High Floor, Higher Ceiling
A Publisher's Take on How to Create Content That Works in the 2020s
I am changing our product development focus at the publishing ministry I lead, Invite Resources. Here is the new emphasis:
Books that sell now are shorter and punchier and need group-friendly, media-rich content.
Authors, educators and content creators: if you want to write to help others, don’t just write long (boring) books. Add group components and media components. Don’t think of your work as a manuscript, but as a project. Intellectual Property.
To be clear: I am the chief of sinners. I have loved writing long books. But I have repented. I am shifting my style to adapt to this new reality, and I encourage you too, as well.
And if you just read this and said, sure, I’m already doing that, then stop. No, you’re not. Trust me, you’re not fully doing this yet.
Let me walk you through what’s going on.
Think of this as a white paper on the state of publishing in the 2020s, and what you need to do as an author or educator in response.
Group Friendly Content is Now Mission Critical
The American media landscape of the mid-2020s has changed drastically from when we started Invite in 2020. If you have something to say to a large audience—particularly, in our case, if you wish to share the gospel through writing or creating content for distribution—then it’s critical to skate to where the puck is going.
For those of you just joining us, let’s recap our key learnings from this past summer:
The future of publishing isn’t personalities; it’s communities.
That’s because people, especially young people, don’t want lectures. They like learning in group settings with high participation. The age of the influencer is on life support, because it’s still one-to-many knowledge transfer.
Long form books for private, personal consumption has given way to multi-modal media, which is better suited for group application. TLDR culture has won.
Church leaders have a vital role as trusted voices to their tribes. They become information brokers. Leaders make readers, who then gather in groups.
In our current “500 Channel Universe”, as we prophesied in the 90s, shared experience is lost, so trust declines. In large part thanks to the proliferation of media channels, we have become more tribal. We gather in bubbles and ignore dissenting voices. We succumb to confirmation bias. We adopt, as my friend Petey Bellini wrote yesterday, “a hermeneutic of suspicion.” We have destroyed our broad-based institutions and authority is at a nadir.
In this environment, publishing stand-alone, long-form paperback books for “everybody” is not skating to where the puck is going.
What works now? The power of the recommendation, lived out in groups.
To be clear, our mission at Invite Resources isn’t to publish books; it is to help people to learn to live more like Jesus. So why print books at all? Why publish on Amazon to “everybody”?
Great question.
The Book Business is a Necessary Evil
When I say book business, think Amazon, and to a lesser degree Barnes and Noble, Target, and the small independent bookstores. Insiders call it the trade. Publishers and authors keep shooting for the trade stratosphere, but it’s harder and harder.
Most publishers are still looking to make authors “Christian-famous.”
Twenty years ago, new releases made up over 60% of publisher revenue. Now that number is about 15%. I cover the data in more detail here.
The market is flooded with self-published, low-quality junk. Most releases get lost in the shuffle and are dead on arrival.
As a result, most publishers are increasingly dependent on a few big name authors to keep the lights on. Check out the 2023’s ECPA bestselling books. It’s littered with a the usual big names, typical properties, and long standing titles. Their strategy is to squeeze profits out of existing IP like Jesus Calling and The Five Love Languages while taking gambles on new titles from known authors.
If you are new or you aren’t Max Lucado, you’re a lotto ticket. They buy as many tickets as they can, scratch them off, and throw them away, because they’re still looking for influencers.
As an author, do you want to be a scratch off ticket? Me neither.
And even if you did become some Christian-famous influencer, is that really what you want? Consider the half dozen large church pastors who have crashed and burned in DFW this year alone. Christian-famous is not good for the soul.
Yet, we have a story to tell.
So, why not just ignore the trade and create direct to consumer (DTC) lists?
That’s worked for a lot of internet-based companies, right? For a time.
Nike just fired their CEO because he tried DTC. As that link shows, every DTC brand that survives more than a few years has had to pivot to traditional distribution: “Today’s Target is full of American DTC brands that proudly boasted that they would only ever sell direct a decade ago.”
Shoot, I just walked in a mall True Classic store the other day to buy a bunch of tee-shirts for middle aged dudes when a year ago, I had to buy them online.
That’s because people want to squeeze their avocados. They want to know what they’re getting.
AND… AND! Authors want to be seen. They want to be on Amazon, and to a lesser degree, in Barnes and Noble. As much as we use the Internet, we don’t consider it to be real. Authors and publishers need the trade to create market presence.
As one author said to me this past week, “If you’re not on Amazon, did you even publish a book?”
So we have to be on Amazon. It’s a necessary evil. It creates legitimacy and it keeps the ceiling high. But we can’t stop there. Selling books to Christian consumers connot be the end goal.
The Book Business is an Entry Point to Group Engagement
The way around the problem of the trade is to publish to it, but build proprietary systems for further engagement. Move trade sales from the bottom to the top of the funnel.
Communities value short form, media-rich content that facilitates group learning. The goal is to make it accessible and comfortable for private consumption, but best experienced in group settings. When we connect content to a community, we raise the floor for engagement.
We’re currently working on a platform to do just that: a digital delivery system plus a means for groups to engage in trusted content.
The key question for you the author then becomes, how specifically does this work?
What is the new pedagogy? Is it possible to publish something that is simultaneously good for private consumption and group use? What does that look like?
I think this is the answer:
Make Your Content Group Friendly and Media Rich
Your goal is no longer a book. It is Intellectual Property.
Because of TLDR culture, stylistic shifts in how people consume content has caused the old bread and butter formulas to get moldy. Most publishers aren’t built for this new reality, but we’re a start up, so we can shift quickly.
If you’re involved in a local church, think about this evolution: Twenty years ago, everyone did the DVD-based book study. You’d read a book, get together in a small group, watch 10-12 minute long video segments on DVD and then talk about it.
In my Methodist tradition in the 00s and 10s, the king of this format was Adam Hamilton. I can’t tell you how many times I heard a Sunday School leader complain that they had gone through every “Adam study” there was and needed more.
Streaming took over 10 years ago, a la Right Now Media, but the pedagogy was still the same.
That format is done.
The pedagogy has changed.
Smart phones changed our consumption patterns, shortening our attention spans and creating more mobility and a higher need for on-demand learning. COVID destroyed live gatherings for a while, and mortally wounded the old, live small group model. Now every group is a hybrid group. We need shorter, punchier content, and content suitable for both in person and asynchronous learning:
The books need to be more trade friendly.
The group content needs to be more asynchronous-friendly.
The videos need to be shorter and more mobile friendly.
The content needs to facilitate new forms of group interaction.
This is the next frontier: learning how to make content media-rich and group friendly.
Our Strategic Shift at Invite
I’m less interested in traditional, long form, thesis style books whose goal is to make an intellectual argument. I also don’t want to make group studies in the style that worked 20 years ago, or even ten years ago.
I’ve been thinking about this all year, and we are so close. We’re about to crack the code on how to publish in the 2020s. The answer is to raise the floor while keeping the ceiling high. Here’s how:
Stay in the trade. We have best practices in place. Feeling good here.
Create digital delivery, including text, but also with video and audio. We’ve been working on this solution since April. More coming soon, because we’re still tweaking and learning what works and what doesn’t.
With a new platform coming, and this is the purpose of today’s post, it’s time to shift how we make content.
This is where you come in as an author.
You need to create shorter, group-friendly, media-rich content.
This is what we want from authors now. It all needs co-launching, and it all needs digital delivery. Like always, our goal is to partner with you, should to shoulder, as we figure it out together.
Now, your turn. Let’s practice what I am preaching here.
Think about your goal as an author. Why do you write? If you are writing for a mission, to share a message, then how do you need to respond to these trends?
Do you need audio or video? If so, how? For what purpose? Is it marketing, or the content itself? What about podcasting?
Do you need study guide questions? If so, what sort? How do you write them well?
How would you teach this in a way that works today? Video? Audio? Participation? What is the right mix of long form reading, media, and participatory guides and questions?
Post your thoughts below.
Trade friendly books keep the ceiling high. Media rich, group study friendly content raise the floor.
Together, let’s make books that are high floor, even higher ceiling.