Wednesday, December 30, 2020

BOOKS ARE A PORTAL INTO A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES

 

PERSPIRATION PRINCIPLE AC 42

          BOOKS ARE A PORTAL INTO A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES

          If there was a healthier and happier way to hide from the horrors of the pandemic over the last year than finding a great piece of fiction to immerse yourself in, I can’t imagine what it would have been. Losing yourself for even a few hours in an author’s imagined and exciting world was a rewarding respite from the awful everyday Trump treachery, doom scrolling and fearmongering, and the ever-mounting body counts.

There was a serious and heartening psychological component to the entire process as well. In our crazy, cluttered and fast-paced lives, where time is always scarce, I’m convinced that an important part of the sheer satisfaction of buying some good books is the optimistic belief that we’re actually buying the time (and the commitment) to read them. One can always hope, and stranger things have happened.

In any case, as often as not, because I was a rigidly enforced Covid-19 homebody, I splurged and went for the hardcover copies which I hoped my kids would eventually read (fat chance of that) after which I’d planned to donate all the classics to a neighborhood library.

But those flashy tomes also served as an effective social shield from interruptions and lectures of all kinds. No one can impose on you or accuse you of surfing, gaming, emailing or shopping when you’ve got your snout stuck firmly in a big book propped up in your lap. This is another virtue by the way of adopting a physical rather than the digital literary solution. Ultimately, however, the magic is in the book’s content, not the mechanics of delivery, so the format doesn’t really matter much.

Next step was the careful selection of the material to be read which also mattered quite a bit. We’ve all come to realize (in our soon-to-finally-end national nightmare) that some sad and ugly truths are far stranger, scarier, and even more painful than the most brutal Jack Reacher tale, the latest deadly disease from Michael Crichton, or an extra frightening Stephan King novel. No one really needed much more “reality” to help make it through the tough times.

Needless to say, trying to read some quickly tossed-together memoire drawn from the constant stream of Trump tell-alls and mea culpas (though they were certainly full of plenty of fiction) wasn’t going to get the job done because everyone was already over the top and drowning in the non-stop BS, dramas, threats and tweets spewed by the Donald every day and regrettably and religiously parroted by the right-wing media. Even reading Woodward’s take on the Weirdo in the White House seemed like way too much work and not all that much fun. So, it was on to more traditional and satisfying fiction.

            And, not surprisingly, gender also played a big role in choosing what gets read. Men, as a general rule, read their escapist fiction to forget about their lives and difficulties since they can’t go to the movies and there’s only so much football. Murder, mayhem, mysteries, military, and, of course, anything about money are sure winners.

Women, I believe, read their romantic fiction to remember the best times of their lives – past and present. They see all the feelings, failings and follies of the characters and they connect, identify and empathize with them because all of these were once also their own and hopefully may be again. Men may want to be a woman’s first love, but women want to be a man’s last romance.

Before anyone faints, I don’t mean all men or all women obviously. I’m sure there are a million exceptions to my gross generalizations but bear with me because - admit it or not – there are real and obvious gender-based differences and market segments in the book biz which create targetable slices, dedicated niches, and cohesive and addressable communities. These core audiences are ripe for the taking (and offer opportunities far beyond just the books they buy) and that brings me to a new startup called Book + Main. (See https://bookandmainbites.com/ )

            Book + Main is building a safe social network and media/commerce platform for women and starting with the 200 million worldwide readers of romance novels - almost half of whom read more than one book a week. Romance novels are a billion- dollar-a-year industry and account for almost 50% of all mass-market paperbacks sold in the U.S. This is an audience to die for and its needs (beyond just the books) are largely unserved at the moment. They represent a very large diverse group with a strong set of common experiences with expectations and desires that can be facilitated, customized and still met successfully at scale.

Consistently active (if not obsessed), addressable and distinct, affluent and engaged, and already powerfully connected with a predilection for sharing, spending and community. As the saying goes, “one smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads” and these readers are smart, sophisticated and control over 85% of consumer spending. And they’re already there just waiting. True audiences always prime tricked traffic. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/the-trouble-with-social-media.html.)

If you have all the money in the world and loads of time, you can go out and try to build an audience like this for your business or you can find an existing population and try to make them your own. They’re committed, passionate and loyal. Their connections to specific authors and genres offer unique channels and moats to reach and retain them. The product and service expansion opportunities are also substantial including wellness, beauty + self-care, subscription boxes, etc.

            But the risk and the challenge (which is the same for so many startups in other fields as well is that you’ve got to sincerely believe in the audience, and you can’t ever take them for granted. This is a lesson for every operator and one that needs continual reinforcement. There are no strike twos in a niche business.

It’s too easy for entrepreneurs in the heat of the moment and the frenzy and excitement of rapid growth to rely on technology and automation and – as a result - overlook the importance of personalized attention especially in the context of networks where the participants generate some of the content, much of the peer-to-peer activity, and a great deal of the positive word of mouth which helps to drive expansion. Letting your readers, writers, clients and consumers do some of the work is helpful and often necessary to secure their buy-in, but it’s not sufficient that they participate and use the network. Only two types of businesses call their customers “users” – tech companies and drug dealers. This is not where you ever want to be. 

            The commercial networks that last – as opposed to the purely social networks which are in an entirely different business (selling mindshare and ads) - aren’t merely communication and sharing platforms although safe, secure and private conversations are certainly a critically important element. Strong networks ultimately need to provide real transactional value as well. Saving time or money. Helping people be more productive and make better, more informed decisions. Supporting them in meeting their various physical and mental needs. And most importantly, regardless of the product or service involved, never looking down on their customers or having contempt for them.

This kind of arrogance, of course, will hopefully lead to the final comeuppance for Trump and his fellow grifters and scammers who couldn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone but themselves and yet are still happy to take as much money as possible from people who can ill afford to provide it while they laugh at them behind their backs. Someday, some way, justice will be done. But I digress.

Bottom line: the near-term future is all about smaller, safer, closer and more personal everything. (See   https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/rules-for-the-next-twelve-months.html?cid=search)  If you’re lucky, you can find yourself an open and underserved niche in the marketplace; build a secure and closed network/moat to bring your audience together and deliver suitable products and services to them; make every effort to get as close as possible to each and every individual and taper your offerings specifically for them; and never take them for granted. They can be loyal for sure, but these days loyalty mainly means the absence at the moment of something better.

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