IDW is one sharp publisher. They’ve carved a nice niche out in the comic book industry by producing primarily licensed books based on television shows, video games, and films. They picked up the Transformers license when Dreamwave dropped it a few years back. They even publshed an original title, 30 Days of Night, that was made into a major motion picture. IDW is also press savvy, and they know how to get their news out into the mainstream media.

So I wasn’t really surprised when I read an article today saying that IDW is producing two biopic comics about the candidates in the upcoming US presidential elections — John McCain and Barack Obama.

What did surprise me is that the article didn’t resort to using words like “bang!” or “pow!” (which always seems to happen in any article about comics), and it didn’t make any tired analogies to Batman or Superman (though they did get a mention in the lead, to the article’s detriment). It also didn’t really talk too much about the comic book; instead, it focused on the fact that these biopics will also be made available through cell phones.

“Cell phones?” you might be saying with a shrug. And the answer is yes — apparently, cell phone comics are a growing market for comics syndication services, and while I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read a comic book on such a tiny screen, I thought it might be an interesting idea for would-be-publishers to consider…But enough about what I think. Here’s a snippet from the article:

IDW Publishing in San Diego, better known for stories of robots (”The Transformers”) and vampires (”30 Days of Night”), commissioned the books with no input from either campaign.

”We’re not doing anything that is sensational here,” said IDW special projects editor Scott Dunbier. ”We’re sticking to the facts.”

Comic book biographies have been written before — Marvel Comics had a best-seller in 1982 with a biography of Pope John Paul II. And books intended to be read on cell phones have been gaining popularity worldwide this year and last.

Dunbier said the company is breaking new ground getting out fully researched comics on two candidates before Election Day. And the nontraditional storytelling and visuals of comics may reach some voters more effectively than other types of media can.

”We’re not in the business of doing textbooks, but I think comic books really do have the great potential to inform and teach,” he said.

Amen, brother. I’m thrilled to see the medium being used for stories that are more appealing to mainstream readers, and I think IDW is making a smart move here that is going to help them expose their entire line of books to a fresh new crop of readers. My only reservation is that the Obama book is probably going to outsell the McCain book by a healthy percent since Obama is so much more popular with the young people who might consider reading these comics. But hey, good for IDW for not being partisan here. I really respect the fact that they’re trying to be fair to both of these guys.

I’m going to do some research on comic books on cell phones and hopefully post an article tomorrow about it. But in the meantime, check out today’s article, and see if it gets your creative juices flowing as you try to think up your own set of comics that can reach out to the mass audience!

“Going green” is one of the latest trends in the business world — in the face of a recession, focusing on reusing and recycling just sounds like the right thing to do to most people, and many businesses are taking advantage of the trend to push new products and services. This isn’t the first time this has happened, or the last — environmentalism seems to be a cyclical trend that shows up every 10 years or so, generally around the time that the economy is struggling.

Full disclosure time: I am for conservation and for cutting down on trash and waste. I am for protecting natural preserves, and I love the idea of clean and efficient energy, like hydrogen fuel cell batteries. I believe climate change is a reality, but I’m not convinced that it’s the fault of industry, and I think that nuclear power is a safe and smart alternative to coal power. I think about the environment in my daily routine, and I drive a small, used, fuel-efficient car and try to re-use plastic food containers when possible.

With that said, I’m not an environmentalist, because I think for myself, and I understand that most of what environmentalists preach is feel-good nonsense. (Here’s a great article from Wired that explains what I mean here, point by point.) That’s why I’m going to present today’s article not as something I feel is smart and insightful, but rather something I feel is manipulative marketing.

The article talks about how many publishing companies, particularly magazines, are attempting to get onboard with the green revolution by offering more of their articles online. For example, the Washington Post Company started up a website called Sprig.com that offers environmentally friendly articles and videos for women:

Sprig.com features articles in five categories: food, fashion, beauty, home and lifestyle, with videos liberally mixed into each section. In the beauty section, a video features an eco-friendly manicure and pedicure, while in the food section, visitors can watch organic cooking demonstrations. The site will post about six new articles a day, written in a way one might characterize as Green Lite.

“We’re targeting this to the 95 percent of people who want to be 5 percent green,” said Jeanie Pyun, Sprig’s editor in chief. “Not the 5 percent of people who want to be 95 percent green.”

Did you catch that? The website is not interested in changing peoples’ habits and helping them “go green.” Instead, it’s just interested in offering content to people who are riding the trend — the same people who are going to abandon “going green” when the economy is back on the upswing and conservation doesn’t seem necessary any longer. This is not a publishing company trying to be socially conscious; this is a publishing company trying to market its products and make a few bucks off web-based advertising:

One advertiser already lined up is the Clorox Company, which produces a range of consumer products including Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressings. Sumona Pramanik, associate marketing manager for Hidden Valley, said she chose Sprig to carry ads about her brand’s new organic ranch dressing partly because Sprig is aimed at a mainstream audience.

“Their positioning as a stylish green site made them a perfect fit,” Ms. Pramanik said. “And having that female target consumer, that’s definitely a place where we play.”

The article also mentions why the magazine publishing industry is “going green”:

“If you looked at 10 new markets to go after right now, this would probably be close to the top, because the number of companies advertising green stuff will explode in the next couple of years,” said Josh Bernoff, an online media analyst with Forrester Research, a consulting firm. “And having an established company behind it is a good way to kick something like this off.”

One thing that the article doesn’t mention, but which I would suggest is quite relevant, is the fact that magazine and newspaper sales are slumping right now as more and more people turn to the internet for their information. Publishing companies who produce this kind of media have traditionally been bloated due to the heavy profits they’ve earned from advertising. Now, more and more companies are finding cheaper and easier ways to advertise products on the web, and magazines and newspapers are losing massive amounts of revenue and finding themselves forced to let nonessential staff go. They’re looking for anything they can hold on to now, and a trend like environmentalism seems like just the ticket to most.

But think about this for a moment. Are publishing companies who publish periodicals really the companies people who are concerned about the environment should support? The argument can be made for an organization like National Geographic, since they are socially responsible and have environmentalism as a core value. But many of these other companies create products with a high expectation of waste. Magazines typically only sell 33-50% of their newsstand copies, and the rest are promptly destroyed when the next batch arrives. Newspapers are one of the most wasteful products in publishing since they’re designed to be disposed of daily. While the unsold product is recycled, recycling is itself an energy-intensive process that isn’t able to turn 100% of the input into usable output, and the cost of recycling makes it cheaper for media companies to use new paper than recycled content.

And what about websites? Computers are fairly energy efficient, but the old CRT monitors many people are still using are not. Laptop computers use dangerous batteries, as do PDA smartphones and standalone eBook readers. Computers also heat up rooms and offices, requiring air conditioners to be run more frequently, which in turn consumes even more energy. Granted, websites create less waste than paper products, and electronic periodicals are more environmentally friendly than paper ones, but the tradeoff is higher energy consumption and increased production of electronic devices, most of which last consumers for a year or two before they’re replaced.

Now, I don’t want magazines, newspapers and computers to vanish because they’re not 100% eco-friendly; that sort of thinking is the reason that most people aren’t willing to commit to this “going green” stuff past a certain point, because it isn’t realistic. I simply want people to understand that this “going green” stuff is just a smokescreen that’s being used to sell things. As a publisher who is producing a series of children’s books about nature, I’m definitely planning to talk about conservation and wildlife protection. But I don’t want to do it in a phony way, that’s designed to sell books and nothing more. I want people to really think about nature, and to ask themselves if it’s part of our responsibility to protect it as we develop our own society.

I’ll close this article with this thought: there is a big difference between being socially conscious and being a part of a trend. If a publisher wants to take advantage of the “going green” phase, now’s the time to do so. But when the trend is over, and consumers return to wasteful excess, will the publishers who once preached “going green” be able to stay consistent with their message… or will they be the ones leading the charge to consume new products as often as possible?

-SJJ

Believe it or not, my entire journey into the world of comic books and publishing began with a Christian comics-themed message board on Yahoo! Groups. There was a time when I was very serious about Christianity, and I wanted to produce books for that market. But as I grew a bit older and wiser, I realized three things:

First, the more I studied the history of Christianity and the religions that influenced it, the less I identified myself with the modern form of the religion. Having this sort of “doctrinal disagreement” would make it difficult for me to get books published in this market if I chose to stick to my principles.

Second, I realized that the Christian bookstore market wasn’t really about books anymore; it was about selling a wide array of Christian-themed gift items and inspirational CDs, with a few books on the side. The competition in the market was getting fierce, too, since chains like Family Christian Stores were using their distribution power to put mom and pop stores out of business.

Third, I realized that producing books for this market was the equivalalent of “preaching to the choir” — and the preaching that people wanted to hear wasn’t even all that good. For example, a popular book in Christian bookstores is Lee Stroebel’s The Case For Christ. The book is marketed as a sincere, skeptical analysis of Christianity that offers proof that the religion is true. But the problem with the book is that Stroebel only interviews people who are sympathetic to his viewpoints, and when he asks the “tough questions,” he doesn’t press his points or question the answers. Any answer he receives is good enough. Sadly, a lot of Christian books I’ve read fall in that category, and I couldn’t see myself, particularly with my unique perspective on some Christian doctrines, writing for that audience. I’ve always believed that it’s better to be a light in the dark than to see who can shine the brightest.

So that’s why I found this article very interesting — a piece about how publishers can sell books to the Christian market. Not surprisingly, the author recommends avoiding the Christian book market and looking for opportunities elsewhere. But I was surprised to see some of the places she recommended taking these books…

So where should publishers of titles for the Christian market concentrate marketing efforts? The answer to all things Christian lies in the Gospel, which means the Good News, as in, “Go ye into all the World and preach the Gospel unto all creatures.” Notice it doesn’t say “Go ye into all the Christian bookstores.”

If “the world” is our marketplace, that opens up limitless possibilities.

Many secular bookstores, both chains and independents, welcome new small-press books, including Christian books. They’ll gladly take a Christian customer’s money for a book the Christian bookstores won’t carry. Libraries, too, buy thousands of small-press and self-published Christian books. Church bookstores and church libraries are another growing market for books that fit their beliefs.

Still more Christian books sell online through BN.com, Amazon.com, eBay, Borders.com, Books-a-Million, and hundreds, if not thousands, of authors’ and publishers’ Web sites and chat groups.

And don’t forget the big-box stores such as Costco and Sam’s Club, both of which sell a lot of Christian books, including an occasional small-press Christian title. (Costco buyers “discovered” one of my self-published titles once and placed a nice big order when I hadn’t even approached them.)

Mail sales can be huge. These include sales via direct mail, book and nonbook catalogs, and card decks. Book clubs are another huge direct-mail market. And homing in on specialized readers can pay dividends even though it’s expensive.

Radio and TV are also getting into the act, with interviews and appearances generating hundreds of book sales. Book infomercials sell some Christian books. And QVC and other home-shopping networks sell them too. (Don’t laugh; several authors have used them very successfully. Joanna Lund, a Christian cookbook author, sold more than a million books on QVC.)

QVC? I never would have considered trying to sell books there, let alone Christian cookbooks. But that’s a fascinating market that a lot of publishers would likely scoff at. I’m wondering if the might of QVC could sell a million nature-themed educational graphic novels. I’ll have to look into that.

Some of the other recommendations are standard, but the author goes on to advise using rack jobbers to get books onto grocery store impulse racks and magazine stands. She notes that this was particularly effective in her own life, since it was a book on a grocery store rack that led her to become a Christian. Interesting.

What I like most about this article is that the basic principle here can be applied to just about any book — even if it’s secular. Is the book market giving you grief? Are you unable to break into the comic book direct market? Then use this long list of alternative selling channels to get your book out there. If you create a good product and you search hard enough, you will eventually find your niche in publishing. Sometimes, it’s just about looking harder than the competition cares to.

So, with that said, give this article a read, and see if it can’t inspire you to look at your product in a new way.

I really don’t mind if my work is reprinted or used for noncommercial purposes. Every now and then, I hear from someone who’s in a writing group or who is teaching a workshop who wants to hand out my Comic Book Writer’s Guide. I need to revise it, but hey, they’re welcome to it, as long as they’re not charging anyone for it. My only stipulation is that they credit me and reference the URL of my website.

But there are loopholes in this system that allow people to use my work for commercial gain, whether I like it or not. For example, if someone wants to parody a piece of writing I’ve published, they are legally entitled to do so… so long as it’s not longer than the original piece and contains enough original writing that it’s clearly a different piece of work. If someone wants to write a biography about me and use large chunks of text from individual articles on this website, they’re permitted to do so, without my consent, under the “fair use” guidelines. (Here’s a detailed explanation of what those provide.) And if someone wants to take my work, change just enough of it that it’s original, and republish it without attributing me, they’ll probably be able to get away with it under the law, because I have to prove that they actually plagiarized my work in order to stop them from using it. That’s a problem.

And there are flaws, too. Most people who want to read my work will read my website. But what if someone wants to make a copy of an article I wrote and file it away for reference? If my copyright language does not state that they’re allowed to do so, and carries that ominous line, “All Rights Reserved,” they’re violating my copyright. The same is true if someone emails an article to a friend, or copies the article onto their own website in “mirror” fashion, with full attribution, just because they’re concerned that my site might go down and the article might be lost. Even something as benign and useful as the Wayback Machine, which archives the entire Internet, regularly violates the copyright of millions of authors without their knowledge.

To face some of the challenges presented by the information age, some folks got together about six years ago to create a “Creative Commons License” (or CCL) system that would allow writers, musicians, graphic artists, photographers, software developers, and other creative people to distribute rights from their copyrights to individual users through a free licensing system. On the surface, it seems like a really good thing for anyone to use, but it does have its own set of problems. The question I’m going to address today is whether or not a publisher should consider using a CCL for his or her printed work. The answer might surprise you.

Now first of all, let’s be clear on what a CCL is: it’s an addition to an author’s copyright, not a replacement. The purpose of a CCL is to give authors the ability to dictate how their work can be used by others. There are four dimensions of a CCL that can be used in six different combinations. I’d list them myself, but this slide, from the Creative Commons License website, explains it quite succinctly:

This is a slide from “Sharing Creative Works,” a comic that explains the purpose and details of the Creative Commons License. And I’m posting it here under the CCL, for what it’s worth! It’s available at the following URL: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works

Each of these attributes represent a certain set of guidelines. Attribution means that those who re-use the work have to cite the name of the work’s creator. Noncommercial means that the work can’t be used for money-making purposes (something we’ll discuss more in a moment). ShareAlike means that when derivative works are created, they fall under the same license as the original work. And No Derivatives means that users are not permitted to create derivative works from the original.

In all of these combinations, a work can be copied and re-used on a personal basis. That’s great if you want people to be able to legally copy and distribute your work to friends, but not so great if you want them to pay for every copy made.

For the purposes of publishing, I would say that it would be a rare occasion not to use the “Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives” model, if a CCL should be used at all. This license would allow users to copy and share the work, which could potentially be of great use to the publisher if it could inspire those reading the copies to make a purchase down the road. From a marketing point of view, using such a license could be a smart move, since it sounds progressive and makes the content freely available to people once the book’s money is made and it’s out of print. The license can always be revoked down the road if needed, and it doesn’t affect reprint rights in the slightest.

If you are publishing nonfiction and you want to get your ideas out to be discussed and applied, I see very little reason not to apply this form of a CCL to your work. Remember, your work can only be copied and shared for personal use (something that’s not likely to happen regularly with a full-length book), and the goodwill you’ll create will likely boost your initial sales. Using the same license for an eBook is less advisable, since it’s more easily copied, but if you are less concerned about money than you are about discourse, you’ll certainly reach a wider audience with an eBook that can be copied and shared with friends… and if your content is good enough, people will pay for it.

If you are publishing fiction, there are fewer incenctives to publish under a CCL. It can be done, and has been done by Cory Doctorow, among others. But I see it more as a publicity tool than anything; something that suits the mindset of a subset of Internet users and inspires them to support the work. But on a grander scale, it can mean seeing even lower returns than the already small amount an author will see on a self-published novel, since people will feel more free to make copies of the work and give it to their friends.

But there’s a dark side to the CCL, and it’s something that bears mentioning. You see, the whole point of using a CCL is to respect the end users of your product and to grant them legal permissions to use your work in what you deem a normal manner. After all, we all know that viral marketing works best with products that can be distributed freely, and we like to believe that consumers will want to pay a fair price for our work, even if it’s after they’ve downloaded it from a friend for free.

While that ideology is nice on the surface, it misunderstands how consumers view products. Price plays an important role in the perception of a product; if a product can be distributed for free, consumers will often assume it’s because that product is inferior and isn’t worth anything. If that product can only be distributed for free under illegal means, consumers are more likely to look into purchasing it first, unless they’re amoral enough that they insist on pirating it no matter how reasonable the product’s cost may be. But the group that will download for free if it’s permitted to do so is exponentially larger than the group that will download for free if it’s not permitted. So why not just make a 99 cent eBook available to those who are willing to pay, and encourage them to recruit their friends to make the purchase as well? That seems just as reasonable to me, and it can be done under the current copyright laws quite easily.

Another aspect of the dark side comes from the meaning of the word “noncommercial use.” Under a CCL, it is technically all right for a user to purchase my product and then post it online for others to use. That user can’t sell the book, but might post it on a webpage where he or she is benefiting from ad revenues or referral links. In my mind, this violates the license. But in his or her mind, the monies being raised might be transferred to an account used strictly to pay hosting fees. It’s a tough problem to work around, and though I can revoke the CCL at any time, I’m going to have a hard time enforcing that without getting attorneys involved.

Conversely, a major media company could see my CCL and, not fully understanding what it means, assume that my work is free to reprint for their own uses. This has happened many, many times with photographs and music, particularly in advertising. In some cases, the work was correctly licensed for this usage, but in one well-known case, a photo of a 16-year old girl was posted by a youth group counselor online using a basic CCL license. Virgin Mobile’s ad firm used the picture in an ad that included some inneundoes that offended the girl, and the whole thing wound up becoming a huge legal mess. From Virgin’s standpoint, they’d done nothing wrong; the picture was licensed for attribution only. But the 16-year-old had a case as well; the picture had been used without her consent, and she’d never signed the standard release that a model might have been asked to sign. Had the picture been fully copywritten, it’s likely such a mess never would have occurred.

What the whole dilemma of a Creative Commons License boils down to is this: do you, as a publisher, want to give away some of the rights you have under standard copyright protection so that others can legally share or modify your work? If so, CCL is a nice option to define your terms to users. If not, you should probably stick with a standard copyright; it’s not a perfect system, but it usually does the job. You can always specify permissions within your copyright for free noncommercial use, and they’re much less likely to be abused.

As a side note, one thing that many small publishers might not realize is that US copyrights that are not registered with the US Copyright Office are extremely hard to defend in court. Any published work, whether it’s set up for CCL or not, should be registered here. Registered copyrights are much easier to defend in court; they’re currently $35 per book. Keep in mind that techniques such as the “poor man’s copyright” — where you mail yourself a manuscript in a sealed envelope, thus procuring a time and date stamp from a government source — do not hold up in court, and they’re no substitute for registering with the US Copyright office.

If you’re still interested in this topic, I’d recommend an article that I found very useful on CCL, by photographer and writer Dan Heller. This article goes into detail about how photographers can game the system and rip people off. It’s an intriguing read, to say the least!

-SJJ

Unlike a lot of folks in the comic book industry, I’ve never been a big fan of fan fiction — writings by fans that take place in an established universe with established characters. But I’m not necessarily sympathetic to the views of fantasy and sci-fi authors who have railed against fanfiction (such as this passionate essay from Raymond E. Feist). No, my beef with fanfiction is that it’s creatively lazy; it involves taking someone else’s characters and ideas and using them to create a derivative work. It’s hard to grow as a writer when you’re simply imitating the work of others, and it’s even harder to grow when you refuse to create ideas of your own. It’s one thing for children to include Spongebob Squarepants and Pikachu in stories they write, because they’re still learning the basic skills needed to create a story. It’s quite another thing for an adult to write a slash fic featuring Sirius Black and Severus Snape engaging in a bondage-themed tryst.

I suppose that one might argue that the folks currently writing Batman, Superman and Spider-Man are writing professional fanfiction, and that by my reckoning, they’re being creatively lazy too. I suppose that case could be made, but the difference is that those folks are getting paid for their work, by the people who currently own the copyright. The work has to be of a certain quality, and one it’s published, it becomes a part of the “canon” of the story. As such, I don’t have a problem with professionals picking up gigs to write established characters. I would, however, have a problem with those same professionals spending their free time writing fanfics on the side.

But lest you think I’m anti-fanfic, let me assure you that I do think that there’s a time and a place for them… and that publishers are unwise to ban them entirely. With that said, I think it’d be wise to first look at the legality of fanfics, and then to talk about how a publisher can use them as a marketing opportunity…

The article I linked today discusses the legal issues surrounding fanfiction. Though it’s primarily from a Canadian point of view, the laws in the US and the UK are almost exactly the same, since all three countries have similar copyright laws.

When an author creates a story and puts it to paper, that work automatically becomes his or hers via copyright law. There are some stipulations, of course — the work has to be mostly original, and it is really the ideas (such as the characters, the unique plot, and a unique setting) that are entirely protected. There’s also quite a bit of gray area involved. For example, George Lucas can’t really copyright the idea of “droids,” since he didn’t invent the concept or the word that “droids” is derrived from. George Lucas does, however, own the copyright on the “Jedi Knights,” the “Sith,” and the “Death Star,” since these were all original concepts that he invented for his story. An author might be able to get away with having “droids” in his or her story. But having characters named Jeda that fought with holosabers using a mysterious energy called the Flow might be grounds for copyright infringement… unless the author can prove that he or she was writing a parody of the original work.

It’s complicated stuff, copyright law, and what makes it worse is that it’s really up to the copyright holder to enforce it, or else the copyright can actually be diminished. That’s one of the reason that authors and publishers have traditionally gone after fanfiction writers — if they don’t, and they continue to create stories that are in any way similar to the work of the fanfiction writers, they can actually be sued.

Granted, that doesn’t happen often. And I’d suggest that in this day and age, when the majority of jury members are going to be more media savvy than they were twenty or thirty years ago, a fanfic writer is going to have a very difficult time winning such a case.  But then again, fanfiction is a lot more prevalent today than it used to be, thanks to the internet, and fanfic writers can be creating work for large, invisible audiences underneath the radar of the copyright holder. And while this is technically piracy, most authors don’t seem to mind, provided that the stories are clearly designated as fanfiction and the more explicit stuff is kept away from the kids.

And this is where my first problem comes in. There are fanfiction websites out there who are making money off the hosting of fanfic stories, and though they claim that they need to do so to cover the cost of bandwidth, I suspect that several of these sites are making more than they reveal. It is true that the largest site,Fanfiction.net, doesn’t run ads [CORRECTION - It does, I just didn't see them due to my ad blocking software], but I’ve seen many genre or title-specific sites that do.

My second problem is that this content is usually horribly written, with very little editing and a peer review process that seems to cheer people on for poor technique. These writers aren’t growing by posting up fanfics to an audience that devours anything having to do with a favorite property; in fact, they’re often stunting their growth creatively. It’s really hard to create good, likable characters, and it’s even harder to put those character in a good, likable story. By bypassing this process and using someone else’s creation to tell stories, these writers are not only not learning how to do the hard work, but they’re also often producing inferior work to the original that re-uses the same themes and ideas over and over.

My third problem is that fanfics aren’t regulated, and can’t be regulated, so you get the inevitable slash fics, which often feature bizarre sexual encounters between two or more male characters. This is a really strange scene, often written by women for women, and it’s prevalent in urban fiction, manga/anime, and television show fanfics.  I realize that some people write it as a joke, but there are people who write this stuff for serious entertainment. I have a similar problem with the guys who hang around comic and anime conventions offering to draw female comic book and cartoon characters in lingerie or sexually explicit positions.

My fourth problem comes from the response of copyright holders who turn a blind eye to fanfiction because they don’t want to deal with the issue. The article linked above says that Gene Roddenberry ignored the Trekker fanfiction zines because he knew it was good for the fanbase. OK. But it would have been better if Roddenberry had acknowledged the zines, set some ground rules for the types of fanfiction allowed, and set up a free license for fans to write their own stories in the Trek universe if they followed his guidelines. This would this have made the content legitimate and allowed it to become something more than fanfiction — it would have become an expanded vision of his universe, for fans, by fans.

And it’s from my proposed solution to that fourth problem that I’m going to suggest something publishers should consider. In recent years, something called a “Creative Commons License” has evolved, which allows copyright holders to easily license their work to users for different purposes. (I’m going to be posting up an article about Creative Commons tomorrow, so stay tuned for that.) Creators can use a CCL to allow for legal fanfiction with established guidelines. They can also offer to host fanfiction on their own websites, under the stipulation that anyone who posts fanfiction waives the right to sue if there are similarities in upcoming volumes of the work down the road. A further stipulation might be that the characters from the work cannot be used in the fanfic; it has to feature original characters created by the fanfic community.

All of these things would help to not only allow fanfiction to legally exist, but to make it more creative and less objectionable. It would also allow the author to legally read over fanfics without the fear of being sued and to even license the best fanfic writers to create spinoff titles in the genre. This could be a wonderful marketing opportunity, since it would get the hardest core fans involved in a product, and it would certainly contribute to strong sales as a result.

Is this something I would try? It’d depend on the project. But I do hope to create something someday that will ultimately become a universe I can open up to my readers, much like H.P. Lovecraft did with his Cthulhu Mythos. After all, it’s one thing to create something that people want to read; it’s quite another to create something that they themselves wish they could write.

-SJJ

I saw this piece on BoingBoing, but go ahead and check out Neil Gaiman’s blog as well to read more about this story. Basically, Neil Gaiman’s publisher, Harper Collins, decided to give away free ebook editions of American Gods via software called “Browse Inside”. The result: sales of the novel surged in independent booksellers, and probably in big chain stores as well (though it was apparently difficult to deduce this since a product promotion was running at the same time). And as soon as the free ebook promotion ended, sales dropped.

So the publisher was giving away free ebooks, and customers were going out and buying the print edition. On the surface, that doesn’t make any sense at all. What the heck was going on?

Before I offer my own analysis, let’s look at some statistics from the article:

Response to our Browse Inside Online Reader was mixed – with 44% saying they enjoyed the experience at 56% saying they did not. The chief complaints were that you had to have an internet connection to read the book, you had to scroll to see the whole page and that the load time was sometimes slow. 69% of respondents said that they would like to be able to download. Some people complained that since they couldn’t bookmark where they left off, they got lost between reading sessions.

Back to the 44% who enjoyed the experience….9% of respondents said that they read through 100% of the book and 30% of respondents said that they would use this tool to read the whole book.

Elsewhere in the article, it says that 85,000 people attempted to read the book. The average time spent reading was 15 minutes, and the average number of pages was 46.

The promotion boosted sales not only of American Gods, but other Neil Gaiman books as well. A large number of the readers were familiar with Neil Gaiman, but had not read American Gods before.

That data helps us paint a clearer picture of what was actually going on:

1. Most readers weren’t especially interested in reading the book online. It’s more likely that they were interested in having an unrestricted preview of the book that could help them decide whether or not they should buy it.

2. Most readers were interested in reading the book because they were already familiar with Neil Gaiman. That is an important point to keep in mind. Readers would not have been nearly as interested in reading a free eBook by an unknown author.

3. Since so many readers were frustrated with the eBook experience, it’s possible that they simply gave in and purchased the book because it was such a hassle to read it online.

4. Since American Gods is such a long novel, it’s possible that fans who couldn’t bookmark their place in the book (another drawback of the software) decided to buy a copy so they could finish it more easily.

5. All in all, only 30% of the people from the sample (which we’ll assume is representative of the entire population) were willing to finish reading the book through the free eBook software.

As such, this is hardly a shining beacon that will point publishers towards releasing their titles in free eBook form as a promotional move.  Harper Collins clearly generated more badwill than goodwill in the process, and the only reason the program worked out in their favor was because readers were more interested in reading this book (a terrific novel, by a great author) than they were in giving up on it.

But with that said, I don’t think the whole idea was a disaster. In fact, I think it offers some clues as to how publishers can use the power of the web to dramatically increase sales, even with unknown authors.

First of all, publishers need to stop being so stingy with their previews. I would suggest making 33-50% of each new novel available, for free, online, using simple, unrestricted software. For one thing, it doesn’t cost the publishers much to do this — once they have the software and the web infrastructure set up, all they’re paying for is bandwidth. And if they make these previews more readily available to customers, they’ll see higher sales as customers log on, start reading, get hooked, and head out to buy. In fact, publishers could even benefit from offering eBooks through this model since they could sell the customer the rest of the story, available immediately, for a fraction of the price of the printed book. That’s money that goes directly to the publishers’ pockets, and it won’t be diminished by returns, payment delays, or distribution percentages.

Second, publishers need to stop worrying about trying to keep smaller retailers in business. Don’t get me wrong — I’m very much in favor of retailers, because they perform an important function at the end of the distribution channel. But retailers love to complain that publishers are trying to undercut them when, really, it’s the retailers themselves that need to change. I’ve been in plenty of mom + pop bookstores that have terrible customer service, lacking selections, horrible atmosphere, and ridiculous prices. It is they, not the publishers, who should be responsible for their failures. Many of them refuse to adapt their stores to the 21st century, and insist instead on blaming everyone else in the distribution channel. Their focus is pointed in the wrong direction. Customers flock to places like B&N, Borders and Books-A-Million because they’re better places to shop, plain and simple. These big chains are also a lot less likely to whine about competition from publishers, since they know that they have mindshare when it comes to getting customers to buy books.

Third, publishers really need to try to understand the mindset of the modern consumer. Contrary to popular belief, book buyers don’t buy books just to read them; they buy because they want to have a sense of ownership. After all, books aren’t hard to read for free; they can be borrowed from friends or checked out from the library as easily as they can be purchased. My wife recently read the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich by borrowing them from the library, and decided that she needed to go out and get the entire series. (Sorry, Janet, but I made her buy them secondhand, because we’re broke.) I pointed out to her that she could always check them out again if she wanted them, but she insisted that she needed to have them — in her mind, she wanted to be able to say that they were a part of her personal library, which in turn makes them a part of her lifestyle.

If Harper Collins thinks that people are buying American Gods because it’s a good book, they’re only half right. People are buying American Gods because it’s written by Neil Gaiman, whose work they know through comics, novels and film, and owning his books reflects well on them in their minds. I’ve actually known quite a few people who have purchased American Gods and never finished it because they thought it was too long and too slow. It’s that sense of ownership that made them buy it, and getting them interested through a preview only increased their chances of wanting to have it.

So, what I’d ask would-be publishers to take away from this is not the idea that free eBooks will increase sales, but rather the idea that consumers do appreciate eBooks as a marketing tool. The more you can give them, the more likely they’ll be to get hooked and buy. And in the meantime, don’t fear the retailers; in the current market for books, suppliers have the power, not the middlemen.

In wrapping this up, I do want to be clear on one point: while this trial did influence many of of the readers to purchase the book, the report does not reveal how many of them actually did or how many additional copies were sold. Because of that, we should take this entire situation, as the saying goes, “with a grain of salt” — Neil Gaiman indicates that the publisher sold “a lot” of books, but he doesn’t say how many. His status as a well-known author also had a large influence on the results.

Paco Underhill is a peculiar sort of marketing researcher — instead of gathering data from polls, he goes out into retail stores, installs hidden cameras, and has members of his field team tail customers and take detailed notes about the manner in which those customers shop. Over the last few decades, he’s developed a system that he calls the “science of shopping.” Personally, I’m not certain that his methods are actually scientific; observation techniques can contribute to science, but many of the recommendations Underhill makes to his clients in the book are based on his desire to improve outcomes rather than his desire to discover if those outcomes are truly effective.

But the book raises some interesting points, and I won’t discount what Underhill suggests merely because his techniques aren’t scientifically sound. Much of what he relays is anecdotal, explaining the layout of a store and the challenges it faced. A mall-based drugstore, for example, had its sodas located in coolers in the back of the store, causing teenaged mall employees to rush through the store during their breaks and tear down a central aisle where older shoppers would often stand and examine pain relievers. Though the product was convenient and visible, the constant flow of fast-moving teens made the older shoppers uncomfortable, and resulted in low sales for these pain relievers. Once the pain relievers were moved elsewhere, they attracted fewer customers, but saw greater sales since the customers were more free to take their time selecting and comparing products.

Underhill’s book is full of this sort of story, and it’s easy to see that he has developed an intuition for understanding consumer buying patterns. One of the things I’ve taken away from reading the book is that the approach many consumers take towards buying goes against the practices some publishers like to follow. And that’s what I’d like to discuss.

Underhill is a big believer in the tactile quality of products — consumers like to touch products as they examine them, as if they have some instinct that the products they want to buy will feel right. Surprisingly, customers don’t just touch clothes and towels — they’ll pick up just about any item as they consider it, hold it, look it over, and then either put it in their basket or back on the shelf once they’ve made a decision. Underhill says that this is a good thing, and that the longer customers are allowed to shop, the more likely they are to buy something. Similarly, the easier it is for them to examine their alternatives uninterupted, the more likely they are to make a choice.

The implications of this for publishers should be quite obvious. Books should always be easy for customers to pick up, flip through, and examine. Some publishers insist on shrink-wrapping books so that they can include pack-ins, like bookmarks or DVDs. But the truth of the matter is that customers hate shrink-wrapped books. They want to be able to pick them up and look through them so that they can make sure they’re getting the right thing. Most customers don’t really care about the pack-ins; they don’t use them, and they don’t see them as being valuable. They’d rather be able to flip through the book.

Book covers often also have review quotes on them, especially on the back cover. But publishers should ask themselves if these review quotes actually mean anything to the readers. Sure, it looks nice to post nice review quotes from a half a dozen reputable sources, but the real reason consumers are looking at the back of a book is because they want to see what the book is about or, if it’s non-fiction, what it will tell them that alternative titles won’t. The front cover, likewise, should have something to do with the content of the book. A lot of mass market paperback books look exactly the same, and it’s clear that there’s not a lot of artistic effort being put into making the covers serve the consumer. Often, books with memorable titles, striking covers, and great back cover design wind up being strong sellers. This is not an accident.

And while I haven’t seen hard data on this, I’d be willing to bet that books with smooth, glossy covers are more likely to sell than those that feel like they’re wrapped in cheap construction paper. Experience has taught me that consumers will tend to buy the book with more pages if they’re faced with two alternatives that are otherwise the same in content, but I’m going to guess that most will go with the book with the most durable spine if they’re comparing two books that are 400 pages or more. There’s just something about cheaply bound paperbacks falling apart that makes consumers willing to sacrifice page count for quality.

Underhill also discusses something that many retailers seem to have figured out over the last few years — the idea that the entrance to the store serves as something of a “landing zone,” where customers zoom in and slow their pace as they adjust to the store. As customers enter a store, they almost always veer to the right, and they rarely notice anything directly at the front of the store. Retailers have gotten good at using this zone to showcase their feature titles and their bargains, but this can come to the detrminent of publishers who are doing in-store marketing displays or participating in endcap promotions. After all, this “net” at the front of the store can capture consumer impulse purchases, preventing them from making their way back to a genre section and finding a small publisher’s title.

As I’ve said in other pieces, I’m not certain that it’s cost effective for small publishers to participate in these programs, since the money it costs to be featured in stores can be more effectively put into online promotional campaigns. But what I would suggest is that it’s worth spending the extra money to get titles featured up front, just as it’s good to get clearance merchandise into those bargain sections. I know that whenever I go to Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Books-A-Million, I generally see the bestsellers, features and bargains before I see anything I actually came in for. That means I’m much more likely to pick up one of those books first.

Publishers can do one more thing to influence retail shoppers –  they can make their spines easy to read. Shoppers have a tendency to gloss over titles they can’t read, even if it’s the title they’re looking for. Sometimes, logos look really good on spines, but often, it’s best for spines to have simple, readable lettering that shows up easily while customers are scanning the shelves. Remember that only the most popular books and authors will get faced out, because they often write so much that customers won’t be looking for specific titles. But often, a small publisher will be producing books that customers are looking for specifically. So making them easy to find on shelves by using big, easy-to-read letters will make customers more likely to immediately pick the books up and buy them without a second thought.

It’s all good stuff to be thinking about. Publishers often don’t put a lot of thought into how their books are perceived at the retail level, but it’s important to consider early on.

As a final note, Underhill’s book says that online sales will never replace brick & mortar sales because consumers really do like the experience of shopping and being able to touch and experience items they’re considering. The book was written in 2000, when this sort of viewpoint seemed a little more relevant. Now that it’s 2008, what do you think about this?

-SJJ

It surprised me when I first learned about it during my research for Army Ant Publishing. And I found out about it in the worst possible way, too — I had already come up with the idea of starting a comic book company for kids, and I wanted to make my first story a cartoonish adventure series featuring my dog, Ramses, a spunky little pup who would be smarter than his owners, but always thwarted by his love for peanut butter.

But unlike a lot of people who want to start companies, I wasn’t content to develop a product and then test it with children. So, I started researching what children were into, and when I visited my mother’s second grade class for a monthly young author’s writing workshop I was teaching, I would ask kids what they were into.

I got the responses I expected, of course — the kids loved Spider-Man, and Pokemon, and Spongebob, and all of the things that marketers work so hard to get in front of them. A lot of them were obsessed with video games, and many of the girls were into Hannah Montana and shopping at Club Libby Lu. But what surprised me was that many of the children were also interested in animals and nature. They enjoyed nonfiction books, and when I looked at the books they enjoyed reading, I noticed that they enjoyed the books with realistic artwork over those with cartoonish artwork.

This was very interesting to me, especially once I started seeing articles such as this piece from Newsweek, which talks about a publisher that gave the “Little House on the Prairie” books a makeover to suit the tastes of modern children. The publisher decided to replace the classic Garth Williams illustrations on the cover with more photorealistic covers that conveyed a sense of adventure. Other publishers of literary children’s books followed suit. The article even quotes two children who approve of the change:

Allison Edheimer, 9, wants the photo version of the “Little House” series. “I’d rather read something where I can picture the person,” she says. Rachael Ross, 10, agrees: “I like seeing real people better than drawings,” she says. “Drawings look sort of fake.”

The problem is plain: publishers, cartoon studios, toy companies, and other makers of children’s products have worked themselves into a strange rut where they’ve gotten very good at telling children what they should like instead of actually listening to the kids themselves. Part of the reason for this is because children are very susceptible to marketing tactics; if you tell them they should like something, they’ll buy into it much more easily than adults will because they haven’t learned how to properly evaluate advertising. And while kids grow ever more savvy, they’re still easy marks for advertising.

Consider the latest Transformers television show. Now, when I was a kid, I loved the Transformers because it featured robots turning into realistic cars, airplanes, and trucks. Some turned into dinosaurs, which was cool. (As supporting evidence, I was less enthusiastic about the ones that turned into insects and, later on, futuristic cars and space aliens — that lack of realism probably turned me off.)

But look at how the Transformers have been changed for today’s kids:

Optimus Prime from 1984	Optimus Prime from 200

When I was a kid, I remember staring for hours at my Transformers posters and folders, marveling at the detail that was put into each character. I loved the toys because they started off as toy cars and trucks and then turned into cool-looking robots. My friends and I would complain that we had to stick Optimus’s hands onto his arms, because that wasn’t how it worked in the TV show. We would often sit around drawing the characters, trying to mimic every detail so that our drawings looked as realistic as possible.

I doubt today’s generation is doing that with the latest design of the Transformers. I know I’ll probably come off here as being reactionary, but… seriously? Did Optimus Prime really need a cartoony makeover that makes him look like a bad video game character? Is this design something that kids will remember 20 years later? Is this design something that will inspire kids to think about mechanical details, or something that they’ll be inspired to copy until they get it right?

Of course not. The new look for the Transformers isn’t something that kids wanted; it’s a design from some people at the Cartoon Network who are trying to be hip and infuse their own artistic ideas into an established license. Kids will likely watch the show, since it’s being marketed towards them nonstop. But chances are good that, if you asked them, most kids would tell you that they much prefer the realistic look of the Transformers in the old cartoons or in the movies to the new, ultra-stylized look of the latest show.

But then, I’m making a big assumption that kids are the ones who are actually watching the show and buying the toys. That’s not a fair assumption to make, since the Cartoon Network pulls in a surprisingly large number of college students and adults during the afternoon hours, and because there are a sizable number of adults who collect Transformers toys. And even though they’re not the intended target audience, they’re often the most vocal segment when it comes to articulating which changes are good, and which are not.

I bring this up because I’ve come to realize that the whole idea that “cartoons and comic books are for kids” is a big myth. Truth be told, kids prefer things that are realistic; that’s why they gravitate towards shows like the Power Rangers and Hannah Montana and iCarly. As goofy as these shows are, they don’t talk down to kids. In fact, in the kids’ minds, they’re not much different from the shows that parents watch. Kids will watch cartoons, too, since they’ve learned from a young age that cartoons are going to have content that will engage them.

But have you ever stopped and wondered why cartoons got so closely associated with children in the first place?

I haven’t seen a lot of information on this topic, so I’m simply going to speculate here. (Please feel free to correct me in the comments section if you know more!) There was a time when animation was designed for the whole family to enjoy, and though cartoons were generally meant to be funny, they were also used to tell more serious stories (such as the old Tex Avery Superman cartoons, or the Disney films like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty).  But as the medium began to age and adult-oriented entertainment grew more sophisticated, cartoons lost their appeal to older audiences. Since they were very expensive to produce, animators began cutting corners and churning out cartoons with a much lower quality than before. As a result, cartoons lost a lot of their magic and lost their ability to entertain adults. Children still enjoyed them, however, since the cartoons were less sophisticated than the adult-oriented shows and easier for the children to understand. Thus cartoons became something that were primarily aimed at children.

In the 1980s, toy manufacturers realized that, following the merchandising success of the Star Wars films, they could use cartoons to introduce new toy lines. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe went first, becoming the first nationally syndicated cartoon show and inspiring children to buy He-Man action figures so they could replicate the adventures they saw on TV. Shows such as G.I. Joe, Transformers, Care Bears and Rainbow Brite followed, all geared at doing the same thing. What’s really important to remember about each of these shows is that they were designed to sell toys, and so their styles matched the toys quite closely. The idea here was to make children feel that their toys were coming to life onscreen; the designs had to match to sell merchandise.

I suspect that this is exactly why cartoons and children became so closely related to one another, and even though animation has since enjoyed a resurgence in popularity with adults, many companies are still rooted in their old ways of doing things, and they assume that since cartoons have been traditionally associated with kids, that that’s what kids expect from products.

But the problem is that if you actually talk to kids, you’ll find that most of them are more interested in watching March of the Penguins than they are in watching Happy Feet. They’d rather tune in to watch Meerkat Manor than sit through another screening of Madagascar. They get excited about Walking With Dinosaurs, but they’re indifferent to Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

And by the way, they feel exactly the same way about comic books. They love comics with cool, realistic artwork that has a photorealistic quality about it. But they’re much less excited about comic books that are done in a hyper-cartoony style (such as Teen Titans).

I’ve heard a few theories on why kids are this way. Jason Maranto, who’s painting my first book from Army Ant, suggested to me that children reject things that seem childish once they reach the age of 8 or 9 because they’re trying to imitate the grown-ups around them. Teachers I’ve talked to have told me that children naturally want to learn, and tend to gravitate towards things that pique their curiosity and that answer their questions more than things that simply entertain them. My own conversations with children have led me to believe that kids love knowledge because it makes them feel important, and thus they seek it out whenever possible so that they can feel more secure in their place in the world.

Whatever the case is, I’m going to suggest that kid-oriented product creators are generally more interested in telling kids what they want than they are in asking them. And what’s more, this strategy seems to work because these companies are good at influencing the purchase decision makers (parents) while ignoring the end users (kids).

That leads me to believe that there’s a lot of money to be made for those who can enter the market with a clear idea of what kids want. But that information isn’t going to come from thinking inside the box — it’s going to come from developing some radically new concepts that really challenge the ideas of what adults think kids would like to have… and that captures the imagination of the kids themselves.

-SJJ

The other day, I posted up an article about rethinking WHY consumers buy. Today, I want to offer an article that talks about who these consumers are.

One of my frustrations in dealing with many small publishers is that they create products without deciding whom they’re trying to develop them for. Often when I’ve talked to people trying to pitch comics and I ask them, “who’s your target audience for this?”, they have a vague idea at best about who they expect to pick up their book every month.

As I’ve said many times on this site, one of the most important aspects of developing a product is developing your marketing. And in order to do that, you’ll need to develop an STP plan (segmenting, targeting and positioning). And in order to do THAT, you’ll need to understand the base of consumers available.

But before you get started, you need to realize something rather important: that demographic of 16-24 that most US comic book creators want to attract? They’re actually a pretty small market right now compared to the rest of the US population. The two biggest consumer markets right now are ages 35-44 and 45-54; they account for 49% of consumer spending in the US. And over the next ten years, these groups are going to shrink as these consumers enter the 55+ demographic… and shift from a consumer mentality to a service mentality.

As I’ve said in my article on the history of comics, there was a time when around 1-2% of the population read comic books. Today, not only has the actual number of readers declined, but the number of comic book readers has dropped down to about .1% of the entire US population. As for the publishing industry in general, the number of adult readers has been dropping consistently for years. Though the retail book market experienced something of a boom over the last 15 years as retailers consolidated into larger stores and niche categories became more available, sales overall have been stagnant, and the publishing industry has been showing signs of maturity for some time.

Check out this snippet from the article:

Can these older consumers, whom many in marketing have ignored for so long, pick up the spending slack? Well, they’ve been doing pretty well lately. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports in its annual consumer-spending surveys that households headed by people 55 to 64 increased their total spending at almost twice the rate of all households (60% vs. 32%) in the most recent five-year survey period.

No other age group comes even close to that growth rate. One reason for the jump in spending was the 23% growth in older households. But the other reason was rising household income. The average household headed by someone 55 to 64 had $10,600 more to spend in 2007 than the average household in that age group five years earlier.

Lest we forget, the oldest boomers are starting to get their direct deposits from the Social Security Administration and, some pundits have suggested, will thus shortly bankrupt the nation. That’s nonsense, of course, but it’s a great story.

In the next five years, aging boomers will add more than 1 million consumers per year to the 65-and-older segment — increasing its number at more than twice the rate of the past five years. This boomer-driven growth will be highly concentrated in the 65-to-74 age group, where more than 80% of that near-term growth in the 65-plus segment will occur.

The article goes on to discuss some strategies on how these consumers can be served. The writer firmly believes that safety, security, and guarantees for services are the wave of the future, and I’m inclined to agree with that. The older people get, the more stuff they have, and the less they’re going to want more, especially in the realm of big-ticket items. Instead, they’re going to focus on services and experiences. That’s going to be very hard for publishers to take advantage of, particularly since many of these folks are going to be less likely to read as they get older and more likely to switch to radio and television (and perhaps some form of digital media) exclusively. This is already a trend with Baby Boomers, and it’s going to continue as more media options become available.

So, how can a publisher target this audience with any amount of success? Especially if that publisher, like me, wants to produce comics? There are options!

First of all, there’s always a service option, where publishers can band together and set up book clubs designed to appeal towards these folks. One model that would probably work very well would be to take works that are in the public domain, put them together in nice volumes, and sell “classic of the month” libraries to old folks who want to have nice sets of books to enhance their home image and to have available for their grandchildren to read. A similar model could be used to produce comics for these folks, which would make the grandchildren angle all the more viable. The drawback of such a system is that it’s easy for competitors to imitate, so the really successful company will be the one with the best service — the product needs to be high-quality, but the service needs to be superb.

There’s also the option of using comics, with large-print bubbles and simplistic art, as a form of method of delivering information. The comics medium is very powerful, and quite underutilized. Pioneers like Will Eisner recognized that comics could provide an excellent method for designing instruction manuals. Comic book companies could pick up contract work designing instruction manuals for high-end electronics and other items that older folks are likely to purchase, but also likely to find complex and difficult to use.

Similarly, comic book publishers could produce adaptations of popular informational books or novels that are geared at this segment. Admittedly, this is a strange idea that would require a lot of development, but if it can be done right, that company would have a huge first mover advantage with the segment.

And, as I alluded, developing products for children and focusing marketing on their grandparents could also be a viable method of making sales. This will work particularly well with books that are educational or that promote good character and values; often, grandparents do not approve of the way their children raise their grandchildren, and if they can be convinced that they can augment a child’s education with extra Christmas and birthday presents, there may be potential there for a secondary market.

Take a look at the article, and see what you think. I’d love for readers to post their own ideas about this issue on this thread!

-SJJ

What’s interesting is that the two books are entirely at odds with one another. And what’s even worse is that Sources of Power seems to be much closer to the truth. I guess I could have saved myself some time and money by reading it before I enrolled in my Consumer Behavior class. But actually, it’s valuable to know the “textbook” theories of consumer behavior… because I’ll know what to expect my competitors to do down the road.

How do you shop? Chances are good that you’ve never really thought about it. But if you’re thinking about creating products for consumers (and if you’re going into publishing, you are!), it’s really important to understand not only your own shopping habits, but those of consumers in general.

My textbook, Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy 9/e, says that consumers shop in the following way:

First, they recognize a problem: “I’m out of peanut butter,” or “I need a new laptop computer.” Next, they search for information on their purchase, whether it’s internal (“Which brands do I like? Which ones do I usually buy?”) or external (“Which laptop are the experts recommending right now?”). If the decision is not a routine purchase, the consumer will weigh the alternatives (“Which laptop gives me the most features for the least amount of money? Which brands do I trust, and which should I avoid?”). Then, the consumer will make the purchase, and afterward, the consumer will make a postpurchase evaluation (ranging from “Mm, this peanut butter is good,” to “Wow, I paid too much for this junky laptop.”)

It’s a pretty straightforward model, and it’s augmented by the distinction between what the textbook calls a “low-involvement decision,” which refers to routine purchases that consumers make almost automatically, and a “high-involvement decision,” like buying a car, house, computer, or other major item that requires a significant amount of research. Consumers will only search for information for so long, though, before they finally settle on an item, so it’s important for companies to make their information readily available.

Now, this model is fairly straightforward and might seem to be based on common sense. I remember nodding when it was presented in class, since it seemed to describe the buying process fairly accurately.

But, in the weeks since we covered it, I’ve come to realize that this model does not do a good job of explaining all purchases. It only explains purchases that require weighing alternatives, whether they’re at the grocery store or the electronics store.

And it doesn’t explain a great deal of the purchasing that happens out there.

Sources of Power takes a different, more realistic approach to decision-making. Though the book is not about consumer behavior, it is about human behavior, and specifically, how different elements of decision-making affect leadership overall. Before I begin discussing its model, let me just say that if you are interested in understanding how leadership works on a fundamental level, you should read this book. It’s not a motivational book or a guide; it’s a presentation of years of research in a very readable format.

The author of the book explains that when he began his research, he believed the theory that decision-makers often isolated two alternatives, weighed the pros and cons of each, and selected the stronger alternative. But as the author and his team began interviewing people who often were required to make tough decisions, such as firemen, military commanders and nurses, they discovered that all too often, people don’t make decisions in the traditional sense; they simply react to cues and tailor their actions accordingly. For example, a firefighter might be on a roof fighting a blaze, and realize that the roof is beginning to soften — a sure sign that it’s about to collapse. The firefighter won’t stop and weigh the alternative of fighting the fire or getting off the roof; he or she will simply get off the roof.

This leads the author to develop what he calls a “Recognition-primed decision model,” or an RPD model. The idea of this model is that a decision-maker will first experience a situation, and then perceive it as either typical or atypical. Once the decision-maker recognizes the problem, he or she will either act accordingly, diagnose the problem and confirm its existence, or create a mental simulation of the action, ensure that it will work, and then follow through with it.

In consumer terms, I might run out of Count Chocula breakfast cereal. So, as soon as I realize that I’m out, I’ll tell myself that I need more and then note it on my (mental or physical) shopping list. I won’t weigh alternatives, or consider other brands, as my consumer behavior book suggests. I’ll just buy more Count Chocula.

For a higher involvement decision, such as purchasing a new camera, I would first experience a situation that makes me aware that I need a camera, such as seeing a friend show off a cool new 8 megapixel gadget or simply breaking my old one. Once I realized that this situation needed my attention, I would plan out a course of action, which might involve researching new cameras until I found a good deal online, or simply driving to the nearest camera store and purchasing what my friend already owns. Once I settled on a plan of action that I could see myself doing, I would carry it out.

This model seems a little bit more realistic to me, because it incorporates something that the other model leaves out: uninformed and unplanned decisions. It also helps to explain why so many people buy on impulse; they have already developed a mental simulation of the kind of person that they would like to be, and when they come across an item that triggers the experience, they can imagine themselves realistically owning it and make the purchase. This also explains why consumers tend to be more persuaded to buy things which are familiar than those which are new; experience leads them to make the choice that they’ve made in the past. If that choice led to less-than-desired consequences, they’re more inclined to try an alternative. But if it was successful, they’re more likely to stick to what they know.

I’m sure this is over the heads of a lot of my readers here, but I’ll keep going for those who are keeping up. If I am rethinking this correctly, then virtually everything that is taught in business schools about branding strategy is incorrect because it approaches the issue from the wrong perspective. The idea of branding is that it creates a perception of a product in a consumer’s mind and essentially becomes the product. A consumer doesn’t just buy cola; he or she buys Coke or Pepsi. Both are just sugary carbonated water with an acidic bite. Both taste very similar. But consumers view them as completely different products that represent different lifestyles and values. That’s what a brand is good for.

But if consumers are buying products not out of preference, and not out of low-involvement decision making, but rather as a result of decision-making that stems from past experiences, then brands are less important as part of a positioning strategy and more important as part of a recognition strategy. That goes against a lot of what I’ve learned in my marketing classes, but the scary thing is that it actually makes more sense. I’ve often wondered why consumers insist on buying what they’re familiar with instead of weighing the alternatives and choosing the superior product. Framing their decision-making process this way gives me a satisfying answer.

I’m getting a little abstract here, so let me give an example to bring this all together. I used to run an EB Games video game store, and my job was to help customers locate games that would make them happy enough with their purchase that they’d come back. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do, since many customers had different tastes in video games than I did. But I realized early on that just because I didn’t like a game didn’t mean that my customers wouldn’t, and that just because a game had been a critical flop didn’t mean it had to be a commercial flop as well. So I did my best to learn as much as I could about each game we carried, and tried to tailor my recommendations to customers based on the kinds of games they indicated that they liked.

A typical sale would work this way. A customer would come in and tell me how much they loved, say, Ghost Recon 2 for the Xbox, and they would ask me what else I would recommend along those lines. My first question would be, “What did you like about it?”, since customers often liked different games for different reasons. If their answer was the violence, I could steer them one way, towards games like The Chronicles of Riddick, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. If their answer was the realism, I could steer them another way, towards games like Rainbow Six 3, Conflict: Global Ops and Splinter Cell. If their answer was the co-op play, I could steer them yet another way, towards games like TimeSplitters 3 and Sniper Elite or Halo 2. My goal was not to just hand them a game that I felt was like the one they enjoyed; my goal was to find out what they liked about it first and then help them select alternatives.

But oddly, most people didn’t want alternatives. They wanted a recommendation of what they should play next. If I handed them two or three games, they’d generally ask me which one was best and then buy that one. If I overwhelmed them with choices, handing them eight or nine games, they often would not be able to select a game and would ask me to narrow their choices down to two or three. Rarely did customers decide for themselves without first seeking my input. A handful of customers came in knowing exactly what they wanted, but most wanted to put as much of the decision in my hands as possible.

I think it was because I intuitively understood this, and trained my sales associates to follow this philosophy, that we were so successful. I used to attribute our success to superior customer service, which we did offer. But looking back on the situation now, I realize that a large part of our success was due to helping customers isolate the experience they wanted to repeat and then offering them ways to do so.

So, how does this affect a publishing company? Profoundly, I’d say. Traditionally in publishing, there has been a huge emphasis on three strategies of selling:

1) Content is king. Get the best content, and you’ll have the biggest sales. Oddly, I’ve come to think that this is the weakest of the three strategies, and the least represented by reality.

2) Bestsellers are king. Get a book on the bestseller list and it will make the rest of your line shine, especially if you’ve got a large backlist from that author. This strategy has worked really well for folks like Nora Roberts, Michael Crichton and Janet Evanovich, and especially well for their respective publishers. Unfortunately, this strategy is not cost effective for a small publisher; it’s too expensive to buy your way into a bestseller.

3) Licensing and/or endorsements are king. If you can play off the popularity of someone else, you’ll make money. Get Oprah to recommend your book and it becomes a multi-million seller; write a book about the literary merits of Harry Potter and release it in time for the next movie and you’ll see surefire sales. Likewise, if you can license a popular story or intellectual property and produce books that go along with it, you’ll make plenty of money, and with very little extra work involved. In fact, you’ll often have the confidence of investors who are already familiar with the property.

Notice that of the three, the weakest is the one that is based on quality and content, not recognition. As sad as that may sound, it’s because consumers aren’t actually looking for quality and content when they’re looking for new things… at least, not consciously.

They’re looking for products that they think will give them the same experience they’ve had before.

Thinking about this now, it should have been obvious to me, because I’ve often seen this in friends. For example, I have many friends who enjoy the novels in the Douglas Adams series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Fair enough — the first two books are fantastic, and the last three, while less inspired, are still fun reads. But for some reason, whenever I tell these friends to try reading Terry Pratchett – who writes in exactly the same style! – they won’t give his work a try because it’s based around a fantasy world and not a science fiction storyline. Even though Pratchett’s books will likely make them feel like they’re reading Douglas Adams all over again, they don’t think that they’ll have that experience, so they refuse to try.

I used to think that that sort of stubborn resistance came from people simply not wanting to try new things. But now, I’m beginning to suspect that it’s hard-wired into our decision-making process… that we’ll only try new things if we are seeking the thrill of experiencing something new.

So, how do marketers get around this?

Well, if you recall, I’ve likened advertising to a giant wishing well, where companies toss their money into a big black hole and hope for a return. I still feel that way about advertising, but… I now see an application for advertising that I didn’t see before. Specifically, if ads can be used to make an unfamiliar product seem familiar to people, they’re more likely to purchase it than not. And while I’ve seen ad campaigns do this in the past, I’m not sure that they’ve all done it specifically for this reason. In fact, most have still taken a sales-centric approach in their message, which is a waste of time if the consumer decision process follows the RPD model as I suspect.

No, advertising still needs to be conducted in a smart, measured way that can be accurately gauged by the company spending the money. But it is one way to make the strange familiar. It just has to be done right, and it has to reach the right audience.

Product placement is probably also a good strategy, though it needs to be sustained to have a real impact.

Stealth marketing is an excellent strategy, though it may be illegal before long since it brings up so many ethical issues.

An active media campaign is certainly a good tool, as are guerilla marketing opportunities and carefully targeted sponsorships.

Rebates and promotional pricing are actually bad strategies to use in this framework, since they focus on elements other than familiarity of the product.

Anyhow, this is a lot to chew on, and I suspect that I’ll be refining what I’m rethinking here quite a bit over the next year or two. But for now, I’ll conclude the following:

It’s much better to have a product that feels familiar than a product that strives to break new ground.

-SJJ