Five Questions with Rosetta Solutions

netGalley is attempting to solve an intractable issue for publishers: How to ensure that your review copies get into the hands of the right reviewers, at the right time and at the lowest possible cost. In addition, tracking these reviews becomes an increasing problem as reviews publishing rapidly expands beyond traditional newspaper and trade magazines. netGalley is an innovative technology services company located in Seattle and staffed with people committed to improving the way publishing operates. For publishers, netGalley helps publicity and editorial and marketing staff reach a wider range of review publications and media and provides up-to-date status of reviews. For reviewers, netGalley helps to manage the inflow of titles and internally manage the review process. There is no cost for individual reviewers to register for the service.

I asked Michael Forney, President of Rosetta Solutions which is the corporate owner of netGalley my five questions.

1. Who is Rosetta Solutions and where does netGalley fit in the organization?
   
   Rosetta Solutions, Inc. (Rosetta) is a publishing technology company full of people who love books. All of Rosetta's products and services have been designed and built with extensive collaboration from publishers and media organizations. Our goal is to streamline and automate publishing workflows to help grow the industry. We do that by providing tools and services for both print and digital editions, including production, conversion and distribution.
   
   Rosetta’s netGalley™ is an online service that helps publishers better connect with their book reviewer and media communities through electronic distribution and tracking of ARCs, galleys and press materials. Through netGalley, publishers can simplify existing processes with premier review and media contacts and broaden their reach to online reviewers, bloggers and specialty publications, all while significantly diminishing the cost of printed review copies and press materials.
   
   
2. How did the netGalley product evolve?
   
   At netGalley, we are fascinated by how the internet continues to help connect smaller and more specialized groups of people who benefit from shared information. Books have long been sold through word-of-mouth, with traditional reviews being the most influential recommendation tool. What we wanted to accomplish with netGalley was to bring to bear the networking power and digitization of the internet on the book review process. We keep asking, “How can we make the existing process more efficient and less expensive? How can we mine the process for more information that will enable better decision-making? And last, how can we help connect the exponential number of new media outlets with new galleys at THE lowest possible cost?” We are grateful to have had the input and counsel of the some of the biggest and most successful publishers and media groups to help us shape the functionality of netGalley. Good listeners make good leaders.
   
   
3. You describe yourselves as a services company in this context what are the solutions that netGalley can provide? Is netGalley a discrete product or tool or do you see it as part of a platform or suite of products?
   
   When we first began with netGalley we saw the immediate benefits of better connecting review organizations with publishers to streamline the back-and-forth communication that characterizes this process. What we then began to see by talking to publishers is how netGalley can equally be applied to the larger publicity process by providing media with a central location to access a broad range of ancillary material about a title. We began to see how netGalley can benefit a range of constituents, directly (in the publishing house or media organizations) or indirectly (for example providing better information and services to authors). So, absolutely, we see netGalley as a platform providing a continuum of services.
   
   
4. You are currently working with a number of publishers on the netGalley launch. What have been some of the issues you have faced as you have designed and built this product?
   
   Probably the biggest challenge for us has been straddling the current reliance on printed materials with the gradual evolution toward digital media. We recognize that publishers and media will continue to rely primarily on printed galleys for some time. At the same time we can be evangelists for digital content, particularly by making it easy and secure to distribute within a given professional community. To be clear, netGalley does not require the distribution of digital galleys and facilitates the distribution of physical galleys. Yet many publishers have indicated that they can use digital galleys to supplement their physical galleys, especially to the online media and blogger communities.
   
   Have you faced particular issues in convincing publishers of the ROI involved in implementing at productivity tool like netGalley?
   
   The publishers and media organizations we have talked with all agree that there is a great deal of opaqueness in the current communication media and review processes. There is equally a sense that it is difficult to understand the true costs of reviews or media coverage. When you pair that difficulty with the explosiveness of new sites covering and reviewing books…it seems reasonable to want to automate and capture more information in this area.
   
   The distribution of marketing materials and the breadth of potential reviewers are growing rapidly. None too recently, a publisher had a fairly static list of people they needed to send ARC’s to have you heard from publishers that this is becoming an unmanageable task unless fundamental changes are made?
   
   We haven’t met a publisher yet who has noted the diminishing importance of The New York Times in selling books. We haven’t met one who says that their list of daily tasks is shrinking. The traditional media outlets will continue to have enormous impact on the books purchased by the reading public. The publicists’ day will get fuller and fuller.
   I think the challenge for publishers is partially in verifying the influence of potential new media sources. We see a lot of heads nod when we talk about automating and consolidating communications online, about bringing together potential reviewers/media who might find you as much as you find them, about cutting down the number of manual tasks particularly around formats and files.
   
   What kinds of improvements would you anticipate in a typical installation of the netGalley product?
   
   First I would ask, improvements for whom? Review organizations for example are going to see enormous benefits in terms of improving their internal workflow and minimizing redistribution costs to off site reviewers. Media organizations will see improvements in time efficiencies and task management. Publishers can anticipate lower direct costs of producing and distributing physical galleys, replacement of manual processes, and a broadening of the publicity universe at lower cost.
   
   
5. What is next for netGalley. Do you have a sense what your next development phase will be?
   
   On the netGalley side, we have a development plan that extends through the next two years and includes new functionality in the existing application as well as services to new segments such as the library and educator markets. Our research indicates that many of the benefits of netGalley to review and media communities can be transferred to other book communities.
   
   From the Rosetta perspective, we have a number of new products and services in development all surrounding the automation of publishing workflows and the consolidation of information derived from these processes. Watch this space for more!

NetGalley's Wellness Project

From their press release and interesting initiative by NetGalley:

NetGalley, a service to promote and publicize forthcoming titles to professional readers of influence, has launched the NetGalley Wellness Challenge. The Challenge is specifically aimed to help members of the site improve their individual influence on book recommendations, by modeling best practices in a variety of fun and easy ways.

Over 120,000 NetGalley members are invited to join the Challenge at the official kick-off on Monday, May 13^th, by pledging to be “NetGalley healthy.” The 9-week program will give members many opportunities to improve their professional reader health through social media, webinars and in-person events at BookExpo America and the adjacent BEA Bloggers conference (which NetGalley is sponsoring). The program ends on July 10^th, and participants will be eligible to win prizes.

Participants will be awarded a digital badge that they can post to their website or blog, to demonstrate that they’re committed to utilizing NetGalley effectively. The program focuses on improving profile quality, the importance of reviews and feedback, and cleaning up NetGalley “to-be-read” lists. Publishers and key bloggers have already joined the effort to promote the program.

Over 200 publishers worldwide use NetGalley to interact with professional readers. Reviewers, bloggers, media, librarians, booksellers and educators can register for free at NetGalley, and request digital galleys from the catalog, or be invited to view a title by a publisher using the NetGalley widget. Once approved by the publisher, NetGalley members can view secure digital galleys on all major reading devices. 

Read more on the NetGalley Wellness Challenge resource page.

Firebrand Ink A Deal With NetGalley

Firebrand Technologies and Rosetta Solutions, Inc. today announced the creation of a joint venture, NetGalley LLC. The agreement passes development and operational responsibility of NetGalley, an innovative online connection point for book publishers and professional readers, into the hands of Firebrand, but retains the core NetGalley team responsible for launching the service. NetGalley helps publishers promote new books and authors through the professional channels that recommend and purchase new titles.

“We have felt for a long time that NetGalley and Firebrand are natural partners,” said Fran Toolan, Chief Igniter of Firebrand Technologies. “We are committed to making this service successful, to helping publishers better manage the costs associated with printed galleys, and to making it easier and less expensive for publishers to disseminate information about new titles.” Firebrand Technologies is a leading software and service provider to the publishing industry. Over the course of the next year, Firebrand has plans to completely integrate the NetGalley service into its offerings.

“Firebrand is a natural partner for this venture,” said Michael Forney, President of Rosetta Solutions. “Their publishing expertise and experience will contribute positively to NetGalley’s vision, adoption and long-term success.”

Since its launch at BookExpo 2008, NetGalley has made considerable inroads. Publishers Weekly and ForeWord Magazine announced that they plan to use NetGalley to manage the influx of titles for review, and major publishers are actively experimenting with the service. Professional readers from all segments—reviewers, journalists, media, booksellers, bloggers, librarians and professors—are enthusiastic about the service’s ability to deliver digital, pre-publication content. (There is no charge for professional readers to use the service.)

NetGalley delivers digital galleys and promotional materials to professional readers and helps promote new and upcoming titles. Using NetGalley, publishers can build communities, invite contacts to view galleys and promotional materials, and track who has viewed their titles.

NetGalley Announce Hachette Digital Galley Program

One of my favorite new technology companies Net Galley has announced a new client agreement with Hachette to deliver their digital galleys. Here is the press release:

Hachette Book Group announced today that they will use NetGalley to distribute digital galleys and digital press kits (including video, audio, tour schedules, author Q&As, and photos) to reviewers, bloggers, media, booksellers, librarians, and educators.

Using NetGalley, HBG will be able to share secure, text-searchable, full-color digital galleys, which the reader can download onto a variety of devices, including Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo Reader, and the user’s desktop.

Distributing galleys and marketing material through NetGalley is a faster, more efficient, and environmentally conscious method of sharing content. HBG looks to expand its reach into the reviewer and blogger community, delivering digital galleys to their own extensive contact lists, as well as NetGalley’s network of readers who are both hungry for books and embracing the technology—and ease and speed of delivery – that this new platform offers.

NetGalley’s membership currently numbers 12,000 “professional readers.” Readers can register and use the site for free at www.netgalley.com. HBG’s launch catalog on NetGalley includes new titles from Brad Meltzer, Lawrence Block, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Darren Shan, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Don Winslow, Michael Koryta, Tom Holt and Nic Sheff.

The catalog will expand in the coming months but the current title list is here.

More on NetGalley

Revisit With Digital Galleys

The Publishing Trends Newsletter from my friends at Market Partners recently took a look at the migration from print to electronic galleys and profiled a company I've been interested in for a while. NetGalley pioneered this migration and they are seeing increased success from publishers willing to make the transition. Here is a sample from the Publishing Trends article:

Carrying the torch in the e-galley revolution is NetGalley, a company owned by Firebrand Technologies, that helps facilitate and fulfill galley requests from site members by providing them with DRM-protected files authorized through Adobe Digital Editions and accessible on Androids and iPhones, desktop computers, and multiple tablets and e-reading platforms. Through the site, members composed of reviewers, media professionals, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, and educators can peruse NetGalley’s available titles, which are provided by over 100 publishers (and counting), including divisions/imprints from four of the Big Six houses. Members can select titles, and NetGalley serves as gatekeeper, passing along requests to publishers for approval (their website even clearly outlines approval guidelines for each publisher). Publishers can set expiration dates for when the galleys will no longer be available, and NetGalley also supports the aggregation of other digital promotional items like video, audio, or artwork under any title’s record page so that publishers can easily create digital media kits for readers to access along with the galley.

“We currently have over 29,000 readers registered on the site,” says Susan Ruszala, Director of Marketing at NetGalley, “and we’re growing by over 12% each month.”

It isn’t difficult to see the value for publishers in using e-galleys. With the cost of postage and printing running anywhere from $5-$11 per printed galley, digital galleys provide publishers with an unlimited amount of digital copies to send at their will instead of being limited by the amount of print copies their budgets will allow. E-galleys are also greener, cutting down on the carbon footprint of print production. To become a NetGalley client, publishers pay a one-time set-up fee based on the number of titles they publish, along with a monthly fee based on the number of titles on NetGalley’s site. There is no cost for professional reader membership.

NetGalley Add Penguin

From their press release:

Penguin Group (USA) is teaming up with NetGalley to deliver galleys and promotional materials digitally. Starting this winter, Penguin will use NetGalley to share secure digital galleys--including in full-color--to reviewers, media contacts, booksellers, librarians, educators and other professional readers. Readers will be able to view select Penguin titles on computers and a variety of eReader devices. “I’m very excited about our partnership with NetGalley,” Matthew Boyd, Publishing Coordinator at Penguin Group (USA) said. “Providing books to readers in as many formats as possible has always been important to us, and NetGalley now allows us to accomplish this at the galley stage.

The partnership also furthers Penguin’s commitment to the environment, as we strive to find eco-friendly solutions at every phase of our publishing process.” Over 19,000 professional readers and 85 pu. blishers already use NetGalley.

Readers can register for free at www.netgalley.com. Readers can request titles from the catalog, or they can be invited to view titles directly by publishers

And I mentioned NetGalley before.

Net Galley Announce Digital Galley Early Adopters.

Earlier this year, NetGalley announced an important partnership with Publisher's Weekly as their first major step to implementing their digital workflow tool NetGalley. NetGalley is a tool that may transform the current paper based Galley workflow into a truly digital based process that will become both make the distribution and management of Galleys more efficient and effective. The product will be launched commercially at BookExpo, but they announce today that St.Martins, SourceBooks, Hachette Book Group and Bloomsbury US will be the first publishers to implement the tool.

From their press release:

"We are delighted to be here at the beginning of this terrific program," said Matt Baldacci, VP, director of marketing and publishing operations at St. Martin's Press. "NetGalley will make our interaction with Publishers Weekly more efficient, and has the potential to show cost, resource, and environmental efficiencies. These benefits are good for PW, the publishers that will join the full roll-out, and the industry in general.

During the pilot period, publishers will submit their title information—and optionally digital galleys—electronically to PW. In return, PW will provide visibility on review acceptance and status through NetGalley.com. Pilot publishers will also have the opportunity to invite other reviewers, media, and bloggers to join their community and view their “NetGalleys” online.

Ted Treanor, CEO of Rosetta Solutions, commented, “The response from publishers to support this initiative has been extraordinarily positive. NetGalley selected this group for their diversity of size and publishing type, and their willingness to innovate. We’re counting on these partners to help us continue to refine NetGalley.com.”

Earlier this year, I interviewed Mike Forney from RosettaSolutions.

Edelweiss Is Blooming

Today’s announcement of the cooperative relationship between Above the Treeline and BookExpoAmerica is a perfect introduction to the potential of the book catalog and electronic promotion tool Edelweiss which launched just over a year ago. Edelweiss will power “Books@BEA” to create an online catalog of new titles from publishers exhibiting at Book Expo 2010 and will be free to both publishers and attendees. Since launch, Edelweiss has grown rapidly to 350 active catalogs containing more than 30,000 titles from nearly 600 publishers and their respective imprints. The exposure at Book Expo will allow new users to recognize the significant advantages that an Electronic catalog has over traditional printed book catalogs.

Building workflow solutions that embed an application into the production flow or process of a business or organization is a powerful way to build customer loyalty. Traditionally, those are not the type of applications you generally see in the book retail space less you happen to be the software provider Above the Treeline, which is doing exactly that.

When I was at Bowker in 2004, I met John Rubin who was rolling out the first version of his software product for small independent retailers. I was immediately taken by the product he was launching. Notably, his product development originated from real experience working with his family-owned independent store and this theme – taking a workflow approach to development – continues to serve the company well as it gains more recent success from Edelweiss, the company’s catalog application.

The core Above the Tree Line product enables booksellers to manage their inventory and store product mix in far more productive and profitable ways. For many stores, using this tool has probably enabled them to weather the recent cruel economic times far more effectively than they may have without it. Stores using the tool are able to see both their own inventory mix and turns and those of other stores in their geographic areas. This ‘collective’ knowledge encourages better market awareness and more intelligent buying decisions, supporting better sales performance.

Edelweiss is a newer product application that builds on the base Above the Treeline application. In speaking to John recently, he emphasized that, in the development of Edelweiss, the workflow approach was key to understanding how a typical bookstore, publisher and publicity person worked with book catalogs. The application has been in full roll-out for just over a year and continues to garner unsolicited positive comments from users. “Timesaver” and “efficiency” seem to be the recurrent themes of this feedback. Above the Treeline was able to establish an early relationship with the ABA and has recently announced an agreement with Association of American University Presses (AAUP).

Edelweiss allows any registered user to create a catalog which can then be marked up and emailed (distributed) to others. The users can order from the catalog and data is also integrated with a store’s point-of-sale system. Users can also add more information to a title such as covers, internal reference materials or other content, and using WYSIWYG screens makes adding this content very easy. From the publisher perspective, they can set up catalogs any way they want. No longer does a publisher or sales rep have to rely on a generic catalog: Building one by genre, previous seasons buys or any other criteria is simple, efficient and effective. The sales rep is also able to create custom address lists so they can create their own mailing lists within the system to make their communication far more productive.

This is a “publisher pays” model with free access to the service for retailers. The publisher pays a base administration fee and then a per-title charge for each six-month period. The payback for publishers should be obvious in reduced hard-copy catalogs, more effective sales reps and better and more efficient buy-in from the stores.

In coming months, the company expects to enhance Edelweiss with several new enhancements that they emphasize (again) come from the feedback they have received from the marketplace. These will include:

• Subject/Format Mapping: Retailers will appreciate the ability to map to POS departments using a combination of bisac subject category and bisac format code.
• Google Map Authors and Titles: Soon the company will introduce the ability to search Edelweiss based on geographic criteria in conjunction with the currently available filter criteria. Set an address and a radius to search, and results will be mapped on Google maps based on available author bio info (residence, birthplace, universities attended or affiliated) and title setting or relevance.
• Custom Market Views: As the number of users and publishers have grown, the company has seen a need to provide different views of the system. Soon retailers and other catalog readers will be able to choose between a number of different market views such as General Trade, Christian Trade, Academic and others. Each view will provide a custom set of publishers, catalogs and titles specifically for that market.

Not only is Above the Treeline expanding the functionality of Edelweiss, but they also continue to look for other opportunities to improve the relationship between independent retailers and publishers (such as the Book Expo relationship). Late last year, the company announced a partnership with Firebrand Technologies that allows integration of the Net Galley e-Galley service into Edelweiss. From their press release:

Edelweiss publishers will be able to use NetGalley’s powerful functionality to offer digital galleys, with or without DRM, directly from their Edelweiss catalogs. NetGalley supports a broad range of dedicated reading devices and platforms and publishers can select reading options and security features based on their specific needs.

For NetGalley publishers with Edelweiss catalogs, this additional functionality will come at no additional charge. Edelweiss publishers who are not currently using NetGalley will be able to purchase the NetGalley add-on on a per-title basis for their Edelweiss catalogs through Above the Treeline. The first electronic galleys provided by NetGalley will appear in Edelweiss in the second quarter of 2010.

As the Net Galley integration takes hold and more Edelweiss functionality is implemented we should see even wider acceptance of Above the Treeline products and services. Interestingly, other publishers outside the traditional independent retail segment are starting to take note of the Above the Treeline products with Moody Publishers and their 34,000 titles announcing that they have chosen Edelweiss as their web-based catalog of choice. And I am sure there will be more to come.

NetGalley and Publisher's Weekly Launch eMarketing Platform

Publishers Weekly officially announced a partnership with Rosetta Solutions, Inc. to implement netGalley, an innovative online application. The platform is designed to help publishers better connect with both traditional and new media communities through electronic distribution and tracking of galleys, press materials, title metadata, and promotional plans. PW will use the netGalley application to capture information at the point of submission of Galleys for their reviews process. One of the key benefits of netGalley to participating publishers will be the ability to upload vital book and promotional information that will enable multiple and varied use by channel partners.

I profiled NetGalley several months ago (link).

Time to Re-Think BookExpo

Imagine the lone guy on the periphery minding his stand with only a solitary apparently lost attendee to keep him company once an hour. By some accounts that was the state of affairs sometime over the weekend at BookExpo America in Los Angeles. In advance of the fair Thomas Nelson, one of the largest publishers in the US decided to pass on attending the show. This action was different than the publisher boycott of several years ago; in this case, Nelson recognised that exhibiting at BookExpo is increasingly irrelevant in addressing the dynamics of the market place. In an age when the traditional publishing schedule is looking decidedly frayed, how BookExpo measures these dynamics will determine how many publishers continue to value their attendence.

In much the same way that Publisher's Weekly has seen their traditional advertising model change fundamentally as the bulk of bookstore book purchases are made centrally and six - nine months in advance of publication, BookExpo is in danger of suffering a similar dislocation. In PW's world there is no need to advertise and in BookExpo's world attendance becomes an expensive way to reach independents. More publishers will drop out - perhaps not next year as the show is in New York but it will happen, because the current show format is an old and increasingly ineffective tool. The decline will accelerate as more publishers take advantage of electronic marketing and promotions tools such as NetGalley (functionality will rapidly expand across the MarCom value chain) and more publishers will experiment with virtual trade shows , webinars and virtual worlds like Second Life.

There are two segments to BookExpo - the education program and the exhibits - and both need revamping. On the education side, BookExpo is losing ground to new upstarts like TOC and SIIA conferences. In both these cases, the conference organizers are successfully exploring the intersection of publishing and technology which many of us in the traditional publishing world continue to battle. Attending SIIA conferences with its breadth of content and technology companies all addressing new and old problems in unique ways can be a stunning business experience. At BookExpo we may see this in isolated cases but not comprehensively. In the traditional publishing market an education program similar to TOC or SIIA is still a market opportunity given the concentration of publishers attending BookExpo. On the other hand O'Reilly (TOC) may have already established the beach head. Consumers are decidedly lacking at BookExpo and in some other trade education programs panel discussions include consumers - in one memorable case they were all thirteen year old girls. Our business is in complete flux and that's the kind of education we should be looking for.

On the exhibits side, BookExpo must lead in the expansion of marketing and promotion programs that go beyond the physical limits of a three day event in a location not everyone can attend. The BookExpo America site should be a 365 day exhibit space. Many publishers and some websites are hosting e-versions of their catalogs. Coupled with more product details, ordering facilities, merchandising tools, etc. the traditional conference attendee should be able to visit and interact with all publisher products on the BookExpo site. (I do mean all publishers). The experience can and should be better than visiting the physical show. The traditional publishing calendar is disappearing - it serves no purpose (just as television has eroded their producer driven schedules) other than as a reminder of the formulaic approach to publishing. The physical exhibit can continue but it must change unless it is to devolve into a middling trade show for small and medium sized publishers.

BookExpo also needs to think strategically about exhibitors and to seek new categories of attendees. There should be more technology companies, service companies and others. Since the market is retail what is more logical than encouraging more vendors who market store systems and products? On the technology side there are many vendors who want to expand into the publishing business but do not attend BookExpo. They do attend SIIA, TOC and Book Business conferences. Expansion along these lines is a double-edged sword since a target audience needs to be in attendance. For that, a stronger education program and specific outreach programs need to support exhibitors and attendees. First time exhibitors should get two years for one paid year for example. (As an aside, I also believe the central exhibit floor 'neighborhood' where the largest publishers congregate should be broken apart to encourage more interaction).

Anyone who has stayed over the weekend at the Frankfurt bookfair (as I did on my first visit - and never again) will hiss and blubber over the idea that BookExpo be open to consumers. This issue has previously been debated by BookExpo managers, and indeed at Frankfurt, the issue of consumers attending the fair has long been controversial with the UK and US publishers. My suggestion is based on simple logic. Book reading is declining so what better way to introduce consumers to what publishers have to offer than showing them. Look at the success of the various city wide book fairs including the one in DC.

I have always enjoyed attending BookExpo but seeing the lack of traffic in many areas this year I doubt I would be the only one considering rethinking my exhibition participation for next year. The fact that BookExpo is in NYC next year will cover over the troubling issues because of the influx of many publishing staffers. In reality the addition of 10,000 publishing staff attendees from NYC is not really what will help return BookExpo to the preeminence it deserves.

Don't Forget: Blogger Signing at BookExpo; 1pm Saturday

Firebrand Technologies has organized a 'blogger signing' at their booth 4077th during BookExpo and I am participating. It sounds like a lot of fun and an opportunity to meet a lot of blog readers across a spectrum of topics. Firebrand is the owner of a great application named NetGalley which automates the process of providing review copies to reviewers. Sign-up if you are a reviewer and don't forget to come by the 4077th booth to meet all of us.

I will be at the booth at 1pm on Saturday - pen in hand.

(Bare in mind however, that I will not be signing any body parts and generally speaking a hand shake will do).

Here is a note from Firebrand:

Firebrand is thrilled to announce that 44 bloggers signed up to be at our booth (#4077) during Book Expo America. It’s clear from how quickly this idea went from concept to reality, that book bloggers need and want to create community-to-community relationships with publishers, retailers, and readers. This is an incredibly exciting time in publishing!

We invite every publisher at BEA to review this schedule and mark their calendars, so they have a chance to meet the bloggers who are helping to sell their books.

The schedule is below. We have a couple of new entries (Sarah Weinman, Ed Champion, and Austin Allen) not listed below, or if you have trouble reading the layout below, Click Here

You can also see the list here.

Five Questions with Shatzkin on DADs

At the Frankfurt supply chain meeting, Mike Shatzkin presented his white paper on Digital Asset Distributors. I summarized the content of the presentation here but I also followed up and asked Mike to expand on several points in the presentation. Here are his responses.

1. You mentioned that the research that resulted in the white paper on Digital Asset Distributors was developed for Klopotek. What is there interest in this research and why were they interested in this subject?
   
   Believe it or not, Klopotek really had a community interest in the subject (although that also translates into a marketing device.) They are not a DAD -- which we define as an operation that does digital storage, conversion, and distribution in response to a publisher's needs -- and have no interest in becoming a DAD. But they do sell systems to publishers that will have to account for digital activity, tying sales and revenues back into legacy systems to pay royalties, among other things. But, mainly, I think Klopotek -- which has been growing out of their German origins for the past several years -- saw a "thought leadership" opportunity to establish themselves in the English-speaking markets. And I think the White Paper and conferences -- the outputs from the research -- were successful for them in that regard.
   
   
2. You have given this presentation and speech a number of times over the past six months or so. What has been the reaction of the publishing community – not necessarily from the larger publishers – but the medium to smaller publishers? Are you starting to see an appreciation for the issues that this next tier of publisher needs to understand and appreciate as they consider their digital distribution needs?
   
   I don't see much of the smaller publishers; I think it is the nature of my consulting practice. But the mid-size ones are definitely feeling the issues raised by the DAD study. Right now, this is being driven by a combination of driving online sales (getting the content displayed with Amazon, BN.com, Google, Microsoft) and driving online marketing (widgets for MySpace and Facebook) for the consumer publishers. Publishers are also increasingly aware that there is a real ROI in developing a digital workflow, which becomes part of the thought process when they think about DADs. The more complex are the books a publisher creates -- the more highly illustrated and design-intensive -- the more benefits come from the digital workflow improvement.
   
   
3. What role are standards bodies playing in this area? Are the business needs and requirements moving ahead of the standards discussions and recommendations?
   
   Interesting that you raise this. Digital guru David Worlock said to me at Frankfurt that he wondered whether we should be worried so much about "standards" when we don't have a MARKET. Shouldn't we build the market first, he wondered? But Mark Bide, my partner in many ventures including the DADs research, would say that, without standards, you'll never build a market! I am not sure the business needs are yet moving ahead of the standards, but they probably will. I agree with something you have previously pointed out on your blog, which is that the identification of salable "chunks" can't really be done before the fact by publisher assignment of DOIs; it is the consumer who will identify what they want and how they want it put together and we don't really have a process to enable that.
   
   
4. You mentioned at Frankfurt that long term there may only be a few DAD’s but in the short term most publishers should/will contract with one of the existing players. Why do you think this is the case: Both the short term observation and the long term evolution.
   
   Technology drives scale is the answer in both cases. As it stands, all the DADs are struggling to build out their offerings to cover everything they have to do. They will all be challenged to provide real digital workflows -- real DAM capabilities -- or they will suffer competitively. They all need widgets. They all need nimble content conversion capabilities. And in the future they will need the capability to add value in sales of aggregated content. In the short term, obviously the players will choose from the choices on the table. In the US, that really means three major players (four if you are an academic publisher.) The biggest companies aren't quite all spoken for, but it will be increasingly difficult for new entrants to gain the scale that is necessary to play.
   
   
5. What will the evolution in services be for these DADs? Where/how do you think they will begin to differentiate themselves or will their services evolve into a commodity?
   
   One aspect of differentiation will be price and service. Pricing is a bit vague now and service is very hard to measure. But as new use cases arise -- Amazon Kindle, a Google device, new Web services like netGalley develop and need their database populated -- some DADs will handle these things more quickly and smoothly than others. That's why we urge strong service level requirements in publishers' agreements with DADs. In the longer run, I can see DADs "making sales." They can't really do that until they aggregate content and know they have it. But let's say a DAD has 500,000 recipes from 14 publishers and can convince Kroger to make use of them in marketing? If you're a publisher with that DAD, you make a sale. If you're not, you don't. In the physical distribution world, publishers look at "what else is in the bag?" when they pick a distributor or a sales rep group? It is too early for that kind of thinking in digital distribution, but it will come.
   
   
   Mike Shatzkin, mike@idealog.com

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 21): End of World Edition - An Essay on Privacy, Books & Marketing, Libraries + More

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed an essay on privacy from law educator Daniel J. Solove: Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' (Chronicle):

Most attempts to understand privacy do so by attempting to locate its essence—its core characteristics or the common denominator that links together the various things we classify under the rubric of "privacy." Privacy, however, is too complex a concept to be reduced to a singular essence. It is a plurality of different things that do not share any one element but nevertheless bear a resemblance to one another. For example, privacy can be invaded by the disclosure of your deepest secrets. It might also be invaded if you're watched by a peeping Tom, even if no secrets are ever revealed. With the disclosure of secrets, the harm is that your concealed information is spread to others. With the peeping Tom, the harm is that you're being watched. You'd probably find that creepy regardless of whether the peeper finds out anything sensitive or discloses any information to others. There are many other forms of invasion of privacy, such as blackmail and the improper use of your personal data. Your privacy can also be invaded if the government compiles an extensive dossier about you.

Privacy, in other words, involves so many things that it is impossible to reduce them all to one simple idea. And we need not do so.

Matthew Ingram looks for the lessons in the success of Go the Fuck to Sleep (GigaOm):

What some call “piracy” can actually be free marketing, as noted by some prominent authors. Neil Gaiman, for example, has said he was initially outraged by unauthorized sharing of his books, and tried to help his publisher stop it, but eventually he came to the conclusion that what piracy really amounts to is “people lending books.” As he put it in a video interview earlier this year:

[U]nderstanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web was doing is allowing people to hear things, allowing people to read things, allowing people to see things they might never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.

Another prominent example of this is Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. The well-known fantasy author doesn’t just take piracy in stride — he has actually assisted people in pirating his own books, by uploading copies of them to file-sharing networks (as has Gaiman). In the case of one book, doing this with a Russian translation helped build awareness of his other books in that country, where Coelho now sells millions of copies. He pirated his own works over the protests of his publisher, but the outcome was spectacularly successful.

From PaidContent's Laura Hazard Owen: How Libraries Are Bypassing Big Publishers To Build Their E-Book Offerings (PaidContent):

As a result of these restrictions by big publishers, McCormack says librarians are turning to smaller presses, which are generally less restrictive about offering access to their ebooks. Library Journal‘s arrangement with NetGalley will introduce librarians to new titles from many of these smaller e-book-only romance publishers. Angela James, Executive Editor of Harlequin’s Carina Press, estimates that over half of digital-first content is in the romance genre.
James predicts that romance e-book originals will be a hit for libraries. “Romance readers are such voracious readers and they can’t afford to buy all that content,” she says. They also tend to be very loyal to specific authors, so checking out e-books in libraries gives them a chance to try out authors they’re unfamiliar with, she says.

The (NY) Observer profiles Bonnie Fuller while also rehashing the nastiness and doesn't provide a punch-line (Observer):

After walking away from Us Weekly at her peak, surprising colleagues and inviting still more biting press attention, it was on to American Media Inc., where she'd been hired as editorial director overseeing a number of titles, including Star. Ms. Fuller's fall was sudden and would have seemed almost random had it not made for such delicious wish-fulfillment among those who'd long rooted for her demise.
When she left American Media in May 2008, with plans to start a new company, Bonnie Fuller Media, few were heartbroken by the reversal of fortune. Ms. Fuller planned, vaguely, to take on cyberspace with a web startup that promised, as this paper put it, to "approach Ms. Fuller as a brand" and "feature her blogging about topics such as gossip, fashion, and romance."

Real life 'Dad’s Army' revealed in secret diary Life in the Home Guard was often as hapless and farcical as the antics depicted in Dad’s Army, a newly-discovered diary suggests. "Yes, Captain Mainwaring, Sir" (Telegraph)

The diary shows that, like Captain Mainwaring, Mr Foster is constantly frustrated at the actions of his platoon, with both the young and old members proving unreliable.
In one incident, he describes sending a pair of young volunteers off to guard a remote waterworks overnight. He is not confident that they will stay awake, so he walks to the spot to check. Sure enough, when he arrives all is quiet, as he makes his presence heard, he can hear the guards waking up.
In another incident, a rifle target practice session ends in farce because, having split the platoon into competing teams of old and young members, Mr Foster finds the more elderly volunteers cannot hit the target because of their poor eyesight.
Another exercise involved stacking two lots of chairs up opposite each other in the parade hall to create makeshift trenches. Members of the unit then had to attack them using “dummy grenades”. Again, the age of the volunteers showed, so while the “old men” did well, they were forced to “give in from fatigue”.
The unit also take part in a mock invasion exercise at night time, but a number of elderly members decline, because they are scared of going out in the dark.

No doubt lost on many....Whenever we are at home and Dad's Army comes on Mrs PND has been known to wail "Oh no, not Dad's Army again".

From the twitter:

Librarians fight for a role in a digital world: Globe&Mail

Waterstone's future looks positively Daunting Guardian

Re-winding A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell - video Guardian

Frederick Forsyth: 'I had expected women to hate him. But no...’ Telegraph

Philip Roth: "I'm not caged in by reality" Telegraph

Sterling Partners With HarperCollins UK On Reprints Of Classic Thrillers Booktrade
- Len Deigton and Alistair MacLean

Houghton Mifflin launches $250K education challenge BostonBizJournal

Pearl Jam to release new book, documentary & album to mark anniversary LickLibrary

Google ditches newspaper archive plan Guardian

Hargreaves report recommends overhaul of copyright laws Guardian

And in Sport: Champions of England for a record 19th time (MEN)