This talk was presented by Meghan MacDonald, Digital Project Manager at Penguin Random House Canada, at #CMPTO: #FAIL and Learn (Tech Forum edition) on March 5, 2014.

1. Code Meet Print TO
What publishers can learn about digital
product development from, well, publishers

2. Meghan MacDonald

3. Publishing Outsider

4. 1. Academics

5. 2. Weird non-profit tech company that
serves the Canadian book industry and
works on standards and stuff like that.

6. (BookNet Canada)

7. 3. Bookselling

8. Now I’m on the inside.

9. Digital Product Development

10. Penguin Random House
Canada

11. (What does that even mean?)

12. Innovation is my job.

13. (And people like to tell me how to do
my job.)

14. I’m told to...

15. Disrupt

16. Pivot

17. Fail Up

18. (And all those other buzzwords we’ve
adopted from start-up culture.)

19. Here’s the truth:

20. Publishers aren’t start-ups.

21. Innovation isn’t easy.

22. Failure is expensive.

23. (But, wait! There’s hope!)

24. I think we’re all forgetting
something very important.

25. Publishers are innovators.

26. (And we always have been.)

27. “Dinosaurs!”

28. (I know. Calm down.)

29. Maybe those dinosaurs are
on to something.

30. Publishers are innovators.

31. Publishing is a risky industry.

32. (But we’ve learned to mitigate this risk.)

33. How?

34. 1. Constraints

35. “When forced to work within a strict framework
the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will
produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom
the work is likely to sprawl."
— T.S. Eliot

36. Content Specialization

37. Format Restrictions

38. 2. Foundations

39. Production

40. Sales

41. Marketing

42. Publicity

43. Operations

44. Innovate with Editorial

45. Publicity
Operations
Marketing
Sales
Production
Boo
k 1
Boo
k 2
Boo
k 3
Boo
k 4
Boo
k 5

46. Publicity
Operations
Marketing
Sales
Production
Boo
k 1
Boo
k 2
Boo
k 3
Boo
k 4
Boo
k 5

47. Digital Product Development

48. What we’re currently doing
wrong.

49. Re-inventing Wheels

50. Digital
Thing 2
Digital
Thing 3
Digital
Thing 5
Digital
Thing 5
Digital
Thing 1

51. Risky

52. (Expensive!)

53. What can we learn from
traditional publishing?

54. 1. Create Constraints

55. (Stop throwing things at walls to see
what sticks.)

56. 2. Build Foundations

57. (What does that look like?)

58. Focus on platforms, not
single products.

59. Publicity
Operations
Marketing
Sales
Production
Boo
k 1
Boo
k 2
Boo
k 3
Boo
k 4
Boo
k 5

60. What are we doing at PRHC?

61. Content Specialization

62. Vast and Varied List

63. Fiction

64. Non-Fiction

65. Poetry

66. Cookery

67. Picture Books

68. Comics

69. Content Specialization

70. Format Restrictions

71. So we decided to start with
the foundation.

72. The Internet

73. (For many, many reasons.)

74. What happens when a
publisher uses their website
to publish?

75. Content Management
Framework

76. Drupal

77. RandomHouse.ca

78. Hazlitt

79. Landing Gear API

80. RandomHouse.ca
Drupal
Hazlitt
Landing Gear
API
Books Authors
Articles
Audio

81. Scalable Solution

82. Platform for Experimentation

83. Reduce Risk

84. We have applied some
lessons from start-up culture.

85. Agile

86. Fail Up

87. Meghan MacDonald
mmacdonald@randomhouse.com
@meghanmac