Publishers and Second Life
Posted by hlsander on March 25, 2007
Last Wednesday, while the rest of the publishing community was at a BookNet conference, I was just around the corner at a Second Life conference put on by AIMS. C.C. Chapman spoke about marketing in Second Life. His entire office space is cited as being the first to exist solely within "the World" of Second Life and he even meets with clients such as Coca-Cola only in this office. (You can read more about the company here).
Second Life seems to be a growing community (approaching 5 million users) and, as such, it's a world that marketers are jumping into full force. This raises a few interesting questions. First off, you may not be "you" in this "world". Each user creates an avatar and can be anyone at all behind their created personality. So the first question is who are you marketing to? The avatar? Or the person behind? Or both? Or, does it really matter?
Given that question, how then does marketing, publicity or selling of books mean anything in Second Life for publishers? Especially Canadian publishers?
I wonder if, with these millions of users teleporting around "the world" (though realists say that only tens of thousands of people are actually using it at any given time) how many of them are Canadians and how would we as publishers deal with the rights issues surrounding our books? You cannot necessarily market to a specific geographic demographic within "the world". Does that matter? I think it does.
One Canadian example, outside of books that was given was that of Telus. They are unknown outside of Canada, yet built a beautiful office space and then did absolutely nothing for months. The only recently have done a real world campaign with a promo code that you can get within Second Life for some benefit. The speaker mentioned that if there isn't something going on of interest frequently (and I mean very frequently) then the avatars will come once and will never come back. They are selective. They are a very niche market. Which brings me to another constraint for publishers. Many publishers barely (if at all) have time to maintain their websites, so how would they be able to dedicate resources to this secondary world? C.C. was looking to hire an avatar to work as a receptionist who lives in Eastern Europe so that he could be open 24 hours a day. I anticipate that several publishers would build something and then not be able to maintain it.
So if you can't constantly and consistently maintain a space, what can you do?
Well you can hold events.
Random House US recently held an event with Dean Koontz (details are here) in Second Life. Posters were put up in "the world" for advertising and press releases sent out in our actual world too.
Dean Koontz did a reading (from a book that isn't coming out until the end of May) and a Q&A. This was videotaped (yes, you can take video within "the world") and streamed out to other locations like Crayon's office so that users could view the event in multiple locations. The benefit? Well, you have just done something cool and unique for an author. You have generated a lot of media attention in our world as well as in the Second Life world. Proof of the success? Well, you can't exactly track it in numbers, but you can see that it had an impact -- just google Dean Koontz in second life and there are so many hits. A great quote from the president of the ABA on this blog.
Amazon.com is also getting in the game, though I'm not sure exactly how (but here's an announcement of their involvement). They have held speaking events such as a web services presentation.
And yes, you can buy and sell products in this brave new world. So, is there potential there? Can you you go into a bookstore one day, listen to Dean Koontz speak and then buy the actual book? Or preorder in this case? Companies can set up their business so that you can click through from a virtual product to the real one and order it in real dollars. Resulting in real ROI.
For more URLS about Second Life you can visit the AIMS blog.
From jmax Mon Mar 26 08:56:14 -0800 2007
From: jmax
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:56:14 -0800
Subject:
Message-ID: <20070326085614-0800@thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca>
Sorry about the commenting hassles with this article.
Second Life seems to be a growing community (approaching 5 million users) and, as such, it's a world that marketers are jumping into full force. This raises a few interesting questions. First off, you may not be "you" in this "world". Each user creates an avatar and can be anyone at all behind their created personality. So the first question is who are you marketing to? The avatar? Or the person behind? Or both? Or, does it really matter?
Given that question, how then does marketing, publicity or selling of books mean anything in Second Life for publishers? Especially Canadian publishers?
I wonder if, with these millions of users teleporting around "the world" (though realists say that only tens of thousands of people are actually using it at any given time) how many of them are Canadians and how would we as publishers deal with the rights issues surrounding our books? You cannot necessarily market to a specific geographic demographic within "the world". Does that matter? I think it does.
One Canadian example, outside of books that was given was that of Telus. They are unknown outside of Canada, yet built a beautiful office space and then did absolutely nothing for months. The only recently have done a real world campaign with a promo code that you can get within Second Life for some benefit. The speaker mentioned that if there isn't something going on of interest frequently (and I mean very frequently) then the avatars will come once and will never come back. They are selective. They are a very niche market. Which brings me to another constraint for publishers. Many publishers barely (if at all) have time to maintain their websites, so how would they be able to dedicate resources to this secondary world? C.C. was looking to hire an avatar to work as a receptionist who lives in Eastern Europe so that he could be open 24 hours a day. I anticipate that several publishers would build something and then not be able to maintain it.
So if you can't constantly and consistently maintain a space, what can you do?
Well you can hold events.
Random House US recently held an event with Dean Koontz (details are here) in Second Life. Posters were put up in "the world" for advertising and press releases sent out in our actual world too.
Dean Koontz did a reading (from a book that isn't coming out until the end of May) and a Q&A. This was videotaped (yes, you can take video within "the world") and streamed out to other locations like Crayon's office so that users could view the event in multiple locations. The benefit? Well, you have just done something cool and unique for an author. You have generated a lot of media attention in our world as well as in the Second Life world. Proof of the success? Well, you can't exactly track it in numbers, but you can see that it had an impact -- just google Dean Koontz in second life and there are so many hits. A great quote from the president of the ABA on this blog.
Amazon.com is also getting in the game, though I'm not sure exactly how (but here's an announcement of their involvement). They have held speaking events such as a web services presentation.
And yes, you can buy and sell products in this brave new world. So, is there potential there? Can you you go into a bookstore one day, listen to Dean Koontz speak and then buy the actual book? Or preorder in this case? Companies can set up their business so that you can click through from a virtual product to the real one and order it in real dollars. Resulting in real ROI.
For more URLS about Second Life you can visit the AIMS blog.
Comments:
Link to the previous discussion --paschal, Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:20:09 -0800 reply
http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/LaunchYourBookInSecondLife
Link to the previous discussion --hlsander, Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:56:14 -0800 reply
Thanks for adding the link.
class? --hlsander, Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:58:01 -0800 reply
How did the class on Second Life go? Any interesting ideas? Conversation?