Digital

Art For The Players

In my role at Kings Road Publishing had the enjoyable experience taking a rough idea for an official licensed series (book and app) all the way from pitch, to finalising a deal, then working with a whole host of talented creatives and leading studios to create a first – Art For The Players (available from most book retailers) an official games console based colouring book which celebrates the incredible heritage of  Sony PlayStation’s unique entertainment experiences.

As you can see from some of the brilliant press coverage and the official trailer below, colouring and consoles can create something beautiful…

 

Interview with the Innovation Enterprise

I’m due to speak as an industry leader at The Innovation Enterprise‘s Digital Publishing summit #DigiPub #LDN 19th–20th October, taking place at London’s ExCel Centre.

Ahead of the event I sat down with Stuart Found to talk all things digital publishing, from recent trends to future opportunities. Here’s a copy of the interview, which originally appeared on the IE’s website here.

SF: How have you seen the digital publishing industry change over the last year?

Kings Road Publishing is recognised in the book industry as a leader in digital innovation. Our approach has always been iterative – and while we’re continuing to grow and consolidate our digital comms strategies, our approach remains experimental. My goal is to take readers’ experience beyond the words on a page and as content consumption is always changing, it’s important to keep an open mind.

SF: What could the industry be doing to better meet consumer expectations?

Clear communication to consumers is always key, even more so in the fluid digital space. Industry brands need to react more quickly with the right level of information, particularly when there is an issue damaging consumer experience.

SF: How much of a place – if any – do you think personalisation has in digital publishing?

There’s been some very interesting work in bespoke personalisation of content by book publishers, but a lot of these don’t seem to have quite hit the mark in consumer expectations. I think this will grow into an important niche of the industry but it is harder to execute it well.

SF: What are in your experience the most common mistakes made my digital publishers?

Personally, I think that a reliance on broadcast messaging and ‘the known’ strategies can dilute brand potential. We have to be bold and do things differently in order to outsmart the competition.

SF: How can digital publishers best respond to the overwhelming shift toward video content?

My view is that book publishers should continue to invest and innovate in this area, but that there has to be a narrative worth filming and compelling reason for consumers to watch it to create any kind of ROI.

SF: Where do you see digital publishing going next?

The enormous popularity of PokémonGO has been a surprise for some, whereas at Kings Road Publishing we’ve been waiting for a gaming leap with geotagging and AR for a while. Niantic has really broken the mould first with Ingress and now PokémonGO, I think that digital publishers will attempt to move into GPS experiences more in the future as there is so much potential for tailored content delivery.

You can hear more from me, along with other digital publishing industry leaders, at the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit in London this October 19th-20th. To see the full schedule, click here.