This presentation was give to an international audience of publishing professionals working in cross-media from Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Germany, France, USA, Australia, UK and Sweden. The purpose of the presentation was to show how old media models are being disrupted and that there is no turning back from disintermediation. Case studies demonstrate the new rules of free market publishing.

1. Welcome to Disruption
Stephen Bateman
Paris March 2011
Perspectives for Authors in the Post-Digital-Age

2. Talk outline
1. Disruption
2. Old and New business models
3. Examples and decisions about what content to put
out, for whom, at what time, in what form
4. Examples of online community building and
monetisation
5. Consumer trends and the competitive landscape
6. How to develop new revenue generating opportunities
7. Want to elicit knowledge and experience from
participants

3. Google Becomes Your Sous Chef with Recipe Search

4. Reactions?
Good? Bad?
Why?

5. Why?
• People search for food related content, a lot
• People search food but really want recipes
• Specific “vegan curry, potatoes, peas and coconut”
• Search by ingredients they have “oatmeal, peanut butter,
applesauce, vanilla, yoghurt”
• Help with special diet low-carb, gluten-free or vegetarian
• Interested in calories and time to cook: all located in left-
hand column
• Great for consumers but what’s in it for Google and
where does the content come from?

6. Sources
• Food Network
• Food.com
• AllRecipes.com
• iFood
• Consumer and retail
• Blogs
• Many other places

7. Friend or Foe?
• Friend or Foe?
• What about Amazon, Kindle,
Apple, iPad, Twitter, Facebook
• Depends

8. borderless world
disintermediation
end of scarcity
It’s the new physics
of business.

9. Not a quote from the book, but it sums up the problem
(It)upsets all conditions of
location, all cost calculations,
all production functions
within its radius of influence;
and hardly any “ways of
doing things” which have been
optimal before remain so
afterward.

10. Is this so totally new?

11. Joseph
Schumpeter

12. hardly any “ways of doing things” which
have been optimal before remain so afterward

13. 1936

14. From Industrial Revolution
to
Digital Revolution

15. The Digital Revolution

16. • Amanda Hocking - best-selling "indie" writer on
the Kindle store, no publisher
• She sells around 100,000 copies/month
• $3 and $0.99
• No intermediaries, nothing to print, no shelf
space, inventory
• Low prices, volume, impulse, self-purchase; she
gets to keep 70% of revenues
• Where did she come from?

17. • 10 of the top 25 best-selling indie Kindle
writers have never been affiliated to a
publisher. Previously, she published stories on
her blog.
• 100,000 copies a month at average $2 retail
@ 70% = $millions
• Welcome to the digital age: the age that
scares traditional publishers but which makes
the world better for writers and readers alike.
• Congratulations to Amazon for making it
possible.

18. • Losers are the intermediaries
• Intermediaries find themselves fighting
rivals that have completely different
operating models
• Amazon is not just a book store but a
very different consumer experience.
Merchandising, recommendations,
collaborative filtering and word or mouth.
hardly any “ways of doing things” which have been
optimal before remain so afterward

19. Digital Marketing Success

20. My French Table
• Dorie Greenspan beautiful book 544 pages, best enjoyed in print
• #13 spot on the New York Times's hardcover list +60,000 since
launch (Oct 2010)
• No TV show or magazine, not quite a household name
• 36,000 Twitter fans
• Blog (2008): In the Kitchen and On the Road with Dorie:
70,000 visitors/ month
• Martoin: “All of the sales [of Around My French Table] were
pretty much created online.”
Adapted: No Platform? No Problem Nov 22, 2010 By Lynn Andriani Pub Weekly

21. My French Table
• Fans buy the books. Online fans blog and tweet about
their adventures cooking Dorie’s recipes, creating a
powerful community. Dorie: "Every place I've gone on book
tour, I've met people who've been part of this group."
• But trade accounts lukewarm about My French Table.
"French food is scary, complicated, not spicy, not
ingredient-driven." Niche
• Dorie says putting recipes online "entices people to look
for more."
Adapted: No Platform? No Problem Nov 22, 2010 By Lynn Andriani Pub Weekly

22. Niche and mega-niche
Business built on being
able to leverage the
Internet to transform a
niche into a mega-niche.
Publisher sold tens of
thousands of copies of a
premium-priced book and
sold only to people who
cared.

24. Digital Marketing
“I’ve decided not to publish any
more books in the traditional
way...I can’t abide the long wait,
the filters, the big push at launch,
the nudging to get people to go to a
store they don’t usually visit to
buy something they don’t
usually buy, to get them to pay
for an idea in a form that’s hard
to spread … I really don’t think the
process is worth the effort that it
now takes to make it work. I can
reach 10 or 50 times as many
people electronically”(2010).

25. What changes the world?
The idea of finding
and connecting
like-minded people,
leading them and
creating value.
Adapted: Wired Kim Zetter 2009

26. Are your target audience online?
If so, where?
Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2010

27. Secrets
• Can you commit to on going conversations?
• Use tools to discover new people to interact with
• Online community building is a long term
engagement: few people will get to understand
you instantly!

28. Use it
• Highlight expertise / experience
• Become leader within your sector / area
• Build a following, tribe, community
• Seed out news / PR pieces of interest
• Have people do your marketing for you

29. Conclusion and Implications
• Digital allows us to build relations with like-minded people
• Take independence, innovate the product, the packaging,
and the user experience
• In time, understanding what your followers will pay for:
users are reluctant to pay for digital content but they
will spend money on products and services around
content, and this is where to focus.
• Great content builds an audience, but monetising that
audience not the content is the key.
Adapted from Forrester

30. Stephen Bateman
@concentricdots
For a free copy of this
presentation, send me an
email or visit my blog
www.concentricdots.com