Digital Marketing Strategy. The Mondadori Case Study

The advent of digital publishing provoked the inception of new forms of publishing and the necessity for companies in this sector to rethink their business models and marketing strategies. Indeed, there are now many innovative ways of publishing and even writing books.
First of all, crowdfunding is a tool used by independent literary magazines, such as The White Review, Bomb and Guernica, in order to support their issues, but also by authors who want to self-publish and directly connect with readers. Kickstarter, the most famous crowdfunding platform, has received $70 million in pledges for publishing projects since its launch in 2009 and books-related funding campaigns have almost tripled from 2011 to 2014, increasing from 735 to 2064. According to Dan Kieran, chief executive of British crowdfunding publishing company Unbound: “People are sick of passively consuming, they don’t want to be told what to buy”.
In Italy, the crowdfunding platform for self-publishing, Bookabook, was born in April 2014. It works similarly to Kickstarter and proposes every month three new projects of books to the website visitors, who can then decide whether to support them and receive a copy of the book at the end of a successful campaign or have the money back in case the expected amount is not reached. In the second place, non-traditional ways of writing books are extremely popular lately, for example social writing. The most famous app for sharing stories and getting a feedback on them is Wattpad: tens of million users in the world and hundreds million of stories published since its launch. Along the same lines, the Italian social network Scribentium was founded in 2015.
Furthermore, books themselves are changing: in July 2015 Jason Sperling, Creative Director of RPA advertising agency, started publishing its book on brand visibility Look at me, on Instagram. The reason, as the author says, is that: “It really becomes a shared conversation on Instagram. With most books, you buy them, read them and then put them away. With this one, you’re getting consumers’ perspectives, you’re getting industry perspectives, and even when you’re reading it, you can comment. It’s a dialogue and a shared conversation”. Indeed, more and more authors are extremely active on social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, in order to communicate with their readers and fans: well-known examples are Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling and John Green.
Interestingly, a few new authors not only use social networks as a promotion spotlight, but they are celebrities born thanks to them, as the case for many YouTubers. In a few months after its publication in 2014, “Girl online” the book written with the help of a Penguin ghostwriter by Zoella, an English YouTube star with almost ten million subscribers, overtook Harry Potter’s record sales. There are many other successful YouTubers who signed agreements with publishing firms, such as Alfie Deyes, Felix Kjellberg and the Italian Marzia Bisognin, to write novels or non-fiction books related to the content of their YouTube channels.

Best practices among independent publishing firms
In december 2014, the young publishing firm Sur organised an interesting initiative, #BlogNotes, during Più libri più liberi, the Roman book fair of independent publishers. Sur invited five bloggers to join their stand during the fair and write about that experience. This was a nice way to involve bloggers and communicate a beloved Roman literary event through their eyes. The experiment was successful and proposed again during other events in the following years, introducing new bloggers.
Another interesting example is Minimum Fax, an independent publishing firm based in Rome and appreciated nationally for the quality of its work and the foresight in the use of social network. As a matter of fact, in their team they have one person specifically assigned to everything related to the web: Valentina Aversano. In order to communicate with their readers, Minimum Fax mostly use its website, e-mail newsletters, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Their Facebook page counts over 47000 likes and the company’s has almost 50000 followers on Twitter and around 8000 on Instagram. Indeed, Valentina Aversano is a master in engaging readers online and every new book release by the Roman independent publisher becomes a success online, the topic everyone in the literary world is talking about, but also in bookstores.
The content shared on social networks consists in reviews from newspapers and magazines but also blogs and on Twitter the response to whoever mentions the firm, is immediate. Unlike the majority of other publishers, Minimum Fax writes on Facebook and Twitter not only about their books but also about insights of their editorial office. Moreover, they are really good at balancing online and offline experiences and communication, organizing several events to present books and even parties welcoming readers in their offices (e.g. for Christmas) or inviting other people in the industry during the most important book fairs. Finally, Minimum Fax has an online store on its website, selling both physical books and eBooks, all available also from the major online bookstores and retailers. However, periodically the company proposes offers called #minimumdeal, to allow the purchase of many titles of their catalogue at a small price. All of the these topics were touched on, in an interview to Valentina Aversano, conducted in February 2016, that can be found in Appendix A.