…this all just goes to show what publishers are up against. I mean, do people really think — in the face of enormously changing consumer habits and online trends — that it’s that simple? The fact is, many people do indeed think it’s as easy as just slashing prices.

Click through for Jeff’s entire post which likens Blodget’s argument to a past Seinfeld episode.

During our conversation, Alan hit upon something that resonated with me. “You won’t become a better marksman by enlarging the target”

I can think of a variety of situations where this axiom comes into play, but I’m curious – what does this mean to you?

Here, as was the case with Scrabulous, was an excellent opportunity for a company to really shine.  Instead, they reacted like many companies with heavy investment in Intellectual Property and went straight to the dual guns of infringement and takedown.

By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods.  When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own.  If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Often, we in the IP business fall back on old ways of doing business – ways that may not allow us to be as successful in the new economy as we were in the old.  IANAL, and I am not saying Creative was not within their rights in doing what they did.  But that’s not really the point at all.  There are several lessons in this, and here are a few of my thoughts as to how Creative might have handled this differently:

1. Public discussion forums are probably not the best place to post C&D notices.  Contacting daniel_k directly would have been my first choice.
2. Chalking up not giving customers what they are asking for to a business decision is well, a bad business decision.  Are customers always right?  No, but in this case it seems like there was an overwhelming outcry to this incident.
3. Beating up your biggest fans is not going to win you new fans.  daniel_k is obviously a huge supporter of Creative products.  He must own them, and to put in his own time and effort to contribute to the Creative community takes the kind of effort that only the most hardcore of fans would be willing to put forth.
4. Why not contact daniel_k directly (see item #1) and collaborate with him to make his driver releases at least unofficial and unsupported?  Creative looks like a hero for finally getting Vista drivers to market, and scores points for “getting it.”  If it was just a matter of the little (optional) donation button daniel_k had on his site, that seems like an easy thing to solve in a phone call or an email.

The rules are different now.  If not, we must at least acknowledge that they are changing.  I think Consumerist summed it up nicely:

Rule of thumb for bad news in the mainstream media: release it Friday so it’s buried over the weekend. Rule of thumb for the web: don’t infuriate thousands of your customers right before you decide to tune out for 48 hours.

1. Be nicer.  I often come across as abrasive.  It’s something I am aware of and want to work on this year.
2. Talk less, listen more.
3. Volunteer my help more often.
4. Slow down.  Change takes time. (See item 2)
5. Share my knowledge more often.

What about you?

On Kindle:

While the purist in me refuses to imagine a world without physical books, I can’t help but think of my children and the entire generation to which they belong, who have grown up in a world not only digital, but instant and on demand. The other night we dug out an old VHS holiday movie and my youngest had to have the concept of “rewind” explained.

On finding your audience:

Books enter the market in a unique and largely untested way. There are generally no focus groups or beta testers. And while no one would dream of launching a computer game, a new line of low-fat snacks or a snazzy new sneaker without extensive market research, every year 6,000 business books hit the shelves exactly that way — based on one author’s vision, one editor’s belief and one publishing company’s faith that they will find a market.

On selecting books:

But there are thousands of books published in a single year, and I am in the business of working on publicity for perhaps a dozen or so. The books I select will become my sole focus for at least six months and I will live with the decisions and books for each of those days as I work to bring the book to the media’s attention.

Barbara’s blog looks to be shaping up to be a must read.

Disclosure: Barbara’s company works on many Wiley bestsellers.

(Via Brand Autopsy)

Lencioni also writes a variety of articles on the website of his consulting company The Table Group, and I was especially impressed by this passage in a recent article entitled Finding the Real Meaning of Your Work.

Imagine, if you will, that you have just ended a one-on-one meeting with an employee in your organization. For you, it is a meeting about whatever issues you discussed. An agenda, a time-frame, an outcome, a meeting. For them it is something altogether more.

Imagine the employee planning for the meeting the day before. Imagine her rehearsing the dialogue with her husband because she is a little nervous about meeting with you, given your title and level of responsibility.

Imagine that immediately after the meeting she calls her husband to let him know how it went. Imagine that she replays the meeting for him, recreating subtleties and details that you will never think about again. Imagine her evening with her family, and how the way she treats them will be impacted in some way by her mood after coming out of that meeting.

Are you guilty?

According to nearly 25 percent of the 750 employers responding to the Collegiate Employment Research Institute’s 2007 Recruiting Trends survey, parents are indeed taking on more than their share of their kids’ job searches. Forty-one percent gather materials from prospective employers.

Thirty-one percent submit résumés on behalf of their children. Twenty-six percent actively promote their kids for positions — and 4 percent actually attend job interviews.

How embarrassing!

I would certainly be as involved as my child wanted me to be in helping him prepare for interviews, or assisting in resume writing, but attending interviews?

How could I possibly expect a candidate to hit the ground running and be an independent, productive employee if they can’t nail the interview without help from Mom or Dad?

If faced with this situation, how would you handle it during the hiring process? Would you ever let your parent(s) be a part of the interview process for your new job?

Here are a few quick checks to get a feel for how much your company really understands what is happening in social media:

1. Is your company blogging? I don’t mean employee blogs about what their kids are doing (and yes, I have one of those too) but is someone really speaking openly and honestly to customers via a blog. Does your CEO blog?
2. Still pushing stodgy Press Releases or have you adopted a strategy for Social Media Releases?
3. Does your company think that their customers are not a part of the social media landscape – that its just a small percentage of people on the fringes of the Internet?
4. Does your company have a YouTube Channel?
5. Do you have a Social Media Newsroom?

If none of this sounds familiar, you owe it to yourself to read Brian’s excellent summary of the future of PR and Marketing.

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”

This may be my new favorite quote and although it can be applied to many situations it certainly reminds me of the current state of book publishing. Here we are being dragged down the stairs by business models, margins and revenue targets that are decades or even centuries old.

We must think about other ways we can create valuable content that meets reader needs and deliver it in new ways that readers want. We need to realize that there is a whole new way to deliver our messages to the readers. We must cast off restrictive mindsets and embrace the changes occurring around us.

And like poor Edward Bear, we need to stop bumping our heads long enough to realize there really is another way.

The key, of course is engaging your customers in the network, but the challenge for many companies is casting off the old ideas and realizing the world is changing.

Make sure you keep your eyes open to the communities your customers are creating online. It’s the future of your company they are building.

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Via(Demand Satisfaction)