From TechCrunch:
In 2012, we launched Thought Catalog Books. With Thought Catalog the website, we mastered producing short-form writing for the web and we wanted a new challenge. We hoped to build a counterweight to Thought Catalog’s trendy digital brand with a more contemplative spin-off brand as a book publisher.
There were two questions driving the identity of our book startup: In the age of algorithms and social media, can we create an enclave where creative and intellectual sophistication still matter? Can we build a publishing model where readers instead of advertisers are the main stakeholders?
It’s critical to understand Thought Catalog Books in the context of the website because when ThoughtCatalog.com went live in 2010, it wasn’t a viral publisher. The non-buzzworthy “Thought Catalog” name reveals a total lack of foresight into the viral publisher trend. Thought Catalog was supposed to be an “experimental cultural magazine.”
The problem was, the experiment with journalistic writing had a conclusive and dire result. Long-form writing like profiles of musicians, book reviews and cultural analysis would bankrupt us, and we pivoted. Audience insights from Facebook data become our publisher, Google data our editor in chief, and Twitter signals our managing editor. Thought Catalog was one of the first magazines built by data from social media and that made us, along with BuzzFeed and a few others, part of the first gold rush of digital publishing.
Money wasn’t the only goal, though. Money is a lifeblood for any company, but we still had higher ideals. We wanted readers, not just visitors; artistic appreciation, not just social likes. This desire to elevate the conversation is what separates a content company from a media company, and we consider ourselves the latter. Well-funded media companies deal with this by commissioning what is deemed the “important stuff” as a loss leader.
. . . .
The book business model is kinder to long-reads. A 5,000-word piece commissioned at $1.00 a word requires about one million reads for the publisher to break even on an optimized ad setup. Often even viral lists won’t get one million visitors, let alone long-form investigative journalism or in-depth creative work. With book publishing, you would only need about 2,000 people to buy the e-book at $4.99 to recoup your investment.
. . . .
We were surprised to learn that print books and digital books were almost two distinct businesses with totally different operating models. While a print book and an e-book share identical content, they reflect diametrically opposed media formats. Print books are luxury goods and e-books are utility, and this has real implications in the strategy and workflow behind the marketing and production of each.
. . . .
You can’t create much markup on utility, whereas you can create a great deal of markup on luxury. This has been perhaps one of the most important insights driving Thought Catalog Books’ growth. The print books department needs to be run like a luxury goods company, while the e-book department needs to be run like a technology company. The content is the same, but the medium dictates an entirely different business model.
. . . .
Online native content is effective for short-form stories, but if a brand wants to cut deeper and build an in-depth story, the print book is the perfect medium. Native and sponsored content is short-form content that readers only engage with for a few minutes. With sponsored books, advertisers tap into an in-depth branding opportunity using the most time-tested storytelling technology out there — a printed book, where readers often spend hours if not days with their content and keep it perhaps forever on their bookshelf.
. . . .
As e-books become increasingly popular, selling physical books on Amazon might make less sense. At Thought Catalog Books, Amazon is a dream partner for digital distribution and certain kinds of print distribution. Amazon doesn’t make sense, though, for selling our premium print books. For us, there is more personality in ordering the book through a more custom e-commerce experience or through an independent brick-and-mortar retailer. If books are truly luxury items, then just as a high-end clothing brand doesn’t want to sell on Amazon, we, as a specialty book publisher, don’t want our products there either. This might eventually be the case with other, larger publishers at some point which, at the very least, may begin limiting their print distribution on Amazon.
Link to the rest at TechCrunch and thanks to Felix, who says “A couple interesting insights surrounded by a lot of weird ideas. The weird won,” for the tip.
PG says another difference between “online native content” and printed books with advertising is that an advertiser can measure whether anyone actually reads online content and can’t measure whether anyone reads a printed book.
As for publishers “limiting their print distribution on Amazon,” readers seem to be helping to limit the distribution of printed books on and off Amazon.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t “native content” the most recent Newspeak for “advertorial” text? So when they are talking about a book they mean a written-to-spec all-promotional content volume such as a glowing CEO biography, helpful tips for using a product, Campbell Soup recipes and the like.
You’re not wrong.
That is what makes all the references to books and ebooks weird. They’re writing ad copy, not trade books.
Thought Catalog FWIW hit my radar only once. Recently, some cute girl who had been dumped by her boyfriend decided to “drink her way through dating websites.”
From what I gathered from her blog and amazon description, she was partway through her quest when she got back with her boyfriend, which kinda scotched the whole thing.
The reviews of her book were not kind, suggesting that her quest exploited the guys, did not reveal anything interesting about the dating scene, and was dull.
It’s hard to reconcile the above article with this ebook as an example of their model.
A dollar a word? Who the heck pays an author that much? No wonder they failed.
It sounds like they had no idea what to do or how to do it. Which considering the time period applied to pretty much everyone. They don’t seem to have been able to catch on to how the market went, and where (ebooks on ereaders).
Well, if they can find a $5 market for 5000-word ad-supported pieces, maybe they can find a market for $70 novels.
Maybe they’re *that* good.
Maybe everybody else is doing it wrong.
Or maybe they need to charge that much because, unlike everybody else, their ebooks offer lower margins than their print books.
“It’s a mystery.”
http://www.theinternationalfreelancer.com/1-a-word/
I’m just curious to know in what market does a 5000 word ebook with ads sell for $5.
I almost said, “A Lee Child short story,” but that sounded wrong. Gilliian Flynn’s standalone short story, perhaps? But that’s about it. And that’s without ads.
It’s not like Thought Catalog is worth paying for anyway. They have a lot of fantastic pieces and a lot of duds because they let pretty much anyone publish there. Maybe The Paris Review or n+1 could get away with it.
I thought that site was a blogging platform, not a publisher.
It doesn’t matter, though – the site rarely loaded correctly so I never visited much.
In the source they present themselves as publishers. And representative of the industry.
They’re just not making it clear which industry they’re supposed to be in, publishing or ads.
A paper book is a luxury? This might have been back in fourteen century, but not today. I wondered if anyone asked the readers?
If you asked me, I would say that paper books are luxury items in my life. Many people who grew up with a book in their hand have pleasant associations with paper books. I certainly do. But for practical everyday reading, electronic wins hands down. Whenever I plump for a paper book, I run through the same justifications I use for an occasional bottle of single barrel bourbon.
I was impressed by the point that paper publishing is a luxury business, electronic is a utility.
I would say electronic is a “commodity” not a “utility” but I liked the point.
Indie electronic publishers strive to make it with a good product at an affordable price. Paper publishers make it on brand reputation and high prices. Indies with an established reputable brand are welcomed by the paper publishers, others need not apply without a gold-plated CV.
That seems about right.
Books, whatever format, should not be a luxury, as in Expensive. Many people will be deprived of their benefits because of the price and the gold plating the books may get to justify their price.
But that reminds me of the “trinket” business. What’s the difference between a trinket, a porcelain doll for example, and a collectible? A serial number for a limited edition and a much higher price.
I hope that’s not what the Trad-Pubs are trying to do.
They are headed that way and already are doing it to an extent. Remember that not everybody buys books to read them. Many books are sold as decoration or collectibles.
Down the road, as print runs decline, prices will inevitably go up and pbooks will end up as objects d’art and collectibles instead of an information distribution system. It might take a decade or two but it is unavoidable; too much of the blockbuster pbook model hinges on volume.
Without going too far:
https://www.amazon.com/The-Library-of-America-Collection/dp/1598530003
Tradpub paper books are at luxury prices because of the infrastructure. They do offset print runs and hope for an 80% sell-through, and because so many unsold books get returned or pulped, the consumer is stuck paying the price for one-and-a-half books for every book purchased. High-priced electronic books are simply a bulwark against the erosion of their print marketshare. And I’m leaving out the other overhead they bake into the suggested retail price.
Many consumers are fed up with this and buy discounted paper books online.
I think you already know this, though. I just wanted to type it out. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong or missed something. 🙂
Paula, you are correct about the costs of paper books, but that does not dictate the final price. The price of any item is dictated by the Market, which includes suppliers, producers, the government regulations, and consumers. A publisher may want to charge a million dollars for a book (not a rare book) and no one will buy it. On the other hand the publishers will sell the books to a discounter and all the books will be sold for $1. The higher the price, more luxurious, for a book the less books will be sold. Lets not forget that the higher the price for luxury paper books, the higher the prices for eBooks. So they justify.
Certainly agree that books should not be expensive. I go farther– books should be free for anyone who wants to read. That’s why I put in volunteer hours for my local library system. But I also think that for those who want to buy them, the free market applies. And if it is a free market, some sellers will take the luxury pricing option. I hope the market teaches them their folly…