I`m pleased Macmillan is learning how to do it from the Long Barn Books template... no high advances, higher royalties and best of all, a top editor. And only spend money where it counts. Works every time.

I'm delighted that Macmillan continues to investigate new business models within publishing and wish you and your authors every success - and avoidance of Hollywoodesque disaster scenarios etc.

In advance of what comes below I do feel that Mr Charkin is more clued in to the opportunities of technology than most of the CEOs of the major UK houses - to which this blog is a testament - and hope that my criticisms are taken with that in mind. Still, publishers have a long way to go before they realise the opportunities of the web and before they can hopefully claim back some of the ground (or margin) that has been lost to the retailers.

However, and I apologise if this seems churlish, I do feel that in some regards, both the Macmillan Science and the recently re-launched Macmillan consumer web site in particular (www.panmacmillan.com) are missed opportunities, and possibly expensive ones at that.

In an age of great possible online marketing innovations, and the increasing adoption of new technologies, both of these sites are resolutely 'web 1.0' and look as if they could have been launched in 1999. They also, vitally, seem to miss the point of their own existence.

Publishers - particularly in the consumer / trade arena - have to compete with retailers, amazon, supermarkets and other outlets, and should be using their web sites as a major weapon to attract consumers, to encourage those consumers to make purchases easily, and to win the chance to retain that customer for future purchases and marketing opportunities. Publishers used to ignore consumers - retailers were their 'customers' - but that is surely changing now, and the future of pubilshing will include greatly increased direct sales for pubilshers.

Publisher web sites should make explicit the added 'value' that a publisher can offer beyond a retailer - and use this difference as a way to make sure that their direct sales strategy delivers on the investment it has obviously sucked up in creating a web site.

But what happens? On PM.com we have enforced registration to purchase, zero discounts on your highest profile book (currently Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park - available at amazon for £3.99 rather than 7.99 on PM.com) and a design where the 'add to basket' button is at the very bottom of the page. Furthermore, the registration system is long and rather offputting and only caters for the middle ground of 'best-selling' authors. The popular science site suffers from the same problems, combined with a (IMHO) horrible design.

In other words, the barriers to purchase, or subscription, are pretty high and in my experience I imagine the customers will stay away in their drives.

I am by no means advocating an indescriminate adoption of warm, fuzzy (and needlessly expensive) technologies but I do think that a little thought to the users in terms of exprience and technologies (RSS for a 'community' site perhaps? or is there no planned evolution of content once published?) - combined with some thought as to what kind of strategy would encourage readers to purchase and signup for (hopefully) well-written and clearly 'added value' newsletters - would have given this site a more focused purpose.

And as to discounts - the grounds on publishers all seem to believe that sales are driven through all outlets - if you can afford to sell to Amazon at a price which allows them to discount at 50%, then you must have the margin to offer better incentives to readers to then give you the opportunity to sell directly to them in the future? Consumers aren't stupid but if they see the producer selling a book at twice that of the major retailers - they may well think the publishers think they are stupid.

Thoughts?

I disagree. I don't believe readers really care whether a crime thriller, for example, is published by Pan, Snowbooks or whoever - I think they care about the story, the genre and the author. Publisher branding, to my mind, should be focused on the retailer for whom values like service, production quality and attitude are important. Crucially, if readers browse a single publisher’s catalogue they are missing out on choice; choice which can only be provided by a well-thought-through range created by a retailer from the best of many publishers’ lists, large and small. Also, competition for market share keeps retailers incentivised to offer their best prices. Disintermediation is a nice idea if you're a margin-hungry publisher but not if you’re a reader interested in discovering a varied and rewarding choice of books, and I’d go for the reader-friendly route every time.

Hi Emma - some really interesting comments but I think you have a polarised view of 'brand' and also underplay readers' abilities to differentiate between publishers and choose how to make a purchase.

I'm not saying that publishers necessarily need to aim to create 'brands' for themselves with consumers. Sometimes, when you have a unique proposition which is recognised and valued by readers, say Serpent's Tail, Canongate, Profile, Picador even - this can happen, but by accident (i.e. via editorial acquisitions which articulate a unique outlook) rather than grand design. Which is what an imprint is all about.

In terms of with the trade, then yes, 'brand' values also make sense, but I think you do need to acknowledge that these values (production, attitude, service) are recognised and valued by the consumer as well as the trade, albeit for potentially different reasons.

However, I think that you are missing a trick to not recognise the 'niche' and the fact that readers may find fit and value in that niche. By this I mean that you have an opportunity to build relationships with Snowbooks readers via your web site as well as via the books you publish, and to encourage them to trust in you as a brand. This could extend to encourage them to try out titles you publish which may not even get stocked in the shops - by virtue of them being published along side your other titles which have taken their attention.

I disagree that consumers can't/don't pick and choose when it comes to titles and need a bookseller to always do that curation for them. I would also argue that some lists, reprint lists (say Persephone) do this curation in a valuable, agnostic way that actually contradicts your argument? What we're seeing across a number of industries is smart consumers finding out what they want to buy (recommendations, reviews, etc) and then shopping around to get it from the retailer that most appeals to them. Why should publishing be different?

Clearly, publishers need to have web sites to fulfil basic (mainly trade although this should be changing) functions. My point is that readers who take the effort to go to a publisher's site should be welcomed and treated as valued and rare visitors rather than idiots. So, discount your titles (if discounting is what everyone else is doing) make them feel special, and rewarded for having taken the time - and the initiative - to realise that 'Snow Books' may be worth a visit and give them a chance to root around in the backlist to see what you're about.

In terms of disintermediation. I'm not saying replace the retailers, I'm saying that publishers already have a channel selling books to readers through their websites, but that doing that at full price and with high barriers (compared to amazon at 50% and one-click) is not reader friendly. It even comes across as the oposite and greedy. However, rewarding those visitors who do come with a better offer (on price or whatever) *is* reader friendly. And that's precisely what they're not doing - there is no 'competition for market share' for a publisher selling a book at full price plus P&P when it's available for half that on every high street. Maybe publishers are too scared of the retailers but I don't think this is why they don't discount on their own sites (many do).

Anyway, delighted to engage with you on this and also thrilled to see someone with your credentials come into publishing and hopefully create some new models to shake up the industry. Cheers!

In standard book publishing it is the author who matters. Should the author move to another publisher, he will take his audience with him. Goes back to the days when everyone vanity published, and publishers per se didn't exist. Writers get a reputation for what (and how) they write, while publishers get a repubation for who they publish.

In the roleplaying games industry it's the other way around. With a few exceptions few authors are even widely known. It is the publisher and the brand that matter. To the average player he doesn't matter who wrote which "Forgotten Realms" or "Arcana Evolved" book, what matters is where the book is set, and who publishes it. (Wizards of the Coast and Malhavoc Press respectively for publisher.)

The standard model means that once you've become aware of the author's style, and the quality of his work, you're assured of getting much the same thing down the road. The RPG model means that quality across a line can, and will, vary in style and quality. Depending on how good the author of a particular book within a line is. At the same time, it gives the publisher some degree of latitude in who writes a particular work.

A standard publisher does get a fair degree of loyalty from an author. Authors tend to go first to the publisher who published their earlier offerings. In addition, a standard publisher doesn't really get the rights. Rather what the publisher gets is permission to publish the work, and to act as the author's agent in other media. Think of it as a licensing agreement.

With RPG publishers everything must first fit in with a particular brand, and is a work for hire. Everything an author produces for a publisher becomes that publisher's property. As a matter of fact, companies such as Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf Game Studios prefer to have their work done in house by salaried employees.

When a writer is a freelancer he still signs over all rights. In addition, the RPG industry has a sad reputation for reneging on its contracts. A number of publishers have outright failed to pay the agreed upon monies, but the authors are usually too short of funds to actually take the publisher to court for compensation. Fortunately the big companies (Wizards, Malhavoc, White Wolf) have a reputation for paying, if not well, at least on time.

This and the very low cost of electronic publishing means that a lot of would be RPG writers go into business for themselves; producing their own books in electronic form, and hoping for attention from and eventual publication by one of the bigs.

It's a rough business all around, and an immature one. With time one hopes it gets better.

With some people the publisher does matter. One may have a reputation in the field of romances, another in popular science. Depends on where a publisher focuses his efforts and output.

Then there are those puplishers who publish certain authors. Baen Books is known for publishing David Drake and Eric Flint. For the longest time Doubleday was Isaac Asimov's publisher. Having certain writers in the "stable" can give a company a reputation among readers it may not have had otherwise.

One publisher (Ace) gets a reputation for publishing it can get its hands on cheap or (even better) free. Another (DAW Books) earns a reputation for eclectic publication within the field of science fiction and fantasy, and a reputation for knowing the field and having contacts all over the place.

Watch the customers in most any bookstore. You'll see your share of those who stick with a particular publisher because they trust what that publisher produces.

Hi Peter

Thanks for your feedback about panmacmillan.com.

The design question is obviously one of personal taste, but we did a great deal of customer research before the site launched to choose this design, and actually users preferred it and found it more user-friendly than that of any of our competitors. On the registration process, we are aware that it could be more streamlined than it currently is, and this is an improvement we're planning to make to the site.

And as for online discounting - interesting to hear your views, but think we'll leave this one to the retailers for now!

Geoff Duffield
Sales and Marketing Director, Pan Macmillan

Peter, I am in the happy (or at least useful) position of being both Pan Macmillan’s new Head of Digital Publishing (as of three weeks ago) and Macmillan’s Director of Communications – so it is perhaps appropriate that I respond to your extremely apposite comments.

First off, I have to say that I couldn’t agree more with pretty much everything that you say. You are absolutely correct that Richard is streets ahead of most UK publishing CEOs on all this stuff. But however advanced he is, he still heads up a huge heffalumping publishing beast of more than 150 years of age, with all the history, ingrained publishing culture, people and processes that brings. He certainly does a valiant job pushing, pulling and shoving to move this beast into the twenty first century – and much to push the general industry in that direction too.

I think Macmillan has – probably rightly – focused most of its digital efforts in areas where the market was moving most swiftly towards an electronic focus – so STM and then academic and educational publishing. So if you take a look at what the Nature Publishing Group, publishers of the leading scientific journal Nature, are doing in this space, it is certainly a great deal more forward thinking than what you are witnessing in the general / trade publishing space upon which you have commented. They have, for example, developed social bookmarking software designed specifically for scientists (‘Connotea’), experimented with online open peer review and moved their business firmly over to a web subscription model. I could go on, but you can find out more if you are interested at www.nature.com.

However, as I said, in the general publishing arena there is a hell of a lot to do and in some ways rather an uphill climb faces us here. Some very basic things need to be addressed in order to move general publishing businesses from Web 1.0 companies to Web 2.0 companies and beyond. First of all, we need to educate our own staff to be more ‘e’-savvy, effect cultural and process change internally and change our thinking about some of the qualities we look for when hiring new staff; then we need to get the basic ‘building blocks’ right – develop a digital platform for delivery of our e-content, work out how to budget and resource for new ‘strategic’ web developments which do not deliver traditional cash flows, develop leaner, swifter decision-making processes, and, of course, get our marketing site 110% right, including a much greater focus on the end-user… and that’s all before we do anything creative or ‘blue sky’ with our content or services. More than anything else we need to start focusing on readers as our customers, not just retailers. It is no accident that the most successful web companies are those who have harnessed consumer power, recognised the value of peer-to-peer-generated content and focused on developing global, online-only brands (I’m thinking Amazon, Google, de.lic.ious, Flickr and many more). It is also no accident that so many of these were initially set up by geeks sitting at computers in their pants – they could move so much faster than lumbering publishing beasts….

The questions for us as we consider how to become more of a ‘Web 2.0’ style company are: how do we develop content, products, resources and services that continue to give us relevancy in the markets we serve? And how on earth do we move away from some of the bricks and mortar, historically-inherited constraints that prevent us moving fast enough for the pace required in this new digital age?

Having said all this (excuse me if I was ranting there…) the specifics you mention regarding the PM and Mac Sci web sites are in fact generally pretty simple to amend, and you can be assured that further updates and improvements are already scheduled. Following the now-established 'Web 2.0' model our web sites are now 'perpetual betas'!

Sara, what a thoughtful and lengthy response to my post. Congrats on the job by the way - what a phenomenally exciting post at an equally exciting time in publishing.

I wasn't making an isolated attack on Mr Charkin or even Macmillan. I singled out the panmacmillan.com site as (1) it's the newest but not the worst, although most of the bad ones were built many years ago and have that as an excuse; (2) mr charkin blogs and dialogue is what blogs are for and (3) having watched and heard of the development of the pm site for some time (I talked to Geoff Duffield [Macmillan Marketing Director] at Frankfurt 2004 when the site had just been commissioned, and was involved ironically enough in an online campaign for the hbk of Bret easton Ellis' Lunar Park which expected the site to have been ready for publication last July) I had high hopes for it to be the best publishers site... So please take
this as dialogue rather than vituperative.

I have read about, and been impressed by, the investments and progress Macmillan has made in the STM markets, including the projects you mention, and have been very excited by them and the potential of similar energies being focused on trade titles, either by Macmillan or more ambitiously by the industry as a cohesive whole. (I'll admit to being personally seduced more by trade than STM books)

I am of course also aware of Macmillan's heritage and the 'historical' problems inherent to publishing houses adopting new technologies. They don't turn on sixpences. I am also pretty sure that the struggles going on at Macmillan are shared by most if not all UK multinationals and independents: they need to wrestle control of something that has for so long sat, ignored, in the 'too hard' box. But, these are not exactly new problems. My first job was at Canongate in 1997 and these issues were under discussion then.

Also, I'm actually not gunning for a digitised-web-2.0-at-all-costs-blue-sky-tagging-and-user-generated-content future. I'm not some dot com ranter trying to implement wacky designs and (god forbid) wacky names for 150 year old media company web sites. My job is to be focused on (and sometimes, advise) the strategies of these companies and to help them execute these strategies online.

So, my main issue with the PM site (and most if not all publisher's sites) is the missed opportunity of going direct to consumer - which has been characteristic of the publishing industry for years. Until they understand their consumers ('end users' in geek speak) publishers are very unlikely to get anywhere near the successes of web 1.0 companies let alone 2.0!

My point is just that given the current landscape, they need to put consumers more centrally in their sales strategies than they have done in the past, and to then find opportunities (through technology or, more importantly, develop creative thinking which can be facilitated by technologies) to build valuable relationships with those consumers. Only when those relationships exist can they consider 'leveraging' them in the ways we associate with the successful web 2.0 companies – and even then that may be beyond their remits.

Interestingly, your post partially leapfrogs my concerns for direct sales of trade editions and begins to deal with the ebook question, which is certainly riddled with very important and interesting problems but not necessarily yet the front on which the battle of the margins is fought. (Of course, I know it is vital and Richard's work at the PA has been involved with that, and Google, and so on).Soon, indeed, if not sooner, these issues will be forced and the industry as a whole certainly needs to be prepared - including agents and retailers and I heartily encourage the unification of the industry around these topics.

But, without a direct sales infrastructure / strategy in place when this change comes, then the scene is set for someone (such as Apple, who has done it with music and is soon to do with film and will no doubt with books) to move straight in to create, and own, that market and relegate pubilshers (again) to bargaining over margins. And yet again someone else will control the customers and the distribution channels. And that would be A Bad Thing given that the opportunity exists for publishers to seize that opportunity in the same way that the music business could have done its own iTunes – but didn't because they were (1) too slow to recognise what they thought was a threat as a massive opportunity (2) too busy trying to sue their consumers as a way to stem the flow.

From where I sit, publishing houses clearly aren't web 2.0 companies, either in style or in content. No one I've worked with in the last 10 years is in their underwear. They can't change their entire business models to become 'MySpace for books'. But nor should they. They publish books and are staffed by people who understand this and who maybe, on the side, also begin to 'get' technology. But I fear (and I really do fear as I love publishing and the industry) that they may well, like the big beasts / dinosaurs you compare them to, be under threat of extinction (ok, that's maybe an overstatement) unless they can actually make some money soon. And at the moment that means understanding consumers, selling books, as well as preparing for the future. Companies the size of Macmillan, and the other large UK houses, do have the resources to create a web 2.0 company, but trying to do this within the infrastructure of a 150 year old wildebeest is, as you say, Sisyphean.

Even though we both clearly find this a fascinating topic, I apologise for ranting back. I don't really think what we've said really articulates our discussions – or our focuses - but at least we recognise that it is fun, and important, and that that a change is going to come – and hopefully both of us can effect some of it.

Kings Cross is a disaster. They've spent ages redeveloping it, only to make the walk from the Piccadilly/Northern/Victoria lines to the Hammersmith/Circle/Metropolitan lines about 10 minutes longer than it used to be.

you are right greg stekelman kings Cross is A disaster.
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