The attention age

According to Esther Dyson we live in the attention age. Hence, to build a successful business model we do need customers but not simply an audience and recipient of our product/service, but a community. It generates value for people and providing value is the main core of any business (Skoler 2011). Social media has become the new word of mouth for marketing strategy. Customers have much more power than they have ever had before. The publisher is still a gatekeeper and his role in the publishing process is essential but it is the reader who decides in which format he/she wants to read the content and moreover to whom he/she recommends it to (Transformation in Publishing, 2011). There is a need of changing our way of thinking to adjust to the new reality that we should not treat as a threat but as an opportunity. The more complicated the market is, the more chances people will want to find other solutions to simplify it. Doing something that we have been doing, only better will not give us different results and new results are crucial at a time when customer expectations are extending. Nowadays the publishing industry is disrupted by many factors, mostly by growth of new technologies that force an update of the whole business structure, from the resources and processes to the values. Therefore, if something new emerges on the market we should give it a serious thought. The new innovation can, in a short period of time, meet the needs of the customers that we did not think about previously. Hence, we cannot miss new opportunities for making the business grow. If we already have professional knowledge about publishing and have an established audience, we can find different ways to generate a new stream of revenue. We can invest in training, new events, or create new business relations. Rights sales can be a good example. We can go beyond our local readership and sell the translation rights to other countries. Thus, we not only gain a new partner within the industry and a bigger audience abroad but also we find a way to expand and make extra profit.