MediaFlect

RR Bowker, essentially the official database agency of books (they assign ISBN numbers), has released this press release in which they herald the fact that the number of books published in 2004 was up 14% to some 195,000 titles, upending three years of flatness.

The obvious observation is that the spread of new media, Google highlighting scholarly titles and the like has not cut out the hunger for book publishing. But a figure that jumped out at me was that, while the number of adult fiction books led the trend (up 43%), the number of poetry and drama books was right behind at more than 40%. Poetry? Drama? Really? Why, I wonder? Do the sales justify the push?

They didn’t give a figure for celebrity-published children’s fiction, but I bet that Madonna, Jay Leno and Jason Alexander among others (why why why do celebs feel the need to write kids’ books?) have helped push that category up a notch, too.

AdAge.com fired off this editorial yesterday espousing the reasons advertisers should not use their budgets to bludgeon content providers into a “friendly” environment. While I agree with Ad Age’s assertion, I don’t see anything to back up their imploring tone other than a somewhat (through a marketer’s eyes) weak assertion that the advertiser should try to reach the audience that the content provider provides.

If I, as a marketer (and I’m not), can get my qualified audience, and some control of the message, why not go there? I think in the long run it’s a losing strategy — because ultimately the content will get diluted the point that users will go elsewhere — but in the meantime (for the two years or so I as ad buyer may have any given job) won’t the ad spend seem more justified? I don’t like this equation, but I think it exists.