Presented at the Classic Events Conference: DIGITAL STRATEGIES FOR BOOK PUBLISHERS Tuesday 12 May 2009, The Wanderers Club, 21 North Road, Illovo, Johannesburg www.classicevents.co.za

1. Successfully moving into the age of digital books: an international case study Michael Bhaskar Pan Macmillan

3. Jeff Gomez (ironically) published this book. Made the case that the market had finally changed. This was it.

4. A small company called Sony decided to launch an e-ink device and ebook store in the US, supplied exclusively through Borders….

6. Meanwhile…

8. It dawned on us….we were next. Better get ready.

10. Our owners had already decided that they liked digital… In Germany Holtzbrinck had put itself at the forefront of the new web. Buy and build. It’s HGV IT crack team were making new systems for publishers.

12. What about us?

14. Then we heard this was coming.

16. We would have to build a publishing process for hundreds of ebooks- and fast This would involve sorting out contracts, all our business systems, assembling and keying in the metadata. Not to mention scheduling all the titles, monitoring them, over seeing the production process, the transfer of files to the third party aggregator, liaising with the retailers, Q&A each title and then sending it back for adjustments. In essence we had to build the whole publishing process in miniature. X 600 In the end we launched with 300 titles- more than virtually any other trade publisher. We were the top selling publisher at launch, in volume and revenue, and in doing so had built a robust ebook publishing process.

18. And not just ebooks…

19. Enhanced ebooks- like DVDs New models for content

20. New ways of marketing

21. And ways of talking to our peers.

22. International Markets: What’s Going On?

25. International Digital Publishing Forum figures suggest we are at the beginning of massive growth (upwards of $20 million per quarter in 09). These figures are from just fifteen publishers and excludes the massive library and mobile reading markets- the real numbers are much higher. Upwards of 15-20% of total sales are coming from the Kindle on ebook titles.

28. How about us?

33. Are we here yet? Not quite.

36. These guys?

38. While out here, it’s a very different story…

40. China has seen a similar phenomenon but with online novels. Commercial publishing houses, as in Japan, are now repackaging these as print titles with huge sales volumes. “ Novel” is the seventh most searched for term on Chinese search engine baidu.cn. Perhaps in Asian societies there is less attachment to the book as an object?

41. So…the world is changing.

42. And our models are changing with it.

44. But things are shifting nonetheless… Some emerging models and trends we are thinking about:

54. The killer device is…??

56. The view from where we are: There has been a lot of progress Systems set up, programmes in place, revenues coming in Experimenting and learning fast has been key Having an open mind to new things helps As does a rigorous approach to the details

57. Conclusion + = … ?

58. The End. Thank you! Michael Bhaskar http://thedigitalist.net / www.10membranes.com