Square Ocean Strategy

I'm in Chicago attending the second annual 800-CEO-READ business writer's Pow-Wow, an event that brings together authors (established and emerging), publishers (big and small), book PR leaders (Barbara and Mark, to be precise),  and the book sales professionals from 8CR. It's a small group and the event is just two days long, which means I'm learning a lot from an amazing group of people in a perfectly short period of time.

A highlight for me yesterday was Ray Bard from Bard Press. Known as the company that publishes just one book per year, Bard has scored 14 bestsellers out of just 27 books published. When Ray talks, people listen.

Happily, when Ray talks, people also LOOK. Uniquely for a "word-book" publisher, Ray likes charts... which means I liked Ray's presentation (everybody else did too -- and I'm convinced that's because he was the only presenter to hand out a piece of paper to each audience member to look at while he talked).

Here is what he handed out: the wonderful "Size and depth of your book's market" chart.

Ray uses this chart to help plot where he thinks the market potential is for any given book proposal, and to help determine whether or not he wants to publish it.

If a book falls into the "puddle" category (small market, small need) or the "bayou" category (big market, small need), he'll give it a pass. If it falls into the "well" category (small market, big need) he'll take a second look. If it falls into the "ocean" category (big market, big need), he'll take it on right then and there.

Nice chart, nice concept, nice model. Everybody got it.

Then I asked Ray if I could take a shot at adding a couple things that I thought might make it even more powerful. He happily agreed, and here's my modified version:

I flopped the axes for "depth" and "width" so that they would be more intuitively visual ("depth" being a vertical idea, and "width" being horizontal). Then I shifted the size of the boxes to more accurately reflect their actual dimensions (a puddle being small, and ocean being big).

It's the same chart, but contains a bit more visceral information. Better than the previous? Maybe. Ray liked the modifications and will test it out.

I'm anxious to see how it goes.

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[Dan Roam]

Thanks Jack, what a cast of characters you all brought together. For a conference to be so good in only its second year tells us more about you and your team than just about anything else.

And tells us to watch out: just imagine this in a couple more years -- holy moley!

[Jack Covert]

great post. thanks the info. i agree about Ray. Fascinating

[Jack Covert]

great post. thanks the info. i agree about Ray. Fascinating

[Jack Covert]

great post. thanks the info. i agree about Ray. Fascinating