marketing

BEA '09 may be remembered as the moment when Google formally entered the ebook market. From the New York Times:

Mr. [Tom] Turvey [director of strategic partnerships at Google] said Google's program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. "We don't believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go," he said.

Recently Publisher's Weekly published an article The Twitter Scorecard that showed which Publishers were using Twitter. I found the piece missing key elements that would provide more insight to their question "So who is twittering, and how effectively?" I believe that if you are asking how effectively we are using Twitter, there is considerable more data needed than was presented. In my opinion, the number of Followers is not a complete measure of effectiveness. In fairness, PW did not say they were attempting to be comprehensive or complete in their scorecard, so I thought I would provide the data that is available mixed with some of my own obtained by scraping. So, I'll attempt to fill-in the scorecard a bit more.

First a note on who is behind the publisher accounts. O'Reilly as a company has oodles of Tweeters who blog about work, life, interests, etc., including @timoreilly who is nearing the half-million followers threshold. I suspect other publishers have the same army of tweeters too, but the data below is is just for the publisher account only. Oftentimes, these sort of accounts are run by PR groups in a Publishing company.

Below, you will find the same list of publishers contained in the original article with the addition of the following column headers and data:

Pub_Twitter is the Publisher account on Twitter. This list was created by PW and am not sure what the criteria was. Followers is the number of people that are following the publisher. These numbers are already off as many of these publishers have added many new followers since the original writing. I kept the same number that PW reported. Following is how many users the publisher follows.
Updates is how many tweets the publisher has posted since the account was created. Content is the most popular words the publisher uses in their tweets. Url is a link to a wordle that visualizes the corpus of tweets for the publisher. At the bottom of the table, you will see All Publishers which shows averages and the link includes all words in a visual wordle.

Pub_Twitter

Followers

Following

Updates

Content

URL

@AAKnopf

1,581

390

495

Book,
New, Read, RT

http://twitpic.com/5k982

@AtriaBooks

1,809

1,813

257

Book, ChetTheDog , Dog, New

http://twitpic.com/5k97i

@BantamDell

1,987

1,125

244

Blood,
Page, Free, Literary

http://twitpic.com/5k95r

@ChelseaGreen

5,003

5,296

4185

Green, RT, Thanks, Book

http://twitpic.com/5k93w

@DCComics

2,176

0

0

---

@DoubleDayPub

1,057

622

137

Lost,
RT, Pygmy, New

http://twitpic.com/5k908

@FreePressBooks

516

387

16

Book,
Check, Mason, tinyurl

http://twitpic.com/5k8yu

@GrandCentralPub

3,726

3,004

671

Thanks,
RT, Book, UR

http://twitpic.com/5k8xd

@GroveAtlantic

268

59

297

Wetlands,
Hely , Books, tinyurl

http://twitpic.com/5k8uc

@HarlequinBooks

2,187

159

776

Harlequin,
Romance, Author, Free

http://twitpic.com/5k8qn

@HarperPerennial

805

459

149

RT,
Book, Story, Read

http://twitpic.com/5k8oq

@LittleBrown

5,999

6,238

1359

RT,
Author, Scarecrow, Book

http://twitpic.com/5k8mj

@OReillyMedia

7,340

3,640

2073

O'Reilly,
RT, New, Book

http://twitpic.com/5k8l2

@ThomasNelson

678

834

182

Announced,
List, Best, Times

http://twitpic.com/5k8g8

@TinHouseBooks

892

162

58

Forgot,
New, Tin, Books

http://twitpic.com/5k8c7

@TorBooks

3,995

2,056

1525

Post,
Tor, Blog , New

http://twitpic.com/5k89z

@VintageAnchor

1,643

1,278

237

RT,
Tonight, Book, New

http://twitpic.com/5k86u

@VintageBooks

783

448

348

Vintage,
Book, Read, Books

http://twitpic.com/5k84j

@WorkmanPub

1,485

562

174

RT,
Book, Great, Books

http://twitpic.com/5k80s

All Publishers(avg)

2,312

1,502

  694

http://twitpic.com/5k9p4

I am thinking of making this a quarterly scorecard for 2009. Before I do that, are there meaningful and obtainable measures you would like to see added to the scorecard? What are the real measures: Sales increases? Information disseminated more efficiently and targeted? Increasing the feeling of community? What elements do you think should be measured in a Twitter Scorecard? Finally, if you are a publisher using Twitter and want to be included in future scorecards, let me know. I am mikeh {at} oreilly {dot} com or @mikehatora on Twitter.

Recently Publisher's Weekly published an article The Twitter Scorecard that showed which Publishers were using Twitter. I found the piece missing key elements that would provide more insight to their question "So who is twittering, and how effectively?" I believe that if you are asking how effectively we are using Twitter, there is considerable more data needed than was presented. In my opinion, the number of Followers is not a complete measure of effectiveness.

At Dear Author, a post stating that not all content should be expected to be free; rather it must be provided, free or not, in a realistic understanding of consumer needs and expectations, which might mean changing the way you do business.

What content providers must realize is that a changing business model wherein revenues are no longer captured in the same way does not mean that content is not without value or
that people will not pay, in some way, to use that content. I think many people recognize that in order to have worthwhile content, we must pay in some way for it. Consumers have reduced the value of the album, but have not determined that music itself is without value. Consumers might believe that digital books have reduced cost given the costs of production, distribution and warehousing; but it is not our belief that books are without value altogether or that all books must be provided for free. I think what consumers are looking for is a fair trade. Content creators provide the best content they possibly can and for a fair price allow the consumers to utilize it in the way that it fits into their lives.

Related Stories:

• Joe Wikert: "iPhone App Store Price Sensitivity"
• Essential Points in the Free Debate
• Author Notes Risks and Opportunities in Free Ebooks
• How Do Publishers and Authors Get Paid in a "Free" World?
• Piracy is Progressive Taxation ...

At Dear Author, a post stating that not all content should be expected to be free; rather it must be provided, free or not, in a realistic understanding of consumer needs and expectations, which might mean changing the way you do business.

Via a Google press release, word that visiting books.google.com/m provides mobile access to 1.5 million public-domain books from within Google Book Search:

Today, we're making it possible for anyone with an Android or an iPhone to find and read more than 1.5 million public domain books in the US (more than half a million outside the US) in the Google Book Search index for free on their mobile phone, from anywhere with Internet access. It's possible for a commuter on a passenger train to read classics like Pride and Prejudice right along with lesser known works like Novels and Letters of Jane Austen, or for a student in India to read Shakespeare's "Hamlet" on her iPhone, all via a simple website accessible from your mobile phone.

So far, the mobile edition only offers browser-based access (Web-style scrolling, no offline access, no remember-my-place), but an interesting addition to the emerging and important mobile reading space. Screenshot below (or click here if you can't see the screenshot).

Google will be at next week's TOC Conference talking about the past, present and future of GBS.

Related Stories:

• ReadWriteWeb: "Google Book Search Goes Mobile"
• Connecting the Dots Between Google Book Search and Android
• Reaction to Google Book Search Settlement
• Magazines Now in Google Book Search
• Google Book Search: It's All About the Index

Via a Google press release, word that visiting books.google.com/m provides mobile access to 1.5 million public-domain books from within Google Book Search:

A judge has dismissed lawsuits from Amazon and Overstock.com challenging New York's "Amazon tax," which was enacted last year. From the Associated Press:

The law applies to companies that don't have offices in New York, but have at least one person in the state who works as an online agent -- someone who links to a Web site and receives commissions for related sales.