Over on the excellent Murderati blog, Pari Noskin Taichert posed an interesting question: What is it, in the end, that makes a reader pick up a book? Is it the relentless crush of Madison Avenue pushing slick glossy ads and co-op space on the reading public? Or is it something more subtle that encourages a reader to try a new author or plunk down a wad of cash for a book from a familiar one?
This is an interesting set of questions, and it’s one I think the whole media industry (books, movies, music) struggles with. The simple fact of the matter is that publishers haven’t shown themselves to be vastly successful in predicting what people want to buy — we see just as many books and movies with huge budgets that fall flat as we do sleeper hits — even though they’d like to think they do. When you set aside all the hype and spin and buzz, that’s the reality.
So, can you predict what makes readers pick up that first book? I don’t think so. I think it starts with the sort of folks who’re willing to take a flyer on an unfamiliar name. To borrow from Pari’s analogy, they’re willing to sit down at the corner table and buy the lady another glass of Drumnadrochit or Glenlivet and strike up a conversation.
No, the real magic, in my mind, is what happens next. Once the reader’s invested that metaphorical glass of scotch, the lady’s got to have something to keep the evening moving forward. To me, that comes down to two frustratingly fuzzy intangibles: you have to tell a good tale, and you have to build a relationship.
I don’t think marketing a book is about glossy ad slicks and Carney hucksters shoving co-op space at a handful of books. I think the aim is to get those handful of brave souls to tell their friends, “hey, you HAVE to check out this great book I just read.” It has to connect with them, speak to their souls, so that when the next book comes out you’ve already done a few rounds of flirtation.
I think series characters are one way to achieve that goal — we all enjoy tuning in to the latest exploit of Kinsey Millhone or Sharon McCone. But I think that’s because we feel like we have a relationship with those characters, so picking up a new book is a chance to drop in on an old friend. But that’s not the only way to do it — I’ll pick up the next Louise Ure standalone for the same reason I’d be inclined to go on a blind date if my best friend was doing the matchmaking. It’s all about relationships, and we can have them with the character or the author.
Over on his Technium blog, Kevin Kelly has a fascinating post about where value comes from in an Internet-based society where everything is digital and the raw bytes are copied continuously from the moment they enter the ether. You should read Kevin’s excellent post, but to summarize, Kevin feels that value in the Internet era won’t come from the traditional mechanism of placing a strangle-hold on the distribution model. Once the bits are out of the bag and out on the wire, distribution is uncontrollable. All those who attack the digital problem through copy-protection and DRM are starting themselves out behind the 8-ball. And that’s no place from which to win the game.
Rather, Kevin says, value in the Internet era comes from eight of what he calls “generatives” - intangible qualities that themselves carry value even when copies are free. Kevin’s generatives are:
- Immediacy - I’ll pay to get it now, even though I might be able to get it for free later.
- Personalization - I’ll pay to get something special, something tailored specifically to me.
- Interpretation - I can get the information for free, but I’ll pay to find out what it means.
- Authenticity - I’ll pay to make sure I’m getting what I think I’m getting. (Think “autographed copy”).
- Accessibility - I’ll pay to get it in the time, place and medium I want.
- Embodiment - I’ll pay to get the information in a tangible form I enjoy. (This is why J.K. Rowling sold 2.7 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the U.K. during the first 24 hours on the shelves, despite the fact that scanned copies of the book were available on BitTorrent within hours of the book’s release.)
- Patronage - I’ll pay to reward the author/musician/etc. for their creative work if I like it.
- Findability - The information might all be out there, but I’ll pay to find what I’m looking for without having to search everything that’s out there.
The publishing industry already “gets” some of this stuff - the generative of immediacy, for example, is why I’ll buy Sue Grafton’s books in hardcover even though I pay a premium price for the privilege. But have publishers embraced these other ways of creating value? I don’t think so. It’ll be interesting to see what the book industry looks like once they do.
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