Trendspotting 2012: Rick Joyce

By PT Editors
January 1, 2012
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Rick Joyce
Chief Marketing Officer, Perseus Books Group

Congratulations, U.S. trade publishers – you have successfully surfed the Conversion Wave. Your frontlist and active backlist are now digital, and the remaining challenges (fixed format, complex conversions, deep backlist, out of print and reverted titles, etc.) are in sight of solution. Can publishers now relax? Nope—the next wave is already here: Digital Discovery, and it promises to offer similar disruptions, costs and opportunities.

Discovery is the next frontier for at least 5 reasons:

1) traditional marketing avenues are waning or fully optimized; 2) the entire chain of distribution-purchase-consumption is digital, and we are now wired for impulse purchases;  3) Every avenue of promotion is either born digital, or lives on digitally via coverage, amplification, archiving and/or sharing. 4) Smartphones and tablets mean that consumer attention is less captive by place and time and so can be spent in ways the consumer finds most rewarding; 5) Browsing is being reinvented and new tools for Interaction, Integration, Connection, Comments and Commerce are emerging.

So, while the goals of book discovery are fairly eternal—to get noticed, get sampled, get merchandised, get qualified, get awarded, get discussed, get bought, get read, get recommended, etc.—the means are rapidly evolving, and require attention:

  • Recommendations reinvention: recommendations that are increasingly amplified by social media, analyzed by metacritic-like scoring, and auto-generated by profile-based engines, etc.
  • Social Media Monitoring: Getting noticed means not only starting conversations (via traditional PR) but finding and analyzing relevant and influential conversations to join in real time—(via Twitter, Facebook, comments, posts, sentiment)
  • Platforms and Assets: these relevant social conversations don’t take well to ad-speak, so publishers need to have the right, more personal platforms, i.e. actual editors and authors rather than imprint Twitter handles.  And, the right bite-sized sharable assets (short excerpts, short video, value-added context, etc.) to contribute
  • Getting bought means not just being available for purchase on an e-tailer site, but coming up higher in search; so SEO and SEM techniques applied to enhanced metadata will be increasingly crucial

At Perseus, we have active efforts across all these discovery avenues, which requires leaning in with startups, inventing new tools, piloting new approaches, and coordinating across the ecosystem of author, publisher, retailer and discovery partners. Happy 2012—think of it as the Year of Discovery.

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Trendspotting 2012: Mark Ouimet

By PT Editors
January 1, 2012
Comments (14)

Mark Ouimet
Vice President and General Manager, Ingram Publisher Services

If 2011 was the Year of  Change in the book industry with the dramatic rise of digital and with shifting roles and reinvention the new norm, from where I sit, 2012 will be the Year of Collaboration. Basically, we all realize that we can’t do it alone . . . and why should we? What one does well another does less so and vice versa. The basic wheel has already been invented, but there are always new spins on it.

A few examples—at Ingram, we’ve spent decades building strong distribution capabilities, pioneering print on demand and more recently, launching a full-service digital distribution and sales program. But it still took individual publishers working with us to look beyond the models we’d already built to see what’s possible.

In 2010, Laura Baldwin, the COO and CFO of O’Reilly Media challenged us to put our existing capabilities to use and to help them move from carrying lots of inventory to carrying little, while still never missing a sale. Today, through our POD and distribution services, we manage O’Reilly’s inventory and print their books. Macmillan also had slower moving books they wanted to continue publishing. We had space, systems and print capability, and another new model was born in which Ingram houses, ships and, in some cases, prints several thousand titles for the Macmillan imprints. Collaboration.

And HarperCollins wanted to expand their reach to Christian booksellers; now, Ingram Publisher Services/Spring Arbor has launched a new distribution program into Christian markets. Award-winning books, coupled with strong market access. Collaboration.

Brill chose to hand over its digital books to Ingram’s CoreSource platform to distribute and archive its scholarly volumes to bookselling partners worldwide, allowing Brill more time to concentrate on publishing academic content rather than devote resources to the logistics of redistribution of e-content. More collaboration.

These are just a few of our examples at Ingram, but there are numerous others in the industry. Penguin recently announced a “virtual inventory” model in partnership with a printer. Earlier this year, HarperCollins and long-time print partner struck a deal that significantly changed the publisher’s supply chain model. Oxford University Press launched University Press Scholarship Online, so other university presses can offer their own monograph repositories around the world. These collaborations are just the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve had the pleasure of being in the book industry in one capacity or another since the late ‘70s (please don’t do the math!), yet I’ve never been more excited about what is possible, probable and yet to be discovered. There are a few things I know for certain—the Reader, our ultimate boss—is in for a treat as we bring them tremendous content (and 2011 was chock-full of it)  in brand new as well as in familiar ways. I also know this will come about behind the scenes and amongst the various players in the book industry through growing collaboration and specialization. Experts enabling other experts to do what they do best. From where I sit, everybody wins—publishers, distributors, booksellers . . . and, ultimately, readers.

 

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People Roundup, December 2011

By PT Editors
December 1, 2011
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CHANGES

Lauren Shakely is stepping down as VP, Publisher, Clarkson Potter, Potter Craft, Potter Style, and Watson-Guptill, and will be leaving the company.  Pam Krauss is returning to Crown from Rodale in the position of SVP, Publisher, Clarkson Potter.

Brendan Cahill has left his position as Publisher of Open Road Integrated Media and will relocate to Woodstock, VT when he becomes CEO of Green Mountain Digital. He may be reached at bcahill@greenmtd.com. Former Abrams CEO Andy Stewart founded the company in 2009, along with David Roberts and Charles Rattigan. The company produces a line of bird and natural guide apps with Audubon, and does apps with Orvis.

S&S CEO Carolyn Reidy announced in late November that she had “asked our digital group, led by Ellie Hirschhorn, to take on a greater role in working with our publishing teams on digital marketing campaigns for select  titles,” and concurrently it was announced that Frank Fochetta (ffochetta@aol.com), Lauren Monaco and “some others who have contributed much to Simon &  Schuster’s success over the years” will be leaving the company.  Shortly thereafter Sumya Ojakli was named Senior Director of Special Sales. Ojakli has operated a consulting company since 2003. SVP Marketing Liz Perl will now report directly to Reidy.

Meanwhile, Thomas LeBien has joined S&S as VP, Senior Editor. He was most recently at FSG, where he was publisher of the Hill & Wang and Scientific American imprints. Roger Labrie has left his position as Senior Editor at S&S and will be providing freelance editorial services to agents and authors. He is based in Summit, NJ, and may be reached at rlabrie311@comcast.net

The newly independent Monacelli Press, now located at 236 West 27th Street, announced that Christopher Lyon has been hired as Executive Editor, to direct its new electronic publishing initiative, aimed at developing book apps for museum and trade publications.  He had been at Prestel and MoMA. Heather Kirkpatrick, previously with Picador Macmillan, has been named Marketing Manager.  Managing Editor/Production Director Elizabeth White had been promoted to VP and Stacee Lawrence has been promoted to Senior Editor.

David Goehring has joined Wiley as Director of Digital Publishing for the professional/trade group. He was most recently Director of Harvard Business Press, and before that held executive positions at Perseus and Pearson.

David Rosen, who was most recently at Progressive Book Club, has been named Director of Digital Publishing at Invogen, an eBook conversion and enhancement. He may be reached at David.Rosen@invogen.com

Joy Dallanegra-Sanger has been named as Senior Program Officer, a new position, at ABA. Most recently, she was SVP and Director of Marketing at Macmillan Children’s and may be reached at Joy@bookweb.org

Jon Rosenberg has been named VP Publisher at Silver Dolphin. He came from Browntrout, the west coast calendar publisher, where he was VP, Publisher and Creative Director.

At Norton’s new imprint, Katie Henderson Adams has joined Liveright & Company as Editor, acquiring literary non-fiction and fiction. She was previously at Other Press.

Corinna Barsan is joining Grove/Atlantic as Senior Editor. She was previously Senior Editor at Other Press. She joins Senior Editor Jamison Stoltz and Amy Hundley, who has been promoted to Senior Editor/Rights Director.

At Other Press, Sulay Hernandez has joined as an editor, working on literary fiction and narrative nonfiction. She was previously at Touchstone/S&S.

In the wake of John Groton’s departure last month after just over a year as VP of Sales, National Book Network has reorganized its sales team and rehired Spencer Gale. The company also brought on Ron Powers, former CP of Sales for National Accounts, Ingram Content Group, to head NBN’s Fusion eBook business.

EVP, MD Egmont USA, Douglas Pocock had left  the company. Cally Poplak, Managing Director of Egmont Press, has taken over management of the U.S. business from London.

Rachel Vogel has joined Mary Evans as Foreign Rights Director and Literary Agent. She has previously held positions at Movable Type and Lippincott Massie McQuilkin.

Jeff Umbro has joined Goldberg McDuffie as Digital Marketing Manager. He began his career with Appsolute Media, focused on social media marketing, content strategy and SEO.

Jeanne Finestone will be joining the United Nation’s Mission in Timor-Leste (East Timor) as Public Information Officer for Outreach. She was at Ananta Media and has held a number of marketing positions within children’s publishing.

Melissa Klare moved from Special Markets at Random House to Associate Director of Special Markets at Penguin.

Lisa Lee has joined Holiday House as Director of Production. She was previously Senior Production Manager, Children’s Books, at HarperCollins.

Executive Editor of features for Library Journal Rebecca T. Miller will become Editor-in-Chief of School Library Journal, filling the slot vacated by Brian Kenney. Miller has been at LJ since 1998.

On Demand Books has hired Karina Mikhli as Director of Content Development, focusing on publisher content permissions. She was VP of Publishing Operations at Assouline and Production Manager at Oxford University Press.


PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES

Jeff Weber has been named VP, Director, Online & Digital Sales, RH. He has held multiple sales and digital business development positions with the company since 2001.

Molly Barton will move up to Global Digital Director at Penguin. She takes over from Dan Ruffino, Group Digital Director, who is returning home to Australia.

At HarperCollins, Cindy DiTiberio has been promoted to Senior Editor. Mary Beth Silfin has been promoted to the new position of VP, Deputy General Counsel. As a result of changes in the legal and contracts departments, VP, Associate General Counsel Tom Ward will leave the company after more than 15 years.

At S&S Children’s imprints Simon Spotlight & Simon Scribbles, Siobhan Ciminera has been promoted to Executive Editor; Lisa Rao moves up to Editor; and Beth Barton has been promoted to Associate Editor.

Andrew Savikas has been named CEO of Safari Books online. He spent the past five years as Program Chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference.

Harvard Business Review Press, the book publishing unit of Harvard Business Review Group, has promoted Sarah McConville to Publisher and Tim Sullivan to Editorial Director. Justin Fox, who has served as Editorial Director of the Press for the past 15 months, will continue as Editorial Director of the Harvard Business Review Group.

Frank Steinert, previously Random House VP, Human Resources, is promoted to Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer. He is head of HR for the company worldwide, and for the U.S. division.

 

DULY NOTED

Congratulations to Michael Cader and Publishers Marketplace, which celebrated it’s 10th anniversary this past month.  He tells subscribers that “Among the fun stats to share, we note that page views at PM are up 21 percent year-over-year, which is our biggest increase in the past five years (which is as far back as the stats log goes). And among the most satisfying is that, since 2004, we listed and shared almost 8,000 job postings, helping bring together employees and employers across the industry. Within our databases, we have reported 58,500 deals; aggregated 72,500 full-length book reviews; track 22,255 distinct ISBNs all the time through our Book Tracker; and host 1,750 web pages for members (including 469 pages for agents alone).”

******

The Women’s National Book Association will present the annual WNBA Pannell Award to two bookstores—one a general bookstore and one a children’s specialty bookstore that “excels at inspiring kids interested in reading”—at BookExpo America in June. Each recipient will receive a check for $1,000 and a framed piece of original art by a noted children’s book illustrator. Deadline for nominations is Jan. 15. Nominated stores can make their submissions to the Pannell jury electronically via email: vtomaselli@mtmpublishing.com


UPCOMING EVENTS

The Center for Fiction honors Nan Graham at its gala on December 6 at the University Club. Jeannette Walls is the MC and Don DeLillo will present the award.  Stephen King and Susan Moldow are honorary chairs.  For details go to www.centerforfiction.org

******

The winners of the 16th Annual Books for a Better Life Awards will be announced during an awards ceremony at The New York Times Center in New York City on Monday, March 12, 2012 where industry honoree, Skip Prichard, President and CEO of Ingram Content Group, Inc. will be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

****

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Pepsi? Coke? Who wins the taste test in this month’s ereader review roundup?

By PT Editors
December 1, 2011
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With the announcement of the new Nook Tablet, all the key ereader players appear to have entered the ring in time for the holiday season. And while it remains to be seen what effect Rakuten’s acquisition of Kobo will have on the device in the long run, quality-wise, all the ereaders appear to be in dead heat. When it comes to the tablet members of each of the ereading families, almost everyone seems to agree that they are impressive for their prices, though iPads remain the devices to beat in terms of features and quality. In regards to function as ereaders only, opinions seem to waver depending on whether or not one wants to commit itself to the Amazon way and what is the better price point out there (and amidst many holiday promotions, even this has changed throughout the month).

So which ereader best suits your tastes? Read on to draw your own conclusions:

“In other words, the Kindle Fire isn’t going to assume a place in anyone’s gizmo collection as their go-to work device. Amazon isn’t selling their new tablet as such. As a dedicated media device, though, the Fire has significant things to offer users—provided you’re willing to play Amazon’s game, and shoulder the costs that come with that.”

— Nicholas Kolakowski, EWeek (11/16/2011)

 

“But it’s more likely the iPad won’t see any serious competition until mid-2012 or even 2013. Until then, media consumption tablets such as the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire are offering something that tablet shoppers can value: A moderate price and a wide selection of content including music, videos, e-books and games.”

— Ian Paul, PCWorld (11/8/2011)

 

“The capability to share reading activities with friends and followers is a boon for heavy social media users looking for posting fodder.

‘Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market,’ said Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis in a statement last week announcing the interesting — and possibly game-changing — news that the company will be acquired by Japanese-based Rakuten, one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms. It will be interesting to see if Kobo devices get into the hands of more consumers once that happens.”

— Christina DesMarais, PCWorld (11/13/2011)

 

“The Nook Tablet is a little prettier and more open than its arch-rival, the Kindle Fire, but it’s got less access to content, so, on the most practical front, I think the Kindle Fire has the Nook Tablet beat.  But they’re pretty much equivalent devices and the choice for many consumers may come down to whether they feel manipulated by the Kindle Fire’s absolute focus on selling digital and hard goods from Amazon (see my earlier review of the Fire) or charmed by Barnes & Noble’s friendlier user interface in the Tablet and its in-store sales force.”

—Craig Morgan Teicher, Publishers Weekly (11/23/2011)

 

“Sales of dedicated e-readers aren’t growing as fast as those of tablets, but are still expected to nearly triple in the next five years. Juniper Research estimated on Tuesday that 67 million e-reader devices will be sold in 2016, compared with 25 million this calendar year. That may pale in comparison to the 55.2 million tablet sales forecast for 2011 by Juniper—especially when e-books can be read on tablets—but the e-reader market is still showing solid growth.

I’ve been reading e-books since 2003, back in the days when the PDA, or personal digital assistant, was a precursor to the smartphones of today. Between that history, my own observations, and hundreds of reader comments on the topic over the years, there are at least five reasons I can think of that e-readers are here to stay and grow over the coming years, as Juniper says.”

— Kevin C. Tofel, GIGAOM (11/15/2011)

 

“Which device would I want for Christmas? In the end, I used two criteria: the features that suit me best and good ol’ word of mouth from experienced users. So, Santa, if you’re listening, I want a voucher for next year’s iPad 3 (for fun and games) and the much lighter-weight Kindle 3G (for 24/7 reading and downloading). But that’s just a Sugar Plum Fairy dream. In this economy, our house will probably be wrapping up paperbacks.”

— Julia Heaberlin, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (11/17/2011)

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Cracking a Cold Case: Scandinavian Crime Fiction’s Mainstream Success

By PT Editors
December 1, 2011
Comments (1)

It’s been over a year since the last book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, was published in the US. The trilogy’s blockbuster success promises to continue with three English-language film adaptations yet to be released (one advantage Lisbeth Salander has on Harry Potter at this point), but Publishing Trends elected to take a step back to examine expectations Larsson’s legacy has created for Scandinavian literature, and more specifically, for the newly minted genre of “Nordic Noir.”

In both the US and UK, the rise of Nordic Noir as a genre began in 2007. Of Scandinavian crime fiction’s growing success in America, Booklist claimed in 2007 that “Henning Mankell cracked it.” Despite the seminal success of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wallöö’s Martin Berg novels in the 60’s and 70’s, and the 1993 sensation of Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Mankell was the first Scandinavian crime author to be consistently tied to the Millennium Trilogy phenomena. He’d first been published by The New Press in 1997, predating Larsson’s presence in the US by over a decade.

In May of 2008, The LA Times announced that the “Scandinavian Whodunnit Boom” had arrived. In the UK, nationally-syndicated crime-fiction reviewer Barry Forshaw was drowning under “Scandicrime” review copies and was approached by Palgrave Macmillan to write a “Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction.” (It will be published in January 2012 as Death in a Cold Climate). Vintage, which had been licensing the paperback rights to Mankell’s novels since 2003, brought out new editions of the Martin Berg novels, which had been out of print for years. And, of course, 2008 also happens to be the year that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published in both the US and UK.

“Perhaps the most interesting thing about ‘Nordic Noir’ as a discrete genre” says Forshaw “is that it exists at all.” According to some brief research undertaken by Barbara Fister, Director of the Scandinavian Crime Fiction Project at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota (also conceived of in 2008), the term “Nordic Noir” seems to first appear in reference to Mankell’s detective Wallander, circa 2006. Both she and Forshaw note that there have always been Italian mystery aficionados or French Noir connoisseurs, etc. What’s different here, says Fister, is that these “pseudo-genres” never broke out to have much significance for the general reading public. The Martin Berg mysteries, Smilla, Wallander, had all made strong showings before “The Girl” broke onto the scene and left every previous Scandinavian crime novel in the dust. Simultaneously, “If you liked Stieg Larsson” reading lists started sprouting up in Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, all over review blogs, and on Amazon’s customer forums, publicizing previously obscure or niche Scandinavian writers. An idea of how well the Millennium success wore off?  Between year-end 2008 and year-end 2010, sales of Faceless Killers, Mankell’s first Wallander book, jumped from around 7,500 to over 35,000.

How does all this look from up North? All parties agree that it wouldn’t be completely outlandish to declare Stieg Larsson patron saint of Nordic-language translators. Sarah Death, Editor-in-Chief of the periodical Swedish Book Review and freelance translator had only ever worked on literary fiction until 2010. Since then she’s translated three mysteries, lined up another for early 2012, and has turned down several more. Of herself and her colleagues, she quips “We’ve virtually all turned our hands to crime while the work is there.”

Barry Forshaw speaks of the prestige now afforded by many translators, with Scandinavian authors and publishers now willing to wait six months to a year for a well-respected translator. (Some have speculated that bad translations may have caused the delayed success of certain Scandinavian  crime novels, while good translations and editing have only helped others).  Readers even queue for hours to have their Millennium Trilogy books signed by Steven Murray, the books’ English-language translator. “It’s as close as they can get to the author,” Forshaw says.

Reports from Scandinavian publishers and agents are mixed. Kari Marstein, Publisher of Fiction at Gylendahl in Norway, says that it’s not just that Anglophone publishers have discovered Scandinavian writing “could be as successful” as any domestic author, but rather, “that Scandinavian writing…can be successful in English-language markets at all.” Norwegian agent Eirin Hagen notes the effect of international hopes on crime fiction domestically. The number of crime titles published in Norway has grown swiftly every year and, of course, she says, “when the numbers increase, it’s the opposite with the quality.” Amongst international publishers trolling for “the Next Stieg Larsson,” she notes that US publishers especially are paying “very high” advances for crime novels that are not even yet domestic successes.

So what’s next for Nordic Noir? When pressed to answer who might be the NSL (as the “Next Stieg Larsson” is referred to in some circles–we kid you not), most point to Jo Nesbø, the Norwegian author whom Knopf took over from HarperCollins in 2009. Just to get the point across, the cover of The Redeemer, (Nesbø’s first book to be published in the States) boasts a bright orange medallion screaming “The Next Stieg Larsson!” Camilla Läckberg’s books (published in the US by Pegasus) get the same treatment, though both Nesbø and Läckberg were  published—and selling well—in their own countries for years before Larsson was.

No matter what, expect to see increasing emphasis on the “nordicness” of Nordic Noir. In the UK, Camilla Läckberg got her umlaut back; “Lekberg” became “Läckberg” when “blatantly Scandinavian” began to spell “Sales.” On the cinematic front, one need look no further than the poster for the new English adaptation of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo to find fetishization of all things arctic. We asked Barry Forshaw what other trends he’s been seeing in review copies coming in right now. What should readers be on the lookout for? Without a second’s pause he answered, “Psychotically antisocial young female heroines.” In response to the interviewer’s amused laughter, he continued-with a long-suffering sigh: “I’m terribly serious. Expect to see lots more of that.”

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Ad:tech New York: SoLoMo and much mo’

By PT Editors
December 1, 2011
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With 50 talks over three days and close to 300 exhibitors, ad:tech New York is one of the world’s largest Interactive Marketing conferences. On the first day social media strategist Lynne d. Johnson invoked one of its main themes with a slide with one stark acronym: “SoLoMo”— a mashup of social, local, and mobile. They’re starting to seem inseparable. As Google’s Christian Oestien later shared from a Google/Ipsos OTX survey of more than 5,000 smartphone users: 95% use their phones to find local information — and 88% act on that information the same day.

Publishing Trends has reported on the dazzle of “augmented reality” apps in 2009 and 2010, but now the performance results are coming in — and they’re impressive. Johnson reported on how online retailer Dabs.com partnered with Flixmedia.tv to enable customers to have a “live 3D experience” of Acer’s new 3D laptop.  70% who visited the site chose to “live the experience” and 13% purchased the laptop — compare that with the typical conversion rate of .5%

Metaio.com and Lego’s Digital Systems created one of the most popular AR apps: “Digital Box.” Hold the bar code on a Lego box up to a scanner in a brand store and a 3D animation shows the assembled toy from all angles.  Can virtual pop-up books be far behind?

Social media is also starting to deliver knockout results. Dave Linabury of Campbell-Ewald reported getting 5% clickthroughs on promoted tweets on Twitter. Rustin Banks from Blogfrog chides marketers that “banner advertising on a social site is not social advertising. You need to get directly into the conversation.” Banks touts the “interest graph” as being more valuable than the social graph. Personal bloggers use Facebook but “interest” bloggers create their own independent blogs — and develop devoted followers. Marketers are catching on. AllState launched its “Share a Hero Mom Story” contest by seeding the conversation with 40 top bloggers reaching 3 million readers. The contest received 11,000 votes in four weeks. Intuit offered $50,000 to the winner of its “Love a Local Business” grant campaign. To get the online conversation started, Intuit seeded the story with 73 top bloggers — and generated 14 million impressions across blogs, Facebook and Twitter in two months.

Many presenters highlighted mobile’s fast growth. Adam Broitman of Circ.us shared a Morgan Stanley report that predicts that mobile Internet users will surpass desktop Internet users some time in 2014. Justine Jordan from Litmus noted that while only 15% of emails get opened on smartphones, the percentage can climb to 30% for niche audiences — and both figures are likely to increase. Jordan identified some of the emerging issues with mobile email:

  • Go big — anything smaller than 13 pixels will be get resized so best to go large; resizing can really screw up tables
  • Imagine fingers, not cursors, clicking on your links: make targets “touchable” (44 x 44 pixels minimum)
  • Streamline content for easy reading and make clear, clickable calls to direct action
  • Never include a plain text “view on mobile” version — that’s an extra link to disappointment

In another session on email marketing, Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx delved into email’s “long tail.” While 72% to 80% of those who open an email act on it within 12 hours, Quist’s research finds that 25% of purchases occur more than a month later. One of his clients reports that every week 50% of sales come from old emails. So keep those links and reporting windows enabled.

Katherine Griwert of Brafton reminded marketers that fresh content is all the more important now that Google’s post-Caffeine indexing system scans the web every second for new content. Google’s new “freshness” algorithm update also prioritizes recent results for 35% of searches. Best to schedule new articles to post every day to keep both search crawlers and customers returning.  Griwert shared a case study that showed that adding a blog can improve search results. After Resolution Systems Inc. added a blog to help promote its sales training systems, traffic on its core keywords jumped from 50% to 400% — organic search visits went up 20% and time on the site increased by 39%.

While many panelists write books — Chris Brogan has Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything coming in January, and Lee Odden seems to pack everything into Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing, coming in March — only two authors had official book signings at ad:tech. Walter Isaacson delivered Wednesday’s mid-day keynote on Steve Jobs (watch video). His bestseller probably prompted the most thought-provoking remark about Apple’s iconic CEO when later that day EffectiveUI’s Anthony Franco warned marketers about business leaders who cite Jobs as an excuse not to do research: “Steve Jobs’s designs worked because he was designing for himself. Most marketers are not designing for themselves.” (see Franco’s article in September’s Fast Company).

The other author, Hearsay Social’s Clara Shih, drew on her book, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Market, Sell and Innovate, for Thursday’s luncheon keynote (see her at 48:15 on this video). Many social media marketers skimp the details when discussing metrics. Not Shih.  Her talk urged marketers to “learn and live the new social metrics,” and in her blog post on “7 Habits of Highly Successful Social Marketers” she endorses the “four measurable social media metrics” recently outlined by analytics guru Avinash Kaushik:

  1. Conversion Rate = # of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post;
  2. Amplification = # of Shares Per Post;
  3. Applause Rate = # of Likes Per Post;
  4. Economic Value = Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings.

As her last habit Shih encouraged everyone to pay attention to three important new innovations: Facebook’s new Timeline and Open Graph, and Google+’s November launch of brand pages (see video of Google+’s Christian Oestien’s ad:tech presentation on brand pages).

Publishing Trends thanks content developer and marketing consultant Rich Kelley (@rpmkel) for his reporting on ad:tech New York.

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People Roundup, November 2011

By PT Editors
November 2, 2011
Comments Off on People Roundup, November 2011

PEOPLE

Ira Silverberg has been named Literature Director at the National Endowment for the Arts. He was most recently an agent at Sterling Lord Literistic.

Angus Killick will be joining Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group as VP and Associate Publisher, reporting to Jon Yaged, President of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group (MCPG). In this newly-created position, Killick will coordinate MCPG’s programs and lead the children’s marketing team, as well as pursuing business development opportunities for the division. Killick was at Kingfisher, a division of  Pan Macmillan, where he was the Associate Publisher and Director of Marketing.

Knopf and Pantheon Publishing Director Pat Johnson has decided to take early retirement, according to Knopf President Tony Chirico. As of January, Chris Gillespie is being promoted to SVP, Associate Publisher for Knopf, Pantheon and Schocken, with Knopf Creative Marketing Director Anne-Lise Spitzer and Doubleday Director, Sales Management and Planning Beth Meister also taking on work with Pantheon and Schocken. Meister will also be adding Knopf to her portfolio, continuing to report to Suzanne Herz for Doubleday titles, and reporting to Gillespie for the other three imprints.

Meanwhile, HarperCollins announced that it has acquired the rights to the majority of titles published by Newmarket Press. As part of the agreement, President, Publisher and Founder Esther Margolis, will join the HarperCollins It Books imprint as an Executive Editor. Harry Burton, who had been Publicity Director for Newmarket may be reached at harry.burton@earthlink.net .

Elise Howard, formerly SVP, Associate Publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books, has gone to Algonquin Books, which will start publishing young adult and middle grade books by the end of 2012.

Earlier in October, HarperCollins Chief Digital Officer Charlie Redmayne left the company to become CEO of Pottermore. Redmayne first joined HarperCollins UK in 2008 as Group Digital Director, and was promoted to CDO in 2009.

Nina Hoffman has been named Senior Director, Department of Publishing, at the American Society of Hematology, and may be reached at nhoffman@hematology.org. She was previously President of National Geographic Books.

Karyn Marcus joins S&S as a Senior Editor, focusing on non-fiction and suspense fiction. She spent the past three years as an Editor at Thomas Dunne Books.

Digital hires this month include:

Michael Cairns has joined SharedBook, as Chief Revenue Officer overseeing AcademicPub. He may be reached at michael@sharedbook.com.

Jeff Dodes has been appointed to the new position of EVP, Marketing and Digital Media Strategy for St. Martin’s. Most recently, he headed the Marketing and Digital Media department for Sony Music’s Jive Label Group.

Dani Nadel has been hired as Chief Digital Marketing Officer for Scholastic book clubs and e-commerce, reporting to Judy Newman. She was most recently President at Publicis Modem. Tom Burke has been promoted to Chief E-Commerce Officer, Book Clubs and E-Commerce.

Christopher Davis has joined Open Road as EVP and COO, reporting to Jane Friedman. He was previously the SVP of Business Operations for AOL/HuffPo.

John Groton left his position of VP, Sales for National Book Network and has joined Innodata Isogen as Account Executive, eBook Publishing, developing new business with trade book publishers. He is based in Stonington, CT and may be reached at jgroton@innodata.com.

Nicole Kuritsky has been named Senior Manager Emerging and Mobile Media for Rodale. She was most recently Mobile Product Developer at Wolters Kluwer.

Elsewhere. . . Liz Hartman has joined The Book Report Network in an at-large position as Director of Advertising and Promotion.

Eileen Lawrence has joined Little, Brown Books for Young Readers as Executive Director of Marketing. Previously, she was Senior Executive Director of Advertising, Promotion and Creative services at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. Steve Scott has also joined the company as Franchise, Licensing and Media Tie-in Art Director.  He was most recently at Scholastic as Art Director, Paperbacks. Sasha Illingworth, who has joined as Senior Art Director, had been an art director at HarperCollins.

Earlier in October, Hachette Book Group eliminated 11 positions in its Sales & Marketing department, including Norm Kraus and two other reps. In a statement the company said the layoffs came about “after an extensive review of our overall sales and marketing structure to identify effective ways to meet the changing needs of our account base…”

Kerrie Loyd has joined Soho Press as Director of Marketing and Sales. She was most recently Imprint Marketing Manager at S&S’s Pocket Books and Gallery Books imprints.

Diane Levinson has joined Princeton Architectural Press and Chronicle Books as a Publicist.  She will handle art & design titles from both McEvoy Group publishers.  She was most recently at Hal Leonard Performing Arts Publishing Group.

Caroline Marks has been named CEO of Bookish, in which Hachette, S&S and Penguin are investors, and which was scheduled to launch late summer–replacing Paulo Lemgruber, who has left the company. Marks was formerly General Manager of Digital Parents and Lifestyle Platforms at Meredith.

Barbara Jones has joined Henry Holt as Editor. Most recently, she had been Editorial Director of Hyperion and Voice.

Ethan Nosowsky has been named Editorial Director of McSweeney’s. He spent the past four years as Editor-at-Large for Graywolf.

Robert Rooney has been named Executive Director of NAIPR, succeeding Sean Concannon, who has joined Sonnet Media. Rooney was formerly at Jessica Kingsley.

Publishers Lunch reported that Movable Type Literary Group and Artists and Artisans have formed two operating units: Movable Type Management, with Jason Allen Ashlock as President, and a performance division, Movable Type Media with Artists and Artisans’ Adam Chromy as President. Jamie Brenner, Brianne Mulligan and Michele Matrisciani (who was most recently Editorial Director of Health Communications) will serve as Senior Literary Managers.

Matt Weiland, Senior Editor at Ecco/HarperCollins, will move to W. W. Norton as Senior Editor in the Trade department.

Adam Wilson joined Gallery Books as Editor, reporting to Jen Bergstrom. He has been at Harlequin, working on its Teen, Mira, and Luna lines.

RoyaltyShare has hired Marcus Holloway as President and COO, and the company announced that it has received a new round of investments. Additionally, it is launching a new Enterprise Services division focused on the needs of large entertainment and media companies, headed by President Steve Grady.

Jeremy Tescher has been appointed National Sales Manager at The Overlook Press. He was previously National Accounts Manager, Paperbacks, at Penguin.

Alessandra Lusardi has joined Rizzoli as Senior Editor for its Ex Libris imprint, with a Fall 2012 launch date. She was an Editor at Viking for the past nine years. In addition, Rizzoli Senior Editor Kathleen Jayes will also acquire for Ex Libris.

 

PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES

Nancy Miller has been promoted from Executive Editor at Bloomsbury to Editor-in-Chief at Bloomsbury USA. She will now be reporting to Publishing Director George Gibson, and has worked for, among other houses, HarperCollins and Random House.

At Basic Books, Lara Heimert has been promoted to Editorial and Publishing Director. In her new role she will play a larger role in the presentation and publication of the imprint’s books while freeing Basic Book Group publisher John Sherer to concentrate on the new Perseus digital marketing initiatives and to focus on the efforts at Westview Press and Nation Books.

Rica Allannic has been promoted to Executive Editor, Clarkson Potter, and Kate Tyler has been promoted to Publicity Director, Crown Illustrated, which comprises the Clarkson Potter, Potter Craft, Potter Style, Watson-Guptill, and Amphoto Books imprints. Kim Small has also been named Publicity Director for Potter Style, in addition to directing publicity for Potter Craft, Watson-Guptill, and Amphoto Books.

In Scholastic’s Trade division, Editorial Director David Levithan has been promoted to Publisher and Editorial Director. Also, Charisse Meloto moves up to Executive Director of Publicity for print and digital publishing; Bess Braswell is now Director of Marketing; Victoria Tisch is Director of Marketing Operations; Maria Dominguez is Executive Editor and Manager, Scholastic en español; and Paul Banks moves up to Executive Art Director, Licensed Publishing and School Market Originals.

At Scribner, Katie Monaghan has been promoted to Deputy Director of Publicity.

Elda Rotor is being promoted to Associate Publisher of Penguin Classics, while continuing to serve as Editorial Director.

At Little, Brown Children’s, both Connie Hsu and Kate Sullivan have been promoted to the position of Editor.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS

Carolyn Reidy, CEO of S&S, will be honored at the 25th anniversary Gala for Goddard Riverside on November 7, 2011, at 583 Park Avenue in New York. For details, go to www.goddard.org/BookFairGala.html.

****

The Center for Fiction honors Nan Graham at its gala on December 6 at the University Club. Jeannette Walls is the MC and Don DeLillo will present the award.  Stephen King and Susan Moldow are honorary chairs.  For details go to www.centerforfiction.org.

****

Macaulay Honors College at CUNY has launched a lecture series featuring writers from the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. The upcoming author in the series will be Paul Hendrickson, who will discuss his forthcoming book on November 2nd at 7:00 pm. The series is free and open to the public. Go to http://macaulay.cuny.edu.

****

Words Without Borders has announced that its annual benefit, this year entitled “A Celebration of Caribbean Literature,” will take place on November 14 at the Bohemian National Hall. Madison Smartt Bell, Tiphanie Yanique, and other authors will read from their works. For details go to: http://wordswithoutborders.org.

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Rudolf? Blitzen? Who will go down in history in the holiday e-reader market?

By PT Editors
November 2, 2011
Comments Off on Rudolf? Blitzen? Who will go down in history in the holiday e-reader market?

Lest you think that last month’s announcement of Amazon’s new heavy-hitting team of Kindles means it has a monopoly on the market, Kobo has come out swinging with the news of its Vox tablet. Playing up the more social aspects of the ereader, Vox offers social media features that make sharing while reading all the more intuitive, touting itself as being inspired by Vox Populi, the voice of the people. This theme may also hold true as the Vox offers expandable memory and a closer-to-standard “open Android” that can be easily customized. The Vox also enters the ereader arena amidst talk about Amazon’s dropping profits as it sells the Kindle Fire at a loss, in addition to rumors that many sold Kindles are not in use.

Still, with many Kindles already preordered, Amazon has a clear competitive edge as Black Friday swiftly approaches. And while the Kindle and Vox’s lower prices are expected to loosen Apple’s grip on the holiday shopping season, industry expert Tony Bradley of PCWorld asserts that the market MVP isn’t going anywhere fast. Add to all of this talk of a new Nook on the way, and it’s a sprint to the 4th Quarter finish line this holiday season.

So what device will be the ultimate ‘It’ gift? Read on and decide:

“Let’s keep it real. Android tablet makers may have ramped up production this past quarter, and it may be true that Android tablets account for 27 percent of the tablets manufactured during the past quarter, but what counts is how many have actually been purchased and are being used in the real world.

When it comes to that stat it’s no contest–Apple owns the market for now. We’ll see if the Amazon Kindle Fire can put a dent in that at all.”

—Tony Bradley, PCWorld.com (10/22/11)

 

“You already know that I thoroughly enjoy reading ebooks with the Kobo eReader Touch and now we see the Kobo is challenging Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire with the Kobo Vox eReader available now for pre-order for $199.99 with availability staring 28 October. Like the Amazon Kindle, the Vox eReader is both an ebook reader and a tablet with a custom user interface built on Android. Social networking integration has been a focus with the Kobo ereaders and the Kobo Vox is inspired by Vox Populi, the voice of the people, with extensive social interaction. You will find Kobo integrates Facebook Ticker and Timeline to enable reading discovery and Pulse to find book recommendations. While I love the Kobo eReader Touch device, it is going to be a major challenge for Kobo to compete with the Amazon ecosystem and brand. Then again, they have shown before that they can make lovely hardware and compete in the dedicated ebook reader market.”

—Matthew Miller, ZDNet.com (10/19/11)

 

“The big difference, though, is that the Vox comes with a much-closer-to-standard build of Android (based on Android 2.3, Gingerbread). It has access to ‘an app store’ with over 15,000 apps and the marketing copy trumpets ‘The Freedom of Open Android’ and that the Vox offers ‘unencumbered access to Android 2.3 so you are free to customize your experience to suit you best!’

The Vox also comes with Kobo’s Pulse social reading experience that I ranted against a while back. The Kobo Vox is available for pre-order now and is set to ship on October 28th, so it’ll be in consumers’ hands a few weeks before the Kindle Fire.”

—Peter Smith, IT World (10/20/11)

 

“Peter Rojas, who has founded some of the largest technology based websites on the Internet, has expressed his expectations that the Amazon Kindle Fire will be the largest selling product during the holiday season. He said that the low cost will make the tablet an option for even those users who already own an Apple iPad, which is much more expensive, to buy it as a second tablet for their homes.

He drew a parallel with people buying more than one computers [sic] with the advent of netbooks which are available at much lower prices. The sales of the tablet are expected to reduce the profitability of Amazon initially as the company is selling the tablet at close to its manufacturing price or at a small loss.”

—MobileBloom.com (10/23/11)

 

“Kobo’s Vox keeps it in step with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with all three companies now offering touch-screen eInk eReaders and 7-inch touch-screen Android tablets.

And that’s a point Kobo has made before — it will match its rivals and won’t be left behind as it competes to be the third-place eReader with sights set on growing in stature and sales.

‘We’re gunning for Amazon,’ Kobo Chief Executive Michael Serbinis said in a May interview with the Times’ Technology blog.”

—Los Angeles Times (10/19/11)

 

“It seems that the familiar Amazon marketing strategy of releasing a hardware device at around a breakeven point financially, and giving shoppers access to their wide range of digital content which is high-margin and low price is working in the tablet marketplace as well as it has in the eReader market. A recent tech tear-down showed that the Kindle Fire Tablet costs approximately $206 to manufacture per unit. Selling at a retail price of $199, which is $200 to $400 less than the competition’s 7 inch models, means Amazon is losing $7 per unit.”

—MobileBloom.com (10/ 17/11)

 

“There’s finally a legitimate reason to buy the new-ish Sony PRS-T1 Reader: You can hack it and install the Kindle Android app. I kid. However, there is a new hack for Sony’s least expensive ereader that allows for root access, effectively opening up the device to all sorts of Android uses. This of course includes the Kindle app.

Apparently it’s a relatively easy mod as The Digital Reader notes it’s relatively foolproof. Just download the installer to the reader and give it time to do its thing. After that, the reader will reboot and you’ll be able to play Fruit Ninja on an inexpensive eink screen.”

—Tech Crunch (10/24/11)

 

“‘Great looking books.’ That’s what Amazon is promising to deliver with Kindle Format 8 (KF8) — a new, HTML5-based file format for Kindle books. According to the company, KF8 will allow publishers to produce picture books, comics and graphic novels with greater ease, thanks to the platform’s rich formatting capabilities and design elements. In fact, this format brings more than 150 new formatting tools to the table, including fixed layouts, nested tables, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics, among others. It should be noted, however, that audio and video are not included on the list of supported HTML tags and CSS elements.”

—Amar Toor, Engadget.com (10/24/11)

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Pivotcon Profiles the Power of the Social Consumer

By PT Editors
November 1, 2011
Comments (1)

(Version 3.0 of The Conversation Prism infographic first created
by Brian Solis and JESS3 in 2008 to map the social media universe
by “features and capabilities.”)


When Pivotcon kicked off in October, 2010, Douglas Rushkoff christened it the“TED of Marketing.” Programmed and hosted this year by new media guru Brian Solis, Pivotcon brought together  635 brand managers for an intense, intimate two-day focus on how advertising interacts with the “Social Consumer.”  Publishers could learn a lot from these marketers.

Who is the Social Consumer? Several speakers focused on “millennials,” also known as Generation Y, those who came of age around the turn of the century (i.e., born after 1977-78). Britta Schell of MTV offered four key insights into them. Millennials, she noted, are:

  1. Curated for me: every day they act as their own digital publicists, monitoring, curating, and sharing online content
  2. Publicly intimate: 93% say they post things only their friends will understand
  3. Like-a-holics: 79% expect feedback online; 58% feel more confident when others respond
  4. Observers of four rules of “digiquette”: 1) Learn the rules 2) Pace yourself 3) Avoid controversy 4) Guard your future

Jack Krawczyk from StumbleUpon echoed Schell’s findings. When Facebook introduced the “like” button in April, 2010, Krawczyk claimed, “a new era began. Suddenly a new link distribution system was born.” Within an hour of launch one billion “likes” were registered. “We now have a two- billion-clicks-a-month industry.” Why do people click “like”? “People share things because they want people to like things they’re sharing,” Krawczyk observed, “and they want people to think more of them because of what they share.”  As Facebook’s Matt Trainer noted: after American Eagle added “like” buttons to its site, sales increased 57%. Open Table saw 200% growth after adding “like” buttons. (You can read about other Facebook marketing successes at http://facebook-studio.com/)

Radha Subramanyam of Nielsen shared some results from the recent State of the Media: Social Media Q3 2011 report issued by Nielsen and NM Incite: 40% of social media users access SM content from their mobile phones; social networking is the third most popular app on smartphones, after game-playing and checking the weather (and ahead of navigating, listening to music, and reading news).  Tumblr is the new emerging player in social media, tripling its growth in the past year, especially among ages 18-34.

(Nielsen graphics:
Source: State of the Media: The Social Media Report Q3 2011
by Nielsen and nmincite)

Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy contended that Facebook’s open API is “the single most important development in the history of the Internet . . . Facebook is collecting the most massive database of information in one social graph. Now all advertisers can share an app rather than developing their own.  The Facebook social graph is the database to rule them all.” When this social graph is combined with mobile applications, we can expect transactions to be much smoother. “Imagine that instead of wishing someone happy birthday on her Facebook page, you can say ‘Happy Birthday, your morning coffee is free on me today.’ Isn’t that more meaningful?”  Users have more power than they know. “Location and friend data are empowering. That’s something a user can do that Amazon and WalMart can’t.” Saylor urged publishers to “create a mobile app that delights. The money will follow.”

“A great app grants a wish,” according to Oren Michels of Mashery. It enables you to check into your airline flight without standing in line or helps you find an available nearby hotel room at your price. But one app developed for all platforms “will suck equally everywhere,” warned Michels. “Android has a back button, the iPhone’s IOS does not. Apps need to be customized for each device.”

The most compelling presentations detailed changes in strategy due to a better understanding of the Social Consumer. Kristine Welker of Hearst Digital planned three goals for her websites: grow traffic, get communities talking about the brands, and have users consume content. But when she turned over control of the Real Beauty website to Michael Jaindl and Buddy Media a number of discoveries ensued: Jaindl found that reducing the number of publisher’s posts actually allowed community activity to increase: users posted more when they were consuming less (enabling the publisher to get more engagement with less effort). The optimal post length?  just 80 characters. Best time to post? Thursday and Friday.

Paul Dunay of Networked Insights told of the strategy change he made with a major video game manufacturer in marketing the new release of their bestselling auto racing video game. They spent $30 million advertising the previous version, but sales dropped as soon as the ads stopped, and then picked up again. For the new release Dunay first focused on “earned” (word of mouth, social media) and “owned” (company website, email) media—to build credibility and loyalty. The gaming company then juiced the marketing with paid ads after the product got traction. The result? They got greater “awareness and trajectory” but were able to spend 40% less than they had on the previous version!

Can web-based advertising compete with TV? Network Insights proved it could. When an exclusive $42 million deal with a competitor locked one of NI’s clients out of advertising on the NCAA basketball tournament, NI used search data analysis and social media to devise a sequenced media campaign around “upsets”—the most enjoyed and talked about aspect of the NCAAs. When Morehead State beat Louisville, for example, NI’s client developed “upset” content and, through uploads and paid placements, seeded it on YouTube and on sports sites where fans found and shared it. The result: for $2.25 million, this campaign generated more than a billion impressions, more than TV ads would have—and at a fraction of the cost.

Several case studies revealed how companies now leverage the influence of bloggers. For the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes last summer, Pete Caban of Mekanism described how they corralled “The Rise 50” – the 50 most influential movie bloggers–combined they reached 350 million viewers, Twentieth Century Fox flew them to Hollywood for a two-day “summit,” a visit to the set, advance tickets, and an ape IQ test. Mekanism also created six videos about apes, “some real, some fake.” The campaign took off when the fourth video, of an ape with an AK-47, went viral. It’s now been viewed more than 16 million times. The Rise exceeded expectations by 59%.

Similarly, Paul Dunay described how as part of the release of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Universal held a special invite-only midnight screening for just seven bloggers  who together had 350 million readers. Services are now springing up to help find these “influentials” across industries. Shani Higgins of Technorati (which tracks and ranks more than 15,000 book blogs) noted that Technorati frequently selects bloggers by rankings for special promotions—last summer they gave Sony HD cameras to the most influential tech bloggers at SXSW—Sony then used their stories of using the cameras in its ads. Zuberance is an award-winning new startup that specializes in identifying influentials and turning fans and followers into “brand advocates.”

Jeff Jarvis, outspoken blogger on BuzzMachine and author of the new book Public Parts made the case that “companies with open relationships with their customers will win” and offered several examples:

The decision by Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette to share sales data with authors can be seen as part of this trend. What being open as an author means to the future of books – making them “digital, clickable, correctable, linkable” is a question Jarvis is currently addressing on an ongoing basis on his blog.

Publishing Trends thanks content developer and marketing consultant Rich Kelley (@rpmkel) for his reporting on Pivotcon.

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Best of the Best: What Book Awards Are Doing to Stand Out from the Crowd

By PT Editors
November 1, 2011
Comments Off on Best of the Best: What Book Awards Are Doing to Stand Out from the Crowd

As the minutes before the National Book Awards ceremony tick down, PT was curious about the changing state of US book prizes generally. According to a 2009 white paper by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, the prize industry is growing faster than any other philanthropic sector. The business of prizes has become so large as to warrant the first-ever Global Prize Summit, held in London earlier this year, and to show up in US federal legislation in the America COMPETES Act of December 2010, proving that prizes are becoming big business. This abundance, though creates a problem all too familiar to publishers: how to “to break through the noise” of an overflowing prize market. In an age of overwhelmed audiences, hopes that book prizes will offer distinction and cultural visibility run higher than ever.

Listed below are nine US literary awards, all of which receive less pomp and circumstance than the National Book Awards or the Pulitzer. But one thing these smaller prizes share in common with their larger, grander cousins, is the requirement that publishers or authors themselves submit their books for recognition. For most of these prizes, entry means paying a fee that, especially for smaller publishers, needs to be justified. The question of whether or not a book will stand out of the crowd once it’s won an award remains the subject of vigorous public debate, but we had an even more basic question: what chance does a book have of standing out enough to win a prize in the first place? How large are the entry pools? What categories are most crowded?

The average number of the titles entered is listed for each of the award programs below. For a more detailed idea of entry statistics in one of the country’s most prominent awards program, we had a conversation with the National Book Foundation about their numbers for this year. Katie McDonough, Marketing Media Manager for the National Book Awards, said that entries tend to hover around 1,200, and this year was no exception. Those entries came from some 250 publishers, with the number of titles from each publisher varying widely (there is no limit to how many titles one publisher may enter). Spread across the Awards’ four categories, non-fiction always receives the most entries (441 this year) and Poetry the fewest (at 189 this year). Fiction titles number 315 for 2011. McDonough spoke to the changes in the NBA category system that have happened over the years. Back when fiction was broken down into genre categories, it not only made better odds for entrants, but made the judges’ task less arduous. While the NBA has found the broad categories now in use to be far preferable, things are harder for both judges and entrants.

Even though the sum of an award is composed of more than enrollment numbers alone, the numbers we found do bear consideration. The NBA clearly has fewer entrants every year than the ForeWord or IPPY awards (listed below), and yet is far more in the public eye than either of these. That the NBA entry fee of $125 is not outrageously more expensive than any of the lesser-known awards begs the question of why publishers are as selective as they are in submitting to the NBAs. Although only three programs on our chart share the NBA’s from-publishers-only submissions policy, 1200 still seems a very low number for the tally of American publishers who covet this prize. And even though the NBAs do all their official marketing by the low-profile option of postal mail, their numbers obviously aren’t low because renown is lacking. The NBA’s selective-yet-with-fairly-high-odds approach is only one in the common struggle to find balance between drawing as wide a range of entrants as possible and maintaining an air of exclusive selectivity. As shown by the range of numbers below, different awards programs focus on different ends of this popular-exclusive scale in their search for distinction in the increasingly noisy awards marketplace.

 

 

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