When you compare the online traffic of a news website against that of a publisher's website, who do you think gets the most visitors? Think the New York Times or Fox News versus HarperCollins or Simon & Schuster. To almost no one's surprise, it's not even close: the news sites get much more traffic. Yet both groups create massive amounts of content that people enjoy reading. So why such a big difference? Put simply, one group understands the power of content.
Let's face it: most readers never visit publishers' sites. And if they do, they don't find many good reasons to return. That's because the typical publisher's site is covered with dozens of images showing frontlist releases, current bestsellers, author listings and some lame ads to join a boring mailing list.