Data-driven Publishing – Amazon offers “The Kailing Name in History”
Last night, Amazon offered me a book I was sure to find interesting: “The Kailing Name in History.” For only $29.95!
OK, you say, so why were you searching for your own name on Amazon? Gosh, don’t we all Google our own name or search other online databases? <wink>
By combining variable imaging, a dynamic web page, variable data printing, and print-on-demand, Amazon is demonstrating the power of “cross-media” in merchandising customized books.
We’ll walk through each element on the order page; open Amazon’s product page here>>
Variable Imaging – The thumbnail of the book cover includes the name “Kailing” as part of the image itself – this is not a text overlay, but incorporated as part of the image. To see this, either click on the book cover image or on “See larger image” under the thumbnail on the left. When the image is displayed, right click on it and “Save image as…” When you open the saved image, you will see that the name is an integral part of the image.
Dynamic Web Page – The Web page itself is dynamic; the image inserted has “Kailing” in it, the name of the book in the title area contains “Kailing,” and in numerous places in the descriptive text the name “Kailing” appears. While it is not particularly difficult to insert the name in the text – in direct mail it is simply a mail merge function – it is somewhat effective here because it’s still an unexpected action on a Web page.
The Kailing Name in History is a customized book offering a unique blend of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary about the Kailing name. The book is just one of an entire series of family name books in the Our Name in History collection. Each book in the collection is printed on demand and is compiled from hundreds of millions of records from the world’s largest online resource of family history, Ancestry.com. This particular book follows the Kailing family name through history and makes the perfect gift for your family members and anyone interested in the Kailing name. In the book you’ll find out about where people with the Kailing last name originated. You may discover the countries and ports they left behind, the ships they sailed and more. You’ll get a better idea of where people sharing the Kailing name settled and where they may reside today in the United States, Canada, England and other countries. You’ll get all this information and much more in your Kailing family name book. If your last name is not Kailing, then check out our collection of nearly 300,000 family name books to find other available names in the series.
Actually, they could have used at least 3 or 4 fewer insertions of my name and still have been as effective. It starts to look like mail merge gone bad!
Variable Data Printing/Print-on-Demand – The book itself is produced using a print-on-demand process in a very short run. I’m not sure how many people are ordering The [your name here] Family in History books this week, but I don’t imagine it’s a lot.
The actual production of the book involves some fairly complex variable data functionality that merges a variety of available information into a book template to produce something that is “unique” to me.
A nice example implementing at least four “cross-media” elements of personalized/customized communication!
