Ken Brooks, Cengage: digital products are breaking the steady state model between revenue, product investment and cash. The lower prices that products are being sold at generates far less revenue than the costs of producing them. Need to use savings from current operations to fund new products. Have to do this in process management, vendor management and technology management. which can no longer be considered as a back-office operation. Each new product tends to create a new process and if allow this to happen then will die a death by a thousand cuts.
Bob Young, Lulu: self-publishing makes up 1% of the publishing industry. When started were a POD company trying to find all of those authors who the publishing industry had rejected. Did very well and were profitable and then ebooks came along and forced them to re-think their model. Number of authors who are capable and willing to sell their book is very small and this is a major role of publishers. The role of publishers is now matching people who have something to say with people who want to hear it. Revamping Lulu’s software to accomplish this.
Liisa McCloy-Kelly, Random House: advanced ebooks they are making requires a lot of R&D. Too much focus on “percent” of digital at this point because have a long ways to go. Don’t know what consumers want yet, and the consumers don’t know it either. A lot of trial and error ahead. No one size fits all. Random House model is “our content for everyone, everywhere, in every format, on every device” . This lends to a hub and spoke model, but this also has challenges. XML is good and digital workflow is good, but these are tools only. A lot of lag between the development of tools publishers can use and the opportunities in the market. Challenges: book life cycle is very long and how can you focus on something “hip and secy” today when the book will be published a year from now? Having your traditional teams develop new products and old [products and increased the workload so it is hard to catch up. Random House runs 5 different ebook conversion workflows: simple backlist, simple frontlist, upcoming frontlist, complex backlist and frontlist, R&D for new functionality. Complex Ebook Production Teams focus on kids, cooking, crafts, photography, humor and other books that are heavily illustrated. Made up of production manages, assistant production managers and skiil in project management, design (print and web), production, editorial and coding skills. Work with the ebook technical team who maintains the internal ebook specs and work with artists, designers, and coders. Making ebooks for some platforms is like doing a waltz with your hands tied behind your back and a weight on one foot.
“The lower prices that products are being sold at generates far less revenue than the costs of producing them.” Really?? Is he talking about ebooks here?
More info on this little factoid would be appreciated.