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It’s About the Reader, Not the Book! by Tim Sanders
September 26, 2012
I grew up in Clovis NM, a hub for Santa Fe Railroad. It was one of our biggest employers. They shrunk dramtically by the time I graduated high school. Why? Their leaders focused too much on the future of the train, and missed the boat (or, should I say, the plane). Santa Fe should have explored the future of the traveler while they had deep pockets to diversify their modes of transportation. Today, the railroad industry is a fraction of its former self, mostly moving around logistics and a smidgeon of passenger market share. They suffered from a classic error in marketing and product development.
History is filled with fail stories, like Kodak, where legacy leaders failed to consider what business they were really in. Kodak wasn't in the camera or film business, they were in the memory business. Santa Fe was in the transportation business. For publishers (and pundits), "The Future Of the Book" is a popular topic, and fuels a useless debate about whether books will be physical or electronic. That's not an interesting discussion, really. When Bowker surveys suggest that X% of consumers say they'll never switch to eBooks, I have to laugh a little. It's not even close to the right question at hand. Just ask Clayton Christensen (Innovator's Dillemma). He argues that you don't ask your customer's what they want, then let that drive your innovation efforts. If Henry Ford did, he'd get "faster horses" instead of "a horseless carriage."
The trick in customer-hunting is to see where they are going, and just lead them a little (or as in the case of Apple, a lot).
What all of us should be asking is: "What is the future of the reader?" More specifically, "What is the future of the content seeker?" Ask that question and you won't get misdirected into some pedantic argument about the feel or smell of books or pricing models. You'll get to the heart of the matter: What are the content seekers looking for and willing to pay for? Who else, besides publishers, can provide it to them? Are there competitors in adjacent content spaces we haven't considered? Do we even care about the reading experience or are we trying to preserve the one-pound-book-that-feels-like-$30's model of marketing? Is data driven publishing a violation of organic editorial practice, or is it the publishing industry finally entering the 21st century of customer driven product development?
Whether you are a traditional publisher, author, freelancer or entrepreneur, you'll do well to consider the Future of the Reader with different comparisons:
- Pictures VS Words - We live in the Insta-Pinterest economy, where the content seekers are being trained to view, not read. Facebook was smart to see this coming, and tweak Edgerank accordingly ... then buy Instagram.
- Long VS Short - The Domino Project was disruptive in that it eschewed long form content just to drive up price points. That's why all their titles were best sellers.
- Single VS Serial - In the future, ideas will be obsolete or dated before Wal-Mart can stock them on shelves. The ability for digital books to be updated constantly means that the future reader will likely prefer to subscribe to an idea than to purchase a perishable product.
- User Generated VS Corporate Generated - The tone of writing is changing fast, thanks to blogging and social media. Strunk & White's ardent rules of writing may not resonate with the new reader, who's more likely to watch reality televsion than PBS programming. Fan fiction is likely the canary in the info-coal-mine for the publishing industry. Oh my.
It's important that we shift the debate to these issues, and quickly, as there are formidable competitors on the horizon to "the book" as a discreet commodity. Santa Fe didn't see Southwest Airlines coming...but they should have. Random House and Simon & Schuster should worry more about Flipboard than Brightline. Because the content seekers only care about solving their problems (from passing time to discovery to learning). In his must-read column (Get Real) for Inc., 37 Signals founder Jason Fried quotes Harvard marketing guru Theodore Levitt to underscore my point, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole."
About Tim Sanders
Tim is a bestselling author and former Yahoo! executive with a mission to disrupt the traditional publishing and self-publishing industries and share knowledge with authors looking to publish and market high-quality books.
Follow @sanderssays