The book industry, like many areas of the media business, straddles two worlds. On one side is the 21st-century digital maelstrom, a place where software, platforms, devices and networks are upending the way authors and publishers do their work, and how readers buy and read books. On the other side is the traditional book industry, which revolves around the centuries-old concept of printing words on paper.

Casual observers might suppose that the traditional concept of a “book” is about to expire, as people switch to phones, tablets, and audiobooks. I have news for them: It’s not going to happen anytime soon. Printed books have shown a surprising amount of resiliency and flexibility (case in point: adult coloring books) and still sell very well. For my own publishing business, printed books account for 80 percent of sales (up from 70 percent three years ago).

As a consumer, I prefer traditional printed books over e-book editions. They are easy to use, don’t require batteries, and are sufficiently portable to bring on the subway or take to the beach. Like many readers, I do not want printed books to go away—in fact, I will continue to buy printed books as long as the titles are interesting and the prices are reasonable.

That said, as someone who is engaged in the business of producing and selling books, I so much prefer to be working on the edge of the digital maelstrom. It’s fraught with unpredictable change, but at the same time it’s an exciting, dynamic, and hopeful place to be working. At the same time, prospects for widespread improvements in the way publishers do business are not possible while the traditional book industry is hobbled by old ways of thinking and a few dominant players who are highly resistant to change. Take the Bowker ISBN monopoly, which makes millions off the backs of enthusiastic yet naive authors and new publishers in the United States. Then there are the big-name publishers that regularly leave books hanging in editorial limbo for years before finally releasing them. The practice of publishers launching books with little or no marketing support is a longstanding problem that has gotten worse as publishers attempt to cut costs.

Drawbacks to relying on editorial instinct

A huge impediment to the publishing industry is the bureaucratic mindset that prevents many organizations from embracing innovation. There are many opportunities available to organizations that are willing to embrace change. Yet innovation is regarded as a threat, as evidenced by the many outmoded and inefficient models in the book industry.

Consider the various processes associated with selecting and preparing books for publication. The traditional industry relies on skilled editors who serve as gatekeepers. They field calls from agents, go through the slush piles, edit the works, and shepherd the manuscripts through the publishing process. Alan Rinzler, who has been an editor for more than 50 years, described the process to NPR:

“Editors fall in love with books. They see something in it that resonates for them personally and they become passionate about it. They really have no idea whether or not the book will sell. It’s strictly an intuition, an instinct.”

Editors’ instincts sometimes yield massively successful books. A new author who stays on the best-seller lists for 20 weeks did not get there by accident. Someone at a publishing house saw potential in his or her manuscript, and an editor—or team of editors—worked with the author to finesse the text and bring it to the marketplace. Their editorial intuition is correct, and the book is a success.

Most of the time, however, books fail to make back the massive investments in time, money, and other resources. According to the same NPR article, 80-90 percent of books don’t sell. That does not mean the books are bad. But it does indicate that most titles fail to resonate with readers. It further points to a huge hole in publishers’ understanding of the marketplace … and a huge opportunity to close the gap.

In the past two decades, innovative companies from giants such as Amazon to startups such as Jellybooks have developed new data sources and new ways of measuring reader interest. Amazon is very skilled at identifying and promoting promising titles, but doesn’t share much of its data with publishers. However, publishers do have access to new types of data and services that can help gauge reader interest. For instance, Jellybooks’ technology measures how many pages readers read in a given book. If incorporated into the publishing workflow, such data could help identify titles and trends that have a much better chance of succeeding. Nevertheless, the traditional book industry still prefers to do things the old-fashioned way—by trusting gut instincts. It’s incredibly inefficient, as demonstrated by the poor success rate for new books and the ongoing struggles of the industry.

Using Lean Media in the book industry

Is there a middle ground? Over the past few years, I have been developing the Lean Media framework as a way for all kinds of media companies to change the way they develop and release books, film, magazines, music, websites, videogames, and other information and entertainment works. By reducing waste and understanding audiences, creative teams can be more focused on making great media. Conceptually, it looks like this:

Practically speaking, Lean Media entails streamlining operations and connecting with readers before the launch. Publishers can start by identifying delays, redundancies, and unnecessary processes, and working to reduce or eliminate them so the creative team (authors, editors, designers, etc.) can concentrate on developing books, instead of dealing with excessive meetings and months-long approvals. Publishers also have to be willing to show manuscripts or other draft materials (character sketches, outlines, cover designs, etc.) to beta readers and focus groups, and gathering both qualitative and quantitative reactions.

One example of Lean Media in action comes from Red Chair Press. The Massachusetts-based company recently launched Scary Tales Retold, a series of horror-themed fairy tales aimed at young readers aged 6-9. Publisher Keith Garton came up with the idea, and worked with an author and illustrator to create a half-dozen titles, including Cinderella and the Vampire Prince, Goldilocks and the Three Ghosts, and Jack and the Bloody Beanstalk. As part of the development process, Garton showed manuscripts to two groups—kids and parents—to gauge their reactions. It was crucial to validate the idea among both audiences prior to publication, as the books were intended to tread a fine line between being funny and scary. The kids liked the concept, and giggled at some of the more outrageous scenarios (for instance, Cinderella as a vampire, Jack getting squashed by the giant, etc.). Red Press also received feedback from parents, who are sensitive to books that are too scary for young kids. One piece of parental feedback that Red Press incorporated was the books should be limited to a certain age range that should be clearly stated on the cover.

Regardless of the feedback received, the Lean Media framework recognizes that the creative team is ultimately responsible for deciding how to move the project forward. In other words, authors and editors are still calling the shots—but they are doing so with a better understanding of readers. For publishers, it offers a new way to develop manuscripts and create books that audiences love.

It’s time for more publishers to consider how better data, new technology, lean thinking, and other innovations can be brought into their businesses. Embracing change is not easy, but when it comes to making media, clinging to the past is not an option.

Ian Lamont is the founder of i30 Media Corp. and serves on the board of the Independent Book Publishing Association. He writes about Lean Media at leanmedia.org. Follow him on Twitter at @ilamont.

The post The Book Industry’s ‘Gut Instinct’ Problem appeared first on MediaShift.

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On the night of July 7, reports surfaced from a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas that shots had been fired. On the streets of the city, it was a chaotic scene as a lone gunman targeted police for murder and protestors attempted to escape the violence. Outside of Dallas, people tried to understand what was going on. Some turned to television news to get updates, but millions more turned to digital sources, including Twitter.

Twitter was a way for audiences to access raw scenes from the protest and the law enforcement response to the shooting, as well as unconfirmed reports and hearsay. Witnesses shared their stories on Twitter, while audiences all over the world added their observations and prayers. However, as the night drew on, many people gravitated to one of the most reliable local sources of information: The official Twitter account of the Dallas Morning News (@dallasnews), whose reporters and affiliates live-tweeted the crisis as it unfolded. The @dallasnews feed broadcast a stream of updates, reports from its journalists on the ground, and photos and video from the scene:

Twitter was an invaluable tool for the Dallas Morning News that night. It was a way for the 130-year-old newspaper to leverage its considerable editorial resources to report on a live, breaking news story. While TV news typically owns breaking news events, live-tweeting enabled the Dallas Morning News to cover the story in ways that the TV news crews could not. Twitter also provided a critical alternative when the Dallas Morning News website was brought down by a tidal wave of visitors.

>>>>> Related: DigitalEd Training: How to Live-Tweet Events. Learn more here. <<<<<<

The Wide Range of Live-Tweeting

The coverage of the Dallas shootings was not the first instance of a news organization live-tweeting an event. Journalists have used Twitter to live-tweet breaking news since the social network first made its debut 10 years ago. Moreover, Twitter can be used to live-tweet all kinds of events, including:

• Local news
• Weather events and natural disasters
• Community events
• Rallies and elections
• Sports
• Entertainment news
• Product releases
• Conferences and seminars

I see all kinds of news organizations live-tweeting events. The 2016 Elections have been a boon for live-tweeting political events, with solo journalists, commentators, and news organizations providing play-by-play coverage of debates and speeches. In recent months, I have also seen live-tweets from media teams reporting on Apple product announcements and an unmanned rocket landing on a barge. At the other end of the spectrum, the sports reporter at my local newspaper sometimes live-tweets local Little League games:

My first live-tweeting experience took place at a technology conference. At previous conferences I had used blogs to report on the speakers and exhibits, but for this conference I used my personal Twitter account (@ilamont) to shoot out interesting facts, quotes, and observations. It was liberating.  Instead of trying to compose a 400-word blog post on a single topic, which might take an hour or two to write and edit, I was able to push out dozens of tweets for each speaker as it was happening. I added the official conference hashtag to each tweet, which made it easier for other participants and fans to find and share. The conference MC even sought me out during one of the breaks to chat.

While I no longer work as a tech journalist, I still live-tweet at events that I attend. It’s an invaluable tool for sharing information, connecting with other people, and offering my observations about the media industry and other topics that interest me. While giving a presentation in May about my Lean Media book project, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that some attendees were live-tweeting the event, sharing information from my presentation with followers who otherwise would not know about my ideas:

Lean media: you don’t need all your smart people working on a media project; don’t use 15 when 5 can get it done. #HEAAinnovation

— Nicole Gustas (@rednikki) May 22, 2016

The Risks

However, there are risks to live-tweeting. The immediacy and brevity of Twitter means that quotes, observations, and video are posted with limited context and fact-checking. It’s easy to use Twitter to inform audiences, but false, inaccurate, or exaggerated information can make it into the feed and be spread to a global audience. For instance, during the Dallas shootings, the DMN Twitter feed shared the photo of a suspected shooter who turned out to be an innocent man.

Complex or nuanced stories may not be so suited to live-tweeting. It would be difficult to live-tweet events such as the release of an economics report, the results of a ground-breaking medical study, or the official announcement of a 30-page federal indictment. Such topics are not only difficult to parse, they are also not particularly photogenic. In such a scenario, it may be tempting to stick to the highlights, but where live-tweeting excels is in the sharing of information, reactions, imagery, and details that cannot be found anywhere else.

Best practices for live-tweeting an event

Live-tweeting an event can be done alone, or in concert. For teams, coordination will be necessary to make sure that each person has his or her own area of responsibility. Some teams use shared Twitter accounts, but in recent years I have seen organizations shifting to a model that uses a master account for major updates and retweets of reporters and official sources broadcasting interesting information, interviews, and other media. This is how the Dallas Morning News operated on July 7 and 8. As the crisis began to unfold, @dallasnews shared the handles of its reporters on the scene:

Should live-tweeting include retweets from non-official sources? People on the street may witness something that is important to understanding a story. But it may lack context or details, or it may come from an account whose ownership is difficult to verify. If images or video is involved, there may also be questions of copyright. It’s up to journalists and news organizations to make policies or on-the-spot decisions about how to handle tricky situations.   

Technology tools for live-tweeting

Live-tweeting an event does not require a particularly heavy-duty tech setup:

• Laptop with Wi-Fi connection
• Phone with carrier or Wi-Fi connection
• Twitter app or client software such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck
• Specialized apps for editing or sharing video
• Charging cables

Having a good network connection is critical. If no Wi-Fi signal is available, or it is overloaded, I sometimes use my phone’s personal hotspot feature to provide a Wi-Fi connection for my laptop.

I generally use the Twitter Web client on my laptop and the Twitter app on my phone. However, client applications such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are good for monitoring certain topics either as a saved keyword search or hashtag.

One of the most important pieces of software for live-tweeting is a basic text editor such as Notepad for Windows, TextEdit for Macs. If I have advance notice of the event, I will create a simple list of relevant hashtags and Twitter accounts which can be copied and pasted into new tweets.

If you intend to use video, either shoot in short clips or have assign someone to edit or extract short clips that are optimized for Twitter. Twitter has a size limit for videos, as well as a length limit (currently 2 minutes and 20 seconds). Uploading a long video will take a long time and will require a good network connection.

It is possible to live-tweet video using Periscope (an app that Twitter owns) but be aware of the following limitations:

• Not everyone in your audience will have the Periscope app installed.
• Maintaining a live video feed makes it difficult to tweet text/photo updates at the same time.
• Periscope requires a strong network connection, whereas text tweets can work over a lower-bandwidth connection.
• Periscope and video editing apps use a lot of battery power.

Twitter and other services offer widgets that can be added to website home pages. If you know that you are going to be live-tweeting an event, or breaking news turns into a live-tweeting opportunity, be sure to notify your existing audiences via the website, newsletter, and other social media. You can refer them to the Twitter feed, or to a web page with the widget installed.

If done correctly, live-tweeting an event can deliver huge value for audiences while helping media organizations cover breaking news, community issues, and other important events. It’s not hard to get started, and if done well, live-tweeting can help your organization stand out compared to the competition.

>>>>> Related: DigitalEd Training: How to Live-Tweet Events. Learn more here. <<<<<<

Ian Lamont is the founder of i30 Media, which publishes In 30 Minutes guides. He is also writing a book about Lean Media. Follow him on Twitter via @ilamont

The post Live-Tweeting the News: The Risks and Rewards appeared first on MediaShift.

Instructor: Ian Lamont, Founder, i30 Media

Practical approaches to using Twitter to cover live events and breaking news

When news is breaking or an important event is unfolding, people turn to Twitter for authoritative, trusted voices and real-time information and insights. In this session, content creators of all stripes will learn how to use Twitter to provide effective live coverage of news, sports, conferences, and other events.

For journalists, Twitter offers an opportunity to highlight information and points of view that might otherwise be excluded from regular news coverage. Twitter can also help users raise the profile of their live events, engage with their audiences, and/or strengthen their brand.

The presentation will feature numerous examples and explore tools and time-saving techniques that help users maximize output and audience engagement.

What you’ll learn from this training:

1. Types of events suitable for live-tweeting
2. Preparing for an event
3. Collaborative live coverage and tips & tricks
4. Marketing via Twitter, newsletters, websites, hashtags, etc.

Handouts:

• Presentation deck

Who should take this training:

• Reporters interested in leveraging Twitter to cover live events
• Editors seeking a way to augment their regular coverage with live-tweeting
• Anyone who wants to leverage live events to engage with audiences, participants, and observers

Date and Time: July 27, 2016 at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT

Price: $39

Register now for the online training!

Note: If you can’t attend the live session, you can still register and see the archived video and ask questions of the instructor. Free registration for BigMarker is required.

About the Instructor:

Ian Lamont is an award-winning business and technology journalist and the founder of i30 Media Corporation. He has written for more than a dozen online and print publications and has also served as the managing editor of The Industry Standard. His writing and editorial work has garnered industry awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and the American Society of Business Publication Editors. Lamont is the author of several In 30 Minutes guides, including Twitter In 30 Minutes, Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes, and Excel Basics In 30 Minutes.

The post DigitalEd: How to Live-Tweet Events appeared first on MediaShift.

All of them started as experiments. The Huffington Post was launched in the mid-2000s as a link list and blogging site, leveraging the celebrity network of co-founder Arianna Huffington for content. The Simpsons began in 1987 as short animated clips shown during the commercial breaks of a sketch comedy show on the upstart Fox television network. Minecraft was created in 2009 by a Swedish game programmer, Markus “Notch” Persson, as a part-time project. Led Zeppelin I was recorded in a few weeks in 1968 after the British rock band toured Scandinavia, with production self-funded by guitarist Jimmy Page and the band’s manager.

Led Zeppelin 1 album cover.

When the artists, creators, and producers launched these experiments, there was no guarantee they would do well. But the way they innovated greatly increased the chances of success. They moved fast, used low-cost methods of production, and kept the teams small. When they released early versions to the public, they paid close attention to what audiences liked—and didn’t like. This feedback could be incorporated into subsequent releases, and could also help drive marketing and business decisions.

All of the examples listed above are examples of what I call lean media. While their creators went on to enjoy great success, lean media is not just the domain of superstars. Lean media methods can be applied to products designed for niche or local audiences, or products that have a short shelf-life.

Further, lean media projects can take place in a variety of environments. There are many examples of people working out of a coffee shop or basement recording studio, as well as professional production teams working for established companies. All kinds of people and organizations can leverage lean media techniques to create innovative, exciting new works which resonate with audiences and help achieve business goals.

The lean startup movement

My way of evaluating the success and failure of new media products changed after attending an October 2010 talk by Eric Ries, a software developer and author of “The Lean Startup.” Earlier in his career, Ries co-founded a company that attempted to capitalize on the instant messaging craze. As CTO of IMVU, he was responsible for developing a product that used avatars to connect with multiple IM applications. The team planned lots of features, which took six months to develop.

The initial product was an utter flop. Very few people downloaded the software, and only after interviewing and watching people use the software did they realize most of their initial assumptions about their target audiences were wrong. Testers liked the avatar concept, but hated the IM connections. IMVU ended up throwing away thousands of lines of code before finding a model (based on a 3D virtual world) that worked.

Ries realized that IMVU’s initial top-down approach to product development was flawed. The team had wasted months creating a complex product that no one wanted. However, once they started to listen to what their users were saying, interesting things started to happen. They were able to steer IMVU into areas the development team had not previously considered. Today, IMVU has millions of registered users and a huge database of virtual goods.     

Based on his experiences and discussions with CEOs and managers from other companies, Ries articulated the lean startup methodology. Central to the production, marketing, and growth of a venture is validated learning—the process of “demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects.” It is a rigorous approach to product development that emphasizes getting early versions of the product in front of users, carefully measuring the results, and quickly iterating.

Another concept that is central to the lean startup methodology is the minimum viable product (MVP). An MVP is more than a technical prototype — it’s a bare-bones product that can be shown to early adopters to validate assumptions. Through a deliberate cycle of building, measuring, and iterating, a real product that has real demand can emerge. With real demand comes repeat orders, lower costs, and eventually growth (and profit).

The iterative cycles are structured to achieve product/market fit. Marc Andreessen, a co-creator of the Netscape Web browser and a top Silicon Valley venture capitalist, gives the following definition:

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

It sounds so basic. Make something that people want. Yet countless technology companies have made the fundamental mistake of building an app, a gadget, a platform, or something else that people do not want. They may have achieved product/solution fit, in which a team creates a great product that solves some problem … but it’s not a problem that customers care about!

Bringing lean ideas to the media world

Ries’ focus was on software and technology startups, but I realized some his ideas about product development, feedback cycles, and eliminating waste could be applied to media content as well.

I had seen it with my own eyes. Print content, websites, video, music and other products that leveraged lean methods had many positive attributes. User feedback could be observed and incorporated sooner. The products were cheaper to produce, and they made it to market more quickly.

Conversely, products that took the “big launch” approach — large teams, top-down directives, secretive launches, etc. — tended to encounter problems. They required more staff and budget commitments, took a long time to complete, and more often than not led to mediocre products or expensive failures.

Just as Ries had articulated a framework for lean tech startups, I wanted to create a lean framework that was specific to media ventures. While media and technology startups share some commonalities, I believe there are some marked differences in the way a band, video producer, games designer, or an online editor approaches developing products (content) and connects with customers (audiences). Hard-to-measure intangibles such as creativity, design, and brand really do matter.

What causes media products to fail?

I’m a media person. I’ve been involved as a producer and manager in various media businesses since the early 1990s, including the music industry, broadcast television, online tech news, and book publishing. Over the years I’ve been involved with scores of product launches, new brands, and innovative media experiments. Some succeeded. Most failed. For years, I was apt to blame failures on insufficient planning, poor marketing, staff issues, and lack of management buy-in. I could also point to factors beyond our control, ranging from economic crises to technological shifts.

In hindsight, I now believe that a counterproductive way of thinking about media creation contributed to many of the failures. Over and over again, in many different companies, I participated in the creation of expensive, intensive, and secretive productions. This formulaic approach—which I call the big launch playbook—may work for a small minority of productions. But it sets up many other ventures for failure.

As the term suggests, the “big launch” is focused on the launch. There is a lot of planning and building in secret, with everything building up to the official launch date. Producers and creators are guided mainly by creative instincts and prior experience, external cues of what is doing well in the marketplace, and internal feedback. There is an emphasis on professional production processes and expensive marketing campaigns. Audiences seldom have a chance to see or experience the product before the official launch. If they do, it is usually through pre-launch marketing campaigns (think of the Star Wars clips released in the runup to the launch of The Force Awakens) or focus groups, by which point the development phase is nearly complete. After launch, there may be an opportunity for feedback-inspired improvements. In many cases, such improvements may be very limited, or focused on marketing rather than changes to the core product.

Conceptually, the big launch playbook looks something like this:

Teams can make elaborate plans and spend lots of time and money developing something that audiences are supposed to like. However, the true test doesn’t come until the end of the process when it’s released to the world. If it doesn’t work? There may be some low-hanging fruit that can help put the product on the right track. But in many cases, it may be too late or too hard to fix it.

The lean media playbook

The lean media playbook emphasizes the following elements:

• Small teams. Individual producers or small teams drive the project forward. Keeping the team small lets members move more quickly.
• Reduction of waste. Producers work with the tools and resources at hand, and avoid complex, expensive, or time-wasting processes. Creating a satisfying media experience for early audiences is more important than obsessive attention to detail.
• Audience feedback. Teams monitor audience reaction to early versions of the product to gather measurable data (metrics) and qualitative feedback (commentary).
• Iterative development cycles. The team improves a product based on metrics, audience feedback, and their own sensibilities and instincts.

Conceptually, the lean media framework looks like this:

As the diagram indicates, audience feedback plays a major role in the development of lean media products. Feedback can be qualitative (i.e., based on audience comments or observations of their behavior) or quantitative (based on metrics or other forms of numerical data).

For instance, when The Simpsons first appeared as short commercial “bumpers” on the Tracey Ullman Show, quantitative data included television ratings. But there was important qualitative information, too. When producers bundled the clips into longer reels and showed them during costume breaks to live studio audience, the resulting laughter validated the idea that The Simpsons could be developed into a full-length program.

Lean startup practitioners favor actionable data that can help product teams understand what is working and make hard decisions about how to proceed (or not; if the data does not support moving forward, the team may “pivot” to something else). In the media world, qualitative feedback may be more accessible, particularly during the early prototype stages. The feedback may cover:

• Design elements
• Accessibility
• Aesthetic considerations
• How it makes them feel
• Pricing

Ideally, audiences will share feedback with the team at the earlier stages of development, starting with the idea itself. Of course, no product or prototype will be ready the day your brilliant plan is hatched, but for certain formats it is possible to talk with audiences about the concept, or show simple outlines or wireframes. Use those comments to inform development of the working prototype.

Once a working prototype is available, don’t keep it under wraps—let your test audiences try it out! Use the audience feedback to shape progressive iterations of the prototype, with the goal of getting even more actionable feedback and metrics for the soft launch.

What is a soft launch? You may have heard the term before—it’s common in both the software industry as well as with the launch of certain types of physical products. Firms conducting soft launches quietly release their products to a small group of customers in order to gauge interest or tweak features and/or marketing messages before the main event.

In the lean media context, a soft launch is the initial public appearance of the product, or elements of the product such as the design, important creative elements, etc. Depending on how audiences react, the media product in question may only need some minor tweaks—or it could require a major overhaul.

The hard launch is the point at which the product is stable in terms of creative vision, production, presentation, features, and messaging. It may not be necessary or even possible to make significant changes after this point, although motivated teams will constantly be looking for ways to further improve their creations.

Some lean media considerations

Are all low-budget productions lean media? Not necessarily. Audience feedback must be incorporated into the development process, to let producers better understand what audiences like—and don’t like. Otherwise, it’s just a low-budget production operating under the big launch mindset.

It should also be noted that adding audience feedback to the mix does not mean internal feedback is being thrown by the wayside. Nor should producers feel obliged to incorporate every whim of their early test audiences. Rather, the team needs to evaluate and synthesize this information, and make decisions on how to proceed. Some audience signals will be easy to interpret. Others will require the team to balance other considerations (creative, production, marketing) to decide on the best way forward.

Where does it all end? Ideally, the product will grow into something that enjoys great success. Think of some of the examples cited in the introduction, or some of your own media favorites that started lean and grew into something significant and long-lasting.

In reality, however, many products will never get out of the development stage. Maybe audiences don’t like it (no matter how many improvements are made), so the creators go back to the drawing board. Or perhaps the team is working on several products at once, and when one of them shows promise, they drop their work on the others to push the winner forward.

The lean media framework is itself still at the prototype stage. I am sharing ideas with early audiences (you) to gather feedback and make additional improvements, with the goal of creating a simple guide to the basic lean media concepts. Feel free to leave your comments or share your experiences below, or check out the lean media book website, which contains additional draft chapters and examples.

Ian Lamont is the founder of i30 Media Corporation, which publishes In 30 Minutes® Guides. He has written for more than a dozen online and print publications, and served as the managing editor of The Industry Standard. To learn more, follow @ilamont on Twitter, or visit the lean media website.

The post Lean Media: A New Framework for Media Production and Innovation appeared first on MediaShift.

At a very basic level, it’s possible to correlate available metrics with specific events. For instance, if App Annie shows a sudden spike in refunds for your top seller beginning two months ago, or a rise in your category rankings, consider what could have caused the change. Did you introduce a new edition, or did you get a plug on a national radio or TV program? Is your e-book subject to seasonal sales or drop-offs?

Of course, when considering an event or trend in the data, such as a spike in sales or a plateau in category rankings, multiple factors may be responsible. It’s also possible that specific causes may be unknown to you — Amazon reveals very little about how its search engine works, and does not announce when it tweaks its algorithms.

In addition, when trying to interpret data, it’s vital to keep in mind the adage, “correlation does not equal causation.” Assumptions can sometimes lead you down the wrong path, and lead to decisions that have the opposite of the intended effect.

The cover experiment

Beyond passive interpretation of the data, it’s also possible to take an experimental approach. Testing a new product or marketing campaign and measuring the results can yield insights and help authors identify opportunities. It doesn’t have to be complicated — just make a single change to a title on sale, and then look at the daily sales figures, category rankings, and other data to measure the impact. Elements that can be measured include:

• Price changes
• New marketing campaigns or promotions
• Changing descriptions, categories, or other metadata
• Changes to cover art

One early experiment involved changing the cover of one of my titles from DIY art to a professionally designed cover. Using Google Sheets, I tracked daily KDP sales and Amazon category rankings before and after the switch, and observed an aggregate 50 percent increase in daily sales in the weeks following the change, as well as a corresponding rise in the overall ranking in the Amazon Kindle store. This convinced me to use professional design services for all future titles. You can see the before and after images for “Dropbox In 30 Minutes” below:

I’ve used the same designer for all “In 30 Minutes” titles since that experiment. There is a cost associated with using a professional designer, but the measurable sales boost is worth it.

Using metrics to turn around a failing title

And then there’s the flop I mentioned in part 1 of this series. After a string of successful releases of “In 30 Minutes” guides, I released a new title that explained how to use spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel. For the first three weeks there were no sales. What was wrong, and how could I fix the problem?

I immediately decided to carry out a series of experiments, and measure the results. The chart below shows the Kindle Store rank of the title from early November through the spring:

Each one of the blue dots represents a new data point. The higher the value, the worse the ranking in the Kindle store. On each date, I often implemented a specific product or marketing action, or attempted to measure the impact of the last change. Here are some of the events:

Nov. 3: Released “Spreadsheets In 30 Minutes.”
Nov. 7: Changed name of guide to “Excel In 30 Minutes.”
Nov. 18: Still no sales.
Nov. 24: Changed title to “Excel Basics In 30 Minutes.”
Nov. 29: First sale recorded. Minor metadata changes implemented.
Dec. 12: Dropped price to $5.99.
Dec. 25: No further sales since price change.

By the end of 2012, things were looking dire. There had been practically no sales in two months. The Kindle Store ranking was approaching 1 million, which any author or publisher knows is not a good place to be.

Then some of my marketing experiments began to yield results. In early January, I implemented a significant metadata change, including updating the description and changing the categories. All of a sudden, the title started to sell. I couldn’t be sure that the metadata change was solely responsible, but something was making the book more noticeable or appealing to Amazon.com users.

In the early spring, I started a Goodreads Giveaway. In the first week that the promotion was active, I observed a spike in sales. I was far more confident that there was a connection between the giveaway and the new sales, because I had new metrics to work with — the Goodreads data that showed the number of people who signed up for the promotion as well as the new “to-reads” as hundreds of people added the title to their reading lists. I assumed that some potential readers couldn’t wait for the promo to end, and went over to Amazon to buy the guide.

This data not only showed that sales were picking up, it informed many of the marketing and product decisions that followed. For instance, every title I have released since January has included a Goodreads Giveaway as part of the launch marketing. I have observed a similar mini sales boost each time I have launched a Giveaway.

Taking e-book metrics to the next level

What does the future hold for metrics in the e-publishing industry? I look forward to App Annie and other third-party services expanding their metrics offerings to include data from Nook Press, CreateSpace, and other platforms. I also hope platform owners can expose new data via APIs or other mechanisms to allow authors and publishers to get a better understanding of how readers are using e-books. Which chapters are they reading, and which chapters are they skipping? Where in the books are they adding bookmarks or annotations, or zooming in on images? What links are being clicked? What other sorts of engagement are taking place? This type of data is already available to app developers through tools such as Flurry and Localytics, and help developers improve content and user interfaces. As e-books become more app-like, authors can use this data to make better reading experiences for their audiences — and help improve sales.

If you’re an independent author or publisher, how do you use metrics? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. I will try to answer questions as they come up.

Part 1: How to Track E-Book Sales with App Annie, Google Sheets

Ian Lamont’s media career started more than 20 years ago and spans three continents. It includes a stint in the British music business and a six-year residence in Taipei, where he learned Mandarin, worked for a local TV network and newspaper, and started a hard-rock band. He was the senior editor, new media for IDG’s Computerworld and served as the managing editor of The Industry Standard. After graduating from the Sloan Fellows program at MIT, Lamont founded two start-up ventures, including a mobile software company and i30 Media, which publishes In 30 Minutes® guides. In his free time, he loves spending time with his family, geeking out on genealogy, and improving his Chinese cooking skills (he cooks a mean 三杯雞!). Follow him on Twitter at @ilamont or email him at ian@in30minutes.com.

The post How to Boost E-Book Sales by Tracking Marketing Tactics appeared first on MediaShift.

As a small, bootstrapped operation, my company could have written it off as an embarrassing flop and moved on. But that’s not how I roll. Not only was I curious about what went wrong, I also needed to find a path to sales. So I employed an approach that has served me well in the world of digital media: I launched a series of product and marketing experiments, backed up by metrics.

If you’re a self-published author or a small publisher, how well do you know your metrics? Don’t worry if you don’t know much, or only use metrics for basic tracking purposes. In part 1 of this two-part series, I am going to share some tools that can help you tame your data and leverage metrics for better decision-making. In part 2, I’ll share some insights gleaned from my own experience publishing a series of how-to guides, and how data has helped me make better-informed decisions about product development, marketing and distribution.

Basic Metrics And The Excel Gap

Most authors who publish on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform have a good idea of their current monthly sales totals, as well as the sales and category rankings for each of their titles. Judging by some of the discussions I see on author forums and blogs, some authors religiously follow their daily stats. Authors also monitor the current sales figures from Apple’s iTunes Connect, Nook Press, Kobo, CreateSpace, and other self-publishing and print-on-demand (POD) platforms.

But it’s much harder for authors to identify trends over longer periods of time, or leverage metrics in other ways. This is not because of a lack of data. All self-publishing platforms offer basic sales figures and make older data available for download. The problem: The presentation of current data tends to be poor and the data downloads — usually spreadsheets that require a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel — are hard to work with. Even Apple, which has created industry-changing user interfaces for desktop computers and mobile devices, can only offer authors a simple bar chart showing daily sales on iTunes Connect (see screenshot, below). Monthly revenue is available in downloadable CSV (comma-separated value) format — but there are separate files for separate countries, and authors have to do the currency conversion on their own.

App Annie

Fortunately, there is a new tool that allow sales, revenue, and even ratings or review data to be aggregated, analyzed, and leveraged for marketing campaigns, product updates, and other business decisions. App Annie, which offers a metrics tool for developers of iOS and Android Apps, recently released a tool aimed at the e-book market. Authors and publishers who create a free account and share their KDP and iTunes Connect login credentials are able to get a long-term view of sales and revenue, which can then be sliced and diced by title and market:

App Annie gives insights into other metrics, as well. Amazon ratings and reviews are aggregated for each title, and it’s also possible to see rank history, daily ranks, and highest ranks reached by title and country.

Importantly, it’s possible to see how other books (including competing titles) are ranking in various categories in different markets. This is publicly available information, but it is very hard to track over time. Sales Rank Express and other online sites provide similar tracking, but the advantage of App Annie is that the data is brought together with your own sales and revenue figures. Here’s the view in App Annie for Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” which shows rankings data for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan:

App Annie isn’t perfect. There are shortcomings:

• Only sales and revenue data from KDP and iTunes Connect are included. Data from Nook Press, CreateSpace, and Kobo cannot be viewed in App Annie.
• There is a lag in the monthly data. For instance, monthly KDP sales/revenue data doesn’t appear until the middle of the following month.
• Authors who are concerned about sharing data with a third-party service may not be satisfied with App Annie’s promise to encrypt the data and “never, ever” share it. Considering the many reports of data breaches involving companies including Dropbox, Facebook, and Apple, there is a legitimate reason to be concerned.

Despite these issues, App Annie is much easier to use than the next tool in my arsenal: Google Sheets, an online spreadsheet program that is part of Google Drive’s free online office suite.

Google Sheets

Spreadsheets have an image problem. Most people assume that programs such as Excel and Google Sheets are intended for accountants, financiers, scientists, and other geeky types. Creating a spreadsheet, sorting data, using functions, and making charts seems daunting, and best left to the nerds.

Not true! Once new users get over the unfamiliar screen layout and commands, basic spreadsheet functions are easy to learn. Learning Excel or Google Sheets is outside of the scope of this article, but if you’re interested I’ve written a how-to guide for Google Drive (which includes Google Sheets) as well as a guide that covers Excel Basics. There are also numerous how-to videos available on YouTube.

For my publishing company, I use Google Sheets over Excel for the following reasons:

1. Sheets is free.
2. It allows me to access data from any computer I am using, as well as mobile devices.
3. I can use it to collaborate with authors, copy editors, designers, and other freelancers.
4. I can create online forms based on Google Sheets that make data entry easier for both myself and some of my freelancers.

Unlike App Annie, Google Sheets doesn’t magically display sales or ranking data. It has to be uploaded, imported, or manually copied and pasted from other sources. It then needs to be manipulated, using simple formulas that calculate totals, percentages, discounts, and other important indicators. You can analyze the data just by looking at the raw results in Google Sheets, but it’s also possible to use Sheets’ chart wizard to create visualizations that can aid in interpretation.

Yes, doing all of these things can be a pain. But once you have a spreadsheet set up to gather and process certain types of data, it can be very easy to spot trends, measure the effectiveness of promotional campaigns, and track basic information about your business. I have one spreadsheet that aggregates all unit sales and revenue from all platforms. It was difficult to create (more than 300 rows) but it’s absolutely critical to monitoring what’s going on. Until App Annie came on the scene, I maintained another spreadsheet to measure the impact of specific campaigns, changes to products or marketing, and even the introduction of competing titles.

In the next piece, I’ll talk about how I used Google Sheets to measure the impact of a new book cover. I’ll also reveal how metrics helped me turn around sales trajectory of the flop mentioned at the beginning of this column.

In the meantime, I would be interested in hearing about how other authors and publishers have used Google Sheets, App Annie, or other tools to drive product decisions or marketing. Leave your comments and questions in the space below.

Part 2: How to Boost E-Book Sales by Tracking Marketing Tactics

Correction: This post has been altered to correct that iTunes ranking data is available.

Ian Lamont’s media career started more than 20 years ago and spans three continents. It includes a stint in the British music business and a six-year residence in Taipei, where he learned Mandarin, worked for a local TV network and newspaper, and started a hard-rock band. He was the senior editor, new media for IDG’s Computerworld and served as the managing editor of The Industry Standard. After graduating from the Sloan Fellows program at MIT, Lamont founded two start-up ventures, including a mobile software company and i30 Media, which publishes In 30 Minutes® guides. In his free time, he loves spending time with his family, geeking out on genealogy, and improving his Chinese cooking skills (he cooks a mean 三杯雞!). Follow him on Twitter at @ilamont or email him at ian@in30minutes.com.

The post How to Track Book Sales with App Annie, Google Sheets appeared first on MediaShift.

Fred Wilson — a venture capitalist who has made investments in Twitter, Zynga, Tumblr, Etsy, and FourSquare, among others — apparently thinks not. As reported on MediaShift on November 15, Wilson told an audience of CUNY students with interests in business and journalism that better opportunities could be found in industries that aren’t as “picked over” and have problems that aren’t being solved.

As the co-founder of a technology startup that once considered the news industry as a source of partnerships and revenue, I agree with Wilson that startups should look elsewhere.

However, the reason they should do so is not because the media industry lacks problems that need to be solved. If anything, the media industry has problems that span every sector of the industry and every segment of the value chain. Rather, the reason why startups should look for other opportunities is many industry problems are so intractable, and the chance for making a successful business is so slim, that it simply doesn’t make sense to target it.

The case of Invantory

Right now, we’re developing Invantory, a mobile software platform that targets the local classifieds marketplace that is currently dominated by Craigslist. We’re going to make the Invantory experience one that is defined by an easy-to-use interface and great-looking photographs that are now possible with most smartphones. Further, we’re attacking a problem that has vexed users of Craigslist and newspaper classifieds for years — the lack of a system to vet who you’re dealing with. Our reputation system, which is built on proprietary algorithms and other safeguards, will help users better evaluate the other parties before they make contact.

My partner, Sam Chow, is a former Microsoft engineer and an experienced programmer for Apple’s iOS platform. My own background is online news, content and communities. In the 2000s, I was a technology journalist and online editor, and in the 1990s, I worked at a daily newspaper and on a daily television newscast.

My news roots run deep, and I thought there might be some alignment between our platform and the needs of local news publishers, which have seen their own classifieds revenue fall sharply in the last five years. In 2006, classified revenue in four categories (cars, jobs, real estate and “other”) totaled $17 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Last year, it totaled just $5.6 billion. Wouldn’t it be great if our platform could somehow help the media industry, while building Invantory’s user base?

I began seeking out publishers, online news professionals and other experts to better understand the market and the possibilities for our platform to serve online news operations through white-label apps or other solutions. Very quickly I realized there would be a problem selling to publishers. Most people I talked with had reservations about dealing with software vendors, ranging from a reluctance to share revenue to outright mistrust.

“I’ve dealt with enough vendors to become very cynical,” a publisher of a small newspaper told me. “Whether they extrapolate revenue based on bigger markets or outright lie, we have become very suspicious.”

This sentiment, which was echoed by others I spoke with, made me realize that the sales cycles would be punishing. For many customers, it would be hard to get our foot in the door, let alone successfully close a deal.

Yet the same publisher was interested in a technology that could help once again make classifieds a draw — as well as bring in revenue or improve efficiencies. He readily admitted that his own technology was complicated for users. “On Craigslist, it’s easy to create an ad, upload a photo, and publish,” he said. “We should be able to do that.”

The barriers

I spent time studying how classified systems worked at various publishers. I found it very interesting that many smaller publishers still had a classifieds desk that took ads over the phone, often augmented by email with customers. Some larger publishers had online classifieds tools, but they were clunky. Part of the problem related to the fact that most attempted to serve both the print and online classifieds, and did neither job well. Others were poorly configured. The system used by my hometown newspaper didn’t even let me post classifieds locally — but did make it possible to create listings in markets more than 20 miles away. The system also tried to charge expensive rates for relatively small ads — $15 to $20 was a typical base rate for a small text ad in print. (A simple online classified ad was included for free.) No wonder people were abandoning newspaper classifieds for Craigslist.

Beyond the clunky ad creation systems, one of the biggest technology problems I observed was the nonstandard online publishing platforms used across the industry. This is actually a huge, underappreciated issue for all news publishers, including broadcasters, news agencies, blog-based news and opinion sites. It leads to additional costs, complexities, and talent shortages that companies based on older media platforms — including print, television and radio — did not have to deal with.

Among newspaper websites, it’s not hard to find home-grown hacks or heavily customized content management systems. Even at publishers which use the same CMS across their properties, variations are common — a typical example might involve different versions of Drupal and Drupal modules, owing to staggered technology upgrades, different needs for various brands, and complications involving legacy applications and data. Throw different registration and online payment systems into the mix, and you can start to understand the problem new software platforms targeting this industry are faced with.

Related to the CMS mess was a lack of developers and other technical staff at media organizations. This is a problem that afflicts many industries, not just the news business. But it exacerbated the problem with nonstandard publishing systems. Not only would heavy programming work be required to get Invantory to work with a new customer’s site, but integration would largely fall back on us. Systems integration is technology consulting that requires lots of time and specialized development staff. It was not a business that we wanted to get into.

The Final Nails in the Coffin

The final nails in the coffin came at the New England Newspaper & Press Association’s fall conference in October. There, I heard more details about the pain being experienced by publishers, and received advice that helped us make our decision to abandon our original plan to target the media industry.

One of the speakers, Amy Mitchell of the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, laid out the grim financial outlook. She stated that while most newspapers are still managing a profit, they’re surviving by managing costs. Mitchell was unable to identify any solution to the revenue crisis. “We are not recommending anything other than experimentation,” she told the audience, adding that this was going to be tough at many publications whose corporate cultures are resistant to change and innovation. This signaled that publishers were not only less likely to invest in innovative technologies, they were also unable to afford more expensive third-party software.

News industry analyst, author and blogger Ken Doctor was even more skeptical of a turnaround. “It is impossible for anyone to keep up with the disruption,” he stated. Doctor went on to predict that broadcasters would soon begin to feel the same pain as newspapers and magazines, as business models based on traditional advertising eroded further.

However, Doctor also saw opportunity in tablet platforms. “If you read, you’re going to have a tablet,” he said, adding that the price of Kindles and other devices will soon drop to $50. “Why wouldn’t you buy one?” he asked the audience.

The final presentation of the afternoon was from Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor turned Silicon Valley CEO. As a consultant, speaker and author of the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, he has become a well-known pundit on the travails of the news industry. During his NENPA talk, he predicted more top-line pain for publishers, owing to a number of trends:

• “The audience trend is you don’t have audiences under the age of 40.”
• “The most important thing happening is brands are going directly to consumers.”
• “High-priced reach advertising is not defensible.”
• “Coca-Cola has 34 million friends on Facebook … This is the future for marketing and advertising.”

Moving on

That evening, I met my partner and told him that the idea of selling to the news industry wouldn’t work. Doing so would require huge investments of time and staff expertise, for skeptical customers who generally couldn’t afford expensive technology systems. Raising capital would be more difficult when investors heard who we were targeting. We are still going ahead with our plan to create a mobile classifieds platform, but will instead go direct to consumer based on a freemium business model.

We’ve already built out the cloud infrastructure and now have a demo application. Work has already started on our intellectual property — the proprietary technologies that will drive our reputation system. Soon we will begin user testing. (If you’re interested in signing up for product updates, or seeing an alternative to Craigslist in your town or city, please use the sign-up form on the front page of the Invantory website.)

We understand that we’ll face a new set of challenges, especially in terms of developing a solid go-to-market strategy and revenue plan. But we believe the time is ripe for innovation in this space.

Ian Lamont is the former managing editor of The Industry Standard and a web media veteran with years of experience developing online news, community and content. He eventually left the news media to return to grad school, earning an MBA as an MIT Sloan Fellow. His startup, Invantory, is a mobile software platform for local classifieds. Follow him on Twitter at @invantory or @ilamont or email him at ian.lamont@invantory.com.

The post Why Our Startup Decided Not To Target the Newspaper Industry appeared first on MediaShift.