1. Email is technology : Do you know if your sender email server is blacklisted or has potential to be black listed. Is your email text, html ? Is it easy to read across multiple email systems ? Have you checked the resolution of your email ? Do you know that a single unwanted character has a potential to mess up with the mail delivery or readability ? In case you have never asked these questions to yourself, I recommend reading how to code html mails by MailChimp

2. Email is permission based : And Indian Email-marketers don’t get it. They think it’s their birthright to spam their users. A randomly connected email database will never work for you or cannot be deemed as loyal user base. Email marketing should not be a hit and run campaign and accidental conversions. Email should be a communication to the user on a ongoing basis and the consumer should be looking forward to receiving your mail and open it with due respect. That’s the success. Some more basic fundamentals here

3. Email marketing is not cheating : And again Indian Email marketers don’t get it. Common guys we have been in the British rule for so many years and you mess up with our English ? Exclusive, Lifetime, Discount, Limited Period – all have have some meaning and as Indian consumers we definitely know it. Indians still read their daily newspapers or live in the environment where your outlet is stone throw away. It doesn’t even take them 5 minutes to know that this email from you is completely bogus.

4. It’s about microcopy stupid: And the microcopy begins right from the from & sender line of your email. I am ashamed to say that most of the companies including banks and reputed institutions fail miserably in this. They send the absolute garbage. Infact Nigerian scam mails are much more well written than some mails from top Indian brands and institutions. And I am not kidding. Here are some tips to write microcopy. Though you won’t find much on microcopy and email but they go hand in hand.

• Don’t send an email without your brand name. The subject must be so precise that even without opening the email the user should get your communication and intention of clicking the mail should be yet another click and not the click on the [x] mark . Upon opening the mail, seduce the user in 1 microsecond so that he/she is motivated to read further and be lead towards an action you want him/her to commit.

5. Jpeg is for porn : And not for marketing. Why do Indian marketers still send one single jpeg file as an email. Don’t they know that most (all) web based email systems and desktop based email system require one more click to show an image. I don’t even see a proper alt-ext behind images or text + images so that a user can at least make some sense out of it. Here are some tips on it – using images in email marketing & use email marketing ? ignore the big picture.

6. Oye ? Where’s the call to action yaar ? Never hire a bollywood script writer for your email marketing messages. They put all their writing talent in one single mail hoping for a lifetime achievement award. Audience in movie theatres have paid 300 bucks to suffer for 3 hours. But sorry your email receivers don’t have such patience. Communicate fast, efficiently and clearly what exactly you want the user to do and for what ? A simple example Click here Vs Click here for 20% discount. Know more on emailmarketingtips.com.

7. Crash landing: Ok even with these problems the user managed to do us a favour and land on our landing page. And… he has a great fall. Any email marketing campaign should be in three steps and the landing page is step 2. Without any wishful thinking just imagine a scenario where at each step your success rate is under 10%. 10% at email clicks and 10% of 10% at landing page – what would happen if your user is lost on this page. Maintain the train of value proposition and help the user make his next move. Visit CMSWire, davechaffey.com and b2bemailmarketing.com for more tips.

8. Collect & bond, it’s your ‘relationship’ network : The most important & logical part of Email marketing is to collect the email addresses. And if email IDs are precious, then they should be handled with care and collected with utmost precision. Do not miss an opportunity to get the users subscribed to your list whenever you get an opportunity through point of sale, point of service and so on. Show and prove him how it will offer a great ‘customer experience’ and not just spam.

Further Read on Email Marketing:

1. Email Marketing Best Practices on emailaddressmanager.com, mailchimp and marketo.
2. Email marketing reports & insights : email-marketing-reports.com, emarketer.com & mailermailer.com

Smashing best on Email Marketing:

• Email Newsletter Design: Guidelines And Examples
• Best Practices For Bulletproof E-Mail Delivery

Photo Credit : Flickr/Rmgimages

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A big media group which is a leader in print has a online recruitment service “brand x”. Even with strong media presence “brand x’ did not create any impact in online recruitment space, so there came a super marketing strategy of creating a entry portal to “brand x” through “category y”. There’s no mention of “brand x’ and its made to appear as if this completely a new service.

These people forgot one thing – that “brand x” is a service and “category y” is just a name and entry point to “brand x’. Brand x is the host of the destination and its who is going to communicate with the user as ‘brand” x. No, wait a minute, they don’t communicate as “brand x” but as “sexy samantha” (no offense to any of the samantha’s but just a fictitious name).

Thumb Rules of Sending Your Company’s Email Messages:

If you are communicating as an employee / person:

The from name should be Your Full Name [yourname@your_company.com]. This mail should not talk to any list, unless all of them form a certain group of cluster and really know you well. For example, from your ID to all your distributors in Mumbai. In case you are using a generic name or sharing the inbox, like pr@your_company.com you must reply with your actual names with proper signatures and designations.

If you are communicating through newsletters / mass mailers:

The from name must be your Brand Name [do-not-reply@your_company.com]. This mail can talk broadly with your customers and must have a working subscribe / unsubscribe module with also an option to land / communicate some where if the users want to know more about the communication of this mail. No matter how much you want to enhance the “open rate” never dilute your brand name by using “sexy samantha” types of email handles.

If you are sending alerts:

Most of the business are done online and much of the communication these days is done through automated systems. In these cases, the right email sender should be selected appropriately on the basis of who will close the loop. From name can be do-not-reply, a team id, a persons id who is responsible for that function, or a feedback ID. Decide on the basis of first two rules.

If you are serving the customers:

The customer service department or the feedback ID or the customer support ID. Remember you are the most unfortunate lot in the whole wide company. Don’t get scared by the responses that you get. Remember just one thing, no one can thank someone anonymous and most of us get pissed off cursing someone faceless. I hope you got your answer on this.

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I had attempted to gather such insights in an interview with my 14 year old nephew The mind of a 14 year old Indian – brands, media, trends, internet, politics & more… and the same question came back to me on “ how a young consumer who is totally onto new digital media is different from the user who is traditional in media consumption” and how this affects his relationship with brands and marketers.

Here’re some points from my own thinking and the first points comes from one of the answers on LinkedIn.

Personal Interactions With The Brand

This was never possible before says Ryan Cormier, according to him the young consumers are different than "traditional" consumers of the past.The growing number of tools now allow consumers to opt out of advertising messages. Satellite radio has affected radio ads. DVR devices have greatly affected television marketing. For nearly all traditional media, there is an option available for consumers to opt out of marketing messages. Even when there’s none, people have remote controls to skip your message

However on digital/social media it’s the opposite. The young consumers are actually opting IN here to marketing messages. There is a personal interaction between consumer and brand that was previously nonexistent. Now, consumers go online to do research and gather insights and recommendations about which products to buy and who to use for specific services. Because more decisions are being made online, it is imperative that marketers understand the consumers they are trying to reach in order to create a digital marketing strategy that will get those consumers to opt in to the marketing experience.

Spreadability Quotient of Your Brand / Be The Meme

Before the first point of personal interactions, the “Spreadability Quotient” comes first. My nephew never saw a brand campaign of Converse shoes, he never interacted with any of the interactive Converse social media presence and such. But he and the people around him were wearing Converse and it was considered cool, it was considered cool even when other brands were having massive advertising budgets and reach and products 3x to 4x price range. Yet young people chose to dodge all that and prefer Converse .

The future of Digital Marketing is dependant on Spreadability Quotient of the brand within the young people’s own circle of trust. The young people who are getting more and more connected with technologies will they spread your memes (seeded through marketing or celebrities) or mimic each other’s behaviours

Remember the digital media allows these young people to live their own sub-culture almost real-time and without any restrictions of time and distance.

Spreadability Quotient : Inspired by Henry Jenkins from his blog post “If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead (Part One): Media Viruses and Memes”

Three Billion Blog also describes it well in a short and sweet post on “Meme Theory in Youth Marketing “

Creative agencies are experts in No.1 (and so they should be) however it is the ability of that initial idea to mutate and evolve which is the Holy Grail of advertising. If a young person can be inspired enough by an idea in marketing campaign to want to repeat its strapline in a social situation, sing the song from the ad or the most recent (and most powerful) recreate their own version of the ad and post it on a video sharing site, then you have struck gold!

The best way to sell to young people is to be part of their culture by giving them some form of social currency. As such, Meme Theory must start becoming a much more important benchmark for the success of any youth marketing campaign. There is magic in those memes.

The Media With Infinite Long Tail / The currency of Popularity

Traditional media is one way voice and the digital media is a two-way super highway. On digital media the user’s own social network is reconstructed online. The supernova’s created on traditional media are limited and on digital media limitless  – that is the long tail construction of digital media constitutes many many things with infinite people, infinite choices and that too with infinite personalization options.

The dotcoms which went bust spending millions on Super Bowl ads now have a better targeted properties like Techcrunch or GigaOm, the properties where they can get better conversions and not just the “eyeballs”

Earlier marketer & network had nexus and decided and created their own SuperNovas and user stories. These days digital consumers are constructing their own networks, their own circle of trust and hand picking their own SuperNovas, creating and spreading their own memes.

The marketers now even don’t know who is following whom for what and where they can seed their messages. The limited landscape of media has suddenly become infinite and the never ending friending (pdf)  generation is still growing their network adding more to the chaos day by day. Look at the taxonomy of top 100 digital properties on the web for any country, even if you are able to classify them, do you think you can have a clean and unified marketing strategy across the spectrum ?

For example – How many people are really following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, is his likes and dislikes are to himself and limited to his page or they also spread within his circle, can a brand approach Ashton for seeding their messages, would he be ready for that ? or he is just happy to be their and live his own life and chit-chat with followers around him.

This challenge is not just for people who want to associate with new rich and famous on digital media but also with the new rich who have suddenly found the popularity currency. The rich and famous are expected to be more open and real on the new digital medium and once they are ready to be sponsored, does their popularity remain the same ?

Young People And Their Unapologetic Ways

The traditional consumers were you in your awe, even when you were not the coolest brand on the planet at least they identified you as a corporation and you deserved some respect. These days, the young and restless have taken your for granted, they pay you and your offer them products and services, that’s it. They would only respect you, if you offer them something cool and exciting and if there’s a real customer experience. Otherwise, they treat you like dirt.

The technology is also to blame for this, for the previous generation you were really solving their problems and adding to the conveniences in their lives. Today, it’s all about experiences – personal gadgets or immersive products and services are the aspirations and not washing machines and air-conditioners. No sir, young people no longer thank you for that, they have taken you for granted.

You had the luxury of the slowness of “word of mouth / print”, today you never know when the bad experience of your brand can become the hot trend on digital media properties. Face to face conversations and interactions was actually a shield between traditional consumers and traditional marketers and traditional media was a cosy vehicle.

Now the young generation can show you the middle finger in front of thousands of your customers. Suddenly your over zealous social media strategy becomes your own graveyard.

How John Cena & Hugh Jackman have reached Deoghar, Jharkhand a.k.a The Infinite Reach of Digital Media

Deoghar is a popular pilgrimage in Jharkhand state and very traditional in all matters, then how come I located posters of John Cena & Hugh Jackman in a kid’s bedroom there. Simple, he is more connected to the digital world then some of us oldies living in a metro. He frequents Orkut, has Tata DTH at home and a super speed broadband connection from BSNL and remember this is a town where 24 hour power-cut is regular feature.

Such people, I must say disrupt your idea of “target audience”. How can this little gent who doesn’t even have continuous 24 hours power-supply and reach to a mall or super market wears Pepe. How come this household has a microwave oven and were able to arrange all the ingredients for Pizzas on a short notice. Common, the digital marketers are happy to sell their washing powders and biscuits here and what’s going on here is potential market for canned and ready to eat food.

There are many more such thoughts in my mind and no conclusions yet. The only thing that I can say so far is “Spreadability Quotient” is the most important factor with young people who are on high dose of re-tweets and comment | like | share. This can only come when they feel good about themselves and you “have” to become facilitator in providing that “customer experience”.

Please feel to share your thoughts in the comments section, would be glad to extend this discussion further.

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* I will ignore thousand of blogs, millions of experts and billions of quick DIY online marketing tips.

My focus will be on…

• Our Business
• Our Products & Services
• Our People, Partner & Customers

I refuse to become test bed for social media experimentation.

* My corporate website will offer ALL the information related to my company

• it won’t have ‘click here to enter’
• I will ban flash animation and images unless they are used to convey relevant information and as a value ad to the text
• It would contain anything and everything possible to my product, services and people. Even if it means carrying my CEO’s poems

* My corporate website must feature on the top results on any search engine for keywords related to :

• my brand
• my brand + products / services
• my brand + people
• my product/services + locations

Rest all is spam.

* We will publish press releases and blogs related to my brand, people, products and services

• The press release won’t be a secret press note to previleged media people (unless it deserves to be), it will out in the open online -searchable and findable.
• The blog won’t be a blah blah me too blog, it may not contain ground-breaking updates but it will surely talk about us, our people and our products.

* We will look at the best practices in content marketing & creating community

• Content marketing can be through detailed product materials, tips & tricks, how tos, reference material,white papers, reports, surveys, research, insights, best practices, videos  and so on
• Community can be internal employers, business partners, distributers, sellers, consumers, town, city, province or country. Our company will be good to them

* We will not boycott our own marketing

• The promotions & offers that my company is running will be on my website first.
• The commercials, documents and videos posted on web will be compulsory hosted on our website.
• People can connect & receive comments on facebook and twitter, but why not on our very own website.

* We will be very very pessimistic marketers

• Tomorrow it’s just our website on the web, all the search engines, blogs and social media properties are shut or on a fail whale. Can our website be our saviour.

* We will recruit internal & external evangelists and not outsource agencies for spamming

• It’s not about creating the buzz, it’s about becoming "buzz worthy". You only become buzz worthy by spreading your circle of trust and doing things which are good for your company, employees, partners and customers. That’s how they become your evangelists. There’s no shortcut.

* Social Media Marketing is NOT Free

• Whoever suggests that blogging, facebooking, twittering or creating your social media initiative is free, is basically telling you that your people come cheap, your time has no value and your office is a cafe’ where people come to drink coffee and post some messages here and there.
• There has to be a strategy, don’t get into popularity contest. Always measure ROI

* There’s no Anti-Social Media on Web, All the web and all the media is SOCIAL

• Some gentleman sends a feeedback on your contact email ID mentioned on your website, no one replies and the dissatisfied customer send an email to his friends that never to buy your product. Is this a social normal social behaviour or not.
• Focus on customer experience, employee experience and partner experience. Man is a social animal, just remember that. Social media is not just status updates, tweets, forums & blogs it’s just marketing word to classify ‘something’.

* There’s no marketing without measurement

• To excel in marketing you must be excellent in Excel. Also available on Slideshare
  
  The Sanity Checklist For Digital Marketers (a.k.a The art of Slow digital Marketing)

  View more presentations from santoshmaharshi.

Picture – by Dan Perry on Flickr

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“A new business that Accenture has established to help companies develop world-class digital marketing capabilities and optimize online/offline investments. Accenture Interactive will bring together advanced technology platforms with consulting, analytics, Web development and digital managed services capabilities in an integrated model.”

And why this announcement is important. Actually you must check Russ Mann’s blog for that, but here’s anyway my 2cents, without any one asking.

What’s next
Next is companies like Accenture and many more and that too at a global level will getting into digital marketing

Global Contracts
Companies like P&G and many more will work out a global level deal for their digital marketing – to not only save the costs and the logistics but also for a unified coherent messaging and approach. Also means, Chinese and Indians will not only answer your support calls, but they will now also tell you what to buy

Business Intelligence & Customer Intelligence
BICI is the language that marketers will talk. The presentations and the decks will compulsorily have graphs & charts pulled from spreadsheets.

SQL is the new HTML
Had read it somewhere long time ago, it comes to digital marketing now. Digital Marketing & Data will marry each other and never be able to live happily ever after.

ART Vs ROI
It will be interesting to see how ART of web designing / marketing will be impacted by process driven and measurement driven organizations. Will it work on a templatized model or will it allow freedom to creative teams to be wild and crazy.

Global Synergey & Rhythm
Efficiency, global strategy, branding clarity, business rhythm and everyone in synch should be positively affected by this. The more global the organization is, the bigger is the challenge to keep things together. To keep things together, will be the KRA of such global digital marketing solution providers.

Impact on other businesses of the eco-system
How will it impact the businesses of analytics provider, software providers, ad-networks for that matter. Look at the Actionable Insights #2 on Russ’s blog where he talks about real-time reporting of the campaigns. Does this mean, in future a Digital Marketing multinationals will pull one campaign from X ad-network / publisher push i to Y ad-network / publisher just like that; almost real-time.

What will happen to the online sales and marketing teams of the publishers. Talking to a brand manager who is also learning through a sales call, is different that talking to a representative from such organizations.

Accountability Vs Creativity & much much more.
Doing a campaign which has 10,000 leads, or doing a crazy viral which passes along 100,000 people – which is more important for the brand and who will decide that. What will happen to the local innovation of global organizations. What will happen to the internal marketing arm of the organization, where they put in their passion, extra time and hardwork to execute something "extra" which is neither quantifiable nor measurable.

Can marketing be as per the specs and SOPs. Both the sides, will have to work on this challenge. But, my thumbs up for accountability in marketing !!!

[Via - @Gauravonomics ]

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I have been a very social spammer cum observer from a long time and worked on social products like Rediff Q&A &  Connexions in my previous avataars and now manage media and content programming side of the business. I am slightly nasty person, who spends more time on measurement and tweaking 2pc, 5pc or so, that’s why they call me pucca marwari, yeah

Social ROI

No one knows what to get where, because there’s scarcity of actual social media experts. One stop shop for all things digital is very 2000ish dotcomish bubblish. That means we are ready to sale you anything as per your budget.

You can of course have the first customer who is ready to become a bakra for you or suddenly attain social nirvana under mashable bodhi tree on his own but after the first experience it leaves a bad taste with him and that’s why there’s no second attempt.

Understand client’s need & deliver what the business requires

Social Media Enthu Cutlet

In India people haven’t understood the difference between the brochure site & real web-site. You pick up top CEOs / CMOs on this side of the world and show them their logo animation with click here to enter and their chests will swell with pride.

The social media activities on the web that you see for their corporations are run by social media enthu cutlets. They job hop and their social presence is struck by error 404.

Social Media is not championship game, it has to be first social within your organization.

What is social Media

In full agreement with Gaurav Mishra. Social Media is not just facebook or twitter it is harnessing community, it’s your review on Mouthshut, it’s a blog on website, it’s feedback mail that you must answer, it’s a forum for your product/service.

People have love and hate relationship with products and services. WOM is now WOC – word of click on social web properties. Comment | Like | Share and much much more…

Word of click spreads more rapidly than WOM.

Everything is factor of time, resource & returns

Coming back to the article,  a NGO might decide not to get into social spam game on a daily basis and invest 26 hours in a day re-tweeting. Because it makes sense for them to cold call 10,000 organizations, have 1,000 meetings and finally get support form only 100 corporate and get each of their 1,000 employees committed to some contributions. For example Give India which doesn’t even have 100 Facebook fans has contribution in Crores, yes C is capital. What percentage of this contribution will come through online say if they had 100,000 fans or 200,000 followers on Twitter.

Ranks & counters don’t mean anything unless they translate into $s, sorry INRs

The problem is growth

Whatever best practice template that you take for social media initiatives, the challenge is not recruitment or keeping the buzz for a while. The challenge is what to do with these 100,000 users that I have, they are not coming back, there’s no need to come back, I have nothing to offer them now.

First day first show was rocking, how it can become a true blockbuster.

Agitation Vs Involvement

I am not that excited in accepting Pink Chaddhi or Jaago Re as the success model for social media. Pink Chaddi was mass agitation, can’t be used by brands or organization. Jaago Re is a social awareness movement for a good cause of enhancing voter’s awareness and this mighty thing requires mighty involvements. They surely must be having a 10-20 year plan in front of them. But would we like all advertisements and bill-boards turned into a shoutbox – Chain Se Sona Hai To Jaag Jao !!!

Business and NGOs don’t wear pink chuddies

Thanks Saabira Chaudhari for posting this topic and letting us know about the views from different angles. Looking forward to you next great post.

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Think about it this way: traditional advertising is a "hope and a prayer" (must we really trot out the infamous quote from John Wanamaker: "I know that half of my advertising doesn’t work. The problem is, I don’t know which half.") Brands take out ads in hopes that people see them, remember them, and then (either at that moment or at some point later in time) act on them. Some of the best ads have a conversion rate of 5% (meaning 95% of the people who saw it did nothing). On the other hand, if you think about the context of search, we have individuals who are actively raising their hands and looking for something specific. It could be your product or service or they could be creating search queries that have enough keyword relevance that you could be in front of them. On top of that, you don’t pay for that ad, unless they click on it.

The problem is real marketing is not glam and sexy and most of the marketers don’t want to get into numbers crunching and reporting ROI, trends and analysis in excel’s cells and columns. If you are running an ad-campaign or just launched a product, you are happy to note the ‘x’ number of blog mentions on the web. Are bloggers your consumers ? When your consumers search for you online – do you want them to find you through rant and raves or directly through your site.

Few months back it was my wife’s birthday and I was planning to gift her some jewellery. There’s one of the most reputed brand I was looking for, these guys must be spending millions on print advertising, fashion shows, etc. etc. But when you search for their brand name online there’s just one link on first page, rest all is non-sense or some other sites carrying review, listing and so on.

Then on the site it was first Enter, then skip intro and then product description in flash’s cranky fonts and cool background music. The product gallery sucked even on my high-res screen. Cool too you, but not usable to me.

Result, I went to the good old Tanishq because this is what I got on the first results page on any search engine that I tried that day Tanishq Store Locator – South Region for the keyword “Tanishq Bangalore”. Just explore their site and how they have mixed flash and animation with regular HTML – browsable & findable, both.

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[Via Cheeryflava] Leo Burnett UK predicts the Future Trends in Advertising for 2009

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Global Brands in Indian Market

• Microsoft Advertising
• Google Adsense
• Yahoo Advertising

Reference: WATBlog, Trak.in & some Search

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• I won’t definitely miss something by Clay Shirky but but a soft-cover book would be at least 200-300 INR less than the hard-cover. Since I buy lots of stuff which I never read, I am usually concerned about the pricing too.
• The book looked bulky to me, cos I carry my laptop which is already stuffed with so many things. The soft covers I find are more user friendly, specifically travel friendly. Most of my reading is actually while travelling and hence the concern.

I posted this question on LinkedIn and got some good replies but I am of a different view or may be with limited vision. I don’t get the explanation on marketing, collectors items, more profit on hard-cover types. I wonder if Book Publishing Industry is playing Ostrich and acting like Music Industry by sticking the age old formats and distribution structure.

The Profile of Me, The Reader:

I am a voracious reader and I atleast consumer 100 pages of text everyday – feed readers, blogs and portals.

My reading is limited to non-fiction and the subject area of my work, field and industry. That’s why Clay Shirky is all the way more important read for me.

I read when I am back home in the evening and I would anytime prefer a book than some TV show. Plus with speed reading tips from Tony Buzan I can do power reading over the weekends or when I am travelling. Usually when travelling abroad I at least have 2 books on my target.

Hardcover Vs Paperbacks / Softcover & Digital Publishing

Paperbacks are easier to carry and easy on the pocket too.

Paperbacks  give you that light feel and it would also appeal to less avid reader who get intimidated or have excuse looking at the big and bulky books

Paperbacks  can actually give you much more readership – as some class of readers are always price sensitive – college student, young professionals, housewives, and retired people.

Paperbacks  if it may not kill but at least control the piracy to some extent.

Industry should focus on creating readers and fan following for authors, not the collectors.

Readership is not about books – it’s about the time slot and the industry is competing with portals, blogs, aggregators, social networks, mp3 players, online video, TV, Newspaper and so many other things related to content consumption.

I think Chetan Bhagat has got it right. His books comes almost near if not equal to the cost of some high-end magazines and he has not just created fan-following for himself but lot many people who otherwise don’t buy books would never think twice before buying his books. They would thus get introduced not just to reading but also to the habit of buying books.

And if you believe it in Long Tail and the Tipping Point : Won’t it make more sense to create long tail readers and not just collectors. Won’t it make more sense where you create so many readers that it almost brings tipping point not just for a particular blockbuster bestseller but to entire industry and market

The reading habits are changing – the content is now consumed in capsules. Take the example of a book called Groundswell. It was almost a repetition for me. The social technographics was known to me few years back and I keep track of various blogs which talk about the subject. The book was good and related to my industry but I have had the capsules long time back and still I am on it on a regular basis.

The Industry cannot rely on few top best-sellers, just imagine how affordibility can changes the dynamics of the book publishing and the consumption.

Environmental conditions also provides a pointer to take a new approach towards the materials used in book publishing. From glossy thick pages encased in hardcover to thin re-cycled pages tucked in paperbacks.

Content Consumption is moving to digital screens, I don’t see any publisher doing some radical stuff on that front.

Of course not all content can be ready for screens – but why not for books less than 250 pages or so – can we show them in Wiki format ?

Why can’t the distribution be changed ? Subscribe to a publisher and download the chapters each week, or make micro-payments for just the chapter that you want to download.

Supporting Trends and Data

• Press release on PRarticle.com, July 2008: Book Sales in Decline as US Economy Contracts
• The book business in the United States in 2007 registered $29.93 billion in sales, producing 2.377 billion units, about the same as 2.383 billion in 2006, according to the Book Industry Study Group.
• While the book business has been relatively stagnant in recent years and even months, it now appears to have turned the corner downward.
  Net sales of books in April fell 3.5 percent to $472.7 million, based on data from 79 publishers as reported to the Association of American Publishers.
• Not all sales were down. Among the book categories registering increased sales were inexpensive e-books, up 19.9 percent to $3.4 million; university press hardcover sales, up 12.1 percent to $5.6 million; adult mass market sales, up 4.7 percent to $53.2 million; adult trade paperback sales, up 4.5 percent to $118.3 million; and audiobooks, up 1.7 percent to $12.6 million.
• E-book sales rocket up at Random House, Penguin, S&S and elsewhere
• Last week Random House announced sales for e-books were already more than double the total for 2007. The trade body, the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) estimates that sales of e-books in March 2008 were 58.9% higher than in March 2007
• In an economic bind, families turn to libraries
• “Book publishers have a lot of challenges, and folks getting their books via the library doesn’t even make the first page,” said Michael Norris, a senior analyst for Simba Information, a Stamford, Conn.-based media research company. Norris said that when consumer spending in general rises again, book sales will grow, with patrons possibly buying titles they first borrowed from the library.
• Still, the nation’s three biggest booksellers are struggling, with shares trading near 52-week lows.
• Barnes & Noble saw second-quarter sales dip 1.6 percent to $1.22 billion and profits fall 14.6 percent to $15.4 million. Books-A-Million’s second-quarter sales fell 7.5 percent to $122.8 million and earnings declined 79 percent to $645,000 from $3.1 million.
• 15 Trends to Watch in 2008 – Publisher Weekly *** must read
• You can also try comparing the search query on Keywords Forecasting on adCenter Labs

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