Liz Strauss.com

When I worked with a team to turn around a small publishing company, one of our strategies was to develop co-publishing partnerships with companies in the U.K. At the time, this hadn’t been done in our part of the industry. Step one required long days of knocking on doors to tell and retell our story.

One by one, my U.K. consultant (and friend) and I did just that. One by one, the publishers with whom we met gave us their confidence. Within a year we had strong relationships with 75% of those we had met during that first tour. During that trip my U.K. friend said, “Give it one year, and they will be coming to you.”

He was right. They were. Suddenly, in a few months I was the hottest game in town.

Other U.S. publishers in my industry started to notice. They wanted those U.K. relationships. U.S. folks began to go to the U.K. to do what I had already done. One of them said to me, “Do you know what it’s like to follow you into the U.K.?”

I answered, “No, but I don’t think I would want to.”

What I knew, and I think most folks hadn’t considered, is that there was considerable planning and groundwork that went into that very first trip that we took. Our goals were clear and our offering was simple, smooth, and the offering was tailored to the U.K. publishers’ way of doing business. In other words, we made it easy and fun to work with us.

What those who followed saw here was something that had been built over 18-months of working together and it looked like something anyone could do without thinking. It was not.

One piece that the U.S. publishers would get was that I had promised my U.K. partners not to treat them the way American publishers usually do.

I promised I would listen and consider their needs as my own.

It’s the same thing that a great business blog does for customers.

No U.S. publisher ever gained the foothold there that we had.

Liz Strauss

Some great statements from Om Malik via Scot Karp who is live blogging the Mesh Conference in Toronto. Scot is quoting and/or paraphrasing after Om’s conversation with Mark Evans . . .

Blogging is a cheap way to create advertising inventory, with a lot less work and a lot more return on investment.

Being completely opinionated takes away from what you write. When information is free, context is the value. People confuse my giving my opinion with my trying to give context.

Every user comes with their finger poised on the back button, so you have to do great stuff. Reading blogs is about contextual reading. In blogs you can actually follow the thought process.

People have so many choices, if people don’t identify with me, they won’t read me. I do my blog even though there’s hardly any money in it because I want to engage my audience.

And my favorite . . .

Don’t read anything I write, just read the comments.

Each one of these is a classic statement that could serve as content for an entire post.

There are more Om-isms in Scot’s post today. Scot also shares more about the conference. His perspective always makes me think. He sees the breadth and the depth of what’s going on. I like that.

Liz Strauss

The Not-So-Perfect Book

When you talk to an editor inevitably you will find that he or she is trying desperately to make the perfect book. It takes a while to convince an editor that perfection is in the eye of the beholder–

• to an editor, a perfect book is one with no language errors
• to a designer, a perfect book is aesthetically pleasing
• to a sales rep, a perfect book is one that sells and stays sold
• to the finance folks, it’s one that sells and makes money at the same time
• to the company president, a perfect book is one that does all of those things
• to the only one who counts–the customer–it’s a book that meets his or her needs.

There’s no such thing as a perfect book. There’s only a book that serves our customers. If it serves the customer then it’s perfect to me.

Liz Strauss