International Expansion

Case Study – MX Publishingwww.mxpublishing.co.uk

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Medium sized publishers based in London, ©10 years old

Four staff

One of the world’s first Print On Demand (POD) publishers due to Xerox background

Use Lightning Source (Ingram) UK and USA for print distribution, Powa for websites

About 100 titles from around 60 authors

NLP and Therapy, and Victorian Literature (inc Sherlock Holmes) as key genres

Very active in Social Media and MD is a contributor to The Booksellers ‘Futurebook’

MX Publishing Background

Steady growth in visitor numbers and sales from the USA to our UK website in the last few

years www.mxpublishing.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes genre very popular in the USA

Decided in October 2010 to ‘Go Global’ and launch a site in the USA

Lightning Source has a strong ‘drop-ship’ model for the USA plus Ingram serves the

bookstores like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble very well – so no fulfilment concerns.

Background

Google Analytics showed that more than 40% of site visitors were from the USA

[Powa sites are fully integrated into Google Analytics to make tracking key information very easy]

Website copied over (about 4 hours) with products changed into US$, shipping options changed to USA and more of a lean towards Sherlock Holmes in terms of featured products

US ‘Virtual Office’ set up through Regus with office address on Broadway in New York

USA ‘917’ Manhattan telephone number through SkypeIn with number diverted to UK Office

Expanded social media activity with a focus on the USA market

Expansion Into The USA

Sales up over 240% YOY in December and continued in January (+199%)

3 New authors from the USA recruited, including our new No.1 bestseller

Major new reseller recruited

New trade customer from New York contacted via phone

Major distribution deal for India and 4 other countries due to ‘impressive web presence’

Significant impact on Amazon Kindle sales as well – up 117% month on month

Initial Impacts

Facebook - Specialist Group Pages

Sherlock Holmes Group

Over 1,500 members

Authors participate well

Strong US membership

Social Media Marketing

Facebook - Specialist Group Pages

NLP Group has over 1,700 fans

Enable fans to post events/courses

Links to blog articles very popular

Social Media Marketing

Facebook Advertising

Very targeted – e.g. advert only shows if someone has ‘Sherlock Holmes’ as an interest

Comprehensive and easy to use performance metrics

Social Media Marketing

Twitter – Main Following 22,209 @mxpublishing

#hashtags for certain keywords like #kindle #sherlockholmes etc.

Social Media Marketing

Specialist Twitter Accounts

More than 30 specialist accounts

Sherlock Holmes Books

NLP Books

Cancer Books

Etc.

Notes:

Specialist accounts are working very well, but take time to build

Manually ‘following’ to ensure that the accounts are not blocked for ‘auto-following’

Tweet management software used to schedule tweets through the day

Social Media Marketing

Author Blogs

Link across from other social media, including forums and communities

In books the expertise/knowledge of the author is critical and the author having a great blog with regular interesting articles means we can generate regular interest .

Social Media Marketing

Major USA trade customer has 3000 customers on their database, but no stock/delivery

capability

Offered them a smaller trade discount but direct shipping to their customers

Books featured on their website

Electronic discount on the www.mxpublishing.com website gives them trade discount

They take the order, place it on us and we ship direct through Lightning Source

Orders already from more than 30 states

Local low cost ground shipping within a few days

Drop Shipping

Expansion is replicable. Our next strongest markets are Canada and Australia – we’ve already added one and the other will follow this month. We also plan ‘information only’ sites in countries where we don’t have local drop shipping.

Everything is very measurable – from sales through to the website’s built in analytics

Soon we will launch a site in India to support our distributor there

Risk is minimal as all services are ‘on-demand’

Costings

USA Office (Regus) £99/month

Phoneline (Skype) £20/year plus calls

Information site (Powa) £9.99/month

eCommerce site (Powa) £49.99/month

Spend with design agency one hour per site (one off template work)

Why is it so exciting?

The local website was the catalyst for our growth – it gave customers, both consumers

and trade lots of confidence that we could be a good supplier

It was important to have a clear and simple social media strategy

The virtual office can help in some markets, but this is the most costly element and we

will be selective with it (i.e. Australia yes, Canada, India and France no)

The new ‘on-demand’ ways to get services - Skype, Regus and Powa are all low risk,

and scalable – e.g. we can upgrade each as we grow.

Summary

Questions

We would very much like your feedback

at www.mxpublishing.co.uk or www.mxpublishing.com or

via email steve@mxpublishing.co.uk