This is a terrific piece by Joanna over on TeleRead called ‘Three truths that publishers should try to understand about readers.‘ I particularly agree with her point about publishers needing to understand the shift between bookstores as customer and the reader as customer.
“The big shift that ebooks are bringing to the market is not necessarily the paper to pixels one—it’s the shift between the bookstore as customer and the reader as customer. The problem many print publishers seem to have today is that they don’t really understand who the reader is and what they want out of a purchasing experience. Well, time to educate them! Each of these reader ‘truths’ is arguably debatable, but this is a summation what I’m hearing—over and over again—on message boards, in comment threads and in blog replies. This is where your new customer is at, publishers! Understand, and you can sell to them better. Fail to understand, and you have no one to blame but yourselves…“
Related articles
- Three truths that publishers should try to understand about readers (teleread.com)
- Published Author walks away from a $500,000 2-Book Deal (ireaderreview.com)
- Helping bookstores remain relevant (teleread.com)
- 7 ways ebook apps can help brick-and-mortar bookstores (radar.oreilly.com)