When other resources are in short supply, the one thing all publishers always have more than enough of is content. So how do you maximize that resource to help you reach new audiences? As a preview of the panel he'll be joining at our Tech Forum conference on March 24 in Toronto, McSweeney's Jordan Bass joins us on the podcast this month to talk about their approach to repurposing content.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Transcript
Zalina: Welcome to this month's episode of The BookNet Canada podcast. I'm your host, Zalina Alvi. And this month, we have Jordan Bass from McSweeney's, talking about how they approach repurposing content. Jordan will actually be with us in Toronto next week for Tech Forum, our annual conference on books and technology as part of the panel on repurposing content. So, I thought it would be nice to get a little meta and have him repurpose some of those thoughts for the podcast. If you're not familiar with McSweeney's, they're a nonprofit publishing house based in San Francisco, that was founded by Dave Eggers in 1998. Starting with a literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, they've since grown to publish books and magazine, and daily nuggets of literature and humour online, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. So they are no strangers to juggling content across multiple platforms. Now, here's Jordan to tell us more about how they've approached repurposing content across those platforms, and others outside of their wheelhouse.
Jordan: My name is Jordan Bass, I was in McSweeney's back in 2005, and worked there for the various editorial capacities, mainly focused on the short story Quarterly, for eight or nine years after that, and more recently, in the last two years, had shifted over onto the organizational side, I suppose, and took on the publisher role. And was manning that desk until a little earlier this year, where I stepped away from the day-to-day, and now sort of cheering on the new generation.
Zalina: So, you'll be talking about repurposing content at Tech Forum next week. So, I am interested in hearing a little bit about how McSweeney's approaches that. I know you guys publish a lot of content on different platforms, books, periodicals, online. So, in general, how much of that content is unique to each channel, and how much gets repurposed, would you say?
Jordan: Yeah, I would say for a long time, it was not a focus of McSweeney's. The practice was often not to really ask for any subsidiary rights in a lot of the contracts for McSweeney's projects. A lot of the titles would come out in hardcover editions, and then the paperbacks might go to another publisher. So even that standard, kind of, repurposing, was not something that we were concentrating our limited resources on. The emphasis was very much on pushing towards new projects and trying new things. Even the short story magazine itself, which was also called McSweeney's, had this commitment to kind of redesign itself every time and appear in a new physical format. So we were not even repurposing our own internal InDesign templates a lot of the time. And I think that stance definitely softened in the last few years, and we started to see, you know, maybe some more intriguing ways to really, I think, extend the life and extend the reach and extend the audience of some of the projects we were taking on. And in a lot of cases, for us, that's maybe meant finding collaborators who can help us take some of that work in new directions.
So we have an ongoing partnership with Audible now, that is letting us take a lot of the stories we've published over the years into an audio format, which was really just, sort of, beyond our means before they opened that door for us. And I think it's something that is thought about more now with every project, whether there are, sort of, sensible ways to keep it going in new forms without seeming, you know, truly repetitive.
Zalina: So why did you change directions? Was that in response to a specific strategic objective you decided, "We're gonna do this," or did it happen more organically, where you just found opportunities and kind of followed those?
Jordan: Yeah, I would say organic over strategic is genuinely the course of action, for sure. You know, I think it had to do with really just, sort of, getting comfortable with extending ourselves in those directions. You know, it's a very lean operation, just, you know, a few people covering a lot of different projects in the office. And I think the ethos is very much about, you know, trying to present everything in its best possible form and to think very thoroughly about, you know, why this particular book is...you know, has these proportions and these materials and this design, and really try to think through the manifestation of it, which I think is a really useful process, and it definitely allowed us to really push ourselves toward rigour in a lot of different cases. But I think that logic was part of the reason why we leaned away a little bit from, sort of, quickly putting out, you know, half a dozen different iterations of a given project. And I think, over time, we'd, sort of, discussed to be more confident that we could see things move into these other forums and be just as successful and just as engaged in this as we wanted them to be originally.
Zalina: Can you speak a little bit more to the benefits of expanding your reach when you use opportunities? Like, when you're trying to sell the idea to each other or to someone, what are the specific goals that you have in mind when you're deciding, "Well, let's take this, and now let's put it on in an audio format, or something"?
Jordan: Yeah. I mean, I think the goals that resonate with me are maybe hard to articulate super objectively, but I'll give you an example of another project that I think has informed a lot of my thinking, that this kind of approach, even though, you know, its, sort of, particular track record is probably not particularly replicable. So we did a book with Beck, the musician, a few years ago. It was a project called Song Reader, and it was an idea that he had been germinating for a number of years at that point. And he had the idea, probably back in 2005 or so, to do an album entirely in the form of Sheet Music. So there would be no authoritative recorded version of any of the songs, they would only exist on paper as notation for essentially anyone to pick up and realize themselves. And he had very kindly come to McSweeney's with that idea early on, and we'd, sort of, reconnect every few years, and it finally came together in 2012. We made this book that I felt quite proud of. A really, sort of, beautiful artifact, very informed by the history of this one time immensely popular medium, these song sheets that you would, you know, pick up at, sort of, then general store, department store, that was, sort of, the, you know, hit billboard records of their time. And, you know, it was a bit of a leap of faith, in a way, to try to sell, you know, a pretty ambitiously packaged collection of guitar and piano sheet music, essentially, through an independent book publisher. We didn't, you know, have any particular distribution connection to the music store world or to record stores, or to places like that.
And the fascinating thing that happened with that book was, in the years between when Beck had first had this idea, and the years when the book finally appeared, YouTube had been invented, and this entire participatory culture of audience interaction, had really appeared, you know, almost de novo and grown to this incredible scale, and which changed the reception of the project really dramatically. And what I mean is it changed it from an experiment that we would, sort of, have to explain and define for people, into something that, I think, people, sort of, intuitively knew how to engage with and how to interact with. And, you know, we immediately saw a really big response of people who understood that they were supposed to take this book home and record themselves playing these songs, and put it on SoundCloud or put it on YouTube. And that connection was made almost instantly, which opened a lot of doors for the project pretty quickly, where we were able to see it have a kind of great number of successes in, sort of, drastically different forms to... You know, from these, sort of, audience-based, internet-based engagements with it, to live shows, and with our participation and without our participation, you know, all the way from, sort of, very tiny Indie productions, up to collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to, sort of, other recorded iterations of it, and Beck going out and playing it on tour, and taking the book on tour with him there.
And obviously, you would not really see that exact same trajectory happen with more conventional titles. You know, it was certainly a unique situation. But it was definitely very enlightening for me to see how you could respond to the way a book was being received in real-time, and, sort of, change your plans on the fly just based on where it's resonating in the wider world. Rather than, sort of, sticking rigidly to the original plan, you can actually let a project be reinvented a little bit once it's out in the world.
Zalina: Do you ever find that you have something that just doesn't make sense? It really just exists as it exists, and there's just no opportunities really for repurposing this or putting this out there in any other way?
Jordan: Yeah. I mean, I would be reluctant at this point to draw a hard and fast line. And there are certainly things that we don't put a great deal of time into rethinking and reinventing over and over again. You know, we still, in some ways, come from that place of wanting to, you know, put something out in its best form and let that stand. But I would say that the McSweeney's stance would be more that, you know, each, sort of, incarnation of a project, sort of, has to have its own unique reasons for existing. And we would try to... I mean, I think we would definitely try to make sure that each edition of a book or even nonphysical editions of books have some, sort of, distinctive quality or some level of intention behind them, so it doesn't feel like you're just giving, you know, a kind of poor quality Xerox of the original intentions.
Zalina: In terms of drawbacks, do you ever worry that you're overusing anything, or do you think there's a risk of over-exposing content in various ways, where various overlapping audiences of yours will get tired of something?
Jordan: Yeah. I mean, I imagine there is at some point. I don't think it's something that McSweeney's has strayed terribly close to, you know, because of that, sort of, traditional orientation toward the other extreme. And I think it, you know, probably, again, just comes back to that idea of, you know, trying to be thoughtful about each iteration of a project, and trying to, you know, have each iteration speak for itself in some way, and advocate for its own existence. And I think if you're doing that, then it feels pretty reasonable to see books progressing into paperbacks, you know, to see us releasing excerpts in different ways, to see us promoting them online in different ways, and, sort of, continuing to explore all the ways that they can find their audiences.
Zalina: Is there ever an urge to...or maybe even at the back of your mind, or anyone's mind, to keep an eye out for emerging platforms? Like, think about, "Oh, this medium is blowing up, or podcasting is big, for example, we should figure out a way to get some content on that platform because it's doing well." Does thinking ever work in that direction?
Jordan: Yeah. I mean, I would say that more often, we would find ourselves, you know, really waiting for the irresistible opportunity. And a lot of that was just a function of, being such a small operation, you know, even in the forums we were accustomed to working, and we were making choices between projects and having to, sort of, ration our resources and our staff time, so we were never really in a position where we could be too free with our attentions, I would say. But, you know, we're certainly, I think, like everyone else, trying to pay attention to those developments and pay attention to where interesting things are happening, and just continuing to take in, you know, all the stuff that is being tried out there. You know, I would say that, you know, later generations of small publishers who did come up in a time where they needed to be defined more fully on those other platforms, you know, I would say we take cues from them, if anything.
Zalina: You mentioned you're a pretty small team. So logistically speaking, how do you keep lines of communication open between different editors or content creators to generate these ideas, or just share ideas for ways that things can be repurposed across different platforms?
Jordan: Well, it's just one room out in the Mission District in San Francisco. So, it's genuinely pretty easy to keep in touch. But, you know, I think we've, over the years, tried different ways to keep ourselves organized and give everyone chances to, sort of, think through the possibilities for projects. So we would have, you know, sort of, various meeting rhythms at different times, you know. And depending on the staff structure at different times, the staff itself, you know, well, you know, it's pretty consistently been fairly small, but it has, sort of... Roles have shifted, and people's emphasis has shifted depending on what the project load is at various times over the years. But yeah, I don't know if I have too much wisdom to impart on that front. I would say we were a fairly seat-of-the-pants operation for much of my time there.
Zalina: I can definitely relate. We're a very small office, too. Pretty much turn around and tell your neighbour what you're thinking.
Jordan: There you go. Yeah.
Zalina: So you mentioned working with Audible. Do you do a lot of partnerships where you look outside to other companies who are specialists in different platforms to work with your content? I mean, you also mentioned YouTube, which is fairly DIY, I mean, you use the platform. But how much do you look to outside organizations to partner with in general? I guess is what I'm asking.
Jordan: Yeah, I would say it's something that became more regular over the last few years, and it wasn't a big feature of the operation before that. And Audible is, even the rare case, maybe where it is both an outside partnership and one relying on existing McSweeney's created work. And I think the more often case with those partnerships is that we would actually be collaborating on original content or some other original idea with that partner, and, you know, trying to make something to order, essentially. And part of that is just because, you know... Sort of, looping back to after existed. I mentioned earlier, which is that McSweeney's really just doesn't tend to hold on to the rights that would allow us to really get out there and try to, you know, repackage things outside of our own umbrella. So when we are working with partners, it'll tend to be more of a situation of going back to writers or artists that we've worked with and collaborated with and asking them to make something new with us.
Zalina: So do you have any advice for other, maybe small publishers, who are trying to think more outside the box in terms of how to use their own content or just thinking about different ways to branch out into other platforms?
Jordan: Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, increasingly, there's no canonical way to approach this, which I think is an exciting and freeing situation in some ways. And it was certainly a posture that McSweeney's had assumed fairly early on, that... You know, our sense was that our audience was really making an affirmative choice to, you know, pick up one of our hardcovers, if that's what they were going to be doing. So we wanted to feel like we were making the argument for that choice, and making the argument why you would pick up that book, instead of reading it online, or reading it in paperback, or getting it from the library, or doing something else entirely, you know, buying a record or buying a burrito, or whatever it might be, that was, you know, take taking up your disposable income instead. And I think that was very, very helpful to always keep in the back of our mind, that the job was not done once we had finished preparing a manuscript. That it was not just a matter of, you know, jamming it into one bucket or another and putting it on the shelf, that there was a lot more work to do still, in terms of making the case for why something was existing in the way that it did.
So, I mean, I would say that rather than trying to push folks in one direction or another, I would always just encourage people to make sure that they can finish that sentence themselves in terms of how they're distributing something. Whether it is in a printed format, or whether it is, you know, a digital serial, or whether it's an audio-only project, or whether it's, you know, something they're retesting on the corner of their building, I think in every case, it can be useful to think about why that form is the form being chosen and what you can do to sort of maximize the advantages of that particular form because in every case, there are things you can do that you can't do somewhere else. You know, you can do different things in a printed book than you can do on a poster, or on a podcast, and vice versa. So, it's always useful to take advantage of the advantages that you have.
Zalina: Thanks to Jordan for joining me on this month's episode. You can hear more from him and other industry experts at our repurposing content panel at Tech Forum on March 24th in Toronto. If you're interested in learning more about Tech Forum or the other work we do, please visit booknetcanada.ca. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
