I need to go through and read all of these links now.  I’ve been meaning to read that Olson interview.....

I grappled with whether or not innovation is harder from inside a big corporation....but given that I’ve never been on the outside, I can’t really answer that.  In fact, I even came up with the idea of a book called Skunkworks to help answer the questions for me.  A writer named Ryan Tate is in the process of writing it now.  http://www.skunkworksbook.com/

In the meantime, I’m taking a few days off to think about the questions you raise in this post.

Innovation might be somewhat easier in a startup situation, Debbie, but not by much.  In a startup at least you don’t have to fight internal inertia.

However, either way, you need to fight external inertia.  It needs to be understood that the communities served by the innovators (readers, authors, booksellers, et al) also have a very high degree of inertia. 

Sure the early adopter or “new shiny” mentality happens with all new business concepts, but those folks are a very small percentage of the ones you are targeting.  The vast majority really don’t want to change, or won’t change very quickly, until there is a Malcolm Gladwell “tipping point”.

There is no getting around the fact that innovation is hard, and always takes longer than anyone perceives it should.

Interesting Piece.

Customer Service which starts with Customer Contact (read: reaching the readers) is neither new nor innovative.  But it is time consuming and requires interest and energy.  And, as you say, it requires leadership that values such activities.

It is usually more than the average publisher wishes to expend when they can instead lunch with celebrity authors and leave the customer contact to their retailers and title aggregators. 

While HarperStudio intended to limit its royalty advance exposure, it may not have been any more “innovative” than that.

A viable publisher needs to be supporting the brand-building of their authors while working with their retailers\aggregators to better hear\serve their readers.  This requires getting outside the “management” bubble and into leadership acknowledging the micro requirements of (the actually small) business of publishing.

If publishers will now embrace the true meaning of an “agency model” rather than seeing it as a panacea, then they will certainly be getting much more involved in the nitty-gritty of serving their customers.

SETH GERSHEL
Publishing Consultant

@debbie ... It’s much easier to be a pundit than a practitioner Good luck as you sort.  Let me know if I can be of any help.

@fran ... Good points, as always.  I think the resource-challenged start-up (or challenger) is not idyllic, but a lack of resources does tend to sharpen the mind and address the leadership issue (or kill you).

@seth ... I think HarperStudio’s gain-sharing model with authors is more considered than just a cap on front-end expenses.  As I understand it, they were looking to partner to extend and build author brands, which is new to the publishing space.  Ditto their efforts to move to a “no returns” model.

Engaging with readers is a given, according to Olson.  My concern in this post might be expressed simply: Why didn’t you act on this when you had the chance?  I think the answer is systemic, not personal.

Brian I think we all can agree that publishers need to do a better job connecting with readers, however, we all need to think about how readers want to be connected to…

my personal email is already overflowing with emails from companies that want to make a personal connection with me.  As a reader, do I want a personal connection with a publisher?  Probably not.

Publishers need to see themselves as the conduit that makes connections between the author or content and the reader. They shouldn’t think of themselves as the entity to be connected with.

Agreed ... the implication there is that some, perhaps many publishers become white-label providers over time.

My thought on Olson’s remarks are less an endorsement of the idea of readers first, which has nuance, and more a look at how people get religion when religion has less of an impact.

Fran, I agree with you, for the most part.  I’m over emailed myself and have pretty much just given up.  I’ve never been a believer in the whole email marketing thing because of this—and yet the smart people I know do it. 

That said, two things:

1) I try to tell authors this (that the readers want to connect with THEM and not ME—or another marketer) but many many many authors don’t want to have to do that work and want a marketer to do it on their behalf.  This is a whole other blog post though—and it’s a challenge I deal with every day.

2) Occasionally there is a place for a reader to connect with a publisher such as if there’s a problem or to let them know about this or that.  I often do it on Twitter or Facebook.

Debbie,

I agree with point #2, and point #1 is part of that “external inertia” I was alluding to in my earlier comment…