Personalization in Transmedia Storytelling - BIB11

This is the presentation I made in San Francisco at the Books In Browsers Conference hosted by the Internet Archive and O'Reilly Media on October 28, 2011. I have made some minor edits, but for the most part it is intact.

There is the video of the talk, which I will include a link for at the end of this post. Before viewing, I should preface it with the fact that I was nervous and while I still believe the iPad is a good teleprompter, one should stop their twitter notifications from pushing alerts while one is trying to read the speech in front of an audience (and a camera). A room full of tweeters didn't help... any ways, here it goes:

Why is transmedia storytelling important?

I’d like to demonstrate the effectiveness of transmedia storytelling and why with all the technology we have at our fingertips with devices like this one (hold up ipad) that it’s relevant, needed and expected.

Now I'd like to first say, that transmedia isn't for every book. But i believe that some stories are better when they are experienced vs. when they are just read. Some books are better left alone. But 'those' books is not where I work, I work in experiences, in immersion.

Over the next few years we are going to see tablets in many cases taking over desktops and laptops to become many peoples interface with digital content. And, with the fact that readers will have the capability to view more robust media, they will begin to demand more from storytellers.

This past summer, while camping in the Canadian Rockies, a bunch of friends and I were sitting around the campfire on a dark night. In fact, it was pitch black as only it could be in such a remote setting. The fire was cracking and sending sparks towards the stars



A friend of mine is a really good storyteller and he starts in on this fantastic tale of campers just like us, lost out on an old logging road, not too far from where we were. The story began to get really interesting, we were on the edge of our logs as he began to tell us how one by one these lost campers get gruesomely picked off by something mysterious in the woods.

We were hanging on his every word when all of a sudden someone from the group, an accomplice of the storytellers, sneaks up behind us and jumps in front of everyone with an axe at the climax of the story.

You'd think that a bunch of middle-aged men might be immune to this but it startled all of us. The story was good, really good, but I bet if I told it to you here in this room right now, you wouldn't have the same reaction.

The surroundings, the realism and the immersion in the storyworld combine themselves to create a very scary encounter. By adding these components; the remote darkness, the campfire, and a drunk man with an axe - the story has gone from a simple reading of a story to an experience. The audience is entertained and engaged.

Transmedia is the campfire. Transmedia is the ambience and surroundings. Transmedia is the interaction. It builds a credible storyworld that immerses the audience and gives them an experience.

Next week is the Storyworld Conference, the first world-wide Transmedia conference ever, it’s right here in San Francisco. Transmedia has moved from being talked about to being done – it’s a major buzzword in Hollywood and everyone is jumping into the game to figure things out and to tell fantastic stories..

There are challenges facing transmedia producers:

1. Category Recognition
2. High production costs
3. Inconsistency in approach

Combine that with the fact that nobody within the transmedia world can agree on what exactly transmedia is. There are many different strains, many different concoctions.
However, there is one thing that everyone can agree on: they don’t like the term transmedia.

I don’t much care about the label, I’m more concerned with how we tell readers about what we have. And, to do that, I suppose we need some consensus on what it’s called. And, as long as we, as a niche industry can’t agree on what to call it, how are readers going to even know what to ask for?

This transcends into discovery. Even when a reader finds us, how do they know we're a transmedia story without us being obvious about it?

While researching transmedia storytelling and trying to find similar projects to ours, it actually solidified my assumptions on a problem that everyone faces, Discovery. Everyone wants their book to be discovered, but in most every case but in transmedia, you have a category or genre that aids the reader in their quest for content. Transmedia can pertain to every genre. So, how do we let readers know that this book is an interactive, immersive experience? How do we differentiate our product from a regular book or from an enhanced book?

And, while I’m sure there are other projects out there similar to ours, they are not easy to find… even though each of them are likely spearheaded by very talented digital companies, from a readers perspective, they are hard to find – getting found in a category that nobody knows exists is entirely left to chance. And, being left to chance, is something that is best not presented in an investment pitch...

Simply put, the category of Transmedia stories just doesn’t exist as it should. It needs to be created and promoted.

There are few places that list transmedia as a genre, and when they do they typically list the ‘how to’ books on the subject rather than books that employ transmedia storytelling. This would lead one to believe that there are more experts on the subject of Transmedia than there are content creators in the field.

For instance, when we look at the listings on Good Reads, the category of Transmedia contains 17 books on how to write transmedia and one book that actually is transmedia. And, it really isn’t transmedia storytelling, it’s a novel with an Alternate Reality Game component… close, but no cigar.

Differentiation is probably a better word to use than category, but I've got a retail background.

Apple has made efforts to differentiate books with an enhanced section in the iBookstore, this is getting closer, but an enhanced book isn’t necessarily transmedia. Simply putting an embedded video into a book doesn’t make it a transmedia book, it’s an enhanced book. So, how do we stand out and let readers know that what we have is an experience based narrative?

My hope is that there are content creators at the Storyworld conference and that the discussion of public awareness for transmedia storytelling is brought forward. If quality of attendees is anything like this room, I suspect it won't take long for a solution to arrive

I should back up and give you a little background. Last year we released One Child, a transmedia thriller it contained an original soundtrack, 4 filmed scenes, 27 social media profiles and was released in real time online and then sold as a print version, an eBook version and a browser-based version. I’m over simplifying the description as many of you are already aware of it. We learned a lot from this experience and looking back, there’s not an awful lot I would change to the way we told the story from the transmedia side of things. From the distribution side of things, well that’s another subject.

You see, in my space, how we approach transmedia at Enthrill is that we use multiple mediums to tell the story – our base narrative is written and edited the same way a traditional book would be. Where we differ is in the planning of the story and how we break out the plot, the character stories and the various elements to tell the story through multiple venues.

So, while we may employ a serial release of the narrative in real time, readers can follow some of the characters online through social media profiles, you can read and interact with their blog posts. In fact many of the elements we put into play you can follow without ever engaging in the narrative, they can be stand-alone stories in themselves.

Our next transmedia story is due out in March of 2013 - over the last 6 months we have conducted extensive research into the locations for the story, having the author spend about 6 weeks on the road between eastern europe, London and Boston. In addition, we've been planning an extensive back-end for the project and will begin development over the next month.

On the storytelling side, we’ve already begun two blog sites and have created 6 character profiles online. We are not making these discoverable yet, but, I can tell you that one of the blogs will be written by a character in the story who by day, works as an IT manager for a large company and blames network security issues on the end users. By night, he writes his blog under a pen name scorning these end users – the blog is called ENDLUSERS and will be written in character by a real life IT professional. You see, the blog may never be mentioned in the narrative of the story, but you can discover it a number of different ways. It’s a stand-alone piece that you can enjoy on it’s own.

Creating multiple story paths like this one is called transmedia storytelling. It’s using cross media platforms to tell or extend the story.

This method creates an immersive experience that is ‘real’ for the reader. We believe this method of transmedia is critical to telling the story and allows readers to slip fully into our storyworld.


Believability is crucial in transmedia storytelling as far as we are concerned. Everything we do must be true to the story or to the character. Some storytellers are using different mediums to channel a character - an example of this would be getting tweets from Betty Draper, a character from the television show, Mad Men – some people think this is cool, and while the tweets are in character and pertain to the story. My thoughts on this are that it’s hard to believe that someone in the 60’s is tweeting at all, I mean, everyone knows that Twitter wasn’t around until at least the late seventies.


In my mind, this type of use or method of transmedia is strictly promotional. It uses alternate mediums to sell a TV show – this is no way to carry a narrative. And, although there are people who like this as part of their experience, it has less to do with the story and more to do with the promotion of the story.

Unfortunately, (for this idealistic storyteller) this use of transmedia as a promotional tool vs. as a storytelling tool, is more prevalent, because it’s easy to monetize. It’s easy to monetize because it’s easy to understand – transmedia storytelling inherently isn’t.

Promotional transmedia is at it’s best, glorified advertising and I believe it hurts legitimate transmedia storytellers because to most people, transmedia is transmedia. There's no differentiation. And, money, like water follows the path of least resistance. Things that are easy to understand, find funding.

So, how do we, as transmedia storytellers, monetize?

I’m really excited about this - because the breakout of the story creates multiple, independent opportunities for making money on the project that don’t conflict with the story. Monetization in transmedia can be as fragmented as the story itself. Focusing on book sales alone is losing site of the bigger picture - there can be hundreds of verticals within a single property.


Merchandise – who wouldn’t want an endlusers t-shirt? The merchandise doesn’t even have to reference the base story, in this case, it’s a characters' blog, who’s to say that the character isn't monetizing his own site? How about offering advertising space on the numerous websites and blogs that we have in place as part of our storyworld? Real websites have advertising, so why not fake ones?

Then we come to product placement.


I know, it's a dirty word to some. But, transmedia storytelling allows us to integrate product placement and have it become part of the story – it helps in making the characters and plot believable. Linking characters to real world things and brands isn’t anything new, but the fact that this information is being spread over multiple platforms and mediums makes this type of integration especially appealing to manufacturers and advertisers.

This means that there can be more than a mere mention in the text of the book, it can be brought to life in video, through social media and throughout the storyworld. A seamless integration between story and brand(s).

For instance, a character can use an iPhone, like the Apple page on their Facebook account, add Apple to their interests and comment on the Apple page. In addition to the character integration, we can also put ads for Apple products on our radio station web site as well as other web sites in our story world.

My point is that it can be part of the story, placement may not even be obvious to readers unless they were using Small Demons.

The total integration would be very seamless and natural, as part of the story – the reader may not even make the connection of ‘placement’ but they would certainly be exposed to Apple as part of the experience.

In fact, the product doesn’t even have to be mentioned in the narrative of the story at all to 'qualify' for product placement in transmedia.

Product placement in a transmedia story needs to be weighed however – will it benefit the story or detract from it? This question must be asked. At the end of the day, the story must be believable. Product placement must make sense for the character and for the story – planning and strategy must be employed to be successful. Placing products must coincide with the audience and hand picked to suit them.

Monetization is important; creative and intelligent use of product placement can be a useful monetization tool for transmedia projects. With so many entry points or ‘rabbit holes’ leading into a story, the opportunities are endless.

Monetization can come in other ways though;

Some readers may stumble upon a blog and follow it for sometime before learning that it is part of a larger story – this may be intriguing to them as they uncover more and more and then discover the story itself. This experience is their own and they made it. How do we capitalize on this?

The act of discovery on the readers part can be preserved by the reader and captured as a product – by way of a bespoke ebook. A custom book tailored for each reader.


Imagine ordering your book online and it being unique to you, based on your experiences with the story. The tweets you followed, the blogs you commented on, all interweaved as part of your very own memento and shipped or downloaded to you as a one-off. That’s pretty cool.

And with the perceived value of a digital asset being low, we need to find ways of changing this perception. Richard Nash had a nice graph depicting ebooks as the lowest point of entry and limited editions as being a bit higher up, ok a lot higher up.

When we look at the story without the packaging of a print book, the reader is left with a 1 megabyte file – it’s intangible and is hard to instill value. Enhanced books, books as apps, digital/print combos – these are all attempts at adding value to the digital asset to justify a higher fee. I have no issue with these, as I believe they do add value. Content creators need to pay attention to anything that can change perception on ebook value.

But adding value isn’t just in the how much extra stuff you get, it can also be measured on personal interaction and what you offer the individual.

We need to continue to be creative in marketing and sharing ebooks. For drm constrained books, what about for an extra fee at time of purchase, you get the rights to share that book with a friend or two. How about on the last page of the book there’s an ability to sell the book to friends through a social media platform, where the reader, the publisher and the original bookseller are paid a commission? The book get’s marketed, it get’s read and people make money. There's lots of ideas - they just need some exploration.

Including readers into the equation means they have an interest in the story, readers love to talk about the books they’ve read. This is extended to the transmedia experience – interaction plays a large roll. By capturing this interaction we believe we can make a remarkable, one of a kind book for everyone.

We believe that people will pay more for something created just for them, a unique product or something that they have a personal connection to. As we build out our next transmedia property, we are developing an engine to do just that – it will incorporate your personal experiences within the story, combine it with the narrative of the book and make it available to you in a print or ebook format. The best part is, we will be able to use this engine for future projects, reducing our cost as we release more stories.

Transmedia isn’t going away anytime soon, the high cost to implement it is what’s stifling it’s growth in publishing however. Everyone from documentary film makers to television shows to book publishers are looking at transmedia because it is a powerful engagement tool and fans love the immersion. The high cost has prohibited many projects from happening or they have to be paired down to the point of ineffectiveness.


As we build out our ‘transmedia engine’ we will eliminate some of the tedious tasks, create a platform to disseminate the narrative and to capture the individuals experience. Once built, our plan is to apply it to all projects going forward, reducing our costs and creating a familiar, yet unique experience for readers.

Delivering different experiences while giving readers an intuitive guide throughout the process that is consistent in each project is paramount.

Moving forward we need to spend as much time on transmedia storytelling awareness and category building as we do in producing transmedia properties – we need to create the category, define the category and make readers aware of it while at the same time creating exciting content that demonstrates the need for this type of storytelling.

My hope is that Transmedia storytelling will soon become a profitable space for publishers and authors to follow and one that publishers and booksellers will want to promote as unique and one that offers readers added experience.

Before I go, I'd like to tell you about a beautiful book. A couple years back I found a beautifully produced hard cover book, it had a canvas jacket, the pages were printed in Pantone 877 and a warm black. Any print nerds out there that can tell me what 877 is? Silver, not just silver but metallic silver (this is a colour that cannot be replicated in the digital realm, like many others). The book was entirely printed using two colours, solids, halftones and duotones. It was really a work of art.

I bought two copies. You see, the book was Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I bought one copy for me and the second copy for my junior high school english teacher who introduced it to me 25 years ago. She sent me a really nice thank you letter.

The reason I tell you this, is because beautiful books need to be shared and experienced. Transmedia enables both.

Thank you.

Here is the video of my talk.

Transmedia Storytelling - our journey

Ah, our next transmedia thriller novel. It's OK, I wasn't doing anything the next couple of years...

We began our second transmedia project - actually, it began a few months back. We're approaching this project a little differently, rather than explain the differences though, I will just explain what we're doing with the understanding that you, the reader, will know that it's different from last time. Except maybe for instances where I say, "we did this the same way last time."

We, oh yes... who are we? We are Enthrill Entertainment.

Here's how it all started...

Jeff Buick, calls me up - "I have the next story - our next transmedia project" - we meet shortly after and he shows us his blueprints for the story at the next board meeting.

The blueprints that Jeff has created are amazing, they show the various characters in vertical columns, as these columns descend, you see how the characters will interact with one another, how their story builds, the plot is plotted and the outcome is a question mark (for us, ...Jeff knows what's there). As a concept, it's a real strong story. As Jeff explains the story, you can visualize the characters in their settings - Jeff is a marvelous storyteller, it's moments like these that you sit back and go, wow!

The board asks questions and is intrigued by the story. A budget is agreed to for research and Jeff is off to spend time in the field, researching the locations where the story takes place. This takes him to London, Prague, Budapest, Pilzen (home of my favourite beer) and Boston. Research takes 6-8 weeks. I was fortunate enough to spend a few days in Boston with Jeff as he scouted locations for characters' homes, workplaces and interviewed locals. This experience gave me so much insight into the depth of research needed to pull together not only a believable story but one that is very, very real.

While research was being conducted, I was assembling the creative team that is to lead the project. From Francomedia, we have Christina Greenway, Dave Kromand, Colin Stange, Ryan Ferrier, Sandor Fekete and Dylan Nadon working alongside the Enthrill team to create an immersive storyworld. Our initial meetings yielded some tremendous ideas - some we will act on immediately, some will be scheduled and some will be dropped for various reasons.

The launch of our book is set for March 2013. This gives us plenty of time to create an interactive and immersive experience for people to engage with characters and elements of the story as well as participate in a large scale event.

Last weekend we reviewed the photos from Jeff's travels, each grouping of photos was associated with a particular character or an event from the story. We saw where the protagonist lives, works, works out, goes for lunch, dinner and drinks as well as some of the streets she walks down. This was the same for nearly every character. As we were going through the photos, you could imagine the character walking down the streets of Boston - it was so real.

I'm always careful about suggesting ideas while the narrative is still being written. I must remind myself that the writer tells the story, it's his creative vision that we are bringing to life. My worry is that by offering up suggestions and ideas during the writing is akin to a committee building a web site - I've seen a few of these disasters. The creative vision must come from one source, the author has fans that have come from his stories - it's his writing and narrative that is at the core of our entire project. Tampering with the foundation of the project risks everything - at what point do we remove the authors name from the book?

Our job as transmedia storytellers is to take the author's vision of the story and embellish, enhance and bring it to life, not to alter or change it. There's a reason we're working with a best-selling author, because he is a gifted storyteller and there's a reason he's working with our group - because we can bring it to life.

That being said, we are currently flushing out character bios, creating in-depth resumes for each and every character so that we can engage actors to portray them online and perhaps in film. We have launched a blog site that will play into the plot of the story - the blog was actually created by a character in the story.

So much of what we do is done in context. For instance, the blog I mentioned above. A character in the story, located in Hungry has launched this blog. How do we approach the design of this blog? What are the characters means for web production? In the timeline of the character, does he hire someone down the road to revamp the blog? What does the blog look like now, what will it look like as the narrative of the story lines up with the storyworld we have created? These are all questions we need to address in developing the characters blog.

Here's how we approached it: The character has little web development means, but enough to grab a template and get it going, after a few months of slowly gathering content on the site, he hires someone to update the look and functionality and it begins to gather content quicker. In this, he acquires a certain piece of content that sets the narrative in motion. The blog cannot look like we did it, it has to look like the character did it.

The design of everything in the storyworld must be within the context of the story and if created by characters must demonstrate and emulate their abilities and sense of style (or lack thereof). This is sometimes dangerous in attracting an audience, if the audience's first introduction to the story is a piece that has been designed by a character of ill means you risk them leaving the storyworld. This is a challenge for transmedia storytellers - how can we get the audience to understand the context in which elements of the storyworld are created?

We've got a lot more planned and I will do my best to update you on our progress throughout our journey.

It's Called Transmedia?

About 4 years ago, our creative team built a pretty fantastic little experience for potential gamers at a local gaming cafe. We created a story about a rogue agent and the ‘agency’ sought the help of new agents to locate his whereabouts. The new agents were recruited through social media (which was still somewhat new to many) and as they uncovered bits of clues and solved various challenges, which culminated with finding the GPS coordinates and timing of a live drop. Two weeks into this adventure, we learned that there was a name for our creation - we had created an ARG (alternate reality game).

As a creative firm that has always focused on creating 'experiences' for customers, we approached the task of promoting the opening of this LAN gaming center with an interactive and engaging game that the audience could immerse themselves in, get to know each other through helping one another solve challenges and ultimately lead them to the grand opening of this new gaming center. This just seemed to make sense for the audience we were trying to attract and engage with, so we did it. It was all very organic how it fell into place.

When it was all said and done, our local 'game' or ARG as we came to call it, garnered more of an international crowd, we had participation from the four corners of our planet. And, any hardcore ARG player can tell you where those corners are. We had a few local players though which became the establishments' first 'regulars'. Even though this was done years ago, it still gives this gaming facility street cred with new gamers - at the end of the day, it was the perfect launch for this company, they have built a foundation for their business designed specifically for gamers.

As I said, creating experiences is where our strengths lie. Previous to this small ARG, we developed the packaging for VoodooPC, a luxury computer company that has since been acquired by Hewlett Packard. We created an experience for their extremely loyal following of A list clients that centered around the opening their very expensive and sought after custom built computer - this included sight, sound, touch, smell and taste... all five senses. About a year after producing these, someone, somewhere coined the term 'Out Of Box Experience' or OOBE, which we were delighted to learn as we didn't know what to call it, we just create immersive experiences. We continue to push the envelope with OOBE design for others.

Last year, I co-founded a new publishing company called Enthrill Entertainment, our mission; to engage, to enlighten and to entertain. We all saw digital publishing as having enormous potential for taking a written narrative to new levels of engagement and immersion. We began planning an ARG for Jeff Buick's latest thriller novel called One Child. The deeper we got into the planning the more evident it was that an ARG wasn't right for the audience of thriller novels. We still wanted to immerse the audience in the narrative of the story and give them something more than 400 printed pages of text. We set out to engage the reader in new ways and hoped to capitalize on the advancements that new e-readers could offer.

While planning the immersive experience for the book, news of Apple's new device, the iPad, was making headlines so we began looking at it from a completely different perspective. What if every reader had an iPad? How would we engage them? Looking at all that the iPad could offer we started planning our story. So, we created an immersive reading experience or story world, complete with a cast of 'real-life' characters and lots of online content.

Trying to describe what we were doing before it hit the streets was difficult, we didn't have anything to go by, there was nothing to compare it to. After about a week into our launch we learned that the word transmedia applied to what we had created - cool, we had something to call it!

Just because we had a name didn't help us communicate what we'd done any better to people who didn't the know the genré. Most people, unless they experienced it firsthand had difficulty in understanding what it was about. Of course, a lot of people, after seeing it firsthand became immediate fans or were excited by what now could be done with a narrative.

Some of the interesting elements from One Child:

• Released in real time over 30 days, live as the story unfolded on a fully customized browser based e-reader, making it available on any device with a browser.
  
• Readers who pre-subscribed to the story were sent postcards from characters in the story, some of these made their way online in discussion groups and forums.
  
• Characters in the story 'lived' online, with facebook profiles, tweeting, blogging and networking on Linkedin - 27 social media profiles were managed 24/7 over the course of the 30 day release... you could 'friend' a character on Facebook and gain access to their vacation photos and more. Many of the characters were managed by Kristin Reilly, AKA Batgirl, a professional gamer and social media maven.
  
• The companies that the characters worked at had web sites with some interesting abilities, you could phone and leave messages for one character and get a returned call.
• Each new day of the story began with morning news being broadcast from a fictitious radio station merging actual news of the day with pieces from the story. Radio broadcasts written, voiced and produced hours before release for 3o days.
  
• Songs from the books soundtrack were released in the browser based reader as they fell inline with the content, in context and helping to set the mood for the story as it unfolded - songs were written by Rick Plester of Black Symphony.
  
• Four scenes from the book were filmed by an award winning production company with the video content embedded in the enhanced iPad version of the story as well as reside in other versions of the book.
  
• Facebook was used as a discussion platform for the readers, most of which were women and over 40 years old (a good call on not pursuing the ARG, eh?).
• Nearly 100 people worked on the project.
  

Even today, it’s hard to describe exactly what we've done without the aid of a white board. Diagrams help, they really do. A video presentation is in the works. We used transmedia to tell the story and to provide additional depth to characters and plot. Some in the transmedia space get it and know what we’ve done, which is really cool. I've always approached my work on this project with an open attitude and will share nearly everything I’ve learned along the way in hopes that these types of storytelling techniques get tried more and refined as the industry progresses. It’s my firm belief that all of us in this industry need to work just as hard at creating awareness of the genré or transmedia category as we do on our own projects. Creating compelling and entertaining content ain’t worth shit if there isn’t an audience. If they don’t know it’s available, how can they ask for it?

It's been a full year since releasing One Child live followed by printed book and ebook and we're still getting comments from people just discovering the property - luckily, we had the foresight that the content would have to live forever and have set up all external elements of the story in such a way so that we have control of the content always. Keeping in mind that for someone to enjoy the full experience five years from now, the content must be time-appropriate so a reader can go through and get the same experience as if it were happening, we’ve set up as much as we could to unfold chronologically for the reader. Now, nothing beat the live roll out, but future readers will also be treated to a near full experience, and with the time frame of the narrative set in the past, it helps puts the additional content in perspective... making it even more believable.

The mixing of fact and fiction in our radio broadcasts combined with the realism of the characters and storyworld had many people wondering what was real and what was made up. Reactions from readers was overwhelmingly positive, as were the reviews from professional reviewers and the media - we achieved our goal of creating an immersive experience for readers. At the heart of all the transmedia was a great story, which always helps.

To be transmedia or not to be transmedia - the discussion around the naming of this genre we’ve found space in is confusing. There’s arguments over different delivery methods and how it should be labeled, the ambiguity of the term itself begs for some whittling before we have anything the public is going to ask for, by name anyways. Quite frankly, I'm not too hung up on it, I think it's kind of funny - I mean, we all know what a story is whether it gets told on TV, in a book or in a movie. It's still a story. Someday maybe the word transmedia will have that same luxury.

For me, well I’m just going to keep creating immersive experiences for brands, for products and for books. Call it whatever you like but me and my team will continue to follow our hearts, tell stories and create things we don't know the names of yet.

The Product is the Package

Much has been talked about the publishing industry; the impending downfall of print books, ebook pricing, DRM and so much more, ...so much, that I am reluctant to even add my two cents. Regardless (or irregardless as I sometimes like to say), here is my humble opinion on some of the issues facing the industry.

First, let me clearly state my bias; I am digital publisher with a focus on transmedia storytelling and distributor of digital content. I believe strongly that, barring some global internet shortage, digital is the future of everything... it just needs some sorting out still.

Now, I'm also of the age where I have a massive collection of vinyl, which I still listen to regularly while working in my office (when there's nobody else here). I also have a pretty good collection of first edition print books from each of my favourite authors. So, I have more than an appreciation for analog formats, I still engage with them regularly.

This engagement and tangible experience is why I don’t see print books ever dying. But, I think their sales will decline gradually over the next 5 years as ebooks continue to take off and erode the print market. This will see a rise in exclusive print runs, special editions and fewer and fewer titles seeing any ink at all.

So, what’s the matter with a decline in pulp and an increase in 1’s and 0’s it’s just a trade off, right? Well, no. As this transition takes place, millions of sales dollars are at stake and all traditional publishers are in the same boat. At this time, consumers don’t see ebooks as having the same value as printed books – but it’s the same product, isn’t it? Well, no. Consumers perceive digital assets as having a very low value which is a huge obstacle when selling them something such as an ebook.

I suppose if we can increase a readers’ perception of value we could maintain a price level on ebooks that offers a sustainable environment for publishing as well. Sure, but to do this, we need to really understand what we’re selling and demonstrate to readers a tangible experience worth paying for.

When you break it down, books are nothing more than packaging. No product is. Now, the publisher and author will tell you, ‘the content is what you're buying, not the packaging’. I say this is dead wrong. Most are under the assumption that the packaging is what the content resides in, and while technically that’s true, without the packaging, there’s not much left to sell or for the consumer to connect and engage with other than maybe 95,000 words, and that can be saved as a .txt file.

If 20 years in marketing consumer products and brands has taught me anything, it's that people buy packaging. Sure, some will argue this, including consumers themselves, but in the end this is what it comes down to... people buy packaging.

And, what exactly is packaging?

It's the wrapper, the container, the vessel that the content is presented in. My definition of packaging is a little more vast than that of perhaps a dictionary, or well, you. But, packaging to me includes many things and encompasses everything you are trading your hard earned dollars for. Good product packaging should include some sort of tangible remnant or an artifact of the product and/or allow you to engage with the product, offering you an experience that you associate with that product.

While listening to a good old-fashioned record, I can read the liner notes and marvel at the cover art – this is packaging at it’s best. The better sound quality and this visceral, visual, tangible packaging experience is why artists and record companies are releasing on vinyl again… there’s a premium price attached, but it’s well worth it.

Having just paid $40.00 for the new, beautifully designed Strokes 10 song LP – the packaging was beautiful and the experience of opening it, handling it and engaging with it while it plays is worth every penny spent. Now, as a digital album, it’s $9.99 – same songs, but there’s no further experience or added value… just listenting. It’s priced right. Heck, at .99¢ a song and I’ll probably pick that version up too so I can listen to it in the car.

For 4 times the price, the music publisher has offered me an experience by creating packaging around the digital asset. (and, don’t for a minute think this wasn’t digital first, just as books are typed into a digital environment, then typeset and printed analog in a book, so too is music). The wrapper or packaging of the digital product is where the perceived value is for the consumer.

In the case of the good old print book, the packaging was done in the form of subtle, beautifully designed text, printed on crisp, porous papers that were easy on the eyes but spoke of quality and importance. This was further packaged with stitched eight page signatures and set into a hard back cover, the linen stretched taut, folded and glued with precision - so much so that the average reader didn't give the construction of it a second thought - it just came that way, it was perfectly bound and solid. The linen was hot foil stamped with the title and author's name. Then this is all finished with a gloss-laminated dust-jacket with embossed text and a perforated price tag inside the fold. I think you get the picture, when you fork over $38.00 for this book, it's not for the 95,000 words inside, it's for the packaging.

Without this packaging, what are those words worth?

Surely there is a price to be paid for something that someone has spend so many hours creating. A team of people were involved in the creation of the digital asset, surely their time is worth something. Unfortunate as it is, if the consumer can’t see it they have challenges understanding it’s value.

In the case of ebooks, there is no packaging. Or, rather the packaging that does exist is 'owned' by the digital reader or store front, and that has little to do with the publisher or author. It also has little to do with the reader and the experience with the product is controlled by the retailer or the device, who has varied interests in your experience outside of the text you are reading. In essence, the retailer and devices own the packaging through the digital storefront – your enjoyment and experience is secondary to volume.

So, if this is the case, if it’s true that consumers buy packaging and not the product itself, and what little packaging exists is controlled by the retailer and device, how do you go about pricing something with no packaging, if packaging is what the consumer has been indoctrinated into purchasing?

Consumers expectations sans-packaging are low, which is why digital content has suffered the label of being worth less, but not worthless. They still want the product, they’ll even pay for it, but not at a premium. ‘It's just a digital asset – what can it be worth?’ We've all heard this. Most of us have seen what 95,000 words looks like in a .doc file, some of us have put them there. Take the time spent typing all those words away and what do you have? All you have is text that can be copied and pasted like a funny image on the web, it’s void of value – until you introduce experience and packaging.

The same goes for any digital asset. We need to be inventive to create experiences around digital products to make money with them.

Digital assets are all the same; we used to purchase Lettraset sheets, sometimes hundreds of them for specific client fonts. There was value inherent each time you rubbed out a letter. Fonts used to be packaged – now, you just select a different font from your toolbar. The end product is the same, the experience is different, less valued. Ergo, in the consumers mind, it should be priced less.

In Apple's App Store, the Apps range from free to $899. The device is the packaging, you experience each app though it and the varying degrees at which the software manipulates and displays the data… or slingshots birds. The point is that you are constantly interacting and engaging with this digital asset and that’s the where the perceived value is. This is similar to cloud based apps – maybe you remember when software was packaged in a box with instructions and a CD or two, you may also remember, there was a much higher retail price.

I think you get the point – the product is the package.

Until this issue of packaging gets resolved, publishers have been willing to look at many ways to maintain a price that defies perceived value on the digital asset they call ebooks. They crave a price that is closer to the heavily packaged print book.

Two ways that have been explored by publishers and debated endlessly are DRM and Enhanced ebooks.

Personally, I’m not a fan of DRM, I feel it undermines the trust the author and publisher have with the reader and quite frankly, I’ve paid for my product (or packaging) and I’ll do with it as I please. Jumping through hoops to access content or restricting access to devices does not make for that same carefree enjoyment and experience you get with a physical product. I know why publishers want DRM on their products, but I would rather see them incorporate some ‘packaging’.

I need to applaud the Pottermore project for bringing ‘social DRM’ into the spotlight, a process where the readers personal information is embedded into the product as a way to prevent copy – this is a far less intrusive and acceptable form of protection than anything I have seen so far.

The other method employed by publishers to create more value on their ebook properties is enhanced versions. Enhancements come in various forms, from the inclusion of video or audio and web links or a full on transmedia experience. Enhancement is where I think publishers need to focus their attention. This is as close to ‘packaging’ as you’re going to get in the digital space – creating experiences around the 95,000 words demonstrates value and commands a higher price.

My company has decided to focus on the transmedia storytelling side of things, and with my background in consumer packaging and brand experiences, we should be able to create that elusive engagement with the reader, providing some tangible experience that they will want to explore again and again.

At the end of the day, consumers want to feel good about the purchases they made and purchasing things makes them happy. Packaging is validation of money well spent.



Packaged in this blog, what do you value my 1791 words at?