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E-books for custom publishing? Book equivalent of airline magazines
May 13, 2009 | 8:44 am
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By David Rothman
The B-pression, as I’ll call it—the book industry Depression—was on many a mind at a Book Industry Study Group conference called “Making Information Pay.”
E-books shined, one of the few bright spots, with Shelf Awareness reporting an annual growth rate of 100 percent even if they’re still less than one percent of revenue.
But here’s what grabbed me: word that that custom publishing of books was also taking off. You know: the book equivalent of an airline magazine.
The rise of custom publishing
“One publisher started a custom publishing department two years ago with one person and now has six because it’s been so successful,” Mike Shatzkin of IdeaLogical said.
Imagine the possibilities here not jut for Print on Demand books, but also for e-books—offered as gifts or as bonuses to help you love a sports-car maker or bank.
Sponsored books may come with strings, yes, making them useless in many cases for libraries; and this is hardly the path for the book biz as a whole to take. Look at all the downloadable ads on the Net masquerading as books.
But right now I’m all in favor of anything reasonable that’ll keep editorial people out of the unemployment lines. Informative and honestly labeled custom books—combined with the economies of E—might help.
A not quite so optimistic assessment of custom publishing, at least in the magazine world: Custom Publishing Industry Showing Mixed Results During Economic Downturn, Custom Publishing News/Custom Content News, April 27, 2009. But keep in mind that magazines are the real focus here.
Related: Custom Publishing Council site. and an article headlined Where corporate America shines: Corporate publications breed trust, in CustomerMedia.nl.
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Comments:
Hi David…thanks for the analysis. A couple points – the custom publishing of books is not about the vanity/sales-oriented publishing of the past. It’s more like self-publishing for corporations, and similar to educational blogs/articles of brands. They are starting to figure out that creating a book that only promotes a product or a singular focus on the company won’t sell anything…but a book that focuses on their customers’ pain points will win in the end. Whether you call it custom publishing, content marketing or branded content, it’s all the same – creating valuable, relevant, consistent content to customers that changes or maintains behavior.
To your point, you’ll see the same with eBooks…and those companies need great journalists and custom publishers to help them produce these content initiatives.
Marketing today is all about publishing great content through multiple channels…and brands need help since most do not have the journalism expertise in house.
See this post on the Fight for Content – it explains the position of service providers re: Content.
http://custompublishers.com/2009/05/new-custom-publishers/
Thanks!
Perhaps some background on custom publishing can help fill-out this post.
First, airline magazines are the tip (or, the tip of the tip) of the iceberg of custom publishing: it’s been around over 120 years and, according to the Custom Publishing Council, there are 100,000+ custom published magazine titles in the U.S. My company publishes a half-dozen of them — circulated to millions of readers each year.
Second thing: Sponsored (or custom published books) have been around a long time in several forms:
Here’s a link to a New York Times article about a well-publicized effort in the 1980s: http://bit.ly/P0aWl . There are thousands of books custom published each year that promote cities or regions, or celebrate corporate or institutional anniversaries, or raise funds for groups like all those Junior League cookbooks. Go into Lowes or Home Depot and check out all the custom published books under those company’s logo — produced by such media companies as Meredith and Hearst.
Also, check out “custom published” text books — an industry that allows professors to put together a print-on-demand collection of articles or chapters that fit in a course syllabus.
Or, yes, and custom published eBooks. As in the many digital custom published magazine titles already showing up, or the hundreds, thousands(?) of free eBooks that are given away for marketing purposes by those hoping to leverage their eBook titles into successful speaking and consulting opportunities.
I could continue, but you get the idea.
The custom publishing of eBooks will track along all other developments related to eBooks — as it has for all other media platforms for over a century