Richard Eoin Nash

“My understanding of Publishing as a Service Business is to distinguish it from one that sells a product in a supply chain, a peddler of tchotchkes. It does not exclude the notion that we would create physical objects, preferably gorgeous, expensive, high margin ones that are never returned and that the purchaser passes onto the next generation, it rather advocates for a mentality, a philosophy, a corporate culture, that is a service, rather than manfacturing-and-distribution one. Much in the way that Zappos is a service business.”

Right on.  Andrew Savikas made a comment on Mike Shatzkin’s blog yesterday, in which I think he really hit the nail on the head: “I don’t think ‘service’ and ‘vertical’ are mutually exclusive—one is a product and other a market.”

As you imply, publishers are not actually in the book business—that’s just one delivery method for the service that they’re supposed to provide (connecting readers to authors/knowledge/experiences).  Multiple delivery methods can be deployed within the same vertical market segment.  O’Reilly does a great job of this.

My primary concern: as the industry transitions from p-books to multiple services, publishers are going to have to make sure that they’re still getting a good slice of the sales pie.  As ebooks inevitably get more popular, we’re talking about a product that is perceived as having less intrinsic value than a book made of paper.  Publishers know that the cost of actually printing books is relatively small compared to the total cost of editing, publicity, etc., but the general public doesn’t seem to care (that $9.99 price point…).

Through ebooks, customers and digital content distributors such as Amazon are redefining the value of publishers’ products under their noses.  And of course publishers are playing along—they want ebooks to succeed, and they’re not generally into being their own retailers.  But maybe that last part should change.  Even if they aren’t doing the coding, I think publishers absolutely need to be involved in the digital distribution process.  Amazon has created a great distribution ecosystem with the Kindle, but it’s not going to be the only game in town (Google Book Search will probably become a platform-independent ebook sales & reading service that can run on computers, Android, iPhones, you name it—and what if Apple throws its own hat in the ring?).  When these services compete, do publishers win?  I’m not so sure.

Amazon started as a retailer, but it IS a publisher now (if not as full featured as the big six in terms of editorial and other traditional).  It’s starting to filter and promote works through Amazon Encore, and there’s also the matter of people self publishing through Kindle.  Why shouldn’t other publishers pull an Amazon and expand their capabilities as well?  Partner with tech-savvy distributors and create their own ecosystem?  Earlier today, I was asking myself—why didn’t publishers buy Lexcycle?  Is it crazy to think that this is the kind of thing that it will take for publishers to compete now?  Technical expertise (if not in house, at least in partnership) may be a necessity to create complete vertical structures in the new era.

Apologies if I’m just rephrasing what you guys are already saying.  I’m just getting involved in the conversation and thinking it all through myself…  Really enjoy your writing and will continue to follow your progress on the new venture.  Cheers.

    – Owen (07/20 03:13 AM)

. . . i think what richard did with soft skull over the years is a perfect example of how publishers should be sorting out demand, and speaks to mr. purcell’s point about the importance of branding by way of imprint—consider that after counterpoint bought soft skull a couple years back, SS proceeded to have their most succesful year ever, while counterpoint did not. . . how many publishers have a fan base (like soft skull) based not on their titles or authors, but on their brand? i know for a fact that my debut on soft skull was the beneficiary of many sales facilitated by soft skull’s unique brand and street cred . . . it also seems to me that the percentage of “subscriptions” was proportionately much higher at soft skull than most publishers . . . i think every publisher should work to build a subscription base . . . people can only make room for so many books to read in a year, why shouldn’t every publisher do their best to monopolize a readers demand . . .? my newborn is named owen—so add one more to the party!

    – jonathan evison (07/21 02:59 PM)

Hi Richard

I think in expanding on your publishing as service model, aren’t you simply restating the traditional publishing paradigm. Publishers have traditionally had a very limited role in ‘connecting readers to authors’ and that role had been largely limited to creation of a book. This limits publishing to an event after which the publisher exits the author/reader relationship. eBooks simply shift that same paradigm into a new medium and i think only succeed in reducing the unit price of the product rather than enhancing the relationship.

As a consultant, I strongly encourage publishers to ‘own’ more of the publishing process, to extend the publishing of a book beyond the initial printing and to use the many online tools now available to create and mediate the relationship between author and reader and in doing so, perhaps allow the original ‘book’ to continue to evolve after the publishing event has taken place. Each book then becomes an opportunity to engage with a community of people and to build a relationship that may inform other books or extend the existing one.

I also believe, as Eoin says above that now is a unique time of possibility for niche or specialist publishers to build loyalty and community around their brand and to imbue their brand with a meaning for book buyers.

    – Phil Doyle (07/30 03:32 PM)