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Q. How do you measure ROI in Second Life?
Ros Lawler, Random House: If you were to measure it purely on books sold from
direct links in Second Life, it would come out as a poor investment.
However, if you measure it in terms of reaching opinion-formers and as a publicity
tool it can show real returns.
For example, a number of our regular visitors write for SL newspapers or influential
blogs and their reporting of our events has an incredibly wide reach.
The event we ran for Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’ (at which God famously
put in an appearance) gained coverage in six UK newspapers.
The point of being there is to maintain a dialogue with the community so as virtual
worlds develop we’re a part of the action, and not playing catch up.
Q. Are you planning any further Second Life projects in the near future?
Ros Lawler, Random House: Our island on Second Life hosts regular meetings for
readers and writers, alongside book launches and competitions.
For example, this month you could attend a book group to discuss ‘Atonement’,
hone your writing skills with the writers group, watch a live interview with Sophie Kinsella
or pick up some audio book samplers in our Valentine’s promotion. You can find more
details of events on the blog.
Q. What proportion of books do you now develop digital content for?
Ros Lawler, Random House: To date we’ve been restricted by marketing budgets,
Internet
The Internet refers to the and so primarily focus on creating digital content for lead front list titles. This includes
physical network that mini-sites, podcasts, games and so on.
links computers across The launch of our widgets will mean we can easily create digital content for every
the globe. It consists of
the infrastructure of book, past and present.
network servers and
communication links Q. How big a contribution to sales do you expect from digital content versus
between them that are e-commerce sales of print products?
used to hold and
transport information Ros Lawler, Random House: A Nielson Online survey recently found that books are
between the client
computers and web the ‘most popular online buy’, as 41% of internet users had bought books online.
servers. As sales of digital content are so new they are yet to show up on surveys of this
Client/server size. However, downloads of audiobooks have increased by over 200% in the past
The client/server year and the arrival of Kindle and the Sony Reader will have a dramatic effect on the
architecture consists of sales of ebooks.
client computers, such as
PCs, sharing resources The landscape could be very different in 5 years time.
such as a database
stored on a more www.econsultancy.com/news-blog/newsletter/3674/random-house-s-ros-lawler-on-widgets-and-web-2-0.html
powerful server computer.

Internet technology

As you will know, the Internet enables communication between millions of connected com-
puters worldwide, but how does the seamless transfer of data happen? Requests for
information are transmitted from client computers and mobile devices whose users request
services to server computers that hold information and host business applications that deliver
the services in response to requests. Thus, the Internet is a large-scale client/server system.