26/08/07

Pelicans and sinking feelings.

Just a brief one.

I was at a party on Saturday night, and ran into an old friend-of-a-friend, who is a freelance (books) journalist. He writes on publishing (and also reviews) for The Times, The Guardian, Time Out and a number of other well-respected publications. I reminded him what I do - the brief version, which is “websites for publishers”. (We first met when I still worked for Canongate.)

He explained that he never trusts or even uses publisher web sites anymore. In fact, he always bypasses them for a phone call to a publicist. Fair enough, but I asked why not - and he gave this example. He had recently been reviewing a Faber title, and went to their site. The first thing he did was click on “Press room” (quite clearly, as a journalist might) and noticed that the most recent press release was dated 2005…In fact, all press releases there are dated 2005. Which may well be when they launched their latest site.

Now, I happen to know that Faber is updating its current site (produced by Lateral - don’t even start me on a company that has a link to an “accessible version” of their web site from their home page). But even so this speaks volumes about publishers and their websites in 2007. Why should anyone trust such a site above and beyond a resource such as Amazon, which is updated by the minute? Why trust a site that hasn’t updated its press releases since 2005? And why bother - if you are a publisher - to spend tens of thousands of pounds at least twice over on web site infrastructure, if you don’t plan to use it?

I don’t want to overstate this, but from one perspective, this one example sheds a lot of light on why publishers are losing the battle to use the web to their advantage.

The simple answer is that publishers shouldn’t expend the energy or the cash if they are not able to deliver on their end of the bargain. They should only do what is achieveable and realistic within their organisation. If you can’t incentivise or encourage your staff to update the website with information that should allow them to do their job easier and better - then pull the plug early on. (We spend a lot of time trying to convince clients to bite off only what they can chew. Or, ideally, less).

Faber is by no means alone here, by the way. Have you tried searching for “Fourth Estate” at HarperCollins; or “Illustrated Classics” at Penguin?

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Publishing, Web.