MediaWeek Report (Vol 12, No 1): Flipboard Magazine - America's Test Kitchen, NYPL & Instagram, Textbooks, Blockchain in Publishing

Check out more interesting articles from my flipboard magazine for publishing and media.

Here is an excerpt from one of the articles I've clipped about America's Test Kitchen (Digiday):

“America’s Test Kitchen made a strategic decision 20 years ago, and I think that that was atypical at the time but prescient because they built a stable business, not one that is dependent on episodic ad revenue,” said Peter Doucette, a managing director in the Telecom, Media & Technology practice at FTI Consulting.

America’s Test Kitchen’s subscriptions business, which currently has 1.3 million paid print subscribers between its Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines and 420,000 paid digital subscribers, makes up 60% of the company’s overall revenue, and CEO David Nussbaum said this area is experiencing double-digit growth year over year. That’s why on Jan. 2, Nussbaum said the company has a pretty good idea what the revenue will be that year, based on how many subscriptions they have. Recurring revenue is a helluva drug.

See more at Personanondata - The Magazine

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 11): Merger News, Mega-Journals, Bookstores and Alexa.

Opposition to the McGrawHill Cengage merger is taking form with the DOJ:

In its section titled “The Textbook Market is Broken,” SPARC explains that college textbooks are sold in a “captive market” because students are forced to purchase the materials selected by their professors. This system “effectively hands the three major companies who currently dominate the market a blank check to develop expensive materials without regarding the preferences, needs, or financial circumstances of students. The textbook industry’s current state of dysfunction results from years of consolidation, unsustainable practices, and lack of price competition.” SPARC points to textbook pricing as an example of this dysfunction, as prices “have increased 184% over the last two decades — three times the rate of inflation.”
In a separate letter sent to the DOJ at the end of July, U.S. PIRG Education and student leaders from colleges across the country raised similar concerns. Specifically, the students explain they have “directly felt the impacts of skyrocketing textbook prices, further exacerbated by Cengage and McGraw-Hill’s efforts to remove cost-cutting options for students by undermining used book markets,” and that “[t]o maintain profit margins, publishers have put out custom or frequent new editions to make it difficult to find a used book for our classes ….” Citing a rather shocking statistic, the students claimed that “65% of students have skipped buying a book at some point in their college career because of cost despite 94% of them knowing it would hurt their grade.” (NatLawReview)

Open Access Mega-journals Losing Momentum:

Based in San Francisco, California, PLOS ONE grew to become the world’s largest journal, publishing more than 30,000 papers at its height in 2013 and spawning more than a dozen imitators—but megajournals have fallen far short of Binfield’s aims. From 2013 to 2018, PLOS ONE’s output fell by 44%. Another megajournal, Scientific Reports, surpassed PLOS ONE in size in 2017 but saw its article count drop by 30% the next year, according to data in publisher Elsevier’s Scopus database. Growth in new megajournals has not offset the declines. In 2018, PLOS ONE, Scientific Reports, and 11 smaller megajournals collectively published about 3% of the global papers total.  
PLOS ONE and Scientific Reports have also slipped on other measures of performance. Publication speeds, a key early selling point, have fallen. And a study published in August showed that by certain citation-based measures, the journals’ connection to science’s cutting edge has frayed. (ScienceMag)

Online bookstore to benefit Independents:

The creators of Bookshop have worked with ABA, independent booksellers, Ingram, and book and magazine publisher partners to launch a site that will provide websites, authors, indie stores, magazines, and bookstagrammers an easy way to promote and purchase the books they love online without driving sales to Amazon.
Bookshop, a B-Corp business, is targeting online customers who are not currently buying books on indie bookstore sites by creating a national platform that allows socially conscious consumers an alternative that supports their values while offering one-click purchasing; an easy, intuitive interface; and two-day shipping. Bookshop will also guide book buyers with human recommendations and personality, not algorithms. (Bookweb)

Amazon's Alexa platform is introducing an education "skills" API:

Amazon has introduced the Alexa Education Skill API, a new application programming interface that gives developers the ability to integrate Alexa skills into their education technology services. The skills range from K-12 (allowing parents to check in with teachers about their child's grades and behaviors in school) to higher education (enabling students to ask Alexa questions about assignments and check their overall progress in courses).
Developers will be able to incorporate Alexa skills into their learning management systems, student information systems, classroom management tools and massive open online course platforms. Students and parents will be able to retrieve information from multiple skills at the same time by only making one request.  (CampusTech)

 According to 3.5million books women are beautiful and men rational (theswaddle)

Pearson's share price fell after announcing textbook sales were lower than expected (Barron's)

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

 

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: The New McGraw-Hill.  Where is Education Textbook Publishing Headed?

PND: Pearson's Future of Education (2012)

PND: Pearson's Blue Sky Project (2012) 

PND: Open Education Resources Gain (2018)

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 10): Flipboard Magazine, Trump Book Slump, Textbook Transformation, Mind the Gap + Others

View my Flipboard Magazine.

Articles:
Book Publishing's Trump Slump
The Radical Transformation of the Textbook
Amazon's Plan to Conquer the World of Publishing
Mind the Gap
A Database of Six Million Syllabi

*******

Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports 

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 9): Amazon Juggernaut & Dilemma, Open Source Publishing, Digital Textbooks, Elsevier

The Amazon Publishing Juggernaut: What does the e-commerce giant want with the notoriously fickle world of publishing? To own your every reading decision. (Atlantic)

"Founded in 2009, Amazon Publishing is far from the tech giant’s best-known enterprise, but it is a quietly consequential piece of the company’s larger strategy to become a one-stop shop for all your consumer decisions. As Amazon Studios does with movies, Amazon Publishing feeds the content pipelines created by the tech giant’s online storefront and Amazon Prime membership program. At its most extreme, Amazon Publishing is a triumph of vertical engineering: If a reader buys one of its titles on a Kindle, Amazon receives a cut both as publisher and as bookseller—not to mention whatever markup it made on the device in the first place, as well as the amortized value of having created more content to draw people into its various book-subscription offerings. (One literary agent summed it up succinctly to The Wall Street Journal in January: “They aren’t gaming the system. They own the system.”)

The Amazon dilemma: how a tech powerhouse that fulfills our every consumer need still lets us down. Despite increasing criticism, Amazon refuses to acknowledge many of the unintended consequences its rise to dominance has spawned. (ReCode)

"Let’s start with Amazon’s power. Its roots can be traced back to a potent cocktail of vision, fortuitous timing, relentlessness, and a knack for exploiting loopholes — from state tax laws to a dearth of regulation that could have prevented it from acting simultaneously as retailer, retail platform, and consumer brand kingmaker."

Fake Journal publishers: OMICS, Publisher of Fake Journals, Makes Cosmetic Changes to Evade Detection. Following a public outcry over their proliferation, paralleled by a media exposé together with regulatory pressures in some countries, fake journals have appeared to be cleaning up their act. (TheWire)

Mind the Gap: The landscape of open-source publishing tools (report)

The number of open source (OS) online publishing platforms, i.e. production and hosting systems for scholarly books and journals, launched or in development, has proliferated in the last decade. Many of these publishing infrastructure initiatives are well-developed, stable, and supported by a small but vigorous distributed community of developers, but promising new ventures have also recently launched.

The notable increase in the number of OS platforms suggest that an infrastructure ‘ecology’ is emerging around these systems. Distinguishing between systems that may evolve along competitive lines and those that will resolve into a service ‘stack’ of related, complementary service technologies will help potential adopters understand how these platforms can or should interoperate.

Hummm, The radical transformation of the textbook (Wired)

“Digital text, digital work, is often engaged with at a lower level of attention. By moving everything online, it’s going to become even more decontextualized. Overall, I think there’s going to be less deeper learning going on,” Trakhman says. “I believe there’s a time and a place for digital, but educators need to be mindful of the time and place for using these resources. Rolling out these digital suites is not really the best for student learning.”

Battling Elsevier:  University of California’s showdown with the biggest academic publisher aims to change scholarly publishing for good (The Conversation)

The UC-Elsevier showdown made headlines because it’s symptomatic of the way the internet has failed to deliver on the promise to make knowledge easily accessible and shareable by anyone, anywhere in the world. It’s the latest in a succession of cracks in what is widely considered to be a failing system for sharing academic research. As the head of the research library at UC Davis, I see this development as a harbinger of a tectonic shift in how universities and their faculty share research, build reputations and preserve knowledge in the digital age.

Inclusive (textbook) access at the University of Arkansas (News) and at Austin Peay (News)


Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports 

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 8): Wiley, Indian Tariffs, UK Textbooks + More

Wiley buys Zyante Books for $56MM in cash (press release)

Zyante was founded in 2012 and its zyBooks platform has served over 500,000 students across 500 institutions. The company targets some of the fastest growing and in-demand STEM disciplines, bridging the gap between classroom and career, and enhancing lifelong productivity and employability. Degree demand in these disciplines has grown by 8% between 2013-2017 according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and jobs in Information Technology and Engineering have grown by 17% and 14%, respectively, since 2016 according to Burning Glass. Revenue for 2019 is expected to be $14 million, a 37% increase over 2018.

India's new government has imposed a 5% tariff hike on imported books to 'encourage domestic publishing and printing' IndiaToday.  There are skeptics:

"I don't think levying 5 per cent custom duty on imported books is going to benefit our local publishers. If one really wants to help publishers here, the rising costs of paper should be brought down. The scarcity of paper should be addressed and removed," he said.

The Publishers Association reports that UK textbook sales declined 6% last year despite some strong promotion (TES)

Sales of school textbooks in the UK fell by 6 per cent in 2018 despite a drive to increase their use.  The Publishers' Association said "the continuing squeeze on school budgets" had resulted in teachers not being able to afford "the learning resources children need”.

The slow death of the Hong Kong independent bookseller (Asian Review)

When Bao, 52, entered the book-publishing trade in 2005 it was still crowded with competitors. Now he is a lonely holdout with dwindling revenues, still publishing books critical of the Communist leadership of China and touching on mainland political taboos such as 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
His most recent book, "The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown," unearthed speeches by 17 top Communist Party leaders and elders at a secret internal meeting 30 years ago, discussing the aftermath of the violent suppression of unarmed students and citizens in Beijing.

India is addressing the predatory journal issue (again) (Nature):

Last month, India launched its latest salvo against the ‘pay and publish trash’ culture that sustains predatory journals. Over several months, more than 30 organizations representing universities and academic disciplines have vetted journals to release a reference list of respectable titles. Predators sabotaged our last attempt. We hope this better-curated list will help to cut off the supply of manuscripts to the unscrupulous operators that profit financially by undercutting academic quality.

 Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports 

 

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 7): Universal Music archive in flames, No law in the Amazon, Bad data, Faber&Faber

From the NY Times magazine a cautionary tale about managing archives via the experience of Universal music which saw an entire warehouse of music archives go up in smoke.  The Day the Music Burned

Eventually the flames reached a 22,320-square-foot warehouse that sat near the King Kong Encounter. The warehouse was nondescript, a hulking edifice of corrugated metal, but it was one of the most important buildings on the 400-acre lot. Its official name was Building 6197. To backlot workers, it was known as the video vault.

...

Before long, firefighters switched tactics, using bulldozers to knock down the burning warehouse and clear away barriers to extinguishing the fire, including the remains of the UMG archive: rows of metal shelving and reels of tape, reduced to heaps of ash and twisted steel. Heavy machinery was still at work dismantling the building as night fell. The job was finished in the early morning of June 2, nearly 24 hours after the first flames appeared.

...

These reassuring pronouncements concealed a catastrophe. When Randy Aronson stood outside the burning warehouse on June 1, he knew he was witnessing a historic event. “It was like those end-of-the-world-type movies,” Aronson says. “I felt like my planet had been destroyed.”

No law in in the Amazon:  How rampant is book counterfeiting on Amazon? And it doesn't stop there. NY Times 

But Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized way.

That has resulted in a kind of lawlessness. Publishers, writers and groups such as the Authors Guild said counterfeiting of books on Amazon had surged. The company has been reactive rather than proactive in dealing with the issue, they said, often taking action only when a buyer complains. Many times, they added, there is nowhere to appeal and their only recourse is to integrate even more closely with Amazon.

Hey Jeff, in college they have this thing that can check whether a paper has been written by the student in question.   Think about it.  Turnitin.

A history of Faber and Faber one of the UK's most iconic publishing houses in The Guardian:

All publishing houses have archives, but for anyone interested in 20th-century literature the archive of Faber & Faber is a fabled treasure house. This is the firm that was, as Toby Faber puts it, “midwife at the birth of modernism”. In 1924 Faber’s grandfather, Geoffrey Faber, aspiring poet and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, had been installed as chairman of the Scientific Press, recently inherited by another All Souls fellow, Maurice Gwyer. It published mostly books and journals for nurses. Geoffrey Faber renamed it and started making it into a literary publisher. Within his first year he had installed TS Eliot as a fellow director and acquired his backlist.

Tracking the results of bad data.  A report from Dun & Bradstreet:

A new report from Dun & Bradstreet reveals businesses are missing revenue opportunities and losing customers due to bad data practices. Almost 20 percent of businesses have lost a customer due to using incomplete or inaccurate information about them, with a further 15 percent saying they failed to sign a new contract with a customer for the same reason.

The way that data is structured appears to be a significant barrier in many organizations, with indications that data is often poorly structured, difficult to access and out of date.

"Businesses must make data governance and stewardship a priority," said Monica Richter, chief data officer, Dun & Bradstreet. "Whether leaders are exploring AI or predictive analytics, clean, defined data is key to the success of any program and essential for mitigating risk and growing the business."

Winning bidders were announced recently for the remaining assets of F&W Media (Folio)

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 6): Publishing News - B&N bidding, EBSCO, Follett, Axel Springer, Paper Shortages, University Presses

Seoul, Korea: Book store

My email newsletter is here.

Investors believe the recent bid of $476mm for Barnes & Noble by Elliot Management under values the business (Reuters).   Additionally, ReaderLink - the largest distributor you may not have heard of - may enter the bidding (WSJ).  Investors want the B&N board to consider more options.

EBSCO is moving in to the textbook hosting game with this announcement that they are creating a solution specifically for faculty which will make it easier to select materials for their courses:

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) announces the release of EBSCO Faculty Select™ (Faculty Select), a single interface for library staff and institutional faculty. Faculty Select makes it easy for faculty to explore Open Educational Resources (OER) and purchasable DRM-free e-books to support their courses. The interface provides the highest quality, affordable course options that drive textbook affordability, access and usability for faculty and students alike.

Follett has also launched a campus 'all access' solution for educational content:

Follett ACCESS is an evolution of delivering over seven years of affordability programs for campuses.  The powerful new program delivers all required print and digital course materials to all enrolled students at a campus as part of their tuition, or course charges, on the first day of class—resulting in lower costs, reduced stress, and greater student preparedness.  By serving over 1,200 campuses in North America, Follett is experiencing demand shift from a course-by-course solution, to a broader full campus participation with Follett ACCESS.

Equity firm KKR really wanted a piece of Axel Springer and have announced a tender offer for all outstanding shares other than those owned by the Springer family and management.  The deal values Axel Springer at just under EUR 7Billion.  The deal is expect to allow Axel Springer to speed up their digital transformation without the constricts of a public (reporting) company (PR):

Axel Springer aims at becoming the leading global provider of digital content and digital classifieds. KKR has significant expertise in the digital and media sectors, an impressive track record of successful investments in Germany and across Europe and will be a strong strategic and financial partner for Axel Springer. KKR supports Axel Springer’s strategy of investing in further growth projects to generate long-term value. Furthermore, the parties are in agreement that Axel Springer will remain a leading voice in independent journalism across all channels, nationally and internationally alike.

 If you attended the BISG annual meeting you will have heard the fireside chat about the state of the printing and paper industry.   Not great is the short answer: Consolidation has resulted in fewer print options for publishers together with capacity issues and in addition paper is becoming more expensive and harder to resource.  Here Forbes takes a look at the paper shortage from the publisher perspective:

Where did this paper shortage come from, and how long will it last? To find out, I asked Danny Adlerman, Director of Production and Manufacturing at multicultural children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, who’s been with the company since its founding in 1992 and works on 200 active titles, including front and backlist, at any given time. Adlerman said that while the paper shortage was most acute about six months ago, its effects are still being felt, though he’s hopeful it’s closer to being resolved than it was at the start of 2019. While Lee & Low hasn’t seen any significant delay in sending out ARCs and galleys, the shortage has yet to be fully resolved. I asked Adlerman about the causes of the paper shortage and what the possible solution could be.

Troubled university publisher Melbourne University Press has announced their new publishing director Nathan Hollier (SMH):

Hollier, the director of Monash University Publishing, has been named as successor to Louise Adler, who resigned along with five directors in January after MUP turned its back on its previous policy to be a more commercial publisher of books in order to focus on academic work and introduce an editorial board to approve publications. He will start the job on July 1.  Speaking to The Age from Detroit, where he is attending a conference of university presses, Hollier said he didn’t expect the approach he adopted at Monash would differ massively at MUP. "I’m going to try to publish books which are the most relevant and important for our times," he said.

Another University Press in the news recently for the wrong reasons: Stanford University Press was the main subject a recent Stanford faculty meeting.  Leaders want a press that is "healthy and excellent" (Stanford)

The Press moved into the spotlight in April when Provost Persis Drell announced that, while Stanford would continue to support the Press with base funding, the university did not intend to fund the Press’ request for five additional years of $1.7 million in one-time support.

Following faculty concerns, Drell clarified that the university had no intention of closing the Press and that she recommended the formation of a faculty committee to develop a long-term plan to strengthen the Press’ financial and operational model. The provost made additional one-time funds of $1.7 million available to the Press for fiscal year 2020 to assist with this process.

The Press received about $900,000 annually in institutional support from the university’s base general funds and income from a small endowment, and at the senate meeting Thursday, Drell said that support would continue. The Press also receives about $5.1 million in revenue from book sales and other sources; however, that income does not cover its annual expenses

“The challenge we’ve been confronting is that the Press is operating with a structural deficit, which was $1.7 million in 2008, and that has motivated a succession of requests for one-time funding,” Drell said. “There have been attempts to address the structural deficit that have not been successful in the past. We need a strategy and a plan to ensure that our Press is excellent and supported over the long term, and we will be working with the faculty on that.”

Read more articles on my flipboard magazine:

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: The New McGraw-Hill.  Where is Education Textbook Publishing Headed?
PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: A Stab in the Dark

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 5): BookExpo, Elsevier, Viral Books, Bennington College, Magazines and Print.

From this past weeks BookExpo conference, the Washington Post reflects on publishers concerns about the future.  (What would the business be without concerns?)  Personally, I found BookExpo dismal.

At the same time, publishing faces troubling unknowns and adjustments. Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest physical book retailer, has been struggling for years and is considering a sale of the company. One of the largest distributors, Baker & Taylor, is ending its retail business, forcing some stores to find new ways to keep books in stock. And publishers again face a potential shortage of printing capacity that resulted in two future Pulitzer Prize winners, David Blight’s biography “Frederick Douglass” and Richard Powers’ novel “The Overstory,” being among numerous releases unavailable for extended stretches late last year.

But the most immediate concern is President Donald Trump’s threatened 25% tariff on some $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, including those from the country’s printing facilities. For years, U.S. publishers have relied on China for low-cost, high-capacity printing of four-color books, coffee table editions, Bibles and other standards of the trade and education market. The new tariff would almost surely result in higher prices, with publishers saying a hike of 50 cents or more is possible for a given book.

Elsevier announces a national agreement in Poland to enable access to their academic content:

The Polish consortium for higher education and Elsevier, the information analytics business, today agreed on a national license agreement for access to critical academic research, while advancing Poland's open access objectives. The new three-year national license is based on a thorough analysis of the Polish requirements for access to research, the country's publishing choices and its focus on research quality. It provides over 500 universities and research institutions across the country with access to ScienceDirect, Elsevier's leading platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature, as well as SciVal, the research performance tool, and Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.

In the Columbia Journalism Review and discussion of the 'viral book'

Traditional publishing, among the slowest of all media, and social media, the quickest, are working together more often. A search of the Publishers Marketplace database for the word “viral” turned up 14 non-fiction books in the first five months of 2019. Seven were sold from viral articles, and six were sold on the basis of another “virality”—for instance, a viral photo or a viral Facebook broadcast. In comparison, 11 books were sold in conjunction with viral media in all of 2018, six based on articles and four on other online media (including a “viral cooking technique”).

Digital media is not an industry known for its profitability. However, the uptick in publisher interest in viral work indicates a hope that publishing can capitalize on an internet-tested zeitgeist: presumably, publishers believe that those viral articles will turn into bestselling books. Is this a legitimate hypothesis? Can publishers forge a solid link between the fast pace of the internet and the very slow business of book publishing? What can authors hoping to garner a book deal learn from this newfound interest in virality?

From Esquire, Bennington College has some literary chops:

A new freshman class arrives at arty, louche, and expensive Bennington College. Among the druggies, rebels, heirs, and posers: future Gen X literary stars Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem. What happened over the next four years would spark scandal, myth, and some of the authors' greatest novels. Return to a campus and an era like no other.

Folio magazine takes a look at three magazines which have ditched print and still survived (and thrived):

As consumers and advertisers continue to shift their attention to digital media platforms, traditional print publishers are increasingly coming to the difficult decision that their future doesn’t include a print publication at all—or at least not one with a regular frequency. 

In the last month alone, ESPN The Magazine, Money, Brides and Beer Advocate announced plans to end their print runs. And they all intend to continue producing content for their digital platforms.

Once considered a death knell for a brand, the print-to-digital transition has proven for some publications to be more of a rebirth, especially when they diversify to additional channels, like events and TV. With that in mind, here are a few brands who have shown there is life after print—a good life.

And the counter discussion: Keeping with print:

And yet, even in 2019, a diverse set of both new and traditional publishers continue to invest in the medium despite its inherent financial challenges, begging obvious questions about how, specifically, a new media brand stands to benefit from producing an expensive print magazine at a time when the barriers to entry in digital media are seemingly nonexistent.

Brazil's publishing market is not doing well at all.


Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 4): The Week In Publishing - Vanity Fair Archive, LA Bookstores, Big Deal Subscriptions

Bondi Digital a NY based digital publishing company announced the launch of the full Vanity Fair magazine archive:

We are thrilled to share that Vanity Fair launched its Bondi-powered and collaboratively designed digital archive yesterday. For the first time, every photo, article, and issue is accessible on computers, tablets, and phones from 1913 to the present on archive.vanityfair.com.

Other Bondi deployments include Aviation Week, Playboy, Maclean's, This Old House and others.

The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at the LA independent bookstore market and asks "why are so many longtim LA bookstores closing?"

Despite the recent shuttering of Circus of Books, Caravan Book Store and Samuel French, bookstore experts say the end for the city's brick-and-mortar stores isn't nigh: "There is a sea change happening, and it is noteworthy."

A recent report by the European University Association (EUA) estimates that European libraries spend more than E1B per year on "big deal" subscription agreements wiht the largest scientific publishers (ScienceBusiness):

European universities are paying more than one billion euros per year for access to journals run by the leading science publishers, according to a new survey from the European University Association (EUA) of ‘big deal’ contracts for access to large bundles of journals.  The survey, published this week, looks at 167 contracts made by groups of universities with Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society, finding that the cost for universities is already high and rising by an average 3.6 per cent a year.  The annual outlay, “Is fully paid by public funds and the bulk of these costs fall on Europe’s universities,” said Jean-Pierre Finance, former president of Henri Poincaré University, who led the study.

The magic of notebooks (mine excepted) from The Economist citing an exhibit at the British Library
NPR's Book Concierge on the best books of 2018 

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 3): The Week in Publishing - UVA Open Access Aperio, University Press, Danielle Steel

From the FT Why novelist Mark Haddon has lost faith in twitter. 

It's academic to some but The Atlantic suggests that university presses shouldn't have to make money joining the discussion that has been prompted by the off again/on again decision of Stanford to pull financial support from their university press.

In Science magazine, academic Alan Chambers describes how early in his career he became "easy prey for a predatory journal.  "The email appeared legitimate. It spelled my name correctly, referenced some of my previous work, and used correct grammar. The journal wasn’t on Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers. I thought I had done my due diligence."

How did Danielle Steel write more than 170 books?  A guide to efficiency from a profile in Glamour magazine. " There's a sign in Danielle Steel's office that reads, 'There are no miracles. There is only discipline.' It's a dutiful message, and yet the sheer amount that Steel has accomplished in her five-decade career does seem like the stuff of dreams."

Pottermore.com announced a partnership with Warner Brothers which creates a joint venture named wizardingworld.com and will combine the existing content of pottermore.com.  From their press release:  "Wizarding World is the magical universe that encompasses Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and an expanding range of characters, stories, experiences and products derived from them, as well as new projects inspired by this magical universe."

A curious experiment in micro metadata tagging:  "In the 21st century, digital publishing has led to the rise of ever-more niche microgenres in books – from Amish romance to NASCAR passion – and it’s changing our literary landscape." Pursuit

The University of Virginia recently launched its own open source publishing platform (Aperio) and David Ghamandi, UVa’s open publishing librarian and managing editor of Aperio, speaks to the UVA newspaper:  “To be successful over time, universities need to invest heavily in their own OA presses (where they exist) and support each other’s presses. Universities need to be more serious taking responsibility for the dissemination and preservation of the knowledge produced on their own campuses. There also needs to be a culture shift where more faculty recognize the benefits of OA and are supported by their departments and schools to move the journals they lead to open access presses.”

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

 

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

 

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 2): Baker & Taylor, Wiley, Comics, Translations

In a blow to competition, although not without cause, Baker&Taylor announced they were calling it quits on the retail distribution market.  Independent booksellers in particular will feel the hit from this action which appears to have been in the works for a while but implemented by B&T without contingency planning.  Many independent retailers have been left scrambling to find alternatives not named Ingram.   (ABA)

Springtime for Hitler at the Turin Bookfair where anger is growing (surely it's reached full gestation) against the publisher (Altaforte) of neo-facist content.  As the photo shows, these white lovers are brazen.  From the Guardian.

Woody Allen may have to consider self-publishing (Vox) but it Angelica Houston he may have one buyer at least (NYMag)

John Wiley has acquired the assets of Knewton which was at one time a high flying web-based education start-up which also apparently took in over $180mm in investor capital.  The purchase price was a lot less than that (Chronicle)

An interesting article on comic book publishing.  It's not all Marvel and DC Comics.  There's some adaptation and consolidation going on here as well.  The NYTimes takes a look and shows some of the smaller players are taking the lead of those larger companies by setting up studio deals and other distribution methods.

Vulture challenges the way publishers approach the translation market and suggests at a minimum the English language market is missing out on at least 1000 titles per year from around the world.   It suggests cultural isolationism.

At the recent BISG annual meeting during a q/a on the international rights market one of the speakers lamented the state of the Brazilian book market.  Here from the Brazilian report a review of what they describe as a bleak market.  Since 2009, sales have been downward with 2018 being the worst in 30 years despite significant growth in religious books.

Read more articles on my flipboard magazine:

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: The New McGraw-Hill.  Where is Education Textbook Publishing Headed?
PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: A Stab in the Dark

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.

MediaWeek (Vol 12, No 1): Cengage, McGrawHill, Jet

On Wednesday, Cengage and McGrawHill announced what may be the last mega merger in the educational publishing market place.  Valued at just over $5B this is an all stock deal and the combined  company will have just over $3B in revenue.  Once completed in early 2020, the company will be named McGrawHill and be led by current Cengage CEO Michael Hansen. (Company) and (Recording)

A first time young adult author pulls her title amid a 'racist' backlash and then reconsiders.  The NYTimes takes a look at the 'close-knit children’s publishing community' and the recent history of bullying and controversy and finds (not surprisingly) that "While there are often controversies simmering in the young adult literary world, the magnitude and speed at which the backlash builds seems to have accelerated, often amplified by social media."

Connecting the anticipated raft of data produced by all the electronic touch points which students of all ages generate may become as easy as a walk-up withdrawal at Fort Knox if publishers have their way. At least that is the conclusion of a recent report by Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) which commented that "its (data about students, faculty, research outputs, institutional productivity, and more) capture and use could significantly reduce institutions’ and scholars’ rights to their data and related intellectual property"  There's more where that came from.

The demise of Jet and Ebony magazine and Johnson Publishing is a real shame but at least all the iconic images in their image library may end up in a museum should 'power couple' George Lucas and Mellody Hobson prevail at the bankruptcy auction (CB).  Although it may not go smoothly.  Lucas is owed $13MM for a loan collateralized by the image library and estimates of the library's value extend to $40MM.

Old line publishers seem in a race to sign open access publishing deals as a means to 'pivot' their business models.  Wiley in Germany and now Elsevier in Norway is the latest announcement and some say Elsevier's deal is akin to that last penguin to jumping off the ice.  But not so fast: This deal is still lucrative for Elsevier and the Norwegians appear willing to pay something for the cost of open access publishing. (FT)

Oh my Wiener!  Suggestions that Anthony Weiner is shopping a picture book are completely incorrect although he is looking for a book deal according to the NY Post.  As a bell weather, "Every Simon & Schuster imprint has passed,” although that really sells S&S short.

The assault (my word) on University Presses generated new news this week with notice that Standford University finds itself short of cash and will withdraw financial support from their University Press.  According to IHEd, the press relies on about $1.6mm in financial support from the university which is 'reliant' on the payout from the University's $26Billion endowment.  According to Provost Drell (who also happens to be a scholarly expert herself) next year's payout is expected to be smaller than usual and that the presses output is "second rate".  (Late word: Drell has announced a funding continuation due to the outcry. IHEd)

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Are you considering an investment in new technology?  Check out my report on software and services providers.  (PubTech Report)

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: A Stab in the Dark

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

Michael Cairns is a business strategy consultant and executive.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com or (908) 938 4889 for project work or executive roles.