Futurebook 2012 Conference Roundup | ePub Direct. Market leader ...

Some 700 people attended this year?s Futurebook conference in London on Monday. The dull, wet weather, train delays and early start was not enough to dampen my enthusiasm as we arrived at the QEII conference centre, overlooking Westminster Abbey. This was my first FutureBook conference.

Taking up a suitable vantage point at the back of the room, the keynote speakers began and immediately a pattern began to emerge ? customer insight and data driven decisions are becoming the key to successful digital publishing strategy.

Strategy:

To paraphrase Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks, if you think that simply transferring your text files into ePub format and uploading them to amazon is a digital strategy, then you probably won?t be around in 5 years? time.? She encouraged co-opetition (co-operative competition) amongst publishers and teams, stating that the future of publishing is agile, platform orientated and customer/user centric.

There was much discussion of what consumers, authors and readers expectations of what an eBook should be, how it should flow and the reading experience should be central to the creation of your titles digital file.? But this operational concern is not a digital strategy.

Publishers at the conference were encouraged to develop a comprehensive sales, marketing and retention strategy for their customers which views digital not as a separate department or as a bolt-on but an integral part of the way publishers do business.

Charlie Redmayne of Pottermore, told attendees that publishing businesses can ?thrive not just survive? and explained how they have built successful platforms for JK Rowling fans to explore content. Pottermore now includes 18,000 words of additional content from J K Rowling, a direct-to-consumer shop that sells eBooks in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese and an agreement with Amazon which sees the retail giant direct fans to the Pottermore site to complete the sale.

All very easy if you are Harry Potter I hear you cry. But of 38 speakers at the event, all had a well thought out digital strategy.? Lonely Planet MD Dominic Rowell, outlined how they are continuously working to maintain their place as in a dwindling travel guide market through focusing their business on digital platforms and providing their customers with travel solutions.? Rebecca Smart CEO of the Osprey Group spoke about their strategy to become the ?destination for enthusiasts? and discussed creating communities to better serve their consumers producing content consistently requested and voted on by their readers.

Data:

Anna Rafferty of Penguin, Nick Sidwell Guardian Books and Michael Tamblyn of Kobo spoke at the ?Harnessing data to shape your products, marketing and strategy? session.

Rafferty spoke about the importance of data in practical terms. She discussed how harnessing data can improve the effectiveness of the company?s? email marketing? campaigns which are essential element of their in customer retention strategy and how this method of communication allows Penguin to tailor its message to customers based on the data they have garnered about their customers through sign ups, purchase history, Facebook and pinterest profile data etc.

Nick Sidwell told how the Guardian uses customer insights across sites to target potential purchasers for their short eBooks and urged publishers to adopt a data first approach.

Self-confessed sales data addict Michael Tamblyn told his audience that publishers should be considered with ?the reading experience? not just selling books. Kobo has developed analytics on their devices which allows them to analyse data from their 11 million users. Their data identifies trends such as number of people who complete an eBook vs. number who purchase and of those who did not complete when and where people stopped reading the title.

Kobo believe that this data could be used to assist publishers in the decisions regarding editing and marketing e.g. if a mid-list book has a high completion and conversion rate then investment in promotion could have a dramatic effect on sales volumes.

Consumer Insight:

There appears to be a progressive move by the industry in embracing of ?quants? or quantitative analysts. HarperCollins MD, Simon Johnson showed the level at which editorial based decision based on instinct and supported by data is now valued.? It is clear that in the move to understand the consumer better, that more consumer information is needed and publishers seem to be making good progress in this. Quantitative analysts get data, turn data into business information and ensure that information is acted on. The appointment of Louise Vintner, Head of Consumer Insight at Random House and former BBC Research Manager is another indication of this trend. There is a growing appetite amongst Publishers to pursue D2C avenues.

Pricing:

The morning session on ?Pricing Strategies and experiments? provided us with the opportunity to hear Rachel Willmer from luzme.com discuss pricing. Following her pre-conference blog ?Because we?re worth it? and as much of her research supported our own findings and experience it was a presentation that I was sure would be of value.? From what we know from our own eBook Analytics and what Willmer outlined, it is clear that there is a significant gap in competitive pricing in the UK and the US markets. Publishers who just do a currency conversion of their eBook RRP and apply it across different territories are not maximising their potential volume or value. It appears that the US market is more settled (it?s around longer) than the UK market, which has a lower ASP across pretty much every genre.

As Rachel put it, the #1 selling title on amazon.com (in a particular genre) last month was the same price as the top 10 put together on amazon.co.uk (in that genre) on one day of her analysis! The UK market is seeing publishers in a race to the bottom in an effort to grab market share, which is damaging the perception of an eBook in the mind of the consumer. Hopefully this won?t last too much longer and publishers will realise that they can hold higher ASP?s.

Of course no Digital Publishing would be complete without a healthy debate on DRM but as the conference reached its conclusion, it was clear that publishers are now much more informed about the practicalities of the eBook revolution and in 2013 will be concerning themselves with developing creative and innovative ways to provide consumers with the reaching international customers directly and providing them with the best possible digital reading experience.

Read some of the tweets stats and posts about FutureBook 2012 here ? http://epilogger.com/events/futurebook2012/AllPhotos?page=2

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Source: http://www.epubdirect.com/index.php/futurebook-2012-conference-roundup/

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