Sausages and Pigs

This is the BIG question to my mind currently running through many publishers mind. I think that there is no doubt that content needs to be multi platform compliant, but it falls into a similar area as advertising as to justifying the cost of delivering it.
There is no doubt in my mind that if you can give information in as many platforms as possible, then more people will hear about it and potentially be interested in what the content is saying. There is also no doubt that people having bought into something want to own it and therefore if ownership is a book, they will buy it. When we are looking to publish new books, we are keen to explore whether there are different ways of delivering the content via video, audio or words in anything from website / you-tube / myspace / second life etc. Reading yesterdays Financial Times articles on publishing, it is clear that it is not just us small independents that this is seen as an opportunity to reach new audiences.
However the issue is the cost of making it available.
We know that when you aggregate content, if you know what you hope to do with that content prior to the aggregation, it is cheaper and cost effective to make it available. We have an analogy of sausages and pigs - namely when publishers have made their sausages, it is hard to make it back into pig to make a different sausage. If however you have a pig and a need to make a variety of sausages, then making them all at once is the way forward.
Publisher with BIG backlists, have a problem of paying for the process of making their sausages back to pigs and then making new sausages.
Smaller publishers have the issue of having the budget to allocate to creating content deliverable on multi platofrm. This is where we fall. I am happy and keen to do author interviews for the web. I am happy to make the books available on line free for all. The issue is that we have already made our sausages!
However, watch this space though as we had a meeting recently with a possible author who has ways of reaching audiences which do not require PIGS! (sounds like a beer)

Double Standards

Well I have even surprised myself. I would see myself as being quite focused. Other people even think I am stubborn. If I set my mind to things then I tend to be almost obsessive until I have done them. Setting up Eye Books is a classic example of this.
Some months ago I read about, and people asked me what I thought of Second Life. I was horrified by it and felt that it was a really dangerous place to go. It was going to be full off people who wanted to create a virtual persona as they can't cope with their real life. Escapism that could only go wrong and have a number of crimes committed as a result of people not being able to relate to the way to behave in the real world because of their chosen way to behave in this new virtual world. I had no interest in it and did not even want to look at it.
Today I created an avatar!!!
I have been equally dismissive about 'me to' publishing and the general 'bandwagon' idea that people follow trends. I am proud to think that I do not want to join the crowd and am happy to stand in my space and not be worried about the noise coming from the popular corner. Guess what has driven me to join this virtual world! The fact that 2 friends in publishing have not only set up a virtual bookshop (and apparently they sell books!) but one has now launched a virtual Book Fair and invited me to exhibit. Whilst I give myself a little break as bookfairs that you do not actually have to go to appeal, I am afraid to admit that there has been a slight feeling of wanting to see what people are talking about.
Well I wont tell you what my name is, but will let you know how life in this virtual world is!

How to get the message across - help welcome

Someone came into the office today to chat about publishing. They had an idea and wanted to see how best to progress it and what their options were. They know one of the people who works here (hence them coming in) but had not seen him for ages and were not aware of the focus of our books.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am amazed that our Goldmine Giveaway has not attracted more media attention and more public support. I have started thinking that perhaps the author and I had just misjudged what people were interested in and that they did not get it. Either that or they have not heard about or seen it.
If you ever come to our office, you will see that the meeting area is at the back and the main area has a table in the centre which displays our books and our desks skirt this central island.
Whilst waiting to go to the meeting area, they starting browsing at our books (which is what we thought everyone would do but a surprising amount do not!). On seeing the one giving a free sq ft of a gold mine, she became very excited. My desk is right by this area and seeing her reaction gave great pleasure and realisation that Dorian and I were not off the mark with the idea. Here was someone who got it and loved it. She bought 6 copies and left almost evangelical about what a great idea and present this was and that she would make all her friends buy one. Since then I have had a smile on my face and the desire to find out a way of getting to see people's reactions when looking at our books.
It is very easy when sitting in an office and not having contact with the people who buy our books to loose sight of what type of reaction they can conjure. I would love to get more feedback from all of you as to what you like and don't like about what we are trying to do. So do not be afraid - throw your likes and dislikes about Eye to me and they will be welcomed and appreciated with open arms.
People can sometimes try and hide from things and not face reality. The world is full of unknowns and once they become knowns we can deal with them and move on. When we hide away from things in case they are not what we want to hear, see or face, it does nothing but add to our woes.
I am always excited about finding out stuff - good or bad, coz then I can grow. Change is scary but only the thought of it.

On reading that back I see it is all quite quick - going from a person coming in and buying a few copies of our books to the philosophy of life! Ohhps - perhaps I had better stop here.

Challenging the way we do things

I can't believe it is that time of year again where we need to describe in 250 keystrokes the company for The Frankfurt Book fair catalogue. For each of the last few years, we have always ended up not really changing it for catalogues or website and it needs a change. How do I know this? Yesterday we had a communications expert in the office to help with a few details of communication and it really can make a difference and attract people (or, as importantly put people off) if you get it wrong. This has got me thinking:
I am really proud to be independent.
I am really proud of the fact our books champion people who live as opposed to simply exist.
I am really proud that we are not simply publishing 'fillers' to introduce economies of scale.
I am really proud that we accept unsolicited manuscripts and are accessible to authors and 'would be' authors.
However, as I look at that, am not sure that if I read that about another publisher I would want to explore working with them. So what does matter?
The fact that we got so much publicity (more than £1million worth if we had paid for the equivalent in advertising).
The fact that we had 40% of our books last year selected as Xmas Campaign titles.
Again not sure that it really matters. Probably need to start to be nominated and win awards and accolades. There are two challenges with this.
First - you have to enter yourself and say why you should win. This is something I am not comfortable with. My feeling is that awards are things which people should be nominated for rather than nominate themselves. 'Naive' I hear you say and it is, because even if that were the case, then people would still manipulate the entries by agreeing to work together.
Second - having overcome the above (which I am just about to) you have to be good enough to win or influence the judges.
I would be grateful for any comments on what we should put for our profile description from your point of view and also grateful as to any suggestions for awards and accolades that we could enter to boost our chance of addressing this challenge in time for next year!
What we are currently working with is:

At Eye Books, we celebrate individuals who have taken their dreams and lived them, creating out of their ‘ordinary’ lives ‘extraordinary’ accomplishments.

Our books inspire and motivate us to celebrate our imagination, passion and dreams.