Let's make a wave...

I have been heard to say - loudly, in public places where there are publishers - that we in the book trade have to stop waiting for Google or Amazon or Apple to come along and do clever things and then hope that they will cut us in on the deal. We have to get out in front. 

I have also been heard to say, in general, that people who make sweeping policy statements but have no concrete suggestions are very, very annoying. So, on the understanding that I am engaging in blue-sky thinking here...

Take all the books to which a given publisher has rights. Make them digital, then searchable - not only by content, but by genre, themes, keywords, television adaptations, movie tie-ins, even tone.

{Yes, I know, this is in part what GBS was supposed to create - but Google's proposed digital library was/is notoriously weak on metadata. And one thing Google has yet to master is the social web and the user experience - see below.

The point about this is not that it's unheralded, but that it hasn't been done. This is not merely about making books available digitally. This is about publishing them. Making them known. Linking them in unlikely by valid ways so that people discover new things. A taste engine.}

Open the metadata to the public; allow readers to add tags (though it might prove necessary to restrict access to some central ones) so that the data can grow. Build a community around the system, connect it well to Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. There will be surprising clusters of recommendations, unlikely pairings. Investigate them. Find out why people who read Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals are likely to enjoy Harlan Coben, and realise that they may also like Anthony Bourdain. 

Allow linking to books by other houses. Encourage the adoption of a standard format for metadata which will play across several similar systems.

Sell books through the system. Sell access to the system as a library on a Spotify-ish model. (In order to do the latter, you'll have to do some very fast talking with authors regarding ads. Start now.) Sell the tie-ins. Sell merchandise if there is any. If there isn't any, allow authors to generate some, then sell it and take a (smallish) cut.

Liaise with booksellers to make the system work with smartphones so that bookshops can be a front end for the system. At the moment, for every hundred people who buy in bookshops, there are fifty to eighty who go home and buy online. Book buyers like to browse, to go in and ramble. So set the system up to recognise when a sale comes through a flesh-and-blood store and reward that discovery. Arrange with booksellers that they will take deliveries for people who know they will be at work when the postman comes.

Reward customers who refer others to a given title - give them small discounts, reward points. Bundle ebooks with paper copies, or at least discount direct-to-consumer sales of the paper edition to those who have purchased the ebook. BUT be clear about what information you collect and retain, and allow users to restrict it. Do not, ever, sell data on. This is the Achilles' Heal of Google, by the way: users increasingly mistrust Google's collection of data.

Create a micropayments system which allows people to read chapter by chapter, even page by page if that's what they want to do. Make it fairly generous, the way the Oyster Card is: when you reach a certain limit, you've bought a 'travelcard' or a library pass for a given period of time.

To do all this, you will need:

Engineers. Very good ones. Smart ones. Expensive ones. Many of these people are hired by Google or Apple. You will have to hire them first or steal them, with large sums of money and comparable freedoms (20% of Google engineers' time at work is spent on their own projects). Hire them. Overpay them. Be happy.

The support of your authors. Especially the lippy ones. This should not be hard to get so long as you are reasonable. Authors want you to succeed in making the digital transition. They want to get on with writing.

Or you could just partner with someone who has these things.

But understand that, if you do, you will once again be in the passenger seat. And that is not always a good place to be these days.