Another arrow in the heart of the traditional publishing industry. Big brandname marketing expert Seth Godin is cutting out his long-time publisher Portfolio and promoting/distributing his books from his own wildly popular blog. Essentially that blog has created his own business system.
In THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Jeffrey Trachtenberg reports that this trend-setter "plans to release subsequent titles himself in electronic books, via print-on-demand or in such formats as audiobooks, apps, small digital files called PDFs and podcasts."
Such an approach eliminates the long lag time - sometimes as long as 12 months - between when a final manuscript is submitted for publication and when the book is on the market.
This, I am convinced, handicapped sales of books such as AMA HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC RELATIONS by Bob Dilenschneider and JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR by Llloyd Constantine. Both had material that would have been more of interest to the marketplace, say, six or even 12 months earlier. In addition, the tone might have resonated when the manuscript had been originally submitted but might not have any longer represented perfect pitch.
For example, in the Introduction to AMA HANDBOOK ON PUBLIC RELATIONS, Dilenschneider, a leader in public affairs strategy, notes that chief executive officers [CEOS] come to him puzzled about social media. That Introduction had been set in stone in March 2009. I had assisted with the manuscript and will receive some royalties.
When the book was published by the American Management Association in February 2010, CEOs had already put in place in-house and outside teams to incorporate social media into the marketing and public relations mix. They had to. Otherwise security analysts would have taken note and probably shorted their stocks. That quickly social media migrated from a competitve advantage to a standard tool.
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