Welcome to Disruption

Stephen BatemanParis March 2011

Perspectives for Authors in the Post-Digital-Age

Talk outline1. Disruption2. Old and New business models3. Examples and decisions about what content to put

out, for whom, at what time, in what form4. Examples of online community building and

monetisation 5. Consumer trends and the competitive landscape 6. How to develop new revenue generating opportunities 7. Want to elicit knowledge and experience from

participants

Google Becomes Your Sous Chef with Recipe Search

Reactions?

Why?

Good? Bad?

Why?• People search for food related content, a lot

• People search food but really want recipes

• Specific “vegan curry, potatoes, peas and coconut”

• Search by ingredients they have “oatmeal, peanut butter, applesauce, vanilla, yoghurt”

• Help with special diet low-carb, gluten-free or vegetarian

• Interested in calories and time to cook: all located in left-hand column

• Great for consumers but what’s in it for Google and where does the content come from?

Sources• Food Network

• Food.com

• AllRecipes.com

• iFood

• Consumer and retail

• Blogs

• Many other places

Friend or Foe?

• Friend or Foe?

• What about Amazon, Kindle, Apple, iPad, Twitter, Facebook

• Depends

borderless world

disintermediation

end of scarcity

It’s the new physics of business.

(It)upsets all conditions of location, all cost calculations, all production functions within its radius of influence; and hardly any “ways of doing things” which have been optimal before remain so afterward.

Not a quote from the book, but it sums up the problem

Is this so totally new?

Joseph Schumpeter

hardly any “ways of doing things” which have been optimal before remain so afterward

1936

From Industrial Revolution to

Digital Revolution

The Digital Revolution

• Amanda Hocking - best-selling "indie" writer on the Kindle store, no publisher

• She sells around 100,000 copies/month

• $3 and $0.99

• No intermediaries, nothing to print, no shelf space, inventory

• Low prices, volume, impulse, self-purchase; she gets to keep 70% of revenues

• Where did she come from?

• 10 of the top 25 best-selling indie Kindle writers have never been affiliated to a publisher. Previously, she published stories on her blog.

• 100,000 copies a month at average $2 retail @ 70% = $millions

• Welcome to the digital age: the age that scares traditional publishers but which makes the world better for writers and readers alike.

• Congratulations to Amazon for making it possible.

• Losers are the intermediaries

• Intermediaries find themselves fighting rivals that have completely different operating models

• Amazon is not just a book store but a very different consumer experience. Merchandising, recommendations, collaborative filtering and word or mouth.

hardly any “ways of doing things” which have been optimal before remain so afterward

Digital Marketing Success

My French Table

• Dorie Greenspan beautiful book 544 pages, best enjoyed in print

• #13 spot on the New York Times's hardcover list +60,000 since launch (Oct 2010)

• No TV show or magazine, not quite a household name

• 36,000 Twitter fans

• Blog (2008): In the Kitchen and On the Road with Dorie: 70,000 visitors/ month

• Martoin: “All of the sales [of Around My French Table] were pretty much created online.”

Adapted: No Platform? No Problem Nov 22, 2010 By Lynn Andriani Pub Weekly

My French Table

• Fans buy the books. Online fans blog and tweet about their adventures cooking Dorie’s recipes, creating a powerful community. Dorie: "Every place I've gone on book tour, I've met people who've been part of this group."

• But trade accounts lukewarm about My French Table. "French food is scary, complicated, not spicy, not ingredient-driven." Niche

• Dorie says putting recipes online "entices people to look for more."

Adapted: No Platform? No Problem Nov 22, 2010 By Lynn Andriani Pub Weekly

Niche and mega-niche

Business built on being able to leverage the Internet to transform a niche into a mega-niche.

Publisher sold tens of thousands of copies of a premium-priced book and sold only to people who cared.

Digital Marketing“I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way...I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread … I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically”(2010).

What changes the world?

Adapted: Wired Kim Zetter 2009

The idea of finding and connecting like-minded people, leading them and creating value.

Are your target audience online?If so, where?

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2010

Secrets

• Can you commit to on going conversations?

• Use tools to discover new people to interact with

• Online community building is a long term engagement: few people will get to understand you instantly!

Use it

• Highlight expertise / experience

• Become leader within your sector / area

• Build a following, tribe, community

• Seed out news / PR pieces of interest

• Have people do your marketing for you

Conclusion and Implications• Digital allows us to build relations with like-minded people

• Take independence, innovate the product, the packaging, and the user experience

• In time, understanding what your followers will pay for: users are reluctant to pay for digital content but they will spend money on products and services around content, and this is where to focus.

• Great content builds an audience, but monetising that audience not the content is the key.

Adapted from Forrester

Stephen Bateman@concentricdots

For a free copy of this presentation, send me an

email or visit my blog www.concentricdots.com