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Following Trends
by John Kremer

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This report is divided into four parts, one dealing with editorial, one dealing with trends and their effect on editorial, the third dealing with marketing, and the fourth dealing with Internet marketing numbers. The second part of the report deals with following trends.

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Following Trends

One of the secrets to success in marketing is keeping in touch with trends — not only to select the best editorial product to match the times but also to target your news releases and other promotional materials more effectively. With the dawning of each new year, many experts offer predictions for the next year or next ten years.

Below are a few of the current predictions. Review them for possible new book topics, revisions to current books, or updates on your marketing materials and promotions.

Think of the ways you can make use of these trends. One of the reasons that Avery Publishing finally made it on the map is because they adapted their healthy cookbooks to the low-fat trend. When they retitled Gloria Rose’s Cooking for Good Health to Low-Fat Cooking for Good Health, sales jumped fivefold, from 20,000 copies to 100,000 copies.

In a late fall 1999 issue, Food & Wine magazine, the editors offered their annual report on the latest trends in food. Here are a few of their predictions:

• Pork will become more than just “the other white meat,” it will become the meat of the millennium. How many recipes for pork do your cookbooks feature. In sending out sample recipes to newspapers, include a few recipes for pork.
• Latin ingredients such as guava paste, yucca, and Scotch bonnet chilies will start to appear on supermarket shelves. Do your Mexican cookbooks feature such ingredients?
• Sausages, cured meats, and carpaccios will find favor as first courses.
• Fish restaurants are hot. Are your travel books highlighting them? Note that freshwater fish are coming to be favored over seafood. Do you note the difference in your travel guides?

In a December 1999 MSNBC feature on the future of travel, writer Rudy Maxa predicted the following innovations in auto travel.

• Safety devices, such as collision-detection and avoidance systems, will become more prevalent. What does this mean for your books? One thing: More older drivers traveling more often by car.
• With the advent of a new engine processor, fuel efficiency will increase by 50%. Consider how that might change global warming, car use, political actions, social issues, etc.
• Global positioning systems and ATS (advanced traveler information services) will provide drivers with traffic updates, alternate routes, tourist information, and more. Have you looked into licensing your book content to the companies that will be providing this information via cell phones, PDAs, or in-car computers?

According to Judy Gordon, creator of the fashion web site, The Trend Report.com, here are a few of the fashion trends for this spring. While fashion changes quickly, its trends can be useful in designing book covers, catalogs, brochures, news releases, and other promotions. Here are a few of the hot fashions for spring:

• Pantyhose in ultra-sheer textures and pastel colors, worn with patent-leather high heels. Pastels seem to be in because denim and leather in soft shades of pastel pink or blue are also hot. Also pastel or bright colors, from lavender to lime green. If you are designing book covers for women, perhaps these colors will attract attention this year.
• The disco look, especially with gold or glitter, will again be hot. Hence, spot glosses or gold embossing could draw attention as well.

According to a November issue of FEED magazine, here are a few of the 21st century inventions we can expect.

• Cars made of plastic will weigh less than half as much as current steel and aluminum cars, giving better fuel mileage. Indeed, exhaust might well consist only of fresh, potable water. Again, what impact will this have on environmental issues, global warming, and other social decisions?
• Developments in electronics will allow us to feel movies, music, and computer entertainment as well as see and hear. How will this impact the development of ebooks?
• In medicine, viruses might carry cures as well as illness. With genetic engineering, many health problems might be cured that are now incurable. How will these affect your health titles? How will they affect the current demand for health foods, vegetables, etc.?

In a late December issue of Business Week, the editors predicted that high-tech news would be dominated by web developments (not a hard prediction to make). Among other innovations, they predict the following:

More information appliances, many simpler and less expensive than computers, that will handle many daily chores. Will these save us time? Give us more time for leisure activities? More time for fun and games?

Cable and DSL high-speed modems will replace the current dial-up modems leading to faster Internet access. This could make ebooks even more attractive to consumers, either for download or for reading directly on-screen.

Bluetooth, a new wireless technology, will allow all portable devices to communicate with one another. Think of the possibilities for business, for travel, for publishing directories.

According to Ronald M. Klatz, president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, here are a few of the things that will help in the fight against aging and illness. Consider the impact these innovations will have on elderly travel, recreation, food choices, etc.

• Miniature robots will attack disease at the cellular level, sensing data and delivering medication to specific tissues.
• Genetic therapies will cure male-pattern baldness, Alzheimer's, and other genetic diseases.
• Macular degeneration will be a thing of the past as implanted biochips incite tissue growth and stimulate the brain's visual centers. More older people will be reading again!
• Implanted biochips could also reverse spinal-cord injuries.

Many of the above predictions were excerpted from the Brain Snacks email newsletter distributed weekly by Young & Rubicam's Brand Futures Group. A complete archive of their publications is available at their http://www.brandfutures.com website. If you'd like your predictions or trend sitings to be featured in this newsletter which goes out to people in more than 70 countries, send potential brain snacks to Nancy Arnott, editorial director of Brand Futures Group, at Nancy_Arnott@yr.com. She also can be reached by fax at 212-880-7575.

Again, use the above trends or others you uncover to help you develop new editorial directions or to create new titles within your current editorial specialties.

In December 2001, USA Today listed the changes that had occurred after 9/11, representing the changes from the go-go '90s to the no-go '00s.

Out: Go-Go '90s	In: No-Go '00s
job-hopping	job-clinging
Internet stocks	safety net stocks
boom towns	small towns
biotech	bioterrorism
crowded places	fireplaces
Federal Reserve	military reserves
In God We Trust	God Bless America
skyscrapers	church steeples
low-fat food	comfort food
analyst reports	Consumer Reports
second homes	second mortgages
CPA courses	CPR courses
Alan Greenspan	Allen Ginsburg
Armani suits	chemical suits
bonus checks	background checks
frequent-flier miles	flight insurance
stock tables	breakfast tables
Roth IRA	education IRA
golden parachutes	gold
overtime	family time
travel books	history books
online trading	online shopping
credit card debt	debt to society
mutual funds	fundraisers
corporate bonds	Savings Bonds
Abby Cohen	Dear Abby
gas guzzlers	gas masks
head honchos	everyday heroes
first class	class acts
signing bonuses	severance plans
Times Square	town square
the New Economy	the new reality

In the mid-February 2006 issue of DM News, editor Mickey Alam Khan expected to see the following trends for the coming year:

Buzz marketing or word of mouth will be big. John’s Comments: For publishers, that means you need to make better use of the viral nature of the Internet. I believe Internet marketing will become (and should become) a much bigger part of every publisher’s marketing plans.

E-commerce will be more about interactions rather than transactions. John’s Comments: The key to successful web sites is creating relationships with your visitors, not just a one-time sale.

Mergers and acquisitions in direct marketing, search marketing, email marketing, etc. will rise. John’s Comments: I’m not sure how this will affect publishers. It might create better resources for search or email marketing.

The Internet will be used more for branding. John’s Comments: Authors and publishers should be incorporating the Internet into any branding plans. I believe that all authors should be thinking about branding whenever they are writing or promoting a new book.

Google could face lots of competition this year and, perhaps, a consumer backlash. John’s Comments: This shouldn’t hurt us as publishers. Indeed, it might open up more opportunities to get more visitors to our web sites, especially if your web site is not rated well in Google, but is rated well on other search engines.

Online publishers will place more content behind walls. John’s Comments: In other words, more web sites will begin charging for more of the content they present on their web sites. If you have a big content web site, you might also consider this as a possible revenue source.

Blogs and other consumer-generated media will proliferate. John’s Comments: Indeed, for many media companies, this is the biggest challenge — harnessing this content and making it available to more people. Publishers are already doing this by offering book deals to many well-known bloggers.

Broadband’s increased penetration into homes will change Internet advertising as many TV broadcasters begin to adapt to Internet media. John’s Comments: Also, of course, more and more web content will be audio or video rather than just words and images. Update your marketing to include podcasts or video.

Apple Computer will become the best friend of content creators as its iTunes and iVideo stores get consumers accustomed to paying for content. John’s Comments: iTunes is already featuring podcasts and audio talks, both free and paid. Be sure to market your audio products here as well as other new audio marketplaces.

Search, e-mail, and public relations will receive more marketing dollars. John’s Comments: Something that has been the standard for book publishers for many years now.

The catalog will become more of a showroom than a sales room with buyers going to web sites to place orders. John’s Comments: With more catalogs going to sales via their web sites, they will carry more products and bring in new products more often, thus allowing for more book sales to catalogs. Don’t just pay attention to their print catalogs, check out their web sites as well to see where your books will fit.

Walmart.com might overtake Amazon.com as the largest online retailer. John’s Comments: Any growth in Internet retail markets will only give us more opportunities to make sales. That should be a good thing for us.

The changes that are happening should offer authors and publishers more opportunities for sales and promotion.

More Statistics: Using Statistics to Create Marketing Plans

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