Poll Results: Hot Digital Topics in Publishing

In What's the Buzz by Hannah Johnson

By Hannah Johnson

Last week, we asked you to choose three digital topics you would like to know more about. 55 percent of you chose digital book rights and royalty rates. I guess pricing and e-book sales through Amazon and Apple have everyone stirred up. And with both companies under investigation over the agency model, digital rights and royalty rates are only going to grow in importance.

E-book formats and enhanced e-books came in second with 45 percent and 43 percent respectively. Random House CEO Markus Dohle predicted that e-books would account for at least 10 percent of RH’s revenue by next year. Also, the e-reader pricing wars have begun, and Amazon says that has led to a rise in Kindle sales.

33 percent of you said that social media marketing was an important digital topic, but fewer people (10 percent) were interested in video production. In terms of viral content, video is one of the best mediums out there for that. But it is also time-consuming to produce videos, which may be why many of you would rather focus on issues closer to publishing.

Mobile publishing was a hot item with 32 percent of voters interested in it. More people are buying smartphones, accessing the Internet on mobile devices, and user expectations are trending towards having all content available on all their devices all the time. Asia is definitely ahead of many markets in terms of mobile publishing, but keep an eye on Europe and even the USA, as more companies enter the mobile publishing scene.

Poor XML and SEO received only a few votes. Editors, how often do you use XML in your daily routine? Are you all experts already, or have you yet to implement it into your workflow?

As for SEO, if you are responsible for creating web content, it might be worth your time to brush up on search engine optimization. It can be as easy as changing the headline of your blog post, or adding a couple keywords into your Twitter messages.

Here is the actual poll breakdown:

  • Digital book rights and royalty rates (55%, 33 Votes)
  • E-book formats (45%, 27 Votes)
  • Enhanced e-books (43%, 26 Votes)
  • Social media marketing (33%, 20 Votes)
  • Mobile publishing (32%, 19 Votes)
  • Website optimization (17%, 10 Votes)
  • Video production (10%, 6 Votes)
  • XML (8%, 5 Votes)
  • Search engine optimization (5%, 3 Votes)
  • None of these topics are interesting to me (2%, 1 Votes)

Thanks for voting and take this week’s poll: Which marketing technique is most effective for you?

About the Author

Hannah Johnson

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Hannah Johnson is the publisher of international book industry magazine Publishing Perspectives, which provides daily information and news about book markets around the world. In addition to building partnerships with international cultural and trade organizations, she works with the Frankfurt Book Fair to organize and support a number of its overseas initiatives. Hannah has also worked as the managing editor for an online media company, The Hooch Life, focused on craft distillers and cocktail experts. Prior to that, she worked as a project manager for the Frankfurt Book Fair’s New York office, managing various business and marketing activities.