Beyond the Printed Book: Redefining Publishing in the Twenty-first Century | Lausanne World Pulse Archives

(Editor’s note: This article continues a year-long partnership between LWP and Media Associates International to present a series of articles focused on global Christian publishing.)

Like never before, Christian publishers are blessed. God has allowed us to live in the midst of the most important changes since the invention of the Gutenberg Press. For hundreds of years publishers had just one way to communicate—printed paper. Today, we have a plethora of platforms for reaching readers: printed books, magazines, and newspapers, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, ebooks, and Apple applications. We must be tech savvy and highly skilled.

Sometimes, the breakneck pace of change scares us. It can seem more like a threat than an opportunity. But the fact is we can’t continue to publish books the way we used to.

We also can’t ignore the variety of ways we now have to communicate. In a sense, it doesn’t matter which particular medium we are talking about. More and more, we realize that, as publishers, our role is to provide content, regardless of which media we use to communicate it.

Perhaps our real problem is how to monetize the new media in order to survive and thrive. Most readers are not willing to pay for online content. But online media demand high investment from publishers. In this unknown frontier, spending too much money can put businesses at risk. Yet, more and more readers are becoming Internet users.

Recently, we investigated how our publishing house could take advantage of online trends.

A Case Study from Brazil
Editora Mundo Cristão is an independent Christian publishing house in one of the world’s most dynamic markets. Brazil has experienced five successive years of significant economic growth. Due to government measures, the spending power of the poorest layers of society has increased. Approximately thirty million people have become “consumers” during this period; before, they could barely afford to cover basic needs.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Church in Brazil has been rapidly expanding. It has grown nearly ten times larger since 1970—from 4.8 million in 1970 to 46 million in 2010 (see chart). Projections indicate that evangelicals could represent fifty percent of Brazil’s population by 2020. (In 2010, Brazil had nearly 200 million inhabitants.)

Brazilian evangelicals mostly belong to the poorest layers of our society. A low-cost printed title is the only way to motivate them to purchase a book. For these readers, it is cheaper and easier to have a printed book than an e-book.

Such a dynamic economy challenges us to reach a broader audience. The Internet has become more popular and the number of households with Internet access has grown more than seventy percent in the last four years. With online access at work, cybercafés, and more, an estimated seventy-six million Brazilians may now be connected online.

At Mundo Cristão, we are testing new technologies to reach a larger audience and, ultimately, to fulfill our mission. So far, new media have boosted our effectiveness.

Creating Communities
One lesson we have learned is that we have to create and sustain reader communities with frequent interaction. Some call it a “business to community” strategy. It requires rethinking the business as usual strategy. Sometimes, publishers release a book with the assumption that it will reach all kinds of readers. That’s a mistake. A book for everybody is a book for nobody. We need to define the reader’s profile and use social networking tools to reduce the distance between us.

Twitter, Facebook, Websites In terms of Twitter followers, we are the third largest Brazilian publisher. Every day, we send tweets with campaigns, news, and book launch announcements. In August, twenty-two thousand followers were interacting with us. It’s amazing how fast our twitter posts are replicated.