Haynes’ best-seller: The Imperial Death Star Owner’s Manual.

Haynes offer a shining example of the surge in revenue that digital publishing can bring¹, cutting through the prevalent scepticism that the industry will only triumph through traditional publishing and the market for ebooks is reaching its potential².

However, positing that there is a limit to ebook sales at all is based on an assumption that the enthusiasm for traditional books places a block on ebook up-take, when publishers can – and should – promote both: If publishers want to grow sales in general, a healthy startpoint is not to assume that ebooks sales cannibalise print sales. Envisioning a limit to ebook demand indicates a further assumption; that demand is defined by consumers, whereas it should be generated by vendors. In fact, ebook sales offer far more potential than traditional sales for marketing the right product to the right consumer at the right time by automatically predicting what they are most likely to want, based on data around ebook usage in addition to online shopping behaviour. Publishers can either benefit from ebooks’ enormous potential through the latest analytics technology or see sales reach a limit; a self-fulfilling prophecy that is really based on the limitations of our affinities for the traditional, tactile codex.

So… selling ebooks is sure to bring publishers success (?)

Another example of a publisher’s success with digital Publishers’ foray into digital primarily means ebooks, but this magazine publisher derived greater understanding of – and thus engagement with – customers though web and social, using the same principles of data and analytics than can generate marketing insight for ebook sales. To find out more, click here.

Whether selling traditional or digital books (or what balance thereof) offers publishers prosperity is too simple a question. Rather than merely giving business resource to trying a new venture, if publishers construct a digital publishing operation equipped with complete, efficient, automated sales transaction and reporting faculties, they stand to take full advantage of the opportunity to profit through automated personalised marketing offered by predictive analytics (embellished with ebook consumption data). For ebook sales, business reports for internal insight – and for third parties (e.g. royalties payments due) – are up-to-the minute and produced in an instant.

To discuss how your business operations could benefit from integration with an analytics solution, please contact us. We have 21 years’ designing and implementing best-value, fit-for-purpose Business Intelligence systems to help publishers reach their goals.

Further reading around smarter marketing and sales:

•  The value of a smarter shopping experience, [PDF 16pp]
•  Oh behave! How behavioural analytics fuels more personalised marketing, [PDF 12pp]
•  Bringing science to the art of marketing, [PDF 2pp]
•  Empowering the Modern Marketer: Helping you transform how you interact with customers; SAP ebook.

Endnotes

1. Digital boosts Haynes Publishing revenue, 25.09.14 The Bookseller
2. McCabe: ‘e-books plateauing because print more attractive’; addressing Booksellers Association annual conference, 23.09.14 The Bookseller.