me

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.

From the vaults: #CivilisedSaturday Publishing beyond parody

This article was originally published in an opinion piece on TheBookseller in November 2015.

“Christmas is coming.

We all know this, we’ve spent months finalising our plans for the festivities, picking our favourite gifts (books obviously!) and packaging them perfectly so that we get the kind of warm fuzzy feeling associated with sales at “the most wonderful time of the year” and that’s just the commercial side of Christmas.

But since Black Friday’s ever-growing popularity and presence across large retailers grows each year, this is apparently the week where consumers will kick-start or complete their Christmas shopping.

As The Bookseller reported earlier in the year Tim Walker, president of the Booksellers Association, issued a rallying cry to independent bookshops to fight back with the “antidote” to Black Friday – #CivilisedSaturday.

On Civilised Saturday bookshops around the country will be serving everything from mulled wine to champagne and serving up dignified discounts and recommendations to their patrons.

Now the question is, are we in 2015 or extras in a “Downton Abbey” Christmas special?

My initial reaction at reading this news was to cringe, eye-roll and choke back a laugh (a great look if you’re after one) – not because I don’t see the need for independents and smaller retailers to emphasise the virtues of hand-selling and make an event of it, but because of that awfully cultured name for it.

This industry has its problems, they are many and the struggle for smaller bookshops and other businesses to compete with large players (particularly the online ones able to price and promote aggressively) is very real.

But, for an industry increasingly notorious for its cosseted cultural snobbery, is Civilised Saturday a wise branding exercise?

The name implies that only uncivilised people partake in or appreciate the bargains associated with Black Friday. (Don’t tell the unenlightened shopping at John Lewis this Friday.)

We know we need more diverse books, we need more diversity in book awards and staffing. We also need more diverse book-buyers as books are competing with every other form of entertainment in the world.

For that reason, I dislike the air of smugness emanating from the Civilised Saturday campaign. It feels as though the book trade is determined to focus itself on isolating many consumers to favour its preferred, more refined audience.

This poorly named campaign risks alienating the masses and those slightly mythical creatures, the reluctant readers.

After all, I’m sure that even Dowager Countess Violet Crawley herself would agree that it’s rather common to tell everyone how civilised you are.

From,
A civilised gentleman.

Nick Coveney is Head of Digital and Social Media at Kings Road Publishing.”

Let’s get started

I’m starting this site as a platform for me to share my experience, thoughts and insights on digital storytelling.

Since I joined the exciting world of digital product development I’ve had the enormous pleasure of working with some leading brands and content creators to generate internationally bestselling products.

Excuse the slightly spurious wisdom of the fortune cookie above but one of the things I firmly believe in is that passion and drive are an integral part of creating stand-out digital success.

I will be adding sections to this site over time so please let me know what you think using the contact form.