SharedBook: On Demand

Digitized Content and Customization: A Perfect Marriage

As consumers continue to move more and more into the digitized world, content owners such as magazines, music and recording studios, and TV and radio companies, are scrambling to digitize their archived materials.  But what is their main purpose for doing this? It can’t be solely to preserve the content in a medium that has a greater shelf life. One has to assume that digital distribution is playing a major role in how media companies are looking to monetize these treasured assets.

Almost every aspect of how we consume media and even communicate has gone digital. CD Players (although digital) have given way to MP3 players such as the iPod. Cars have GPS and navigation systems (I can’t remember the last time I bought a map) and many home phone users are switching to VoIP. Fortunately, people still find value in one medium that dates back centuries:  the book. People still like to read books. For some reason the digital world has not completely devoured this form of media altogether. Book stores are still thriving while record stores are unfortunately being closed in droves.

Another phenomenon that has come to the media world by use of digital distribution involves user generated content and the customization of content delivery. People are now getting used to being able to receive the content that is relevant to them based on their personal preferences. All this brings me to believe that we at SharedBook are on to something. With our platform, media companies that have digitized their archived content - articles, photographs, etc. - can now allow their online users the ability to select the content that is most relevant to them and create a book. This will enable media companies with deep content to monetize their assets in a way that just wasn’t available or even economical before. Imagine going to your favorite media company that has the content you are interested in and being able to build a customized book from that information. Now that sounds like a perfect marriage to me.  

Leverage The Long Tail with On-demand Publishing

It is already a classic case and one that is probably being taught in e-commerce classes at B-schools around the country. In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, about a climber experiencing a near death episode in the Peruvian Andes. It was a very good book, but only had limited success. Ten years later, Jon Krakauer, a well known journalist for Outside magazine, wrote Into Thin Air, another book about the fatalities and perils of mountain-climbing at Mt. Everest, which became a huge success. All of a sudden Touching the Void started to sell again. Why? Because the power of the Web was wagging its Long Tail. E-commerce sites such as Amazon.com started using recommendation technologies to say, “If you like Into Thin Air then you might like to read Touching the Void." A book that was nearly out of print was now selling again and very well I might add.

But let’s take this one step further, perhaps it’s time for publishers to use on-demand technologies to leverage their deep content and even reissue good material that falls just under the line for a book to stay in print. The aggregate of sales on books that sell only a few copies a month, times several hundred or thousand titles will add up to significant revenue. Coupling recommendation engines with an on-demand publishing capability can be very powerful. Publishing companies can not only satisfy their customers' eclectic tastes but also add profits to their bottom line in a safe and economical way.