Report 2013 - Kelly Fagan HERE - Australian Publishers Association

The Evolution of Marketing and Publicity Strategy
Looking at book promotion and the way in which trade publishers are responding to changing market channels it
seems important to note that this is a process of evolution not revolution. And there are two parts to the process
– publishers need to evolve their overall strategies concerning marketing objectives and budgeting processes, and
marketers and publicists need to evolve in terms of the activities they plan to promote books at a title by title level.
As Mike Shatzkin says in his blog Idealog:
‘Publishers have a lot to change in the way they do their marketing. We’ve advocated for years that
publishers look at marketing as an investment, building assets, such as email lists of consumers they
can reach for free, through their marketing efforts for subsequent use. That works better if the house’s
marketing efforts are vertical, or audience-centric, which enables repeat efforts to the same people to
bear fruit.’ 43
As discussed earlier in this report, many of the UK publishers I visited were implementing or had already implemented
‘vertical structures’ to varying degrees within their marketing teams in order to target consumer groups and market
segments more effectively and more regularly. In terms of overall strategy, Sara Lloyd seemed to sum up the
sentiment of all of publishers I visited when she said:
‘In trade publishing in particular, publishers tend to think book by book, campaign by campaign, short
term, short term, short term. I think we’re going to see a trend moving away from book by book campaigns
to much more, much broader, much deeper ongoing strategies, including online community building
and brand building, so that you’re not just living or dying by the next book. We’re going to need to have
businesses that can have a longer term vision than that, and in general there’s going to be a greater focus
on developing and communicating brands, because in the cross-media landscape that’s what works.’ 44
With regards to online community building a new study conducted by Bowker Market Research reveals that the
number of publisher-owned online communities in the US and UK is set to more than double by 2015. The study
also investigated the rationale and perceived benefits for publishers moving into this arena, revealing that:
▪▪
84% of publishers felt their spending on online communities would increase in the next two years with only 14%
envisaging expenditure remaining stagnant
▪▪
64% of publishers with online communities were convinced that their investment in this market is already paying
off and a further 24% believed it would do so in the short term
▪▪
73% of all the publishers interviewed felt that online communities helped or would help them to engage better with
their audiences
▪▪
72% of trade publishers said they helped or would help to increase direct relationships with customers and 45%
claimed they provided or would provide good marketing support to sales channels
▪▪
40% of academic and professional publishers said that increasing knowledge and understanding of customers
was a key benefit, whilst 40% felt increasing content usage was a priority
Although currently only 16% of all respondents viewed online communities as viable direct sales channels, the
formats that have benefited most from online community activity are e-books for trade publishers (40%) and online
resources for academic publishers (67%). 45
When discussing the findings at the 2013 London Book Fair, Jo Henry, Director, Bowker Market Research, said:
‘There is a substantial amount of activity going on in this area as publishers seek new ways in which to engage directly
with their consumers. It is interesting to note that in this survey US publishers were not significantly more advanced
than UK ones – and that trade publishers appear to be leading the way in developing online communities.’ 46
43 http://www.idealog.com/blog/book-marketers-need-rethink-three-things-time-timing-budgeting/
44 Transcript of Dutch Foundation for Literature 8th International Non-Fiction Conference, 29 January 2011 (courtesy of Peter Collingridge)
45 http://www.bookmarketingsociety.co.uk/2013/04/publishers-online-communities-set-to-double-by-2015/#coverage
46 http://www.stm-publishing.com/publishers-online-communities-to-double-by-2015/
Author: Kelly Fagan
14