Change is hard.

It’s difficult to be open minded to new ways of seeing and doing things. We all know this. I need only to listen to my son’s good-humored critiques of the music on my iPhone and I know the world is changing. The world turns, lives change, and our stories continue.

The world of Christian publishing is changing too. In publishing consumers are now co-creators with editors, consumers play a larger role than editors as cultural gate keepers, demand-side economics is replacing supply-side economics and distribution channels have moved far beyond brick and mortar stores. Amazon’s ever rising dominance and the explosive growth of self-publishing and digital platforms have converged to create a totally new publishing environment.

So with this magnitude of change swirling around us, what can Christian publishers do to carry out their mission, serve their customers, and maintain profitability?

This question has many facets, and I just want to focus on one: New Product Development (NPD) strategies into the future.

My aim is that the suggestions I make here will create further discussion and refinement and, if adopted and implemented, result in improved NPD success rates, lower return costs, higher ROI, and improved profitability.

It’s Not Enough

“Don’t radically alter your blockbuster strategy.” – Anita Elberse

When Harvard associate professor of marketing, Anita Elberse, offered her recommendation at a Book Industry Study Group gathering last fall, the deeper forces of our current recession had not been felt. She revisited Chris Anderson’s “long tail theory” to answer the question of whether the blockbuster strategy is still the most effective marketing strategy given the new dynamics and realities of today’s digital world.

In her recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Blockbuster or Bust,” she offers a clear and cogent explanation of why publishers keep using the blockbuster strategy, keep making huge bids on new books and, indeed, why they must. Personally, I’ve enjoyed being informed by Elberse’s thoughts. The blockbuster strategy may be the most effective, when compared to other historical strategies. Given the demands of today’s new and changing market environment, however, I ask: Is it enough?

My premise is that it’s not. It’s not because a strategy of parity and doing what the other person does isn’t good marketing. The strategy should be to offer some added value above what competition offers.

Even more important, the larger technological and cultural shifts have transformed publishing into a more personal rather than mass communication medium. This change demands more robust relationship building energy and a more nuanced and finer degree of customer knowledge and trust than historically pursued by publishers.

Those publishers who pursue profitability through use of the blockbuster and ratcheted-up relational strategy can expect to be rewarded more than those who rely mostly on the blockbuster strategy as traditionally practiced.

Why It’s Not Enough

“The dirty little secret of book publishing is that most books fail.” – Mike Hyatt

In his blog entry, “Marketing 101,” Mike Hyatt of Thomas Nelson comments that “something like 90% of all books published sell fewer than 5,000 copies. And by almost every commercial publisher’s standards, these books are failures.”

More than unpurchased items, however, failed books also represent failures and breakdowns in publishers’ acquisitions and NPD processes too. It’s interesting how we infrequently hear publishers used the word “failure” in association with their products. Hyatt’s candid public comment is as refreshing as it is rare among publishers.

But why is this the state of the industry? Why do publishers seem so accepting of such high NPD failure rates and overloaded warehouses of returned books headed to the shredder? No doubt there are many reasons. One of these seems to be the impact of relying too heavily on the blockbuster strategy and a Borg-like, group think attachment to it. The either/or flavor of Elberse’s Wall Street Journal article, “Blockbuster or Bust,” captures this beautifully.

The need for a different approach comes into view when you consider how blockbuster thinking directly contributes to substantially high NPD failure rates, which exists in most publishing houses. It comes more sharply into view when you closely examine the blockbuster strategy and realize that it is, in essence, a sophisticated, high-stakes gamble based mostly on a secular notion of “luck” or “chance.” In her “Blockbuster or Bust” article, Elberse quotes one publishing executive who notes that the process of picking winners remains “an informed crapshoot.”

Blockbuster-Relational Strategy: Small Steps

Admittedly, selecting successful books involves art and science. Storytelling is essentially a human activity; human essence can’t be reduced to a spreadsheet, so neither can the selection and development of books. I don’t think the “crapshoot” element can ever be totally eliminated from the acquisition editorial process. This said, I believe the “crapshoot” element can be much better managed and exposure to ROI risk reduced through publishers considering and implementing the following small steps of what I call the blockbuster-relational strategy:

While you continue to be open and search for the next “hot” personality or thing, consider:

1. Giving priority to consumer demand over editors’ subjective choices within the framework of your mission and values in your NPD process. Rather than let editors’ preferences drive NPD decision making, allow consumer data to drive NPD instead, and then let editors further shape and refine consumers’ ideas. This will help ensure you develop and release the kinds of titles that people actually need and want, while you stay on mission.

2. Restructuring operations so that editorial acquisitions and NPD aren’t autonomous. Weld the editorial acquisitions process with marketing and customer research to allow new ideas and opportunities to be vetted and validated by objective data. Marketing and customer research directives would guide acquisition editors’ NPD search and selection, product managers’ priorities and strategies, and pub board strategic planning and decision-making.

3.  Raising the bar on the quality and granularity of your marketing research. In his exposé in New York magazine this past fall, Boris Kachka noted, “Focused consumer research is almost nonexistent in publishing.” In my opinion, this is critical. If you ask a publisher, “Do you know your markets and readers?” many will, of course, say they do. The hidden reality, however, is that publishers often “know” their markets at a “country club” level rather than at a “family” level. This distinction makes a direct impact.

If you don’t do regular surveys and tracking studies with your customers, start now. If you do, reevaluate them. Are they really robust enough? Are you certain that you’re talking to the right people? Are you sure you’re asking the right questions? Are you doing serious relationship building and marketing research, or are you just doing marketing tactics (blog, web, mobile, video, advertising, PR, etc.)? Are you really learning who your customers are and what they really like and want?

Best practices and tools for marketing and consumer research don’t have to cost an arm and a leg, nor do they have to involve long turnaround times between implementation and insights. The more rigorous the research vetting and validation, the more easily the ideas of wheat and chaff can be separated and the opportunities with the strongest missional and ROI potential be developed and brought to market.

4. Evaluating everything. See what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and what could be improved in your new market-missional acquisition editorial process, and make the necessary adjustments. With deeper customer relationships and more accurate customer knowledge, publishers will be able to more accurately assess customer trend data and more profitably evaluate failed books sales—which in turn can lead to more breakthrough insights for future products and services.

Following Christ into the World

The blockbuster strategy may still be a popular strategy for publishers. After all, it’s an old, familiar friend.  But the blockbuster strategy—as it has been historically practiced—isn’t enough. The easy, country club atmosphere of the past Christian publishing era is over. New environmental realities demand a more holistic, focused, and intimate strategy.

I’m suggesting that the blockbuster strategy be upgraded or replaced by a blockbuster-relational strategy to profitably exist in our new environment. At a minimum, this means a philosophical shift that gives more influence over the NPD process to consumers than editors, an operational re-shaping that results in more integration between acquisitions, marketing, and customer research for the entire NPD process, a commitment to higher market research standards that includes more granular knowledge of customers, and ongoing evaluation and accountability to goals and mission.

The essential and strategic intent of the blockbuster-relational approach is to follow Christ into the world and be more incarnationally aware and sensitive to customers we’re in relationship with. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the clearest example of knowing people whom we serve and a constant reminder for Christian publishers to not settle for superficial forms of “knowing” your present and future customers.

Yes, change is hard. But not changing may be harder.

The stiffest challenges for Christian mission in publishing today and in the years ahead may not come from the environment around us, but from stubborn attitudes and thoughts within us.

Either way, Jesus Christ is sufficient for both. Let’s keep following Christ into the world.

Christopher Ribaudo
Chief Brand and Marketing Strategist, Livingstone.

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