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Multiculturalism and bridging the gap
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:24:04 -0500
We have raised and discussed a wide range of potential issues and concerns in this conversation. It is not enough to lament. What can be done? Some good suggestions have arisen about tracking author visits. There are already dozens of prizes and hundreds of lists that are geared towards bringing attention to diverse books. These have been around for some time and it is not apparent that they are achieving the outcome that might be desired. What more might be done?
I am interpreting the primary issue above all as demand: Create more demand for books by reading more. If books are being purchased, they will be produced. If there is little demand, they are unlikely to be produced.
Within this macro-issue, I am hearing that there is a particular issue that might be exacerbating the problem. It is possible that publishers are not able to pick up the signal of what books are being demanded because of communication and connectivity barriers. They can see a financial profile of African-American readers that is not commercially viable but are having difficulty discerning that there is in fact a material African American middle class but that that market may be hard to pinpoint and may also be suffering from Presumptuous Stereotype Fatigue and Stereotype Incompatibility Blindness. [And this is not about African Americans per se, it is about any attribution minority].
Is there a mechanism that can make apparent the demand to publishers as well as help create that demand? Someone listed out some of the challenges earlier in this conversation. Publisher's compete, non-profits are time and resource constrained, volunteers have limited time, it is a business that has to make a profit, that which isn't written can't be published, there is a revealed preference issue (what people say they believe about books and how they spend their time and money are not easily reconciled). So lots of barriers to solutions.
One idea I have is whether it might be useful to create a reader's forum that acknowledges that there are a lot of particular and nuanced definitions of self that are not being recognized or well served in the broader marketplace. I have in mind a website that is open to a large number of individuals who could identify books they find estimable and pertinent. Books that could be tagged in a fashion that allows for easy search. A community that could pool its knowledge and by its presence make its desires known through purchases, thus allowing publisher's to better identify and target the books for publication most likely to be commercially successful.
There is a branch of business management that focuses on adaptive innovation which involves the effort to quickly and cheaply launch, test and deploy new ideas, products and innovations. Part of that strategy is the ability to fail faster cheaper and easier if the idea does not have traction. Following that model, I have mocked up a blog prototype of such a forum, Library of the Family of Man <http://libraryofthefamilyofman.blogspot.com/>
(LOTFOM) in blogger.
Anybody that wants to make nominations of books, do reviews, tag them for searching can let me know and I will add them as an editor. We can link the books to Amazon as a commercial account. If people are interested and we generate sufficient funds, we can begin building a website that is more customized to our functional needs with such things as community ratings. Take a look at the prototype. I have populated it with a handful of books which have been mentioned in the conversation so far and included some generic verbiage. I have also gone through the exercise of some initial tagging (which needs to be refined).
If we can get a sufficiently large population of people using and populating the site, we can accomplish several things.
1. An independent site where anyone can go to find books that are out of the mainstream.
2. A forum for readers as consumers.
3. Share community knowledge to make everyone aware of books others might be interested in.
4. Allow for greater and more targeted, more nuanced searching.
5. Allow publisher's to bring attention to the books they think might be of interest (to the extent that they can get a reader to review).
6. Allow LOTOM to bring quantitative attention to successful books in order to brief publishers on what is actually popular - with the larger intent to create more supply for the now more apparent demand.
7. We could bring attention to bricks and mortar stores and websites that are particularly attentive to non-mainstream interests and needs.
8. We can incorporate the self-publishing part of the market as well.
Is this a good idea that serves a purpose sufficiently well to proceed further with? Let me know your thoughts. If you think it is worthwhile and would like to nominate favorite books, reviews and tagging, let me know and I will add you to the editors list so that you can do so directly.
Very interested to see thoughts, comments and criticisms to the idea. And any other ideas that might solve the problem of increasing demand.
Charles
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 15:24:04 -0500
We have raised and discussed a wide range of potential issues and concerns in this conversation. It is not enough to lament. What can be done? Some good suggestions have arisen about tracking author visits. There are already dozens of prizes and hundreds of lists that are geared towards bringing attention to diverse books. These have been around for some time and it is not apparent that they are achieving the outcome that might be desired. What more might be done?
I am interpreting the primary issue above all as demand: Create more demand for books by reading more. If books are being purchased, they will be produced. If there is little demand, they are unlikely to be produced.
Within this macro-issue, I am hearing that there is a particular issue that might be exacerbating the problem. It is possible that publishers are not able to pick up the signal of what books are being demanded because of communication and connectivity barriers. They can see a financial profile of African-American readers that is not commercially viable but are having difficulty discerning that there is in fact a material African American middle class but that that market may be hard to pinpoint and may also be suffering from Presumptuous Stereotype Fatigue and Stereotype Incompatibility Blindness. [And this is not about African Americans per se, it is about any attribution minority].
Is there a mechanism that can make apparent the demand to publishers as well as help create that demand? Someone listed out some of the challenges earlier in this conversation. Publisher's compete, non-profits are time and resource constrained, volunteers have limited time, it is a business that has to make a profit, that which isn't written can't be published, there is a revealed preference issue (what people say they believe about books and how they spend their time and money are not easily reconciled). So lots of barriers to solutions.
One idea I have is whether it might be useful to create a reader's forum that acknowledges that there are a lot of particular and nuanced definitions of self that are not being recognized or well served in the broader marketplace. I have in mind a website that is open to a large number of individuals who could identify books they find estimable and pertinent. Books that could be tagged in a fashion that allows for easy search. A community that could pool its knowledge and by its presence make its desires known through purchases, thus allowing publisher's to better identify and target the books for publication most likely to be commercially successful.
There is a branch of business management that focuses on adaptive innovation which involves the effort to quickly and cheaply launch, test and deploy new ideas, products and innovations. Part of that strategy is the ability to fail faster cheaper and easier if the idea does not have traction. Following that model, I have mocked up a blog prototype of such a forum, Library of the Family of Man <http://libraryofthefamilyofman.blogspot.com/>
(LOTFOM) in blogger.
Anybody that wants to make nominations of books, do reviews, tag them for searching can let me know and I will add them as an editor. We can link the books to Amazon as a commercial account. If people are interested and we generate sufficient funds, we can begin building a website that is more customized to our functional needs with such things as community ratings. Take a look at the prototype. I have populated it with a handful of books which have been mentioned in the conversation so far and included some generic verbiage. I have also gone through the exercise of some initial tagging (which needs to be refined).
If we can get a sufficiently large population of people using and populating the site, we can accomplish several things.
1. An independent site where anyone can go to find books that are out of the mainstream.
2. A forum for readers as consumers.
3. Share community knowledge to make everyone aware of books others might be interested in.
4. Allow for greater and more targeted, more nuanced searching.
5. Allow publisher's to bring attention to the books they think might be of interest (to the extent that they can get a reader to review).
6. Allow LOTOM to bring quantitative attention to successful books in order to brief publishers on what is actually popular - with the larger intent to create more supply for the now more apparent demand.
7. We could bring attention to bricks and mortar stores and websites that are particularly attentive to non-mainstream interests and needs.
8. We can incorporate the self-publishing part of the market as well.
Is this a good idea that serves a purpose sufficiently well to proceed further with? Let me know your thoughts. If you think it is worthwhile and would like to nominate favorite books, reviews and tagging, let me know and I will add you to the editors list so that you can do so directly.
Very interested to see thoughts, comments and criticisms to the idea. And any other ideas that might solve the problem of increasing demand.
Charles
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Received on Wed 12 Feb 2014 02:25:21 PM CST
