving deeply into social networking. The long tail, he said, is a fact, but it's important to remember that there's a head as well. Every new meida develops a head, and it is a property of the head that those in it can drive traffic down the tail. If a publisher is to attract those who would otherwise just self-publish, one of the best ways to do so is to have a secure position in the head of many social networks. This enables the publisher to drive traffic to their authors.
That barely scratches the surface of what was said during the morning's keynotes of course, but there are more sessions coming up. More later.
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This will come as quite a shock to many a publisher. I'm constantly surprised that common perception of publishing is all acquisition and editing. In class, Marty mentioned that a book won't be acquired without the approval of the sales manager. Some people gasped.
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