Posts Tagged ‘business strategy’
Can Publishers Matter?
This Monday, Bowker published a report that offers a fascinating picture of the migration of book sales to online retailers. (Bowker is the industry’s key source of bibliographic data and market research.) For publishers, this data isn’t really news. They know full well just how dramatically online sales are growing.
“That’s New to Me”—Book Marketers Please Take Note
In a recent post, Mike Shatzkin took note of how some publishers were reshaping their publishing lists around their core strengths and strategic vision. Along the way, Mike offers his view on how the diminished role of booksellers and the rise of online discovery may effect sales of publisher backlist titles.
When digital first started to happen, it seemed like the backlist might be the biggest beneficiary. After all, stores had limited shelf space and online merchants can “carry” all the books they want, particularly if there is no pre-purchased inventory required. (There isn’t for ebooks and there increasingly isn’t for printed books either, which can be purchased from wholesalers for next day delivery, even if they are printed on demand!)
But, Mike goes on to say that, “it turns out that the current state-of-the-art for merchandising and presentation of books online is not very helpful to backlist.” I have a somewhat different view on this.
A SWOT Team for Indie Bookstores (part 2)
Continuing with our SWOT analysis of physical bookstores, we now move onto Opportunities and Threats. Unlike Strengths and Weakness, which are largely internal to an organization, Opportunities and Threats are external, part of the environment in which the organization operates.
Opportunities
Opportunities arise where our internal strengths are best aligned with the external environment, whether it’s in relation to competitors, general consumer awareness, changes in technology, and so forth. But there are also Opportunities in Weaknesses if one can find a way to turn that Weakness around. The ones I’ll focus on are counter parts to ones I listed in Part One of this post. [link]
At the risk of seeming like I know their business better than they do (I don’t), here are some thoughts on opportunities that might be available to bookstores. Continue Reading…
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