Industry insight interview (Infolution)

Interview with Mark Neely from Infolution, a specialist consultancy who helps groups, companies and individuals get over the ‘pain’ of working out how to make a living in the digital space.

What do you think the challenge is for writers in this digital age if they want to embrace the new technologies and engage with the ‘empowered consumer’?

Context: content that is released digitally, especially written content, is accessed in varied contexts. When you write in hard book form, you can be reasonably confident that the material will be consumed in a limited range of contexts. Digital content can be transmitted or shifted to multiple devices and is typically free of these context restraints. This makes it difficult to anticipate the reading environment, occasion and expectation(s)/mindset(s) of the audience.

Attention spans: we know that  it’s more difficult to read text presented on computer screens than in print (reading rates are between 25% and 50% slower). This poses a challenge for long-form writing. Added to this is the growing perception (see Nicholas Carr’s controversial piece ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’, in The Atlantic Monthly magazine, [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google], that our information seeking and reading habits are being altered thanks to our growing dependency on search engines). Some audiences are becoming accustomed to information ‘grazing’ and seeking out small ‘chunks’ of material and, as a result, losing their ability to maintain focus and follow an extended narrative in longer pieces.

Partial attention: side by side with the attention span issue is the reality that large segments of audiences rarely confine their attention to a single task. The notion of consumers operating in a state of ‘continuous partial attention [http://continuouspartialattention.jot.com/] was documented as far back as 1997 (imagine the typical adolescent environment – listening to music while scanning the TV, playing on their laptop, SMSing close friends and communicating with the ‘extended tribe’ via chat or IM). How do you carve out adequate attention in such an environment to allow your story to breathe?

Architecture: with print-based writing although the narrative might make use of various literary devices to provide a non-linear progression (e.g. jumping back and forth in time, switching between characters or from 1st to 3rd person perspective, etc.), the actual consumption process remains linear. Linearity is a logical and convenient architecture for a physical product that doesn’t hold true for digital content. History tells us that each new medium is initially constrained by the metaphors of preceding media. Radio, for example, was stage theatre in front of a microphone. TV similarly, was largely the radio  of the day, performed in front of a camera. It wasn't until a second generation of content developers emerged in each medium that we saw any true innovation or that the flexibility and strengths of each new medium were embraced.There is a risk that newcomers to digital content, especially those who previously worked in a different medium, will fail to embrace the flexibility and strengths of digital publishing, including the ability to free the narrative from the linear constraints of a digital product.

Models for games and ‘digital as promotion’ are fairly well explored. The biggest challenges seem to be in working out the business models (commercialisation process) for content designed specifically for a digital audience. Can you give your views on how to approach this?

I think the biggest hurdle to commercialising digital content is bringing the ‘economic baggage’ of the print publishing business into the mix. With books, for example, the traditional model is roughly this: you prepare a treatment, get commissioned to write (if you’re  lucky,  get an advance), deliver the manuscript ( 12–24 months),  edit galleys, etc. (add 6–12 months), sit back and wait for final book release (another 6–9 months),  promote all you can and hope to get a royalty cheque . The royalty mechanic is fairly straightforward – 10% of wholesale, as a rule. The author makes the time investment in developing the content, and the publisher makes the dollar investment in printing, distribution and marketing/promotion. The publisher wears more of an economic risk burden, hence the imbalance in revenue share.

Digital publishing doesn’t (or doesn’t need to) have the same investment of time. It certainly doesn’t have the same physical or distribution costs. Accordingly, the risk burden is different for both the writer and publisher. So the entire economic model needs to be revisited against this backdrop.

Authors need to revisit their revenue expectations from each product. If the time spent writing, editing and then waiting for a book to hit the ‘shelves’ is shorter, it means you can be more productive (i.e. turn out more products) over your writing lifetime. Instead of looking to make, say, $150,000 from developing one product in a three-year cycle, perhaps you could switch your objective to making $85,000 each from two products over a three-year cycle.

Publishers also need to revisit their revenue expectations from each product. With digital products, they can target a much larger potential market during the first release window (with no printing and distribution costs, no discounts to secure otherwise scarce shelf space, fewer economic constraints to launching in many markets at the same time). The shorter publishing cycle also means that there is less working capital tied up at any given point of time, also reducing pressure on maximising the internal rate of return.

Beyond these pure economic issues, there are two broader (‘cultural’) issues that need to be addressed:

Passive dependency: Many authors have an attitude akin to academics and prefer to be as far removed from the ‘business’ side of publishing as possible. Publishers, of course, encourage this mindset, as it allows them to secure a much more profitable relationship with authors (that is, carve out the lion’s share of the revenue for supposedly shielding authors from the nasty business aspects of publishing). Authors need to recognise that digital publishing provides them with an opportunity to address this imbalance and, in so doing, reap more of the spoils of their labour. But it also requires them to consider themselves as business people first and creative second.
 
Market dynamics: The digital content industry is just as at risk from ‘piracy’ as the movie and music industries are (and have been). Authors need to recognise that a fair percentage of readers will not pay for their work in digital form. This means that if authors want to protect their income, they will need to do more than ‘merely’ write to generate income from those consumers who opt to obtain digital content products for free. Just as music labels/musicians and movie studios/directors are having to be more innovative so, too, will authors need to look beyond the finished written product to create additional products and services that meet consumer’s needs – especially those who won't pay for the base product, if it is already available at no cost.

Have you heard of any success stories or even just good attempts to build sustainable content products in the digital space?

Most of the success stories I have heard of relate to nonfiction. As an author of nonfiction, it is becoming clear that one economic model is to use the physical or digital ‘book’ product as a loss-leader that creates a market for non-digital services (e.g. write a book on how to sell your business when you want to retire, then use the credibility and profile generated by the book to offer workshops and seminars, etc.).

In the fiction market, the equivalent would be to leverage the popularity of the book to offer paid speaking tours, creative writing workshops and derivative products (such as audio and illustrative editions, exclusive ‘signed’ products, expanded/extended editions with more backstory or additional plots, etc.). Basically, the objective here is to sell to your captive audience.

To use a music industry analogy, Nine Inch Nails recently released an album as a completely free download. On the back of the buzz they achieved by doing that, they then released limited edition CD and DVD versions, which featured a range of value-added offerings. These products were sold for prices ranging from $50 to $300 . Here, NIN was targeting their hard-core fans – those who would value these premium offerings and pay the asking prices. Hundreds of thousands of people got the free version, but the smaller number who paid for the premium offerings were enough to make the album an economic success for NIN.

What would be your top four recommendations to help writers get started in this new space?

Build an audience before you look for a publishing deal. One of the key reasons why publishers reject more manuscripts than they accept is because of the risks inherent in taking on an ‘untried’ author or content product. Access to digital channels provides authors with the ability to demonstrate their skills and the existence of an audience for their content by building an appreciative fan-base online. Prove your market and you will be able to negotiate a much better deal.

Don’t have a preconceived notion of what the ‘product’ is. We see examples all the time of cross-over products – books that become movies, movies that become books, games that become movies and books, etc. Focus on creating a compelling narrative and avoid getting locked in too early to how you might unleash it on the market. Similarly, even if you have decided to produce it in one format, be open to exploring the potential for releasing it in other formats.

See yourself as a business person first. At the end of the day, no-one cares about your economic success more than you do. Not your publisher, not your agent, not your fans. It is up to you as author to take an active and informed role in ensuring your economic success.

Digital doesn’t have to exist independent of physical. As an extension of recommendation two, don’t think that simply because you have embarked on development of a digital product that both it (the product) and your efforts must remain in the digital realm.