

The DNA of a Successful Book - jameslevy
http://blog.hiptype.com/the-dna-of-a-successful-book-1

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ricardobeat
Huffington Post's SEO abilities and juicing every possible pageview from a
story don't make the best example for what book publishing should be like IMO.

We already have plenty of low-quality newspapers 'optimized' for sales all
around the world. Invariably they have one or more naked girls on page 9, and
"funny" police sections. Is that the future of books? Pure entertainment?

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jameslevy
You make a good point. What I was trying to get at is that HuffingtonPost has
a DNA that's different than many of the previous "new media" models that
didn't perform nearly as well.

It's not that book publishing's success stories will exactly resemble HuffPo.
In fact they will likely look very different. Rather, I expect the internal
process to be very similar, in that the winners will use data to win
arguments, will move fast and break things, etc.

And maybe the book culture could use a bit more medium/low-brow culture to
better expand beyond its core audience. An analogy would be how a blockbuster
movie like "The Dark Knight" manages to both be very entertaining but also
appeal to a huge audience.

