A recent post at BusinessInsider reads “One huge bummer about e-books: No one can see how smart you are“, citing that publishers find the transition to e-books the beginning of the end for them, as well as retail bookstores. The reasons cited in the article appear to be two-fold:
The real bummer here is that book publishers are not seizing the opportunity to transition a reader’s behaviour to “show-off” from their intimate living rooms to “sharing” on the vast Social Web. The two reasons above are simply excuses that will likely fail at buying traditional publishers time.
Book publishers and sellers alike could instead be spending their efforts addressing the demise of the printed book (glass half empty)… or rather, the rise of the e-book (glass half full).
Cover art is dead?
Far from it, in fact. Cover art is now more important than ever. With e-book readers like the Kindle and iPad, publishers have the opportunity take a single image, and create a dynamic cover that gives a potential readers more than a singular visual impression.
With smartphones and tablet readers, the cover can become like a movie or video-game trailer that entices your imagination using moving visual and audio cues. Albeit from magazines, here are two very different examples of how animated cover art can draw the consumer in.
A recent New Yorker cover by Jorge Colombo illustrated entirely on the iPhone app Brushes:
And an even more dynamic experience is this opening sequence for an iPad publication:
A movie poster never sells a film as much as the movie trailer or review does. So why should a book cover or poster have to? No longer will you be able to judge a book by its cover…
Exhibitionism drives the digital landscape.
Social media and networks thrive on the fact that people like to share about themselves, as well as share things that they find interesting. Publishers should be making these two factors work in their favor.
First, virtual applications like Visual Bookshelf (by Living Social) in Facebook, have a much greater reach than any guests that will walk through my study at home. Someone with 200 friends can easily share tips about the 100 books on their shelves much more quickly and passively, than they can with 10 friends at a dinner party.
Hannah is a Facebook friend whose bookshelf I've never seen. In fact, we've never met in person, but know each other thru a mutual friend. Nonetheless, I've grown to trust her and her taste in books, and have recently begun reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog".
In fact, Visual Bookshelf expands one’s community beyond their immediate social network friends to the 52,000+ fans of the app on Facebook, or 1.3 million fans [2008 data] on its site. And virtual social applications become more intimate as friends discover what books I may have on my nightstand… not just my bookshelves.
The integration of Visual Bookshelf and Amazon.com is a key example of how publishers can transform consumer behaviour by encouraging instant one-click (print or electronic) book purchases. The one-click sell rate for a cheaper e-book will inevitably surpass the sales of higher-priced print books as consumers become increasingly accustomed to instant, hassle-free purchases.
Readers know what sells best.
After all, they did buy your book. So let them share their favorite experts, whether it’s 140 characters at a time or in 40 word snippets. One day soon, e-books will allow people to share any section (of limited length) from a book directly to Buzz, Twitter or Facebook, for example.
A snippet that rang true to one reader could be the bit that sells the book to someone else. Or if a reader is curious about a book and wants to find out who in their network has read it, linked data will one day be able to give you customized feedback.
Amazon sort of does this already with the “People who bought this also bought…” feature. Netflix does this very well with movies, but has thus far lacked at building an active engagement on existing social networks outside the Netflix platform.
Then imagine tying in a New York Times book review to this social media chatter. The possibilities for truly integrated and digital marketing only keep growing.
Besides, how many of those books on your actual bookshelves, have you actually read?
Together, the e-book and social Web lets you prove your “smarts” through your ratings and reviews… to the billions who have access to the Web. Nevermind the dozen friends who will walk through your house this year.
If any organization should be worried and recreating their business strategy as a result of e-books, it would probably be public libraries. How will they deal with brick-and-mortar operations if the “information” they’ve traditionally collected becomes completely available for loan online?