Denny Hatch's View

Participants in the 2005 Book Summit: Industry Leaders Discussing the Future of Publishing in a Flat World are being asked for their views of the future.

Book Summit checked in with Denny Hatch, who has wide experience as a marketer (including stints as book club director for Grolier, Macmillan and Meredith), agency writer and account executive (the Weintz Agency), and freelance writer/designer (25 years). In 1984, he founded the definitive direct mail newsletter and archive service, Who’s Mailing What! (now titled InsideDirectMail), In 1992, the newsletter was acquired by North American Publishing Company in Philadelphia where Hatch ran the newsletter as well as heading the editorial team of Target Marketing magazine which—after five-plus years under his guidance—is once again profitable. Denny is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars.

1. How do publishers find and target micro-niches of readers?
I can only speak from personal experience. In the 1969, I wrote a comic novel called Cedarhurst Alley about a guy who inherited a house under
the main landing pattern at Kennedy airport. The noise turned his little daughter autistic. When he tried to sell the house, he found the value had been more than halved. In protest, he sent up a WWII barrage balloon into the main landing pattern. The novel got good reviews. Sold respectably. Over the years it was optioned for a film probably eight times. No movie was ever made. I am republishing it via iUniverse for four reasons:

* I have an e-mail newsletter (www.businesscommonsense.com) that goes to 30,000 subscribers. In other words, I have a "platform." You may want to check out a 3/28/05 Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey Trachtenberg titled, "Tip for Authors in a Sales Bind: Get a 'Platform.' "

* The book appeals to people who live near airports and hate the noise. When first published in 1969 (and I have always had a full-time job, and so could not spend many hours on promotion), the Internet did not exist. It was impossible to find the names and addresses of groups around airports that were dealing with noise. Now, with the Internet, these groups--and the people who make them up--are a mouse click away. I am assembling them now--the groups, their leaders and their e-mail and actual addresses. In addition, a number of them list their advisers and board members. These are names I am researching via white pages Web sites--name by name. Tough, slogging work. But some of these groups have hundreds of members. If I can get one or more of them to buy the book--and they like it--they could tell their fellow members. This is so-called "viral marketing."

* The book is very visual--the hero being a giant yellow barrage balloon decorated with Christmas tree lights flying in the night sky with a huge brawling party going on below. It would make a dandy film. In 1969, the videocassette and DVD and made for TV films were not around. That has changed. With the book back in print (rather than hidden in Alibris) a film producer has a chance of seeing it.

* Finally, if all else fails, it will make a fun gift to business clients of myself and my wife.

2. What do you see as the future direction of book printing/production?
Print on demand. The beauty of self-publishing is that a tide of 10,000 books will not be moving from warehouse to store to warehouse to remainder table. Wanna buy my book? Sure. Here's a copy produced just for you. Enjoy. Incidentally, I believe hardcover books are awful. I have arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome. I cannot hold giant hardcover books. Hardcover books are a pain to travel with. They are designed so that publishers can cream the upscale market--high-rolling consumers and libraries--and then offer the paperback version to the rest of us. I love paperback books. All books should be paperbacks and if libraries want hardcover versions, they can have them rebound.

3. What are the implications to the industry with more books being sold beyond the bookstore ?
Print on demand means a 7-Eleven store in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, can have a book printing machine. A vacationer or resident can read a book review, go down the the 7-Eleven and give store owner a credit card. The store owner can contact the publisher, get an electronic file sent to him, load it into his print-on-demand machine and fifteen minutes later, the customer can walk out of the store with a book--nicely bound with a full color soft cover. Clean deal. No returns. The current bookstore model, based on returns is antediliuvian. When I published Cedarhurst Alley in 1969, only 15,000 new titles were published that year. Today, the number is something like 195,000. In those days, it was possible for a publisher to make a profit selling 2,000 or 3,000 of an edition. Today, that number is 20,000 or more. The big publishers are like giant legacy airlines--Delta, Northwest, American, etc.--mired down in a 19th century business model. Thanks to the Internet and print on demand, individual readers can be found for individual titles. You gotta love it!
P.S. My first job after the Army in 1960 was with a hard-drinking, hard-driving publisher named Franklin Watts. Every year on his birthhday he would walk into the office and snarl, "Do not wish me many happy returns. There is no such thing as happy returns."