re-monetizing the book (june 2011)
TRANSCRIPT
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14 • PRINTACTION • JUNE 2011
In late May 2011, at BookExpo America(BEA) in New York City, Canada andQuebec stepped proudly into the techno-
logical spotlight as Montreal-basedTranscontinental Printing launched a neweBook Solution created in partnership withDe Marque, a developer of internationalplatforms for digital content, based in Que-bec City. The annual BEA trade show billsitself as North America’s largest gatheringof book-trade professionals. It is organizedin conjunction with the Association ofAmerican Publishers and the AmericanBooksellers Association (among others)and coincides with New York Book Week, a7-day festival of special events to draw thepublic’s attention to top authors and books.
Transcontinental currently ranks itself asNorth America’s fourth-largest printer, owns35 North American printing facilities withmultiple capabilities, and produces over 50-million books per year for the U.S andCanadian markets. The company’s innova-tive eBook solution numbers among manyradical paradigm shifts in the publishing,production, ordering, selling, and distribu-tion of books on display this year at BEA.
New book business modelsAnother May event, the Toronto DigitalPrinting Forum, conducted by InterquestLtd. at Ryerson University’s School ofGraphic Communications Management,also focused on changing business modelsin the book trade. In fact, it devoted an en-tire afternoon to statistics presented by In-terquest and case studies presented by twopanels of experts, one consisting of bookprinters and distributors, and the other ofpublishers. The trends that emerged inthese sessions are summarized below. Mostwere driven by economic and environ-mental pressures for cost and waste reduc-tion and demand for improved efficienciesto streamline and integrate the operationsof ordering, production, distribution,billing, and sales reporting.
Forum speakers generally agreed thatwhile market demand continues for booksprinted by traditional web and sheetfed off-set presses, toner-based and inkjet printedbooks are on the rise, since they allow forthe lightning turnaround times that havebecome mandatory, along with printing ondemand, economical shorter runs, and theassociated benefits of waste reduction, bet-ter inventory management, and reducedwarehousing costs. Other contributing fac-tors to the growing popularity of toner andinkjet book printing include the rise of self-publishing and customization (for exam-ple, anthologies of required readings forcollege and university courses); new, envi-ronmentally progressive stocks; and recentimprovements in electrophotographic andinkjet technologies (including new finish-ing devices and expanded automation andworkflow integration capacities.)
Additionally, economic pressures, risingfuel prices, more complex technological de-mands, and more business generation viathe Internet have promoted more acquisi-tions, and partnerships among both book-sellers and equipment vendors. Thesepartnerships include a rise in global print-
ing and shipping networks to print and dis-tribute books closer to the point of sale.
Regarding electronic versus printed for-mats, a decline in the prices of e-readersand corresponding growth in the sale of e-books now factor more and more promi-nently in publishers’ and booksellers’revenue strategies. Case in point: In Janu-ary 2011, Amazon reported selling 115 e-books for every 100 paperbacks sold, ande-books accounted for about 10 percent ofall the company’s trade-book sales. Al-though according to the Association ofAmerican Publishers, only seven percent ofadults read e-books today, net sales of e-books approached $70 million in January2011, a 115.8 percent increase above the $32million in sales recorded in January 2010.
Although the recession and pricing pres-sures have resulted in fewer books beingprinted and purchased, along with the clo-sure of several major book retailers, con-sumer demand for printed books stillclearly persists. For instance, in a January-2011 survey by the Book Industry StudyGroup, 75 percent of students said they stillprefer printed textbooks.
Accordingly, publishers and vendors mustremain flexible in response to consumer de-mand for both e-books and p-books, whileuncovering new revenue streams in theevolving marketplace. So far their newstrategies include participation in emergingdigital archives of content that can be cata-logued, managed, and distributed to multi-ple sales channels in either electronic orprinted formats. They are also experiment-ing with the potential for greater interactiv-ity between printed books and cataloguesand electronic media (for example, a printedchildren’s natural science e-book with linksto reference pages in a printed volume aswell as an interactive Website).
Transcon’s eBook SolutionBefore BEA, I spoke with Bruce Jensen,Transcontinental’s Vice President of Salesfor the Magazine, Book and CatalogueGroup, and Simon de Jocas, Vice Presidentof Business Development at De Marque, tolearn more about the specific eBook Solu-tion jointly developed by their companies.
“Transcontinental invested considerabletime to understand the current marketchanges and opportunities, and then fig-ured out if we could devise a solution andwhat it would be, and to source the bestprovider,” recounts Jensen.
“We began by asking what is the emerg-ing business model for books between dig-ital and print. Our answer was a hybrid ofboth. So all business decisions have beenbased on customer preferences for access-ing content as both printed books and dig-ital options. The biggest challenge facingpublishers today is to plan what to do withcontent, how to distribute it over multiplechannels, how to monetize it, and makemoney from offering new services and ca-pabilities.
“In today’s marketplace, change occursnot in weeks or days but hours, so nimble-ness to adjust to market changes rapidlywas also paramount,” adds Jensen.
Re-monetizing the BookVICTORIA GAITSKELL
Continued on page 30
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“Another guiding principle for De Mar-que was to find a solution in which all theplayers in the book chain still have their rai-son d’etre,” continues de Jocas. “The goalwas not to replace but to enable each mem-ber of the book industry – publishers, re-tailers, and end users – to participate in thesolution. The end user or book buyer canstill buy books at stores or on the Internet.Even the printing industry – Transconti-nental being one player – has found itsplace in the solution as well.”
“Publishers are the main beneficiariesand participants in the new system,” Jensenexplains. “In addition to large publishers, itsupports smaller ones, who can’t necessar-ily afford their own robust technology de-partments, and helps them find aninexpensive way to get into new markets.Additionally, printers who plug into the sys-tem gain the ability to be full-serviceproviders by developing and monetizingnew business solutions for their customersusing our relatively simple system.”
Three international platformsThe eBook Solution works by enabling par-ticipants to access its three internationaldigital platforms that store and deliverbooks to numerous retail channels. DeMarque launched the first platform, calledANEL, in early 2009, comprising publish-ers in Quebec and French-speakingCanada. The same year, they added a sec-ond platform composed of three majorpublishing groups in France, called EdenLivres. In 2010, the company added a thirdplatform, called Edigita, including threemajor publishers in Italy.
Participating publishers each deposittheir content in one of the warehouseswhere it is accessible to all selected distrib-utors. Publishers can thus connect to a largenumber of retailers quickly via already pre-determined rules and choose which retail-ers they want to sell to.
Jensen confirms that among the strengthsof the system’s international linkages to threeplatforms with titles in English, French, andItalian is that a publisher who subscribes toany one of the warehouses can access booksand publishers in all three. Thus the systemenables publishers to penetrate language andgeographic markets that they previouslythought were inaccessible.
Additionally, publishers only need to up-load one file in ePub (an industry standard)format for all commercial channels.Through a simple conversion process, thefiles are then delivered as print-ready PDFs.de Jocas explains that this feature offers ahuge advantage compared to other systemswhere publishers have to make the samechange for each distributor. Jensen addsthat the one-file system greatly facilitatesreprints of older and discontinued titles (aprocess that traditionally has been a signif-icant source of new revenue for publishers),as well as the revision of text and formats,creating new editions, and locating themost current versions of titles.
de Jocas points out that another ad-vantage of the system is its neutral soft-ware platform. He says the system is“agnostic” in that it is written to work onany platform, whereas other solutionsmay be built to work with either Mac orPC platforms only. (As another example,all e-books purchased from Amazon mustbe read on a Kindle or within a Kindle app
as opposed to any other e-reading device).de Jocas also enthuses about the fact that
the solution doesn’t impose specific secu-rity, pricing, or marketing protocols, leav-ing publishers free to make many of theirown choices and devise their own pricingand marketing strategies. This built-in flex-ibility also includes the ability to customizesales reports, billing, and accounting infor-mation, depending on which areas andmarkets the publisher wants to concentrate.
“Stressed-out bosses can look at currentsales statistics in the format they choose24/7. That’s very powerful,” says Jensen.“People need better information to decideon successful marketing strategies, as wellas flexibility in pricing strategy based onmarket responses. The flexibility of the sys-tem gives publishers the opportunity to dospecific market testing without a huge fi-nancial outlay.”
Already the success of the eBook Solu-tion is such that Transcontinental has beenselected as the official eBook partner for theCanadian Booksellers Association (CBA).In a May 16 media release, Mark Lefebvre,President of CBA, stated “Our partnershipwith Transcontinental provides our mem-bers with award-winning software that willallow retailers to address their customers'digital preferences and ultimately betterserve them by offering e-reading optionsthat consumers are demanding. Addition-ally, the sales reporting and consumer ana-lytics functionality of their programprovides retailers with a unique solutionnot yet seen offered by the bigger corporateretailers, so the competitive advantage ishuge with this product.”
In a parallel development, also in May(apparently a huge month for book-tradedevelopments!), the American BooksellersAssociation (ABA, a not-for-profit trade or-ganization of independently owned book-stores with storefront locations) enteredinto an agreement with On Demand Books(ODB), maker of the Espresso Book Ma-chine (EBM, a production line for perfect-bound paperbacks) to promote the EBM totheir members. As well, the agreement helpspublishers gain access for their titles toEBM’s affiliated content network in ex-change for software-licensing discounts fortheir members who purchase or lease themachine.
Earlier, in September 2010, On DemandBooks and Xerox announced a partnershipwhereby Xerox will market, sell or lease, andservice the EBM worldwide. On Demand re-portedly plans to have more than 150 EBMinstallations worldwide by the end of 2011.
In a quick e-mail summing up Transcon-tinental’s activities at BEA, Cathy Stojak,Marketing Projects Manager for the com-pany’s Book, Magazine & Catalogue Group,wrote: “We had a full three days of demos –lots of traffic and a few contracts signed. Onething’s for sure – having spoken to all sizesof book publishers, I realize their pain pointsall seem the same: How do I plan effectivelyfor my content and how can I create newways of monetizing?
“This industry has really been shaken andit’s great and inspiring to see how publishersare rolling up their sleeves and getting busytrying to figure out what’s best for them,” sheconcludes. “Each case is different, so there isreally no set marketing strategy – just lots ofoptions and technology.”
Victoria Gaitskell is keen to exchange ideaswith readers at [email protected]
GaitskellContinued from page 14
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