Download - Making Book Discovery Ubiquitous Online
June 22, 2007
Making Book Discovery Ubiquitous Online
BISG/NISO ConferenceWashington, D.C.
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Three themes
Digital standards for discovery and distribution are required to enable books to compete with other media for consumer time and spending.
It is a publisher’s strategic and tactical responsibility to create standardized repositories that insure lawful distribution of authors’ work.
The first application of these standards may be to expand discovery of--and marketing for--printed content instead of direct digital commerce.
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First, some “historical” context . . .
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American Consumer(Percent that read a book)
59.8% 62.1% 59.7%54.9% 52.8%
47.2%
40.9%42.8%47.7% 46.6%
51.6%48.9%
45.3%
35.7%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75 +Age
Rea
din
g 1982
1992
2002
Reading books is in steep decline among the young
2002 Study by the National Endowment for the Arts
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But . . . 65M Americans ARE frequent readers
Read 1-5
53M
23M
31M
10M
Read 6-11
Read 12-49
Read 50+
0 50 100 150 200
Reading Habits of 210M US Adults
Number of Books
Read per year
1 - 5
6-11
12-49
50+
93M
2002 Study by the National Endowment for the Arts
We are most
interested in the
65M who read more
than 6 books a
year
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– Amazon has been a bigger online “brand” than most search engines– Promotion efforts drive consumers first to retail to purchase
1997 + New retailers increase “book discovery”
Publisher content
Consumers
Print & broadcast
media
+
Publishers have historically remained distant from consumers!
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– Search becomes more and more “branded”—Google grows
– Consumers start book discovery at search, not necessarily at retail
– SEO gains in importance
– Amazon visits grow more dependent on search / email marketing, not direct traffic
2003 + Search changes the process of discovery
Publisher content
Amazon
Consumer
Print & broadcast
media
+
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The growth of search has been dramatic . . .
Major Online Partners
Ranking Users Page Views
#1 130M 36B
#3 115M 18B
#4 113M 13B
#6 62M 40B
#8 46M 2B
Source: Comscore/Business Week, January 2007
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Google’s reach is 22 points higher than Amazon’s
Google’s daily reach has quadrupled from 8% to 25% over this period.
Amazon’s reach—which once grew to 5%—shrunk again to below 2%.
Amazon
Source: Alexa.com
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2005 + A time of rapid change in media
• “Search wars” led to race to digitize books
• Community sites get hot
• Buzz about “user generated content” (blogs, podcasts)
• Newspapers are losing readers
• “Authoritative” content falls out of fashion?
• “Web 2.0” is everywhere
• Internet investment is back
• Meanwhile, book consumption is flat!
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How do search engines work with “print” sisters?
Newspapers and magazines are treated as premium branded sites
– Search engines ask permission to crawl archives – Consumer experience is owned by the newspaper or
magazine publisher, not the search engine– Search engine’s goal is about discovery, not retaining
traffic / hosting
Newspapers and magazines have years of experience
– Digitizing their content– Building a web product complementary to print– Growing an online audience
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2005 - A “tipping point” for book digitization
2001
HarperCollins begins archiving books digitally
2002
Amazon launches “Look Inside This Book”
2004
Google launches Google Print & Library (books treated differently than newspapers and magazines!)
2005
MSN announces plans to digitize books
Yahoo announces plans to digitize books
Open Content Alliance to digitize books
Authors and Publishers file suit against Google Library
Amazon Announces Upgrade and Pages Programs
RH Announces Pay Per Page Business Model
Q: Do all these multiple digital copies make sense? A: No. But . . . what do we do?
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Where we landed . . .
1. Digital Infrastructure
3. BuildTraffic
2. NewMarketingPrograms
4. NewPublishingProducts
HarperCollins’ digital efforts are grouped in four areas:
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We focused first on
creating a digital warehouse
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What is a digital warehouse?
Our digital warehouse will serve pages to all current and future online partners such as Google, MSN, Amazon.
Defines and uses standardized web services for distribution of content and metadata.
Goals• Widest possible inclusion into search engines• A single digital version is ensured• Higher quality• Better version control• Do not replicate our 6 billion page archive in multiple locations• Permit caching based on usage
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It replicates what we already provide for print!
Physical Warehouse
Functions
1. Receive books
2. Store books
3. Distribute books to retailers and wholesalers
4. Distribute promotional materials to media and retail
5. Collections
6. Control territorial rights by partner and title
7. Security of books
Infrastructure
Big shed with racks
Sophisticated logistics
Digital Warehouse
Functions
1. Receive digital books
2. Store digital books
3. Distribute digital books to retailers and wholesalers
4. Distribute sample pages to partners and book indexes to search engines
5. Collections
6. Control digital rights by partner and title
7. Security of digital books
Infrastructure
Computer Servers
Telecommunications bandwidth
Sophisticated Software
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OTHER 3rd PARTY SCAN HCP DIGITAL WAREHOUSE
It insures our high standards for content quality
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Digital warehouse status today
• 12,000 titles currently scanned and ingested• All new titles automatically digitized• Total global title count available online is now over 6,000• Nearly 700 titles in viral distribution through the “widget”
0
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7000
Trade Kids Zondervan UK Total Readyto Vend
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6000
7000
Trade Kids Zondervan UK Total Readyto Vend
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We next used our digital warehouse
to market printed books
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Browse Inside enables book sampling on our site
Quality of book’s content is publisher controlled
Amount of content shown is set by publisher
Titles are automatically available on sale date or earlier
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The BI widget is the viral version for bloggers, publicists and authors
Widgets are available on all HarperCollins books in our digital warehouse
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Authors took to the widget right away
JOSH KILMER PURCELL ON MYSPACE
Wanna free, personalized, signed bookplate for your copy of "I Am Not Myself These Days?
How? Easy.
Just put an "I Am Not Myself These Days" widget on your MySpace page or website. It lets other people browse inside the book to see what you've been raving about for months.
JOSH KILMER PURCELL ON MYSPACE
Wanna free, personalized, signed bookplate for your copy of "I Am Not Myself These Days?
How? Easy.
Just put an "I Am Not Myself These Days" widget on your MySpace page or website. It lets other people browse inside the book to see what you've been raving about for months.
JOHN GROGAN’S AUTHOR SITE
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Widget on MySpace
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Widget placed on destination sites enables fast,scalable cross promotion with major sites!
Fox.com gets over 1M unique visitors / month
Fox placement drove nearly 4K page views by over 700 people
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Oprah.com showed best the value of viral placement
Oprah.com gets 3.4M unique visitors / month.
Oprah placement drove nearly 10K page views by 1000 people
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Browse Inside: Unique Users Per Day since Feb 1
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Total Linear (Total )
Data shows how we’ve increased our reach
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Book sampling now available for all retailers
Data shows sampling generates a 6-10% increase in book sales
All online book retailers can now enhance the consumer book shopping experience easily
Booksense.com bookstores now online
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Sampling now available in all newsletters
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Browse Inside is compatible with libraries too . . .
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A final word on digital standards . . .
• We’ve invested 18 months in developing our DW and its standards.
• Publishers should compete on content, not technology.
• Industry organizations have roles to play in speeding the ratification or validation of standards.
• Standards and policy need to be customer-centric and open while respectful of copyright ownership.
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June 4, 2007
Carolyn PittisSVP, Global Marketing Strategy & Operations212-207-7754carolyn.pittis@harpercollins.comwww.harpercollins.com