The publishing consulting firm Market Partners International addressed ways publishers should use the new kinds of marketing in its second Publishing Trends conference, "Publishing Direct: Connecting to the Consumer," last week in New York City.

The keynote speaker, Lester Wunderman, touted as the inventor of modern direct marketing, summed up the general message of the conference succinctly. "Direct marketers are the only true beneficiaries of the Internet," Wunderman declared. Since the only way to sell things efficiently is to be in touch with consumers' needs, he suggested, and the Internet provides the most direct connection from publisher to consumer, publishers must learn to use the Internet as a way to find new markets. "We are trying to write 'rules of the road' for a place nobody has been before."

A common theme of the day was that publishers need to master not "push" marketing, but customer-demand "pull." To create pull, publishers must listen to what customers want. Candy Lee, president of Troll Communications and former executive v-p of romance publisher Harlequin, spoke of establishing a close, even emotional relationship with the customer: "Some people think direct marketers sit around wondering, 'How am I going to manipulate this customer?' "

"I do," replied Pat Corpora, president of Rodale's book division, a publisher that thrives mainly on direct mail and consumer response. "I try to match a given title to a perceived benefit in the consumer's mind: 'I can't live another day without this vitamin book.' "

Permission Marketing and Brand Building

Seth Godin, interactive marketing guru at Yahoo!, calls the creation of demand-pull by polling reader needs "permission marketing," which is, not coincidentally, the title of his latest bestseller from Simon & Schuster.

Godin was on a panel with Jesse Kornbluth, editorial director of America Online, who was appalled that so few publishers even own a connection to AOL. Publishers should be looking at AOL daily, Kornbluth said, to see what their customers, AOL's 19 million users, are doing.

Kornbluth and Godin disagreed on the final role of publishers' marketing efforts in brand-building, and whether it would lead to "disintermediation," cutting out the middle man (in this case, publishers, who are between authors and readers).

While all agreed that the brands promoted in publishing today were individual book titles or authors, Godin thought it ridiculous for publishers to spend time "building brands you don't own." Kornbluth, however, pointed out that if publishers didn't actively collect consumer information and use it to sell more books, they were in for a surprise very soon. "Amazon.com will offer Tom Clancy the ability to publish his next book directly through Amazon, since Clancy has the intellectual property readers want, and Amazon now has the means of distribution, with e-books and on-demand printing. And Amazon can offer Clancy a 50-50 split on sales."

Authors usually don't want to do the production or distribution or marketing of a book, Kornbluth pointed out. The most successful publishers will be the ones who use the new tools to do these things for authors, and that can be anyone, not just traditional houses.