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.