One thing became apparent during the Futurebook Conference rather quickly: it has become painfully clear that publishers should be looking at the consumers as their main customers, in stead of retailers. The erosion of the retail-based model of the book universe has been going on for some years, fuelled by the online retail revolution and the changing consumer behavior that came with it. Digital publishing has only further hastened the process.

Much became clear. As one listened to the speakers – many of which, I was very glad to see, coming from non-English language countries – I gathered that SEO is now a compulsory subject even for publishers, apps hardly even enter the discussion anymore and in defence of Evan Schnitmann I still haven’t seen a convincing business model for enhanced e-books.

One thing however became apparent only because it was not mentioned. It’s the question how to make digital a growing part of your publishing activities if you do not have a global platform like the English language publishers have. The way forward for digital publishing, that much has been clear to me for quite a while now, is in cloud publishing and connecting with he reader directly and, if at all possible, in a meaningful way.

For me as a digital publisher from a small country like The Netherlands, the changes on a global scale often seem bewildering and out of reach. How I’d love to build a vertical community. To create a developers platform for my customers. Expand my business to other territories. But digital is expansive and there are not many publishers who can go all the way like the Hachette’s and the Random Houses in the world.

I expect that must be the same for a lot of my colleagues coming from smaller, non-English markets. How do we, the small players in an increasingly global industry, pick the right strategy in all this global turmoil? Of course, there are small companies in the UK and US as well facing much the same challenges for lack of scale, but at least they share that global reach with their bigger competitors, which brings some crucial benefits, such as rights sales and a world wide audience.

I have spoken about this with numerous publishers and digital managers at length during Futurebook. The common theme of those conversations boils down to: pick your battles. When your annual revenue is below Random Houses marketing budget, there is no way you can compete on every level. So, my advice for small companies:

- focus on building a good digital infrastructure to enable you to be able to publish quickly in all formats and to all channels;
- find the right partners to reach scale and build customer propositions;
- don’t build apps unless you’re really sure about it, because you will likely not earn back your investment;
- use every sales channel possible to reach as big an audience as you can, even the small ones;
- go for the quick wins first – digital can’t be all about investing. In order to survive, your eye has to be on the bottom line all the time;
- Even for small countries with non-English languages there is a global market, you just have to put your books out there;
- Make sure you have the rights to do what you want and need to do;
- Yes, Amazon, Google and Apple are all threats to your native market – but they also offer the best opportunities to reach a global audience;
- Be the best partner for your existing as well as future authors you can be.

Wise lessons. The condensed message I want to bring across is, I guess, a simple one: don’t wait until something happens. Start digitizing and start learning. It is something I’ve heard for several years now, but sadly, looking across the European digital landscape I think this is something (too) many publishers have not quite grasped yet.