Since He left Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1996, after serving as its president and CEO, Joseph Esposito has migrated to the new-media business. He is currently president and CEO of Tribal Voice, the developer of Pow Wow, a communications software tool for creating online communities.
It is Esposito's contention that 'Book publishers need to learn that it's not authors and editors that will drive the business in the future. The industry has to begin to think strategically about technology.' Publishing, he said, 'hasn't scratched the surface of what the Internet can do.' According to Esposito, the focus should be on 'online relationships and community,' and 'the marketing advantage online.'
Esposito pointed enthusiastically to 'the reading group phenomenon -- a marvelous marketing tool. What happens when the reading group g s online?' Pow Wow, he suggested, is one software tool among many that can re-create online the informality of the face-to-face reading group and its ability to generate interest in and sales of books. 'The biggest problem with reading groups is scheduling. But not when the group is online,' he noted. Online reading groups, he said, can also serve as an ancillary to real-time meetings.
Pow Wow is a low-cost software application that allows users to set up their own online communities. For $49.95, anyone can set up an online community of 10 people (for a 50-person community the price is $190), with customized graphics, online chat, instant voice and text messages, real-time voice transmission and many other features. Since Tribal Voice was launched in 1994 by its founder, John McAfee, the software developer has given away more than a million trial copies of the software through the firm's Web site (www.powwow.com ). Pow Wow has proven popular with a wide variety of online community activists, social interest groups and among college professors as a distance-learning tool.
'Publishers can set up online groups. Once you can manage these online relationships, there's a potential for revenue,' Esposito said. In another publisher-organized cybercommerce scenario, Esposito posed the possibility of an online book-retailing consortium that would provide readers with the choice of buying from an online book retailer, a local bookstore or directly from the publisher, with a variety of discounts and shipping options. 'All the technology to do this exists today,' he said. 'Customers are given more choice; retailers have incentive to stock more books; publishers sell more and recapture some margin.'
For more information on Tribal Voice, call (831) 461-3100.
