1. The newly-in-print books could possibly constitute a brandable item; that is, they could conceivably have a coherent audience. (Conceivably doesn’t mean likely.) If that’s true, they should be branded in a way different from the overall RH brand. And if this were done right, RH could subsequently sweep other people’s newly-in-print books under the same brand. They could become the aggregator.

2. They could do these things without compromising any of the link opportunities that would drive them up in the Google search rankings.

3. There SHOULD actually be a “web site” for each book, extensively linked. There are trade publishers customizing their CMS right now to make that possible and, in fact, I think Macmillan may have already done it.

4. RH is not “giving meaning” to its brand by this effort; it is DILUTING the meaning of its brand, which does NOT stand for “old stuff we thought a few people might like to see again.”

5. The statement about Google’s control of the POD here is just wrong. There is a “default” that, by algorithm, assigns a book as POD-able or not based on whether it is commercially available or not. But every copyright holder, author OR publisher, can opt out of the program. They can prevent their book from being shown — or even searched! — and they can prevent their book from being made available through POD.

In other words, the whole notion that RH is doing this to protect these books from being “exploited” by Google is incorrect.

6. The admonition to the critics to “stop thinking of the Web as a universe parallel to bricks and mortar” seems misplaced. It is RH which needs to get ahold of that thought and to invent new brands that suit the new paradigm.

7. I don’t know who among the people who express concerns similar to mine might be thinking or accusing Random House of being “stupid.” I don’t believe that at all. When all six of the biggest and most successful trade publishers are making the SAME mistake of aggregating their web activity under their widespread horizontal brands, there has to be a different explanation. Mine is that “understanding brand” and especially “consumer branding” was never one of the key skill sets for the successful 20th century trade publisher. Like ALL the skills for direct marketing and sales on the net, these need to be developed internally or brought in from outside, and the latter solution presents the different problem of getting the outsiders to understand the book business. This is not a simple problem; if it were, the smart people at Random and their biggest competitors would not be having so much trouble with it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the names of big horizontal companies don’t work as brands in the increasingly niched and vertical world of internet information.

I think it is a good strategy for the future.

The authors need as many POD publishers as possible and “branded or un-branded” doesn’t matter.

POD is a life-line to many authors and Random House is only doing the sensible thing, business-wise.

Kishore Joshi
A “P.O,D” AUTHOR
One Step At A Time
http://www.lulu.com/content/3990391