Signature May/June 2015 - 32

 The 

people we want to
reach are "growing
up with media that
is almost universally
participatory." We
have to learn to
deliver content in
ways that support that
participation.

ecutive, search for a
subset of vendors to
contact about an RFP,
or create a set of comparable organizations for
an in-house project.
Directory structures
mimic the better aspects of
the web. Making books like
this available online improves
the member experience and increases the value of this content
for anyone accessing the directory.
Increasingly, other types of books
make sense online. Many associations
offer technical, scientific, and professional
information in book form, but the form
itself is not always member- or readerfriendly. Traditional book formats can
be too long for the problem at hand.
If I want to better understand how to
manage an employee, I may benefit from
a full volume of best practices in human
resources, but I need the chapter on performance evaluation.
Comparably, I might read a complete
book on strategic planning for non-profit
organizations, but to prepare a presentation I need digital copies of the templates that appear in the appendix. Unless
an association publisher has structured
its content to sell chapters (rather than
books) or offer digital templates (in addition to the book), I am out of luck.
In 2011, Hugh McGuire published a
widely read and debated post, "Why the
32

MAY/JUNE 16

signature

Internet and the Book Will Soon Merge."
His argument included a simple review of
the functionality that people have come
to expect as a given on the web:
n■ Copy and paste
n■ Link to specific chapters or pages
n■ Search for text passages on the web
and find an e-book version
n■ Leave comments or feedback in a
shared repository
n■ Use an available API to easily query
an e-book
n■ Easily search for and extract geographic data from an e-book text
Five years later, use of the web has
only grown, but traditional book formats,
whether physical or digital, continue to
frustrate users. This isn't just a case of
info-snacking - the term given to a tendency among mobile readers to read only
what they can fit into a break, as is the
case when standing in line or waiting for
a meeting to begin.
Those use cases certainly exist, but so
too do expectations that member-facing
content will be available, interoperable,
and adaptable to specific requirements.
Copyright remains important, as do paidcontent models, but they both need to
adapt to help members access, understand, and derive value from published
content.
Two scholars, James Womack and
Daniel Jones, refer to a user-focused
model as lean consumption, one in which
providers (publishers):

Solve the customer's problem completely by ensuring that all the goods
and services work, and work together
n■ Don't waste the customer's time
n■ Provide exactly what the customer
wants
n■ Provide what's wanted exactly where
it's wanted
n■ Provide what's wanted where it's
wanted exactly when it's wanted
n■ Continually aggregate solutions to
reduce the customer's time and hassle
This approach - in effect, "content as
a service" - puts the member or reader
at the center of a book publishing model.
Understanding her requirements comes
first, with content and formats developed
to address those requirements and solve
her problems. Some answers might come
in the form of a book, but many other
solutions are possible, using book-like
or book-derived content.
As long as publishing activities remain
focused on the development and dissemination of containers, whether physical
or digital, they remain publisher-determined, relatively immutable, and almost
always one-way. A solutions-based approach to creating and delivering content
ultimately breaks apart existing publishing models, many of which are more or
less container-driven.
That gap leaves us vulnerable to continued and escalating disruption. A colleague, Liza Daly, summarized things
this way: The people we want to reach
are "growing up with media that is
almost universally participatory." We
have to learn to deliver content in ways
that support that participation. To do
that, we need to consider trying some
new tools.
n■

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signature May/June 2015