I don’t know if you’ve been following the ebook revolution, but if you are in business, you need to be paying attention.

Why you may ask? I don’t sell or read ebooks. Why should I care?

Because business history is repeating itself, and not in a good way. Remember all those years ago when the music industry fought piracy and customers wanting to buy tracks instead of entire albums? Well the book industry is fighting the same battle right now. And they obviously haven’t studied history because they are dooming themselves by making the same mistakes. And a few new ones.

I’ve blogged on piracy before, but that’s not really what I’m writing about today. Today I want to talk about remembering who your customer really is.

I read an article earlier this week on the authors and the publishing industry. It’s long and kind of repetitive, but it makes one excellent point. Readers are the customers of books.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t be wrong to think “Well, duh! Who else would be the customer?” Actually, as far as publishers are concerned, until recently, distributors were the customers. But with the ease of self-publishing, readers are now waking up and realizing that they have power. Readers can choose to buy inexpensive, self-published ebooks instead of more expensive books published by the big publishing houses.

And publishers are starting to notice. But they are making the wrong conclusions. This is where the publishing industry has a different situation from the music industry. It’s relatively expensive to produce a song. Yes, that’s changing quickly, but it was still true when the music industry fought its battle and was forced to change its business model.

But it’s cheap to self-publish a book. Sure, it takes time (lots of time), but once you’ve put in the time, the rest is cheap. I’ve been researching, and you can get a good book with a striking cover, well formatted, up on Amazon for less than $1000. That’s well within almost anyone’s price range.

The conclusion readers are slowing starting to come to is that publishers aren’t necessary. Are they gate keepers? Not really. Look at the drek James Patterson and Dean Koontz are churning out. (They used to be two of my favorite authors.) Are they marketing whizzes? Not really. In the above-referenced article, they state that only 1 or 2 books in 10 do very well.

Now the publishers are looking at successful self-published authors as the “next sure thing.” They are wooing them by telling the authors they won’t have to market. They can focus on writing. If I were an author, I wouldn’t listen.

A lot of successful self-published authors are riding to fame (and fortune) on low-priced books that come out frequently. Will they be as successful on higher-priced books that come out less often? Doubtful. The recent poster child for “self-published author wooed by big publishers” has dropped dramatically in her Amazon ratings. And she only signed a contract about a month ago. What will happen in 12-18 months when her first traditionally published book is released at $9.99 or more?

The message here is clear. Know your customer. Know what they want, and give it to them. Ignore it and face extinction. Do I really think the big publishers will be dinosaurs soon? Not really. But I’m not sure how they are going to dig themselves out of the tar pit.

As a small business owner, learn from the mistakes of the big guys. You don’t have the time, or the money, to afford to make them yourself.

I was meeting with a client, and she told me about two sales calls she’d been on recently. She landed one client and lost the other one.

Not a bad ratio, actually, but there was more. She got the client she thought she wouldn’t and lost the client she thought was a no-brainer.

When she told me more, I quickly understood why.

The one she lost was a perfect fit for her. She had worked with a very similar client in the past, and both are in a very specialized field. The likelihood of finding another writer/editor with experience in genomics was very slight.

So why did she lose the job? Because she didn’t listen enough. The prospect spoke for a couple of minutes and then my client jumped in with why she was perfect. But what she said was just a bit off target, and the prospect declined.

Listening is the most important part of a sales call. If you listen and ask the right questions, the prospect will usually tell you everything you need to know to make the sale. But if you don’t listen, you’re guessing, and the odds are good that you’ll guess wrong.

What about the other prospect?

My client thought she hadn’t done very well on the call. She felt like she’d fumbled her words. She’d tried to tell a client story and lost her train of thought half-way through. She wasn’t the perfect fit for the client’s needs. But she got the work.

Why? Because she connected with the prospect. They spoke on a personal level and shared some non-work related stories. You don’t want to spend too much time in a sales call on fluff, but connection is important.

Given the choice, we’d rather do business with people we like. If you can find some common ground to connect on, you’ll be more likely to be hired than the “perfect” candidate who isn’t likable.

It won’t save you if you can’t do the work, but it can definitely level the field.

Anyone else have a good connecting or listening story to share?