brett sandusky

Making choices about technology

Brett — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:01:58 +0000

I want to start by saying this: technology is a type of currency in business. There are, in fact, a few types of currency in business: actual money, talent, brand, and technology.

Yet, I’ve recently noticed that decisions about technology seem to be made in a space devoid of fully cognizant understanding of these decisions. Why is that? What is it about technology that makes us think it’s acceptable to make a decision based on buzz words, not reality? And why do the decision makers rarely understand technology enough to even begin to grasp the implications of who they use that other currency, money?

In the extrapolated metaphor, money is money, talent is people, brand is art, and technology is language. We need to start paying attention to our language.

* * *

The Académie française was officially established by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635. Richelieu, at the time, as well as his successor, Cardinal Mazarin, was a member of the clergy that all but ran France, using the King as his puppet in power. It’s all very intriguing.

Richelieu fancied himself a great supporter of the arts, and funded a number of writers and artists. He also founded L’Académie française, which is the institution whose mandate it is to protect the French language. L’Académie publishes the official dictionary of the French language, and technically speaking, if a word if not in there, it is not actually French.

But, institutions move slowly, and they are often very conservative in their risk-taking, and L’Académie is no exception. The language L’Académie puts forth as being the official French language is an archaic one. It is quite literally an example of linguistic time capsule, and not at all reflective of the French spoken around France and the world.

Members of L’Académie are called Immortals, and when one of them passes away, a new member is elected in his or her place. This new member then goes through an induction ceremony where s/he recites a biography of their predecessor to the rest of the group. In doing this, the new Immortal speaks directly to his predecessor, in the third person, using the passé simple, (“vous fûtes”) a verb form that is only found in written form and is slowly starting to disappear.

But the Immortals have decided to keep it, and use it, and make it function as living language. Even though it is dead. So think about this: we are talking about an individual wearing a black jacket with an embroidered leaf design on it, carrying a sword (every Immortal has his or her own sword, naturally), speaking in an all but archaic verb form to another individual, who is dead, in front of a room of 39 other individuals wearing black jackets with embroidered leaf motifs on them, swords, and who have all done the same thing at one point in their life.

The point is: as a cultural institution, France hangs on to L’Académie, because the French language is an incredibly essential component to the French cultural worldview. However, as an institution, it really serves very little purpose, and certainly doesn’t reflect the state of the French language as it is actually spoken by French-speaking individuals.

The truth is that all languages are in a constant state of evolution over time. There is absolutely no way to reign it is and dictate a standard language to the people who use that language.

Said another way: the French language IS the Latin language, as it evolved in a certain geographical location spoken by a set of cultural groups in that location. In the same vein, the Spanish language IS the Latin language, and Italian and Portuguese, and Romanian, which all evolved in their own locations being spoken by various people. The moment, in the late middle ages, that historians identify as the one in which we shifted from Latin to French is a non-event. The first text considered to be written in French looks and reads exactly like Medieval Latin. There is, in fact, no difference.

The Romance languages are the result of constant, natural evolution.

* * *

Remember when I said that technology was language? Technology is in constant flux and evolution, just as language. It is ever-changing and evolving into new manifestations.

In the same way that an institution like L’Académie is useless to dictate how modern language speakers use or manifest French in the real world, the concept of “future proofing” against later technology is erroneous and bizarre.

Things change, and technology has forever and will forever be in a state of transition. The first technology used by man was hand held stone tools, and now we have mobile devices. These two things are very much a manifestation of the same thing. Hand-held portable technology. These things accomplished tasks for their users and were carried around to be used over and over again under various circumstances.

* * *

So, let us talk about technology. Let us talk about decision making.

It is essential for us all to understand the implications of the decisions we make, particularly in regards to the ever-changing, variable parts of our business. Over time, it is not entirely possible to predict what is going to be the “next big thing.” Case in point: two years ago at CES every single stall was set up to show off in-home 3D televisions that were going to REVOLUTIONIZE how we watch TV at home.

Even the technology companies get it wrong sometimes.

The fact about technology is that many things come from a place of “we can do this” not a place of “we should do this.” There is a difference between making something work because you can, and making something work because it accomplishes something for a users. But you cannot do away with the first paradigm so quickly, however, because sometimes making something work because you can advances the technology along to a place where, later, you can make something because you should.

When making a decision about technology, it is incredibly common for media companies to fundamentally misunderstand the technology for which they are paying (sometimes) large amounts of money. It is common for companies to purchase things they don’t actually understand. Which don’t do what they need it to do. And doesn’t work the way they need it to work.

And then gets evolved out of usage, just like the passé simple.

The lost art of making things

Brett — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:43:48 +0000

A few weeks ago, three to be exact, I took a position as director of education and head of product at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. 3rd Ward is a 30,000 sq. ft. maker space, set up with various studios and shops so that people can make and learn skills that are either difficult to access or we, as a culture, have lost them.

We teach wood working, metal working, jewelry and art. And millinery (hat making), shoe making, screen printing, and sewing. We have classes in various digital competencies, like web design and photography, and we offer the opportunity to learn cartooning. From cheese making to robotic arms to arduinos to bike repair to upholstery, we offer a lot of things that are challenging to find other places outside.

My short time here has got me thinking about product design in a different way from how I looked at it when working within publishing. But, 3rd Ward is a unique content creator and publisher, too. I am squarely out of the book business, but I wasn’t really in the “book business” for years.

Working in a maker space exacerbates one’s desire to be creative and make things. Every single person I have met here, both on staff and amongst our members, instructors, and students, is creative in what they do. They are also curious, worldly, interested people who do and make various things. They all experiment and try new things. They all fail. And succeed. And fail. And keep going.

Last night, I took my first class at 3rd Ward. It was the first session of a shoe making class. And what did I learn from this? I have a decent aptitude for moccasin making. But also, that the area of my brain that groks knitting and product design groks shoe making. And, I am sure, a multitude of other things. The discipline may be different, but the flow is the same.

But, to bring it back, the impressions I’ve had over the last three weeks so far are all related to how I envisioned the world from the vantage point I was afforded. And I have come to realize that the world outside is moving, evolving, and really fucking quickly.

I’ve had to learn how to readjust my concept of “timeframes” here. Because in a publishing house, when someone mentions a future project, it is either executed months or years later or dropped completely, an idea that lived and died in the moment it was uttered. Recently, I find myself thinking about things through this lens. The truth is when someone asks me for a timeframe on a project, and I say we can get to a particular item in, say, a couple weeks, they look at me funny.

In one particular case, I said something along the lines of, “eventually, we will want to do” so-and-so project. And then we jumped into the database and made it happen. 5 minutes. A new revenue stream created.

So many companies in a variety of industries in this country are essentially media industries at their core. Publishing is one such industry. As is the brand of education that we are doing here at 3W. As media companies, we have a lot of similarities, particularly in regards to how we interface with customers, and how we conceive of and market products. But, the actual doing is something that, in my own experience, publishers simply have not understood.

Businesses do not work today based on old models. This is not a new idea. Nor something I have not said before. It is not an ephiphany, nor a resolution. It’s not original, or particularly insightful. But, it is true, and real. Living outside now, I can see very clearly how the business models that publishers still cling to are dead and have been dead for years. Way beyond the digital transition that we see today. Dead, dead dead. Glue factory dead.

And yet, the clinging. And yet, the fear to move on wholeheartedly. We have absolutely conflated a business model with an identity as an industry. And now it’s just so difficult and painful to change. And so we see mergers and acquisitions… because what else do you do when you need leverage? Consolidate.

I am still involved in publishing in a few ways. Namely, through The Holocene, as well as some side consulting and writing projects that I am working on. But, those things are on my terms, and devoid of the decidedly un-moderist legacy business bullshit.

And so, things change.

Going forward, as my worldview changes, this blog is going to change. I do hope that you all continue to read and share and enjoy that which I have to write, but it is going to be less about publishing overall.

Rather, I intend on writing about product development, education, maker spaces, strategy, futurism, UX, IxD, and media.

To be perfectly honest, this is not entirely different from what I already write about now. Though my thoughts will be altered no longer sitting in a book business space. And I will most certainly write less about the hard realities of publishing.

I leave the publishing industry with this final thought: the true path is not in books, or ebooks, or containers. It is in people. It always has been, though you’ve been shielded from dealing with it. You have been, since the beginning of time for you as an industry, a b2b business. Well, it’s 2013 and non-infrastructure b2b businesses are dying. They’re dead and gone or hanging on by a thread. Consumerism, b2c, and direct-to-consumer are the paths to success. Building and nurturing communities is essential. Consumer interaction and two-way dialogue is essential. You have to retool and rethink. You have to let go of many things you think are part of your identity. You have to evolve.

Is “Discoverability” Even A Problem?

Brett — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:00:52 +0000

This Sunday I attended the annual Book 2 Camp, which has become the pre-TOC venue for unconferencing since it began 3 years ago. All programming is proposed and carried out that day, so you never know what you are going to get. And, overall, I think the maturity and value of the discussion of these sessions has grown over time.

This year, my favorite thing that happened throughout the entire day was, during a session on talking about “what readers want” proposed by Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky of BookRiot, Laura Hazard Owen said after a pretty awesome leadup, “What if discoverability turns out to not even be an issue?” This comment echoed one that Rebecca had tweeted earlier:

<— Really doesn’t think discoverability is problem for readers. Publishers, sure, but readers know where to find books, get recs. #Book2

— Rebecca Schinsky (@RebeccaSchinsky) February 10, 2013

Service as a Service (SaaS)

Brett — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:56:20 +0000

What makes up a user’s experience of purchasing and using a product from any given company? There is a discoverability/marketing component, where the customer needs to be made aware of a product’s existence. There is the purchase decision component, where various factors, many psychological, come together to make a transaction happen. There is the actual product usage component, which lies squarely on the customer and is what we often refer to when we talk about “user experience.” Finally, there is the customer acquisition and retention component. For a product without users is the proverbial tree falling in the forest.

The truth is that over the course of the current business era, a loose term I am using to describe how current business trends have lined up, companies have been focused on marketing, purchase, and are starting to move toward a full embrace of user experience and customer service. Mature companies have thought through all of these components and are doing well. But many others are still faltering when it comes to these last two big components.

The time seems to have finally come when companies are beginning to realize that offering top quality service is the key to community building, customer acquisition, and retention strategies. A new business era is beginning, and this new era is what I am calling Service as a Service.

It’s the rediscovery of service. The offering of top quality product coupled with top quality personal experience which keep customers coming back, and becomes a compelling draw for new customers. It’s about end-to-end relationships with customers and recognizing that customer loyalty is about to trump volume product sales in terms of product strategy.

And it all makes sense: as companies come to terms with the fact that they have to build less product, but better, they realize the volume game doesn’t work any more. Our markets, both physical and virtual, are flooded with products, things, nicknacks, sundries, and novelties. We live in the abundance of our age, where everything is available at the click of a mouse; even shipping time is being reduced to create the shortest wait possible for physical goods.

And as more companies are UX experts shape up product offerings, cull massive lists and focus on core competencies and superior user experience, the only place left to play seems to be customers.

A new-ish concept is that of growth hacking, which is the practice of growing a company’s user base in the desirable “hockey stick” pattern. Whether you consider this marketing or a separate entity, that’s irrelevant. The fact is companies are embracing the growth hacker, the community manager, and other skill sets of the like to focus undeniably on customers. On service.

2-4 years ago, we all started talking about community building in the publishing industry. And this is finally coming into its own. Large houses are starting to hire people to focus on communities more; they are perhaps realizing that the community/customer retention aspect of what was traditionally performed by the “indies” is not so far off. Today, it seems, almost every publishing company is getting involved in the community game.

And what does this actually mean? First off, it means we are beginning to take the benefits of direct-to-consumerism seriously. It means we are starting to come around to understanding how to compile and analyze data that is generated from our users and customers. It means we are accepting that volume is not going to work in an overabundant world, but user experience and SaaS is.

I would argue that a latent manifestation of this is in our current obsession with discoverability. While in itself not salable, discoverability is a service that publishers are pushing to show that we can best serve readers. “Let us help you find something you want to read. That’s what we’re here for” is the added value of discoverability.

And so, to all the community builders out there, to the data analysts, to those studying customer behavior, there is more to what you are doing than just building a community or compiling a massive group of people. You are setting the stage for the next wave of customer interaction, which is primarily focused on not just selling, not just offering a good user experience in regards to product usage, but also on treating your customers well.

Ultimately, as supply skyrockets and demand remains flat, service (aka end-to-end user experience) becomes an essential component to navigating the business landscape.

As publishers, as media companies, it is up to us to define how we treat our customers, who we’ve never had to interact with ever in the past. It is essential that we comprehend the implications of customer service and d-2-c relationships on the wellbeing of our businesses. Let’s not be scared, and go forth into the good night…

Risk Taking

Brett — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:52:53 +0000

I don’t often get very personal on this blog, but right now seems like as good a time as ever to do so.

As some/many of you who follow me on Twitter may know, my (day) job and I broke up on Friday. And, really that is ok. It was a long time in the making, and something that has set me on the path to new things and better opportunities. Sometimes, things simply do not work out, and it’s not healthy to hold onto to them for the sake of holding on. I was mentally prepared for what happened last week, and am feeling very positive about the future.

Alas, my optimism is not, in itself, a source of revenue, though I wish it were. And, I am currently searching for a great position doing something I love in an industry that I feel home in.

This year, 2013, is turning out to be one of great risk-taking. Something to which, surprisingly, I am somewhat adverse. Perhaps we all are. Though, it seems like one can train oneself to break free of the mental boundaries we set up. But, here I am, and it seems that risk has a way of finding you just when you are ready to accept it.

This year, I am grateful for The Holocene, the work we’ve done, and the things we are going to accomplish. It’s a passion project for all of us involved.

But, alas, our startup is not, as of yet, able to provide income, though I wish it did.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to write about food for Foodriot.com and about building a publishing startup from the ground up for Digital Book World.

But, alas, these things do not provide ample income on which to subsist, though I wish they did.

So, it is to you, my friends and colleagues, that I turn to for assistance, as one is never alone in our community, in helping me find a new job either full-time, freelance, or consulting. My goal is to simply add value, impart knowledge, learn and share experience. These ideals guide most everything I do in life. This is what I try to do on my blog, and what I try to do professionally. I hope you see that in me.

(Oh, also, did I mention that I often make baked goods and need a taste-testing team?)

Thank you to everyone who has already contacted me and offered their help and their encouragement. I am grateful for any help anyone is able to provide.

Cheers.

Elephants in the room

Brett — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:00:27 +0000

It’s a new year, and time to purge ourselves of the old and bring in the new. For years now, long before I was even involved in publishing, the industry has latched onto the “New Year, New You” marketing motto as each new calendar begins, in the hopes of selling books to customers who have decided to make a change in their lives. This year, it is time for a “new you,” but for ourselves. It’s time we stopped beating around the bush and dealt with our issues head-on and with realistic expectations. This morning, I saw two articles juxtapositioned, the (paraphrased) headline of the first read: “Ebook retail prices continue to plummet,” the second, “Independent bookstores can increase revenue by selling ebooks.” This second article implied that indies could be saved by the enormous revenue opportunity to be had in selling ebooks … whose retail prices have been steadily declining and continue to do so.

Are we even having the same conversation anymore?

Needless to say, these think pieces lead me to converse with a few friends, some publicly, and other privately, about what is going on here, and I have compiled a short list of elephants. These issues are those that we as an industry must address, not shy away from, and talk about in the open to come to a resolution. We continue to spiral into a complicated mess of “WTH IS GOING ON HERE? WHO’S IN CHARGE?” rather than a rational, business-oriented industry. I refuse any longer to play into the notion that publishing is dead or dying. It’s been changing over many years, and continues to do so. Now is the time to address our changes; now is the time for, in corporate parlance, change management, something we’ve all known but too little of.

The Amazon Issue. If we are talking about elephants, Amazon is the woolly mammoth of the lot. It’s time we dealt with the Amazon issue that everyone refuses to talk about. Yes, Amazon is single handedly responsible for moving a (digital) metric ton of digital materials through to customers, and many users have Kindles or use a Kindle app to read digitally. Yes, the Amazon digital catalog is the largest, and thus offers the most opportunity both to us and to our customers.

However, we must acknowledge that Amazon’s practices have also contributed to the (imminent-seeming) depletion of physical bookstores. They have forced our retail prices down so low that only a company of their, ahem, girth, is able to bear the burden of really taking on major losses. Publishers simply do not have the financial fortitude to emulate Amazon in terms of financial practice.

We need to figure out what Amazon means to us, how we work with them within the industry and how we are going to work with them and our customers. If we continue on our current path, we are simply handing over customers to Amazon and being bullied, a la Wal-Mart suppliers, into accepting terms that will contribute to our own death-knell.

Indie bookstores are not ebook distributors. Discoverability is not a salable item, and thus, indie bookstores don’t really own a share of sales from ebooks. Not a single one has built the technology to distribute ebooks, because it’s not their core business, and the sales from ebooks to indies is not going to change their financial situation significantly.

To generate the revenue in order to be able to significantly change their bottom line, indies would have to necessarily become something they’re not and thus euthanasia vs. natural death.

The indies that are thriving are serving their communities in many ways, one of those things happens to be related to books and literary culture. The idea of making bookstores affiliates to the sale of ebooks as a means of saving them is so off course that it’s surprising anyone is advocating that path at all.

Digital is about ubiquity. Independent, local bookstores are about local communities. These things negate and deny each other when we force them together.

And, Barnes and Noble attempted the store-location based via-our-wifi-only Nook sales. See how that turned out for them, a giant.

We need to accept the reality of products today. Digital products are not physical products and vice versa. The are both great in their own ways and serve readers differently. It’s time to move away from doing things because “that’s how it’s always been done” and accept new products for what they are.

Everyone needs to learn about these new product and their capabilities. Only then can we step out of the dark ages, over here, and start building new, better products which organically incorporate technology. The products we use are not the same as those that we’ve used in the past. It’s a new world.

Metadata is not just about SEO. We need to grow past that notion and start building systems.

An example: Google tailors each and every one of our web search pages based on more than 50 different personality characteristics in our search history. This customizes each person’s search to the extent that there truly is no standard Google search any more. THIS IS METADATA.

SEO and web traffic is old hat. It’s okay to move on to something better.

Similarly, new financial models. Oh, please, new financial models. Today’s products require us to think past that old bundling idea and come up with some truly innovative financial models.

The agenting system is broken. We all know and love agents. But, the agenting system of yesteryear is d-e-a-d. Every agent I know reads submissions approximately 28 hours a day, and MAYBE signs 10-15 authors a year. And I am not even mentioning how many properties they sell. They do all this, on spec, because true payment comes when royalties come in. And, let’s not gloss over another gloomy, but true, fact: every agent I know has received hateful, threatening, sometimes criminal responses to them simply doing their jobs.

Let’s face it. Back in the day, agents were a small but powerful and important part of the publishing ecosystem. They were relationship managers, and were often at the center of one of those three martini lunches we’ve all been dreaming about. They were confidants of authors and editors. They were part of the book creation process. Today, it’s just not the same. The world doesn’t work according to the old boys club rules any more and we need to fix this whole system.

Agents’ roles are evolving. I know one friend who talked to me about, essentially, becoming a publisher. Creating an imprint of her own to publish those materials she believes in but can’t sell. Why? Because a year ago, she knew what she could sell. Today, she said, publishers are all over the place and walls have gone up.

The alarm bells have been ringing way to long on this one. Time for something new.

Self-pub is not our whipping boy. The self pub machine has done an amazing job painting us as the villain and the fat-cat. Hell, Tim Ferriss based his entire book launch campaign around the idea that he was going to be materially damaged by Publishing’s (with a big P) long arm into the back alleys of all business.

Self-pub is not our whipping boy. And we need to stop playing into their portrayal of us. Get over it. People are self pubbing their books. We are not the gatekeepers and tastemakers any more. Stop automatically associating self-pub with crap, because it only plays into their game and diminishes our own industry.

You may not think it, but the more we keep this feud going, the more we are digging our own grave because, in many respects, self publishers are doing it better, faster, and more HOW THE CUSTOMER WANTS IT than us. There is a reason that Guy Kawasaki has named it “artisanal publishing” and is actively differentiating himself from “the industry.” Because the underdog will always come out on top.

Finally, Rights. I am not going to go into much detail here, because I think we all know what a mess this rabbit hole is. Rights and international sales are one of the most giant messes that could possible plague our industry, and it is doing just that.

In an age when we should be selling globally, we are paralyzed by the fact that we do not have access to our own information. Physical warehouses filled with rights information in basements, probably flooded after Hurricane Sandy, are the result of the boys club we were talking about earlier. Enough is enough. I don’t care if you burn it down and make it all up from scratch, but do something.

I hope I’ve opened the door to talking about, even if just a beginning to the conversation, these issues. Whatever we do, 2013 should be the year when we stop feeding peanuts to our elephants.

New Challenges

Brett — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:08:43 +0000

Over the last 12 months as an observer and commenter on publishing it has become apparent to me that change is happening, albeit slowly. Some may even say, iteratively. We’ve adopted new lingo, new job skills, new channels, new ways of doing things. But, one things remains the same: we are still creators of content. And, regardless of what format that content ends up in or how that content is distributed, we still acquire, produce, edit, polish and distribute content. This is what we do.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to take part in O’Reilly’s Mini TOC event in Vancouver. A spark of an idea came out of that conference, and three of its participants. And this is what I am here to tell you about today.

Over the next year, I am working with an amazing group of people to launch this spark of an idea, which has now become a vision, into the world. It’s called The Holocene.

The Holocene is truly the brain child of three individuals, Kim Werker, Corey Pressman, and myself. The idea is simple: build a publishing platform, which works on a range of devices, and brings instructional content to DIYers, crafters, and makers in a better way.

And, here’s how we intend on doing it:

The Holocene is going to be a publishing platform for creating microzines (cf. The Magazine, sub-compact publishing, etc.) which deliver various forms of media (articles, photography, video) and patterns or instructional content so that the reader can make something. Our plan is to deliver this instructional content in a way that is not unlike GPS turn-by-turn, so that our readers only need to focus on one step at a time and follow along.

You see, thus far, instructional content, either on the web or in some form of digital publication, is mostly either a simple HTML hard-coded list of steps or a PDF. Neither of which takes full advantage of the technology we have available to us to provide users with the best possible experience.

Remember when Google first launched directions in Google maps, and everyone would print them out and bring it with them in their car? And now, our phones tell us turn by turn directions, using GPS to track our progress, and we only need to be concerned with what we’re doing in this very moment.

This is what we’re trying to accomplish: The Holocene is going to be the publication that moves beyond printing out instructions for DIY projects, and becomes part of the doing, fixing, making, crafting experience.

We have a plan. And the passion to make this happen. The first project slated to be published on the platform is a yet-to-be-named subscription-based microzine which brings quality content and patterns to the knitting and crochet communities.

Though, we recognize the potential for this platform to be used for so much more.

We have been fortunate enough to have been accepted among the 20 semi-finalists for O’Reilly’s TOC Startup Showcase which will take place in New York City next month during the TOC conference. This year, determining the 10 finalists, who will all get the chance to present their startup at the conference, is going to be done through a voting process open to all.

Personally, I am against random “VOTE FOR ME” tweets and posts which simply give a link and ask for a vote. This is why I am explaining here what we are working on, in the hope that you, too, feel that this project is exciting and worthy of your vote.

For me, this project is a no-brainer. It combines my passion for digital publishing and knitting, my digital and analog making selves, into one thing that I feel very strongly about. This is a step in the right direction for this content and will serve the DIY community. Writers are told to write the book they want to read. As a knitter, I want to use this app.

The other reason is the people involved. I have rarely been able to work with such a driven, intelligent, interesting, genuinely nice, and hilarious group of people. I know that whatever I do on this project will be better because of the fact that Kim and Corey are working on it with me.

And, as a DIYer, maker, creator, doer, fixer yourself, I hope you will want to use this app as well.

Right now, we’re working very hard to make it to the finals so that we can keep moving forward with our idea and make it happen. I hope that you see the value in this project, and that you are so inclined to look kindly upon and cast a favorable vote for The Holocene.

Vote here!

Cheers, and here’s to a successful new year!

Brilliant, Despicable Marketing

Brett — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:31:28 +0000

I had an interesting conversation this past weekend about a recurring theme lately: false marketing. Specifically, about how so many companies employ an angle in product marketing which is patently false. Yet, in the consumer world, it doesn’t really matter any more because if it sounds good, it sells products.

A few years ago, I was on a business trip and, arriving late to my hotel room, ordered room service. The menu listed French onion soup, topped with the traditional melted gruyère. I order that and an entrée, and waited for my food to arrive. When it did, you can imagine my disappointment when the melted gruyère turned out to be provolone. I mean, c’mon, people! I thought about it for a while, suspected maybe the kitchen ran out of gruyère and substituted provolone in its place. But, then, I had called and talked to someone in the kitchen, and they surely would have mentioned it when I ordered. Right? Or maybe they never use gruyère because it’s rather expensive as far cheese goes, and so few people even know the difference… AND … gruyère just sounds better than provolone on the menu when it comes to French onion soup.

When I came back and mentioned this incident to my partner, he reminded me of the 2010 lawsuit against vitaminwater, a Coca Cola product. Basically, Coke was being sued over the fact that they market vitaminwater as a healthy alternative to soft drinks… hey, it’s water… when really it’s nutritional value not really better than drinking a soda. And, I am paraphrasing here, but I seem to remember Coke’s defense being something along the lines of, “If you are too stupid to actually believe this is a healthy beverage, that’s your problem.”

Basically, when confronted with their own misleading marketing practices, Coke responded with a serious “I SAID GOOD DAY!”

When you look around at the world today, this type of marketing is everywhere. And there’s a reason for that. (Back to that conversation from this past weekend.) It was mentioned that what American business really excels at is creating markets. We are a supply-driven economy. And, we are at our best when we have a product and are in search of an audience for it.

That said, let’s talk about books. Specifically, let’s talk about Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4-Hour Chef. It pains me when I see book people buying Ferriss’ line hook and sinker and touting him as a master of book launch marketing. Here’s why:

Earlier this morning I was reading a blog post about what makes a good writer and common pitfalls for novices. High on that list was the fact that “good fiction” has a protagonist and an antagonist.

What Tim Ferriss has done is create an antagonist. In marketing, it is very common to talk about “telling [one's] story.” And Ferriss took this idea to heart. He cast himself as the protagonist, the “book establishment” as the antagonist, and he’s creating a story. Forget that it’s a work of fiction — predicated on a mound of lies about himself, his book, the treatment he’s received as an author, and how the book business works — it’s good storytelling.

And, like the provolone or the healthy vitaminwater, it doesn’t matter. Because Ferriss does understand his audience. It’s not book people. In fact, his true audience is so outside of the bookish set, that he can say whatever he wants against us, (how we are living high, a bunch of fat cats over here) and it will probably only have positive impact on his sales.

What Ferriss is doing is inserting himself and his audience into a narrative which he believes is going to get people to buy books. He has cast himself as the victim in a situation where he is supposedly entitled to distribution at every retail channel. This is despite the fact that he published his book with Amazon, from which many retail channels have publicly stated (before Ferriss even signed with them) that they will not carry titles. Also, let’s not forget that often, for myriad reasons, often unexplained or brushed aside, retailers will and can pass on purchasing and selling a book in their stores. So, Ferriss is telling a story, spinning a yarn, marketing his book in such a way that the stakes are so epic, so blown out of proportion, that no one can ignore it. (FFS, the man is offering a ride in a Lamborghini as a reward in his Kickstarter-style crowdsourced book launch campaign.)

And, it’s working.

It’s working really, really well, in fact.

Whatever it takes to sell books… right? Well, kind of. The problem is this: this entire campaign is predicated on a lie. The lie being that Ferriss is the victim of “book banning” or “boycotting.” (Which, btw, Tim, these are not the same thing. Maybe you should write the 4-Hour Vocabulary Trainer.) And, while it may move books to a large audience, most of whom really don’t know or even care about the truth since they’ve never known the difference between provolone and gruyère to begin with, it’s still an epic lie.

And lying to your customers is bad business. In fact, lying to your customers just demonstrates your disdain for them. Which is sad, really.

The truth is that this is marketing to create demand, this American way, is what lead to what we have: a mass market, pre-processed, fuck you, gun shots on Black Friday, everyone is entitled to the best of everything and more consumer environment. This is the beast we’ve created. This is why “say whatever resonates” doesn’t work, and is actually harmful. This is why it’s important for a marketer to rely on their integrity when devising messaging and verifying their convictions.

So, to Tim Ferriss and the like, fine. Market you book however you like. But, the reality is you are not telling the truth. And you know it. And so do we.

The Mass Produced Artisanal Breakfast Sandwich

Brett — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:18:06 +0000

Recently, I saw an ad for the new “Artisan Breakfast Sandwich” over at McStarbucks. Oh yes, this is a thing. Think about this for a second. Artisan. Breakfast. Sandwich. From. Starbucks. Whoa. It blows my mind to consider this entire concept. It’s like some sort of nihilistic paradox where word anarchy reigns supreme and you can call anything artisanal even if it is mass produced, chemical-ridden, and shows up frozen. I mean, seriously.

After that, I’ve been very in tune to the use of the term “artisan” or “artisanal” to describe food products. And guess what? It’s everywhere. Everything is artisanal these days. Especially things that are not. At my local deli, I even found a bag of tortilla chips labelled “artisan recipe”. TORTILLA CHIPS! I mean, what is this world coming to? Do words no longer have any meaning? And, how are people duped by these clearly Romney-esque marketing tactics where lies are truths as long as you tell them often enough? Are we even paying attention?

And it doesn’t end there. I’ve seen tweets about “artisanal” hot sauce, and stores dedicated to artisanal mayonnaise, and a website devoted to this junk. Personally, I am waiting for the artisanal water to show up on the market. I’m sure it’ll be a giant hit.

So, why do I bring this up? Because words mean things and it’s time to own up to our own artisanal crime against vocabulary. Also an a-word: Agile.

Wow. It sounds so good though. Agile publishing. Agile development. Agile workflow. Agile methodologies. Let’s be agile. That’s not agile. That is agile. How can we be more agile? What would agile do? Agile agile agile.

Enough already. It is time to stop the buzzsanity. (Yes, I just coined a term.) (In my own hyperbolically exaggerated style, which is used purposefully to put emphasis on a point, I am going to state the following: ) Publishing has never put out an agile product to date, so let’s stop marketing ourselves as the latest bastion of agile development.

Whew. That felt good.

But seriously. Agile. It’s our artisanal. We have no clue what the word means, and we all talk about it like we’re experts. We are, in our own way, producing artisanal tortilla chips and pretending we did something unique and special.

First of all, agile is not code for “do things faster.” Variable pricing is not enough to make something agile. Selling access to galleys is not agile.

Let’s take a step back for a second. Let’s talk about Six Sigma. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in the 80s as a manufacturing process which is used to eliminate defects in the manufacturing process, thereby creating more and better output. It’s a supply chain thing. It is deeply rooted in the production and manufacturing of physical goods, particularly those being created on a mass scale where incremental improvements to the process means big money overall. Flash forward a couple years and business are using Six Sigma is myriad ways to tackle this or that business process. Everyone’s a green belt or a black belt and they’re all experts on Six Sigma even though their jobs have nothing to do with manufacturing.

Now, the same process has seemingly happened with regard to agile, which is a business process originally related to digital product “manufacturing” and deals in how product and development teams make things. We, as publishers are arguably not quite digital companies have decided this is the answer; this is how we do things. We are agile, hear us roar.

But we’re not. In fact, we are pretty far from an agile process. In fact, one could even argue that it would be impossible for a publisher, given the things we have determined to be essential to our workflows, to even implement an agile process at all.

Wait, what? No agile? Ever? That’s right. No agile. Ever. … Here’s why.

Sometimes, A/B and multivariate testing is conducted, such as in the case of price variance. MVPs are designed to be small and less complex so that engineers can launch something quickly and with the least amount of complexity possible. Access to beta products is also a common practice in the agile world. But, these are not the be all, end all of agile.

Agile is a methodology that deals in product development and engineering for digital products. It’s main goal is to allow development teams to make better products by building digital products and feedback loops that tap into user behavioral data and bring both user behavior and preferences to light which necessarily inform further development cycles. This is accomplished by small agile teams which work on, usually, one product. They determine a minimum viable products (MVPs) to launch into the marketplace, plan the development, complete the development, launch the product, and then continually improve upon that product over time. Relationships with customers are not only built but are a cornerstone of agile strategy.

See where I am headed?

The business model of publishing is based on selling many, many products simultaneously; way too many for any single publisher, even a giant mega-conglomerate, to be able to support at the same time. We are used to a launching a product and then only revisiting when a new edition or update is planned, generally a few years down the road. This ‘set it and forget it’ model of publishing is not agile.

Publishing’s content strategy is to put out the best content, edited, polished, beautifully presented. Book products are not MVPs. They are the fruit of years and months and weeks of labor by various individuals. The idea that a book, as it is understood today, is some sort of literary MVP is hogwash. This is simply not the case.

I don’t even want to get into the issues surrounding direct to consumer relationships (though I may do so soon), but let’s just say publishers are not cultivating direct consumer relationships well, particularly in ways that allow for true behavioral and usage feedback loops to be implemented.

And now, let’s talk about the big one: development. Thus far, publishers not only have such little control over development of their digital products because this is happening oversees, for the most part, by conversion houses, but few people in-house have enough knowledge to even understand the coding of a digital product a publisher creates.

Here we actually see the antithesis of agile development. Agile is about understanding technology, from both a product and engineering standpoint, so that product, content, design, and code come together to make something. It’s about blurring the lines between these traditionally separate areas of thought and bringing them together so that a product is organically made up of different view points and thoughts and concepts and ingenuity. It’s about using technology where it makes sense and adapting to new tools and processes. It is about owning the development of your own products in order to exercise the greatest amount of control and ability to adapt.

Until we get to that place, where publishers become media/technology companies building digital products in-house with agile teams and strong customer relationships, we’re simply selling our customers (and ourselves) a bunch of mass produced artisanal books.

It sounds great, kind of, until you realize it’s just empty marketing. At which point, you realize: an industry in the business of using words to convey concepts should know better.

What’s next? A case for the future

Brett — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:25:49 +0000

A few years ago, if you were talking about anything in publishing, you were talking about XML. There were blog posts, and webinars, and panels, and workshops, and white papers, and… It was the XML revolution and publishers, who, at the time, were barely cognizant of how to produce an ebook at all, let alone using this new markup language, were mesmerized. XML! This is the way of the future. This is “future-proof.” This is how to make the things we want to make. And it was so.

So, the next bit of time was spent spending lots of money on infrastructure to handle XML. Repositories and writing tools and creation tools and editing tools. All these things needed to be changed. Let’s not forget about workflow. How could you even begin to think about making books in XML and not change your workflow. Of course, there was a ton of push back on that piece at first, since, you know, publishers had been so entrenched in a legacy workflow for so long. How ever would we adapt?

But, slowly, it happened. Kind of. I mean. Authors are still writing in Word. Publishers are still sending stuff out to conversion houses. Few publishers have up and running XML-first workflows or repositories that function in the ways they claim were possible. And, all in all, it was an exercise in a lot of money spending (albeit not without a certain amount of learning). Are we now, 3-5 years on, any better off? Are publishers pumping out the goods at low or no cost? Are we raking in the cash from our major infrastructure investments?

*Sigh* Je n’sais pas. I would argue that few of the promises of XML have been implemented today. And that most publishers still struggle with a digital-first workflow and are still chained to their conversion partners.

But that is almost inconsequential because we’ve moved on. Either you got on the XML train and things are still working themselves out or you didn’t. Like I said, XML was a few years ago. It was sexy. And new. And exciting. And risky. And promised a giant payoff if you went there.

But now, XML is old. We’ve all heard it. So, what is sexy and new? Containers.

Containers is the buzz word these days. I keep seeing tweet after tweet from conferences about containers. It is clear that we, as an industry, as in a massive battle against containers. Containers, as it were, are bad. And we’ve been imprisoned by our containers for too long now! So, it is time to shed ourselves of containers and move along to a post-container world. Where content, as it were, wants to be free. [As if content were capable of such complex human emotion. But, I digress.]

Content does not like containers. In fact, content and containers are antithesis. And we would be remiss to not kill off each and every container and make content king. Containers are dead, long live content!

There are, unfortunately, a few problems with this argument.

1. A workflow dominated by producing containers is best served by XML. So, if we just spent all the time and money converting into XML factories, and now we ditch the containers that are populated by XML, then… huh.

2. Containers actually define the reading experience. Long form reading, which would encompass the large majority of what we are producing and distributing, is not best read on a scrolling webpage. In fact, cognitively, our brains have a harder time reading long form content when it is not broken up. And while it is completely lame to mimic page turns in a digital reading experience, there is something to be said for the role that the pages of a book play in alleviating cognitive overload whilst enjoying a novel.

3. What we are really after is not the elimination of containers, but a larger diversification of containers that allows the reader to make discrete decisions about his or her own reading preferences.

4. Which begs the question of disassociation. Yes, the goal is to disassociate the content from the container and make things work everywhere on every device in whatever configuration the reader wants.

Whew. It certainly is beautiful to dream.

Ultimately, we are on the right track. But there is a missing element: What technology is going to power a world of container non-alignment? When the wall came down, there was a least a general understanding that Democracy was going to overtake Communism, right?

When containers go away, XML becomes less important. As I said, XML is great for powering a series of templates (containers) and making side by side products with little or no variance.

When we take a step back and think through the technologies that would allow us to achieve what we want to, eventually, achieve we are left with the classics: HTML, CSS, Javascript. These web technologies will be the core of what we do in the future. And not permutations of them, like EPUB, but direct HTML for content, CSS for design and Javascript for interactivity and functionality.

And, you ask, is that all? Not exactly. The real story is this: the book of the future will be JSON. Yes, oh yes, a javascript API. A web service. A javascript-based data interchange that’s primary use is to ”transmit data between a server and web application, serving as an alternative to XML.” (Wikipedia)

If you want to talk about a post-container world, you have to talk about web services. The book is not a container or a static XML file. It is a dynamic, database-connected, system that is powered by light-weight, yet powerful, web technologies that are ubiquitous, thus available on a large range of devices, and easy to develop.

Let’s think about this: The content sits in a database. The reading framework lives on the device (browser). User accesses HTML, CSS, Javascript cocktail, known to them as a book, and the content is fed to them via JSON calls. When the publisher wants to edit a book? It’s immediate. When the publisher wants to update a product, immediate. When the reader wants to change devices, it makes no difference. Interplay with javascript, jQuery and jQuery Mobile? Not a problem in the world. All of these languages are based on the same core.

EPUB is a file format expressly made for making digital print books. Everything about EPUB is about creating a facsimile of a print book and making it available digitally. It is clunky. It is a container. And it is primarily and best served by XML. It is time to let go of this era. As an industry, we need to move on and evolve into something more than what we are today.

The history of human language is a history of moving from complex systems to simpler systems. Latin grammar, the root of the romance languages, is many times more complex than any of the romance languages’ grammars. And Indo-European, the mother language of Latin, is even more complex. The same is the case when we look at classical languages vs. middle-age languages vs. modern permutations of the same. Old English is much more complex a language system than the modern English system we use today.

The point is that programming languages are the same. They will follow the same trajectory. We need to shift toward simplicity to allow for further growth and expansion. Today, in EPUB we are using Latin; tomorrow, perhaps, we will be speaking French.