Digital dunces?

I spent the last year enthusing (albeit to a pretty unresponsive audience) about the opportunities that the internet and technology presents publishers. The great thing about the internet is that you don’t have to have a huge marketing budget to promote your books, but you do need to put in a bit of effort. Rather than spending £50k on a London Underground campaign for the benefit of the author and agent, why not record a video or a podcast for free and syndicate it online? Or encourage the author to blog. Or give the damn thing away for free online and hope that it will increase sales of the physical book. Oh, and what would you know, it does.

There are lots of smaller publishers who have really embraced online and are flourishing because they’re intelligent enough to realise it’s key for them. But what about the big corporates who have the money and resources and should really be way ahead of the pack? I was told that one of the board members said it was a real shame that I left my last company, but that ‘all that viral stuff’ wasn’t really suited to publishing. And I wasn’t running around trying to film the next YouTube hit (not that that’s a bad thing), I was attempting to develop a website with good content, encouraging authors to get involved and trying to produce some effective email marketing and author sites. But, apparently, it’s ‘all about the posters’. Even though, last year, more money was spent online than in Tesco. And of that money, the most popular product to buy was books. So why is online seen as a waste of time by publishers? They’re falling over themselves to get their books stocked in big chains; moving publication dates, tacking on added value products and completely redesigning great covers just to get that sought-after supermarket slot. But if online spending is overtaking that of Tesco, why aren’t publishers trying to make sure their titles are easy to find online and offering good content that isn’t available anywhere else?

Anyone?