As in guillotine… https://loudpoet.com guy lecharles gonzalez | loudpoet Sat, 18 Jan 2020 14:49:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.3.2 https://i0.wp.com/loudpoet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cropped-xboxoneprofile_cmonson.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 As in guillotine… https://loudpoet.com 32 32 119483828 Publishers should be fretting over the illness, not its symptoms https://loudpoet.com/2020/01/17/publishers-should-be-fretting-over-the-illness-not-its-symptoms/ https://loudpoet.com/2020/01/17/publishers-should-be-fretting-over-the-illness-not-its-symptoms/#respond Fri, 17 Jan 2020 20:00:57 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24368 The idea that publishers are fretting over losing a few past-their-prime bestselling authors is the least interesting aspect of Amazon's growing "traditional" publishing operation, but it sure has been driving a lot of chatter—and presumably clicks—this week. Several think pieces and a ton of tweets have been written about Amazon recently snatching up another couple of recognizable authors and what it means for the publishing industry, the latest twist on a decade-long story (remember J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin?), but it's just another symptom of an illness corporate publishing has been suffering from for years.

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“From the consumer perspective, shopping at Amazon (or any online retailer working with the Ingram database, which includes other big brand merchants) gives them the choice of any book, whether the publisher has a good sales force or not. With more titles competing for sales and the advantage of blanket coverage by the big publishers diluted, it is no longer true that every title on a big list achieves a substantial minimum sale. Big publishers are having the experience of three-figure unit sales — and sometimes even less — on books they issue, and not infrequently.”

Mike Shatzkin, The Idea Logical Company

The idea that publishers are fretting over losing a few past-their-prime bestselling authors is the least interesting aspect of Amazon’s growing “traditional” publishing operation, but it sure has been driving a lot of chatter—and presumably clicks—this week. Several think pieces and a ton of tweets have been written about Amazon recently snatching up another couple of recognizable authors and what it means for the publishing industry, the latest twist on a decade-long story (remember J.A. Konrath and Seth Godin?), but it’s just another symptom of an illness corporate publishing has been suffering from for years.

BE BEST

Mike Shatzkin’s recent look back at the big changes in the publishing industry is a good read on its own merits, but it’s essential if you’re trying to understand what publishers should actually be fretting about, and how much of it connects back to one thing: chasing bestsellers.

“Despite arguing that they provided necessary intangibles to the book publishing process, they have spent the last decade gutting their marketing and editorial departments… Dean Koontz no longer has to go to a big publisher to have his needs met; Amazon and Bantam, his former publisher, are drawing from the same talent pool.”

Alex Shephard, The New Republic

Partly to maintain margins and partly due to consolidation, corporate publishers have steadily cut back on editorial and marketing operations over many years, effectively creating a cottage industry for freelancers that eventually leveled the playing field for smaller publishers and self-publishers alike. As expertise became more widely available thanks to continued layoffs and consolidation, it also became more affordable as competition increased—ironically resulting in more credible competition from exponentially more competitors.

As one Big Five editor who specializes in commercial and literary fiction said of his category, “There used to be a lot more books that could sell 40,000–50,000 copies. Now more sell fewer than 10,000 copies.” It seems, he said, that “it’s either feast or famine.” Those suffering from the famine are, to an extent, a group once known as the midlist. Ironically, if you ask most editors or literary agents to define the term, you’re unlikely to get a specific answer. Few can say, for example, how many books one needs to sell to be considered midlist. The only thing sources agreed on is the fact that the term is negative.

Rachel Deahl, Publishers Weekly

The bestseller list—from NYT‘s curated version to Amazon’s algorithmic panacea and every iteration in between—has always been an important part of the corporate publishing business model, but it wasn’t the only lever they had to pull. In recent years, though, it’s effectively become bestseller-or-bust for the Big 5, and many mid-list authors have been left to fend for themselves—whether to market their books themselves when they didn’t make the publisher’s A-list; find a different publisher with a mid-list-friendly platform; or go the DIY route.

Where corporate publishers saw famine, mid-list-friendly publishers and individual authors found opportunity, especially in Amazon’s arms. Amazon has steadily lowered the barriers to entry for everyone—along with the perceived value of books, in general—and their own competitors have offered a variety of complementary services that has helped level the playing field for distribution, and not just for ebooks. Nowadays, even self-published authors can make their print books easily available to bookstores and libraries through Ingram—an opportunity authors signing directly with Amazon give up.

The only real competitive advantage corporate publishers have left is the ability to throw big advances at potential bestsellers, but in many cases, those advances are made possible by the increasingly less predictable revenue from robust backlists.

Backlist title decay — lower sales in each format for most titles year after year — is still a fact of life; a backlist beating last year’s sales is only an occasional event. There will be an end to audio sales growth for publishers as the available backlist is exploited and those available to be acquired also are diminished in number. And the non-commercial portions of the business will continue to churn out new titles to compete with the output of publishers.

The growth of the competing title base will not stop.

Mike Shatzkin, The Idea Logical Company

Corporate publishers have found themselves in a street fight they provoked but their business model wasn’t prepared for, and they’ve been playing rope-a-dope for years now, periodically punching themselves in the face.

SOURCE: Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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Running Through 2019 https://loudpoet.com/2020/01/03/running-through-2019/ https://loudpoet.com/2020/01/03/running-through-2019/#respond Fri, 03 Jan 2020 21:00:43 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24331 Running has been my preferred form of stress release and 2019 was stressful af—for both personal and more general "the world is going to shit" reasons—and, from a running perspective, the most productive, as I set PRs for annual (563) and trail (65) mileage. I even ran my first half marathon since New Year's Eve 2016 when I needed 13 miles to hit 500 for the year and manufactured a local course!

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I was an occasional runner as a kid—primarily winter track for a couple of years in high school as the coach also taught some random electives and gave “extra credit” for runners—in addition to pretty regularly playing pickup games of baseball and football, where quickness and hustle were my primary advantages. A few years later, in the Army and then National Guard, running was a thing I did when required, but at no point did I ever consider myself a Runner.

I’m not even sure I recognized it as an identity one might claim if you weren’t an elite professional runner at the Olympics or doing marathons.

Central Park Run

Fast forward to 2012 and I purposefully started running again because I thought it’d be fun to do a Tough Mudder with some friends! It absolutely was, and it remains a personal milestone, but Couch-to-Tough Mudder in 10 weeks (or, as I called it back then, Operation: Don’t Die) isn’t necessarily the best way to respond to the mid-life realization that you’re getting older and should be more mindful of your health. Nevertheless, it worked, got me running on a regular basis—Operation: Don’t Die became Mission: Keep Challenging Yourself—and made me realize I actually like running a lot, especially trail running.

Ever since, running has been my preferred form of stress release and 2019 was stressful af—for both personal and more general “the world is going to shit” reasons—and, from a running perspective, the most productive, as I set PRs for annual (563) and trail (65) mileage. I even ran my first half marathon since New Year’s Eve 2016 when I needed 13 miles to hit 500 for the year and manufactured a local course!

2019 Running2019 got off to a good start thanks to the Winter Dozen Challenge which ultimately forced me to get outside 6 days in a row the final week of January because I’d slacked off most of the month, launching me through the winter and the rest of the year with a consistency I usually don’t have until mid-March or April. I ran only two of my regular races the first half of the year as my focus was mainly on consistent mileage, until I decided to sign up for the Halloween Half in Morristown with only 10 weeks to prepare for it.

Thanks to Garmin’s Half-Marathon Training Plan (with Greg McMillan), I ran three times/week, including stride repeats and progression runs for the first time, and slowly learned to manage my pace, also for the first time. Those 10 weeks of “formal” training were the most mileage, most varied, and most consistent pacing I’d ever done, and I managed to finish the Half in under two hours (1:57)—in pouring rain for the duration—which technically wasn’t a PR but it definitely felt like one.

RUNNING INTO 2020

I turned 50 last August and my knees started to bother me for the first time ever towards the end of the year, so I finally discovered the related benefits of knee sleeves, foam rolling, ice baths, and moderation—easing up on both mileage and frequency after the Half—so I’m now prepared to tackle another Winter Dozen Challenge this month.

Still kicking

I don’t have any specific running goals for this year beyond continuing to enjoy Mission: Keep Challenging Yourself (and avoiding injuries), which means I probably need to be more consistent with cross-training than I was in 2019. We moved to another part of our town over the summer so I also have some new, less hilly routes to explore after 7+ years on increasingly too-familiar roads. I don’t anticipate beating my new annual mileage PR as I’m not planning on doing another Half—but I wouldn’t mind spending more time and miles on trails this year, including possibly revisiting a Tough Mudder or Spartan race.

Mostly, I’m grateful that I’m still able to run at all because nothing else comes close for clearing my head, sorting my thoughts, and avoiding disappearing into the couch and Destiny 2’s loot grind forever, especially since 2020 is likely to be an even more stressful year than 2019, on every front.


Shout-outs to a few of my favorite running things (no affiliate links, just things that make running more enjoyable for me):

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Where Do Libraries Fit In “A Viable Consumer Marketplace”? https://loudpoet.com/2019/12/17/where-do-libraries-fit-in-a-viable-consumer-marketplace/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/12/17/where-do-libraries-fit-in-a-viable-consumer-marketplace/#respond Tue, 17 Dec 2019 19:01:16 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24301 Another notable factor that publishers seem to have trouble acknowledging is that books—especially ebooks—don't exist in a vacuum, competing only with other books published that month, but they fight for attention and discretionary income with every other immersive media format, too. Movies, TV, and gaming have all seen their own versions of digital disruption—not to mention other areas of publishing itself—so the idea that the one compelling villain to blame a decline in consumer ebook sales on is public libraries would be laughable if it wasn't so short-sighted and suicidal.

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“People are reading more than ever, and some think that’s a threat to publishers. I think it’s an opportunity.

After these past two days, I’m pretty optimistic that we’re all going to do the right thing. So what are YOU going to do to change?

Don’t disappoint me.”

10 years ago I was on the verge of helping launch [the original] Digital Book World—an annual conference and online community for the trade book publishing industry which was in the midst of legitimate disruption and exaggerated prophecies of inevitable doom, most notably emanating from our primary competitor, the Tools of Change conference, and the sycophantic tech-obsessed pundits they catered to. My CEO at the time left the 2009 edition of TOC annoyed, less by the overwhelmingly negative tone that permeated the program, much more by the lack of any potential solutions being offered.

The assumption was traditional publishing was finished because… *waves hands randomly* DISRUPTION!

Ebooks were the centerpiece of most of these negative proclamations, Apple (via the iPad) was going to be the industry’s savior, and piracy was the boogeyman du jour—while libraries were barely on the radar, famously excluded from DBW’s inaugural program.

Two notable presentations that year are perhaps even more relevant today as some publishers have decided libraries are an appropriate scapegoat for their declining retail sales despite the lack of any public data supporting that belief.

Both presentations were compelling and well-received, but the connections between them went mostly unrecognized as Singh was generally dismissed as being interesting but irrelevant to the Big 6 (“Publishers aren’t consumer brands!”), while Napack found a lot of support even as his most compelling point (“Create a viable consumer marketplace”) went mostly ignored as devices got more attention than platforms and customer experience.

Show Me the Data!

When it came to piracy, publishers believed it was being driven by people who would normally have paid for the books despite… wait for it… any data to support that belief.

“Some people will tell you that it’s the biggest problem facing publishing or that ebook piracy will kill publishing. None of those perspectives are informed by solid data.” Brian O’Leary

Data needs to drive the ebook piracy debate, Forbes, January 14, 2011

Sound familiar?

Fast forward a couple of years, piracy faded into the background, ebook sales were booming, and Amazon was arguably the only one paying attention to Napack’s call to “create a viable consumer marketplace” as Barnes & Noble’s Nook took priority over making BN.com competitive, Apple failed to take iBooks seriously for years, and half of the Big 6 collaborated on the predictably doomed-to-fail Bookish.

Outliers Aren’t Proof

The new boogeyman became discovery as the demand for ebooks opened the doors to an avalanche of content from traditional publishers, startups, and self-published authors, while physical shelf space was declining in the wake of Borders’ collapse and the steady demise of independent bookstores. “Discovery” wasn’t really a problem for readers as much as it was for publishers who had to deal with increased competition in a variety of categories they used to own, as well as… wait for it… an inability to engage readers directly because wholesalers, retailers, and traditional media outlets were their primary customers, while authors were the “brands” readers knew and loved.

In the midst of all of this, libraries were engaged in an ongoing struggle—first to acquire ebooks at all, then to acquire them at reasonable prices without overly restrictive terms—as they attempted to meet the demand of their local patrons, readers they engaged and nurtured on a regular basis to help connect them to books and authors they’d love. “Friction” became a common buzzword, from Katie Dunneback’s infamous “21 steps to download a library ebook” presentation in 2011, to the latest boogeyman, outlier library patrons signing up for multiple library cards so they can *checks notes* legally borrow ebooks the library paid a lot of money for so they can lend them to patrons on a one book/one user basis, per each publishers’ increasingly limited terms.

Are Library Patrons Not Consumers, Too?

As I argued in my recent op-ed for Publishers Weekly, while it’s quite possible some books’ retail sales are being affected by library lending as readers decide they’d rather wait to borrow the latest bestselling ebook from the library than license it immediately for $14.99 from Amazon, it’s also quite possible—perhaps even more likely—other factors are at play, like competition from other publishers and self-published authors’ ebooks, or the rarely correlated rise of audiobooks—a format dominated even more by Amazon than ebooks.

Another notable factor that publishers seem to have trouble acknowledging is that books—especially ebooks—don’t exist in a vacuum, competing only with other books published that month, but they fight for attention and discretionary income with every other immersive media format, too. Movies, TV, and gaming have all seen their own versions of digital disruption—not to mention other areas of publishing itself—so the idea that the one compelling villain to blame a decline in consumer ebook sales on is public libraries would be laughable if it wasn’t so short-sighted and suicidal.

Conversely, it’s also quite possible that libraries are helping fill the gap left by Borders’ collapse, B&N’s decline, and the lack of local booksellers in thousands of communities across the country—helping readers discover books, new and old, some of which they’ll put holds on and never get to read; some they’ll start to read and never finish, whether by choice or expiration; and some they’ll read and love and buy their own copy (probably from Amazon, unfortunately) because they want to own it or share it with others.

In the midst of a variety of external disruptors that have made book publishing at scale more challenging than ever, antagonizing the one partner whose core mission is effectively expanding and nurturing the audiences for your products, FOR FREE, is a bad strategy.

The Future of Publishing is Bright from Guy Gonzalez on Vimeo.

In my closing comments at the first Digital Book World, I declared: “People are reading more than ever, and some think that’s a threat to publishers. I think it’s an opportunity.”

Any publisher who can’t recognize the opportunity libraries have to play a role in maintaining a viable consumer marketplace is effectively inviting a future where Amazon and piracy are the primary channels for their books. There’s no version of that story with a happy ending for readers nor authors, never mind publishers themselves.

IMAGE: Photo by Julius Drost on Unsplash

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The Limitations of Data—Updates from Libraryland https://loudpoet.com/2019/12/16/the-limitations-of-data-updates-from-libraryland/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/12/16/the-limitations-of-data-updates-from-libraryland/#respond Mon, 16 Dec 2019 12:00:34 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24291 Things have been a little quiet for me on the library front recently—periodic Twitter rants aside—as I've been working behind the scenes on refining the Panorama Project's focus for 2020 in light of recent events, identifying areas where we can have a measurable and actionable impact and figuring out how to implement the right initiatives. While I'm excited about what's in development for 2020, it's still too early to announce any of it, but two articles I wrote recently offer a glimpse of where things are heading.

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Data Points, a PW op-ed

Things have been a little quiet for me on the library front recently—periodic Twitter rants aside—as I’ve been working behind the scenes on refining the Panorama Project‘s focus for 2020 in light of recent events, identifying areas where we can have a measurable and actionable impact and figuring out how to implement the right initiatives.

Whether it’s NY Times bestselling authors whose books have sold less than an average monthly issue of a b-list superhero comic, or publishers declaring library lending is impacting their retail sales—one of the biggest obstacles is the lack of transparency when it comes to useful data, and the industry’s apparent comfort with it.

While I’m excited about what’s in development for 2020, it’s still too early to announce any of it, but two articles I wrote recently offer a glimpse of where things are heading:

Walkabout Northern California | Panorama Picks Regional Spotlight

I believe that one of the most useful aspects of Panorama Picks is the opportunity to look beyond obvious bestseller and/or celebrity-driven demand to identify books that are uniquely in-demand at public libraries in specific regions across the country, and this profile of a niche travel guide offers some insights for publishers, authors, and booksellers about libraries’ impact on discovery and retail sales.

Travel guides are a highly competitive category which has also been heavily disrupted by online offerings over the years. A search for “northern California hikes” on Amazon returns 183 results, and the same search on WorldCat returns 298. Meanwhile, the top 10 organic search results on Google are dominated by travel blogs and bloggers—only one of whom has their own books to sell.

At first glance, Walkabout Northern California may seem like an unusual ebook to find traction in libraries, but it is simply another example of the power of public libraries as a critical discovery channel.

Why It’s Time to Quantify the Library’s Role in the Reading Marketplace

It’s time for publishers and other stakeholders to more accurately measure the role public libraries play in the book business, and I wrote an op-ed for Publishers Weekly identifying three of the biggest known unknowns about libraries that are entirely knowable, if only there was a collective will to start shedding a productive light on them.

Data isn’t a panacea, of course. The fact that two contradictory perspectives can be sparked by similar data illustrates one of the important limitations of data: without proper context, it can be used to prove whatever you want it to. As in the early days of GPS navigation systems, reliance on data will drive you off a cliff if you’re not also paying close attention to your surroundings.

I’m particularly proud of this one, and extremely thankful for the invaluable feedback I got from several colleagues to help shape it, as well as Andrew Albanese’s excellent edits to tighten it up and make it ready for prime time. And I’ll never not be thrilled about seeing my byline in print!

PS: I’ll be representing the Panorama Project at PubWest in February, speaking on a keynote panel: “Ensuring a More Literate Future for All.” It will be my first time attending the conference, one I’ve heard great things about over the years, as well as my first visit to Portland, OR. If you’ll be attending or are in that area, let me know ahead of time!

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Author, Audit Thyself!—Marketing Advice from Kilby Blades https://loudpoet.com/2019/11/05/author-audit-thyself-marketing-advice-from-kilby-blades/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/11/05/author-audit-thyself-marketing-advice-from-kilby-blades/#respond Tue, 05 Nov 2019 12:00:18 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24246 “Most book marketing advice comes from authors who’ve had commercial success with books but no actual marketing experience. Many are taking advice that isn’t meant for them yet because they're not where they need to be,” explained Kilby Blades, an award-winning indie author and professional marketer, sharing practical insights for effective paid marketing strategies with WDC19 attendees.

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The 2019 Writer’s Digest Annual Conference this summer featured several insightful sessions on marketing, including a panel of Big 5 marketers sharing insights on how they work with authors and a step-by-step process for conducting market research and finding readers. In “The Book Marketing Audit: A Plan of Your Own,” Kilby Blades—a pseudonym for the indie author, who is a professional marketer by day—addressed how to develop successful marketing campaigns that are unique to your book and budget.

“Most book marketing advice comes from authors who’ve had commercial success with books but no actual marketing experience. Many are taking advice that isn’t meant for them yet because they’re not where they need to be,” explained Blades.

“Selling more books is an arbitrary goal that doesn’t really make sense on its own.” First and foremost, Blades encouraged authors to be honest about where they are in their career and specific in identifying their personal goals before embarking on any paid marketing initiatives. Ego, glory and accolades, replacement income, hitting a bestseller list, engaging fans, re-invigorating backlist—while each unique personal goal involves selling books at some level, there’s no cookie-cutter marketing strategy that works for all of them. For example, plenty of New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors don’t support themselves from book sales; if replacement income is the real goal, your marketing strategy must be different, depending on the depth of your backlist and strength of your platform.

“When you advertise, you’re probably losing money on the first book,” Blades said, wading into the dreaded math side of marketing. But she offered attendees a useful framework for establishing sales targets and marketing expenses based on specific financial goals, including the most critical aspect: determining the Total Lifetime Value of a reader. “If you get 100 people to buy your first book, some percentage will buy the second book, some percentage will buy the third book, etc. You will have to understand the exact value of a reader in order to calculate how many of book one you need to sell, and at what cost.”

Blades also identified key areas—including genre- or category-appropriate covers and retail pages with strong social proof (also known as reviews)—that every author should evaluate before moving forward with a paid marketing plan.

“If you don’t have enough reviews, don’t advertise your book until you have a critical mass of reviews [on the retail page you’re driving readers to],” she said. Otherwise, you’ll see a lower conversion rate. Blades sets her personal bar at no less than 50 reviews upon publication, and she continues to push for additional reviews post-publication, leveraging fans, street teams, influencers, and sometimes paid review services*.

Emphasizing the effect that reviews can have on conversion, Blades shared a failed marketing effort with her most recent novel, a romantic suspense that lacked the genre-requisite “hard happily ever after,” resulting in negative reviews that depressed sales. She canceled the book’s marketing campaign after two days. “I wasn’t going to throw money at a book that couldn’t convert and wasn’t showing well.”

Bottom line: While the session focused on self-published authors who handle their own marketing, Blades’s professional background also offered useful insights into how and why publishers make certain marketing decisions and why an author’s platform can be a critical piece of the puzzle. Authors with limited platforms—or those who’ve received small advances—typically receive less paid marketing attention than established authors with solid backlists or a popular series because the cost of developing a new readership base is significantly higher than the cost of expanding an existing one. Authors with strong platforms of their own can amplify a publisher’s “free” marketing efforts to generate pre-release reviews (usually via print and digital ARCs, or giveaways), which can seed the ground for paid marketing campaigns. Blades also demonstrated how failure can be part of an iterative marketing process, noting that she planned to recategorize her “failed” romantic suspense novel as women’s fiction and target that audience for new reviews, hoping to build positive social proof before embarking on a revised marketing campaign. Identifying and engaging the right audience for your book at the right time is the critical difference between success and failure in marketing.

*[NOTE: I’m not a fan of paying for reviews and put the services that offer them in a broad “caveat emptor” category of author services that have a mix of legit and sketchy players in the market, with pros and cons for even the legit offerings. Do your research and be crystal clear about your expectations when determining which services are worth paying for. Depending on your goals, even “legitimate” service providers can ultimately be ineffective and a waste of money.]

Disclaimer: I was Writer’s Digest’s marketing director and publisher from 2017-2019 and programmed the majority of WDC19, including Kilby’s sessions, and also moderated a session, but I also covered several sessions for The Hot Sheet, per the note below. While you should take any of my thoughts on the conference with a reasonable grain of salt, trust that I wouldn’t have bothered writing about any sessions that didn’t go well—not positively, at least.


The Hot Sheet[NOTE: This article was originally commissioned, edited, and published by The Hot Sheet and is republished here with permission. If you’re an author looking for intelligent insights on the important issues affecting the publishing industry, you should definitely subscribe.]

 

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Marketing Memos: Quality Content, Diversity, and PowerPoint https://loudpoet.com/2019/10/28/marketing-memos-quality-content-diversity-and-powerpoint/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/10/28/marketing-memos-quality-content-diversity-and-powerpoint/#respond Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:48:40 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24235 I read (and listen to) a lot about what's happening in marketing and media these days, and while the desire for clicks and the illusion of engagement generates a lot of useless noise, there are still some good, actionable insights being put out there that can be easily missed. I share the good stuff on Twitter and LinkedIn when I find it, but "Marketing Memos" is a weekly(ish) selection of 3-5 of the most interesting and insightful articles and podcast episodes—curated after I've had a chance to process them and identify the best.

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Marketing Memos” is a weekly(ish) an occasional selection of 3-5 of the most interesting and insightful articles and podcast episodes—curated after I’ve had a chance to process them and identify the best. Follow Free Verse Media on LinkedIn or Twitter to receive notifications for each week’s post.

GOOD READS

Podcasts May Have Replaced Video, but a Solid Content Strategy Is Still King
By Michael Grimes, AdWeek

“Now is probably a good time to point out that text-based newsletters are having a moment of their own to rival that of podcasts. Indeed, once considered a yawn-inducing lead-gen tactic in b-to-b marketing, newsletters have become a preferred means for consumers to mainline relevant information directly into their inboxes on a weekly and even daily basis. And the very format speaks to the first point about the right level of interaction, as newsletters allow readers to skim pithy bullets until they find something of interest and click through for a deeper experience.”

The worst part of an ill-conceived hard pivot to video/audio is neither one requires running away from text. Transcripts are a no-brainer for accessibility and discovery, while a good editor can easily produce 2-3 distinct articles from each one—assuming, as always, that we’re talking about quality content across the board. There’s a reason so many “social video” producers are dangerously dependent on Facebook and Instagram, and why there’s been a surge in TikTok think pieces. Firing editors & writers to staff video/audio operations not only limits your potential reach, it puts your fate in external platforms’ hands. Diversified formats and distribution are absolutely critical for audience development, but prioritizing begging for Apple ratings and YouTube likes rather than a robust owned & operated platform is bad strategy. If that lesson hasn’t been learned yet, fire your CEO and all of his yes men.


What It Will Take to Improve Diversity at Conferences
By Ruchika Tulshyan, Harvard Business Review

“Some of the biggest inequities are created when speakers are expected to speak for free exposure, learn to refine their skills on their own dime, and keep doing that until they hit big-time conferences where they can finally begin to charge hefty speaker fees. Speaking for free isn’t a realistic option for many people, especially people of color who are most disadvantaged by a large racial wealth gap. At the very least, offer to compensate for travel and lodging, and especially, ensure that not only some speakers get compensated while others don’t.”

Programming a great conference that attracts a diverse audience is hard work but it’s absolutely critical if the event is expected to be profitable and grow every year. One of the biggest obstacles remains speaker rosters disproportionately dominated by white men—or in some industries like book publishing, white women. Most events claim some version of a “commitment to diversity,” typically demonstrated by a token keynote speaker or, even worse, a Diversity Panel, and then wonder why their audiences are stagnant or lack diversity. Expand your network, actively seek out new voices, dig deeper for topics, and Pay! Your! Speakers! If you can’t afford to pay your speakers or even cover their expenses to attend your event, rethink your business model; having a bad reputation among desirable speakers is the worst kind of word of mouth marketing—and you often won’t even know it’s having an impact until your year-over-year registration revenue starts to irreparably decline.


5 tips that will make you love PowerPoint—no, seriously
By Doug Aamoth, Fast Company

“And while there’s no shortage of articles telling you how to improve your presentations, this article here is for those of you who want to work smarter, not harder, inside the belly of the beast.”

Most marketers have a love/hate relationship with PowerPoint, and if you’re like me, also want nothing to do with Keynote, Prezi, or other pretenders to the throne. Some of these tips may not be new to you, but they’re all extremely useful if creating and giving presentations is a notable part of your job.


GOOD LISTENS

The Athletic co-founder Adam Hansmann: ‘We believe there is a $1b company to build here’
DigiDay Podcast

“We see 90% engagement weekly during busy sports times. We see 80% of our subscribers renew. Getting to that point, we feel good about the platform’s permanence. Long term, valuations concerns in the short term aside, we believe there is a $1 billion company to build here, which might sound crazy. But if you look at The New York Times, with their 4 million digital subscribers, they’re a $1 billion publicly-traded company.”

I like what The Athletic is trying to do, in theory, but $100m in VC funding with ~600,000 paying subscribers—the vast majority of whom are surely not paying anywhere near the regularly discounted $59.99/year rate—and no realistic indication of being profitable anytime soon doesn’t come close to being in the same conversation as the New York Times. Meanwhile, most of their journalists come from traditional media organizations that weren’t profitable enough to keep them. $100m in VC funding for any digital media play that wants to grow via Quality Content (TM) is either angling for acquisition or making promises it’ll be forced to break in the near future, along with massive layoffs. Plus, journalists getting paid in stock options is a red flag we’ve seen end badly time and time again. Layer in “engagement metrics” and conversion optimization for paid subs and you’ve got yet another digital house of cards waiting to fall.

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Other Authors Are Not Your Competition—Marketing Advice from Amy Collins https://loudpoet.com/2019/10/17/other-authors-are-not-your-competition-marketing-advice-from-wdc19/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/10/17/other-authors-are-not-your-competition-marketing-advice-from-wdc19/#respond Thu, 17 Oct 2019 21:48:08 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24222 "Market research is a very dry, dull topic, but finding and connecting with readers is how we make money." Too often, market research is limited to the basics—high-level demographics (age, gender, income) and/or broad genre interests (science fiction, romance)—leading to target audiences that either don't actually exist, or worse, reflect the researchers' personal interests. To find the right readers for a specific book or author, Amy Collins encourages writers to set aside personal assumptions and dig deeper.

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The 2019 edition of Writer’s Digest Annual Conference* featured a wide-ranging program covering the craft and business of writing, including several insightful sessions on marketing strategy and tactics. In “Beyond Comp Lists: Market Research for Novelists,” New Shelves Books’ Amy Collins demonstrated how to identify the successful authors in any genre and develop an action plan to find and engage their readers.

“Market research is a very dry, dull topic, but finding and connecting with readers is how we make money,” she said. Too often, market research is limited to the basics—high-level demographics (age, gender, income) and/or broad genre interests (science fiction, romance)—leading to target audiences that either don’t actually exist, or worse, reflect the researchers’ personal interests. To find the right readers for a specific book or author, Collins encouraged writers to set aside personal assumptions and dig deeper.

“Nobody needs your book… Everybody doesn’t read.” Citing data from the US Census Bureau and Pew Research, Collins posited that an avid reader lives in a household that purchases 9 books per month, and there are only approximately 7 million US citizens who could be considered avid readers. In order to identify the right readers for a specific book—and make money—you have to find the avid readers who actually read and buy books like yours.

“The smaller your target, the easier it is to hit.” Collins’ market research process begins with developing a detailed profile of a single reader, setting aside as many personal assumptions and biases as possible. “You are not your readership,” she cautioned. From basic demographics to detailed psychographics, the goal is to craft a three-dimensional sketch of one specific reader who would be likely to buy your book. “Once you have made up a human being, how do they spend their time? Where do they shop? What are their biggest problems?” This profile will evolve, especially once your book starts to sell and you can analyze your actual readership. But it’s a more effective reference point than something generic like “millennial sci-fi readers.”

WDC19 Reader Profile

“The people who would love your book, what are they reading now? Who’s on their bedside table?” The next step in Collins’ process is to create a list of 24 comparable authors based on what books your ideal readers are likely reading right now.

  • Identify at least three authors your profiled reader currently enjoys, and search each of them on Yasiv.
  • For each of those three authors, click on their most popular book from the results, and confirm its genre/category relevance to yours. (For multi-genre authors, choose the most popular title that is relevant to your book’s genre/category.) Identify three new authors from Yasiv’s “Customers often buy” results. Repeat for your other two authors, which should give you a total of 12 comp authors.
  • From Yasiv, click through to the Amazon product page for your authors’ most popular relevant titles, scroll down to the “Amazon Best Sellers Rank” in the Product Details section, and click through to their best performing category that’s relevant to your book.
  • Add the best-selling author in each category to your comp list—one for every author on your Yasiv list—for a total of up to 24 comparable authors.
  • To flesh out your 24 comps, use USA Today‘s Best-Selling Books list, filtering by the relevant genres, to identify any relevant authors you may have missed.
  • Monitor these bestseller lists periodically to identify new comp authors and trends in the market.

“Other authors are not your competition,” Collins explained. With your unique list of 24 comparable authors who are currently selling books, the next step is to connect with each one of them. Join their communities, follow them on social media, sign up for their newsletters,a nd read and review their books on your own platform(s). Read other reviews of their books, and make a list of potential reviewers for your own book. Identify their super-fans; follow and engage with them. Engaging with your comp authors and their readers will help you develop organic relationships, evolving your understanding of your own potential readership, while also enabling you to build a list of truly engaged reviewers and readers who will be interested in your book when you’re ready to start promoting it.

Bottom Line: Real marketing is more involved than simply having a platform. Collins’s in-depth process offers a practical approach that authors don’t have to spend money on, and it addresses the challenge of how to build and manage an effective platform by focusing on the readers you’re building it for.

*Disclaimer: I was Writer’s Digest’s marketing director and publisher from 2017-2019 and programmed the majority of WDC19, including Amy’s sessions, and also moderated a session, but I also covered several sessions for The Hot Sheet, per the note below. While you should take any of my thoughts on the conference with a reasonable grain of salt, trust that I wouldn’t have bothered writing about any sessions that didn’t go well—not positively, at least.


The Hot Sheet[NOTE: This article was originally commissioned, edited, and published by The Hot Sheet and is republished here with permission. If you’re an author looking for intelligent insights on the important issues affecting the publishing industry, you should definitely subscribe.]

 

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Marketing Memos: Content, Commerce, and… Libraries? https://loudpoet.com/2019/09/09/marketing-memos-content-commerce-and-libraries/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/09/09/marketing-memos-content-commerce-and-libraries/#respond Mon, 09 Sep 2019 13:47:46 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24200 I read (and listen to) a lot about what's happening in marketing and media these days, and while the desire for clicks and the illusion of engagement generates a lot of useless noise, there are still some good, actionable insights being put out there that can be easily missed. I share the good stuff on Twitter and LinkedIn when I find it, but "Marketing Memos" is a weekly(ish) selection of 3-5 of the most interesting and insightful articles and podcast episodes—curated after I've had a chance to process them and identify the best.

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Marketing Memos” is a weekly(ish) selection of 3-5 of the most interesting and insightful articles and podcast episodes—curated after I’ve had a chance to process them and identify the best. Follow Free Verse Media on LinkedIn or Twitter to receive notifications for each week’s post.

GOOD READS

Joe Pulizzi Shares His 7 Laws of Content Marketing at CMWorld 2019
By Dennis Shiao

“A lot of B2B sales and marketing works like this, according to Pulizzi: run marketing programs to attract leads, then convert leads to opportunities and sales. When a sale happens, throw a party! And then move on to the next sale, leaving your customer in the lurch. In other words: a one night stand. Instead, said Pulizzi, aim to get married to your customers. Don’t have a party only to leave them. Think less about campaigns and more about ongoing content experiences that inspire and delight.”

Pulizzi’s perspective on content marketing is always interesting, even when I occasionally disagree with him or cringe at his archaic analogies, but his keynote at CMWorld included some useful takeaways for marketers fighting the content battle on either side. Whether in-house, advocating for content marketing as a critical aspect of an overall marketing strategy; on the media side, advocating for best practices with clients looking for the ephemeral “something new;” or in social media masquerading as audience development—his 7 laws are great food for thought as you develop your own unique content strategy.

As with so much in marketing nowadays, it was best summed up by Cluetrain 20 years ago: “Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.”


Publishers eye Google moves as potential threats to their growing commerce businesses
By Max Willens, Digiday

“Publisher commerce operations have been a bright spot as they seek to diversify from display advertising. In the space of just a few years, BuzzFeed built a commerce operation featuring nearly two dozen writers cranking out gift guides optimized for Facebook as well as Google. Smaller upstarts now see it as key to their futures. Overtime, a venture-backed publisher focused on high school sports, vows to build a nine-figure commerce and apparel business within the next five years.”

First things first, Digiday got the headline wrong. “Publishers eye Google moves as potential threats to their growing dependence on Amazon affiliate links” would have been more appropriate. Most publishers don’t have anything resembling actual “commerce businesses;” many are simply old-school affiliate programs, predominantly powered by Google (for discovery) and Amazon (for fulfillment), funneling traffic and revenue—not to mention editorial resources—to the latter in exchange for crumbs off Bezos’ overflowing plate. Similar to many other short-sighted digital pivots that centered ad revenue as the problem to solve, it “works” until the platform “partner” has the upper hand and their terms predictably change, requiring yet another desperate pivot. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Comparing Overtime’s branding and licensing plans to Buzzfeed’s algorithm-chasing gift guides does a disservice to both—the latter’s Tasty brand is a much better example of their “commerce” aspirations—and the article effectively buries the lede in favor of Google FUD: strong brands and credible content can drive diversified revenue streams, including bolstering advertising opportunities.


Embargoes Aren’t the Answer
By Rebecca T. Miller, Library Journal

“Publishers understand the importance of physical space when it comes to bookstores: they even pay for premium placement in them through coop dollars. When it comes to libraries, placement is free, but that doesn’t mean it is without value. Publishers should be embracing what libraries offer, not casting their shared lending as ‘cannibalizing’ a bottom line that will only diminish if book culture dissipates from lack of engagement.”

Imagine having literal thousands of publicly funded institutions offer 24/7 marketing of your products—from on-site and online discovery, to on-demand personalized recommendations—and deciding those institutions were your enemy? That’s effectively what’s happening in the book world as certain publishers have decided public libraries are “cannibalizing” their sales despite years of consumer research and anecdotal studies showing otherwise. My former colleague Rebecca Miller eloquently adds her voice to the conversation, and LJ‘s useful infographic makes libraries’ impact clear for even those who prefer seeing the world solely through spreadsheets.

Libraries are Engines for Book Sales
via Library Journal

BONUS

What Do Big Five Publishers Do for Their Authors?
The Hot Sheet

“At the beginning of the session, Gonzalez said that all authors should have a fundamental understanding of marketing so they can make informed decisions. Regardless of what kind of platform they bring to the table, their publisher will find a way to leverage it, but the author’s willingness to collaborate with the publisher and adapt to changes in the marketing plan is key.”

I had the pleasure of putting together and moderating an insightful panel discussion for WDC19 focused on dispelling marketing myths in traditional publishing, and it got a nice write-up in The Hot Sheet—an excellent resource for authors, and other book publishing professionals who want a unique lens on what’s happening in the industry, produced by one of my favorite friends and colleagues, Jane Friedman. I also covered a few other marketing-related sessions for The Hot Sheet which will be appearing in upcoming issues, so go subscribe!

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work—Random Musings on #WDC19 https://loudpoet.com/2019/08/27/teamwork-makes-the-dream-work-random-musings-on-wdc19/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/08/27/teamwork-makes-the-dream-work-random-musings-on-wdc19/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2019 22:38:44 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24163 The weirdest Summer of my professional career came to a surreal close this past weekend as I attended the Writer's Digest Annual Conference as a speaker and journalist rather than the publisher and marketing director who curated ~80% of the event before my departure in early July. I'm obviously still biased, but overall, it was an invigorating experience—from the amazing keynotes and insightful presenters, to the mini-reunion with some of my all-time favorite colleagues, all survivors of F+W Media's disastrous bankruptcy process that seems to have ended relatively well... for Writer's Digest, at least.

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The weirdest Summer of my professional career came to a surreal close this past weekend as I attended the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference as a speaker and freelance journalist rather than the publisher and marketing director who curated ~80% of the event before my departure in early July. I’m obviously still biased, but overall, it was an invigorating experience—from the amazing keynotes and insightful presenters, to the mini-reunion with some of my all-time favorite colleagues, survivors of F+W Media’s disastrous bankruptcy process that seems to have ended relatively well… for Writer’s Digest, at least.

I even got some on-the-spot creative writing done, participating in a couple of unexpected writing exercises!

Writer's Digest Annual Conference 2019My speaking gig was on Friday afternoon, moderating a panel of professional marketers discussing the realities of their jobs, dispelling myths about what publishers do and don’t do for authors. I think it went pretty well, especially since we took questions throughout the panel, dedicated 20 minutes at the end specifically for questions, and the panelists still had a line after the session ended. Mission accomplished!

(I believe the session will be covered in an upcoming issue of The Hot Sheet, and once I have a minute to review it and clean it up, I might make the full recording available.)

Of the eight other sessions I attended throughout the weekend, not including keynotes, there wasn’t a single miss among them—not even the somewhat… philosophical, 101 take on platform one presenter/sponsor delivered because I had to acknowledge I wasn’t really the audience for it. All of the others delivered great insights and actionable takeaways, and the writer in me was extremely glad I attended.

Insightful Sessions

Out of all the sessions I curated, the one that was the closest to being purely selfish was Ran Walker‘s “Using Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction to Improve Your Novel,” because I’ve always been a firm believer that poets make better novelists—despite having absolutely nothing to base that on! He framed the session as a workshop and took us through a couple of challenging exercises, giving us 10 minutes each to write a Kwansaba (7 lines, 7 words/line, no more than 7 letters/word) and a Dribble (50-word flash fiction). I don’t usually participate in interactive exercises at conferences, but I didn’t have my usual excuse that I’m working the event and Ran was so engaging, I took a stab at both.

I cheated a little on the Kwansaba and also forgot to write it as a prose poem…

while I couldn’t resist tackling a current event for my Dribble, “Embargo”:

Jonathan stared at his library’s website, fuming. “All these books… Who even needs libraries anymore? Prime has everything.” Behind him, Jeffrey chuckled. “Exactly. Now, send it, Jonathan. Send it!” He paused, a familiar but fleeting sense of dread he couldn’t quite recall… and then he did as he was told.

I also attended Lilliam Rivera‘s session on Worldbuilding which, in addition to offering a variety of great insights—”Research is your friend; not only are you writing creatively, you become a journalist.”—and resources on building engaging worlds that center your characters, she also had us do a couple of writing exercises, one of which I again participated in.

PROMPT: Pick a setting, write two visual details, two sounds, two tactile details, two smells, and then write something incorporating them.

The loose footing on the gravel trail was sporadically interrupted by mini-obstacle courses of rocks and roots, more challenging thanks to the steady drip of sweat stinging my eyes thanks to the hot, humid air. An occasional breeze rustled the trees, shifting the shade and fading the distant traffic from the highway a half-mile away.

Considering I haven’t done any creative writing in several years, these exercises were actually a delightful surprise to knock some rust off the gears and remember what it’s like to transform thoughts into words on paper, in the moment—even if they all ended up having a nonfiction spin to them!

The SF/F panel—which I didn’t curate—was especially good as authors Tobias Buckell (a friend and favorite for his excellent Xenowealth series) and Sarah J. Sover (who wrote one of my favorite articles during my WD reign on embracing your weird side), and Tor.com editor Ruoxi Chen had a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation about the genre, moderated by WD’s Amy Jones. I wish I recorded it because I was so engrossed the only notes I took were book recommendations to add to my already overflowing to-be-read list:

The Best Keynotes!

One of my main goals with WDC19 was to really diversify the program, challenging our staff to go beyond our core group of recurring guests and find new voices, and despite the huge obstacles the whole bankruptcy situation put in front of us, I think we did a decent job improving upon previous years. For the keynotes, though, the main goal was what it’s always been: book a compelling trio covering different genres and different voices—N. K. Jemisin, Karin Slaughter, and Min Jin Lee absolutely knocked it out of the park!

From Jemisin’s practical and personal primer on what it takes to be a full-time writer, to Slaughter’s dark humor and family history paying off in one of the best author origin stories, to Lee’s humble and inspiring talk that nearly moved me to tears—I don’t think I’ve ever seen three keynotes at a single conference complement each other so perfectly and organically and totally coincidentally. It’s an event programmer’s dream come true—book the right people and let them create magic—and judging by the feedback I overheard throughout the conference and saw on Twitter, I think the hundreds of attendees overwhelmingly agreed.

I gave up any illusions about writing fiction years ago as I came to terms with my preference for nonfiction and the business side of the industry, but I still left WDC19 fully inspired, energized, and educated in ways I didn’t quite expect and will always be grateful for. I’ll be covering four other sessions I attended individually over the next few weeks for a freelance assignment and will add those links here as they go live—Spoiler: Amy Collins, Kilby Blades, Dima Ghawi, and Christine Conradt were all great!—but keep an eye on the #WDC19 hashtag for other perspectives on the conference, too.

And if you attended, let the Writer’s Digest team know how it was for you—on Twitter, via email, the attendee survey, and whenever you see them in person. The Writing Community can be an amazing and supportive group—we all saw that firsthand throughout the bankruptcy—and hearing from you directly is like a shot of adrenaline.

PS: Not to play favorites, but I want to give a specific shout-out to two of my former WD colleagues who ensured the conference didn’t miss a beat when I left, and in whose hands I fully expect WDC20 to be 100 times better: the aforementioned Amy Jones—mark my words, she’s the next Jane Friedman—and Taylor Sferra—the most organized and unflappable events director I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

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Marketing Memos: Metrics, Churn, Authenticity, and Platform Personalities https://loudpoet.com/2019/08/05/marketing-memos-metrics-churn-authenticity-and-platform-personalities/ https://loudpoet.com/2019/08/05/marketing-memos-metrics-churn-authenticity-and-platform-personalities/#respond Mon, 05 Aug 2019 15:04:30 +0000 https://loudpoet.com/?p=24146 I read (and listen to) a lot about what's happening in marketing and media these days, and while the desire for clicks and the illusion of engagement generates a lot of useless noise, there are still some good, actionable insights being put out there that can be easily missed. I share the good stuff on Twitter and LinkedIn when I find it, but "Marketing Memos" is a weekly selection of 3-5 of the most interesting and insightful articles and podcast episodes—curated after I've had a chance to process them and identify the best.

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Marketing Memos” is a weekly selection of 3-5 of the most interesting and insightful articles and podcast episodes—curated after I’ve had a chance to process them and identify the best. Follow Free Verse Media on LinkedIn or Twitter to receive notifications for each week’s post.

GOOD READS

8 Ways Marketers Can Show Their Work’s Financial Results
By Paul Magill, Christine Moorman, and Nikita Avdiushko, Harvard Business Review

“Focusing only on what is most measurable underrepresents marketing’s full impact… CMOs should emphasize that their metrics are valid when evaluating whether marketing activities are working as expected, and that the inherent imprecision in measuring marketing’s financial outcomes does not undermine their validity. Marketing leaders also need to protect against overindexing the marketing mix toward the most trackable tactics merely because they offer more precision.”

Excellent advice here for all marketers, not just the endangered CMO. If you’re unable to frame a holistic narrative around your marketing strategy, you’re doomed to transactional initiatives, last-click attribution, and marginal results—at best—if not outright failure.


The L.A. Times’ disappointing digital numbers show the game’s not just about drawing in subscribers — it’s about keeping them
By Joshua Benton, NiemanLab

“Retention is critical to making reader revenue the bedrock of the new business model; one newspaper found that half of its new subscribers left within three months — but that after that point, the departure rate dropped under 2 percent a month. You’ve got to get around that corner.”

Some media organizations belatedly weaning themselves off an unhealthy over-reliance upon advertising are finding the “pivot to paid” even more challenging than the ill-conceived pivot to video. The FUD surrounding the LA Times‘ announcement that they’re falling short of their digital subscriber goals was over the top and a bit premature—mostly from pundits who’ve never managed a legitimate paid subscription business and were apparently unfamiliar with the concept of churn. Benton’s overview is insightful, and his tips on managing churn are applicable well beyond the news business, especially for marketers who’ve hit the inevitable wall after a “growth hacking” spike.


We Need Diverse Books Celebrates 5th Anniversary, Sets Agenda for Next Five Years
by Kara Yorio, School Library Journal

“What I like so much better is the term ‘informed by our experiences.’ which Cynthia Leitich Smith taught me to use. No writer is perfect. We are all human, and even at our best, we can still make mistakes. Using the OwnVoices term doesn’t provide a writer with Teflon coating, although I feel like some publishers hope for that. And it especially feels dangerous when writers might not feel safe to claim what their ‘OwnVoices’ might be.”

“Authenticity” has been a marketing buzzword for years and too often ends up being the exact opposite—most glaringly in social media, “influencer” marketing, and branded content gone predictably wrong. Its equivalent in book publishing is arguably “Own Voices,” a term intended to represent historically marginalized authors telling their own stories—rather than a white author attempting to tell them, only sometimes informed by research and personal awareness—but that’s quickly becoming a lazy marketing tactic with a much looser definition.


PODCAST PICK

Great Big Story’s Courtney Coupe: ‘It’s not about bulk and driving as many eyeballs as possible’
The Digiday Podcast, DigiDay

“I love the audience that we’ve been able to build on these platforms, and the platforms have been great for building that audience, but I don’t know that we know that much about them. Part of our brand is that we have no home destination, no hub for our fans, so building a site is giving our audience a place to go and interact with us on a deeper level. A place that delivers on content and gives them the sticky experience that they’re looking for.”

Great Big Story started popping up in my YouTube recommendations a few months ago but I never watched their videos because I’d never heard of them. I try to keep my YouTube recommendations as clean as possible by only watching creators I’m familiar with or have some obvious credibility, and regularly prune sketchy creators whenever one slips through. Learning GBS is part of CNN was [mostly] reassuring, and I’ve since enjoyed several of their videos and even subscribed to their channel.

Their evolution is interesting for anyone playing in the mobile/social video space, or considering a belated pivot in that direction—understanding the limitations of the platforms du jour; recognizing how audiences engage differently on each one; and reinforcing the value of having a central hub you control, regardless of how successful you may be on any particular platform.

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