My Big Book of Posts & Predictions

I have compiled all my annual predictions posts and a selection of more thoughtful posts that have appeared here since 2006 when I started PND. Here is the slideshare link to the book.

If you would like a pdf file of the book directly from me just send me a note.  Here is a link to all the other presentations I have placed on slideshare.net which have been viewed 35,000 times!

 
Personanondata Predications and Posts: 2006 - 2012 from Michael Cairns

Corporate Blogging

A rehash originally from September 21, 2006:

As boss you are always worried - at least you should be - that your message is getting out to the troops. Getting this out to them and having them embody it is always a challenge. Having quarterly company wide get togethers is great if you can pull it off. I was lucky to do it once every six months even with a small company. The CEO blog is becoming an effective mechanism for not only presenting the corporate strategy and goals but also the person behind the big desk. CNN recently published this article on corporate blogging and Mr. Charkin is getting quite a reputation. While I didn't start this blog while I was at Bowker, I wish I had because it could have been an effective communication tool. While I spent most of my day with my staff, communication at the level of status meetings and product development discussions can be disjointed and somewhat out of context to the strategy. The type of corporate communication you strive for should be integrated, coherent and concise to be ingested and internalized by the staff. It can often be hard to attain this when you are dealing with the minutia in a editorial or IT status meeting. Offering a perspective on the big picture puts the daily activities in perspective which is what the CEO can do as king of the mountain. A blog entry once or twice a week can bring clarity to what everyone is striving for.

The other aspect of blogging is that is can be personal - Richard recently mentioned his cricket team's closing match and Karen Christensen (also mentioned by CNN) discusses all types of things that aren't strictly related to her publishing company. For staff, this makes their boss more human. You can't have a personal relationship with every employee but it is interesting how much commonality exists across the levels of an organization. Blogging if used as a pseudo-corporate communication method has to be kept up and it also should have some standards - good (not perfect) punctuation and no swearing. It wouldn't be terribly funny for the boss to be written for creating a hostile work environment via their blog. There is the confidentiality aspect which some PR departments are concerned about which is legitimate but I would hope blogging CEOs know enough about what they can say publicly or what they should be cagey about.

Bowker is a private company, but early on in my tenure I was paranoid about email messages from me getting to our competitors since there was so much inter mingling of staff over the years; however, as the years went by we were doing so many more interesting and positive things that I ceased to care. I am more surprised that more CEOs don't do this - maybe it has to do with more mundane matters such as an inability to write coherently in a free form manner.

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 49) Revamping GED, HS Corporate Marketing, Book Blogging, Pretty Books + More

The GED test is being revamped (EdWeek):

Situating the GED as a pathway to higher education echoes its original intent. The first exams, in 1942, were envisioned as a way for returning World War II veterans to complete high school and use the GI Bill to attend college. In 1949, the first year statistics are available for nonmilitary test-takers, 39,000 people took one or more of the five sections of the test: reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. By 2010, that number had risen to 750,000.

The GED is widely used as a high-school-completion tool by those in the military and in prisons, and by dropouts who are too old for the public school system. Although one-quarter of those who take the test are 16 to 18 years old, the typical GED candidate is 26, has completed 10th grade, and has been out of school nine years, according to ACE data.

But while the test has helped thousands move forward, it is dogged by criticism that it doesn’t reflect high-school-level achievement. Officials in New York City, for instance, said last December that the passing score reflects only middle-school-level content and skills. The city is helping pilot a new, accelerated GED curriculum and accompanying supports in a subdistrict of alternative schools.

Even as the GED is overhauled, scholars continue to debate its value.

Report looks at the connection between corporatism and educating children (NonProfit Quarterly)

If you haven’t been around schools and schoolchildren recently, get ready for some stomach-wrenching corporate curricula:

• Shell‘s “Energize your Future” curriculum, which reimagines the oil industry behemoth as a leader in alternative energy technologies.
• American Coal Foundation’s “The United States of Energy” fourth-grade curriculum, which is quite favorable, not surprisingly, to coal mining and use.
• Coal Education Development and Resource’s (CEDAR) curriculum, which encourages coal use and students’ participation in regional “coal fairs.”
• Kohl’s department stores’ “Kohl’s Cares for Schools” campaign promoted awarding $500,000 to the 20 schools that got the most votes on Facebook—and everyone who voted found themselves on Kohl’s mailing lists for promotions and advertisements.
• Education Funding Partners (EFP) is marketing to schools to sell the naming rights to school cafeterias and auditoriums to corporations such as Apple and Adidas.

Here’s the kicker for all of us in the nonprofit world. Some of the corporate marketing is cloaked in the garb of corporate charitable partnerships (for example, the Kohl’s competition). Some of the marketing is carried out by nonprofit affiliates of the corporate interests (for example, the American Coal Foundation and CEDAR, both 501(c)(3)s). And some of the corporate marketers are corporations whose partnerships for schools and other causes are often lauded as standout examples of corporate philanthropy—Microsoft, Disney, Nike, Google, etc.

Is book blogging dead is the question asked by Jacket Copy (LATimes) in response to a email blast from William Morrow:

"Message is essentially: if you don't review enough of the books we send you, in the timeframe we want you to, you're out," Rebecca Joines Schinsky tweeted Thursday. Schinsky, who writes and edits The Book Lady's Blog, is one of the leaders of the latest generation of committed book bloggers.

"Can you imagine them sending this to Horn Book or The NYTimes?" added Pam Coughlin, who blogs at MotherReader.

Many publishers enthusiastically send books to bloggers, and today's book blogger may rake in free books like leaves after a windy fall day. But it wasn't always that way.
When blogging about first began, publishers, like many other long-established businesses, looked at the form with justifiable skepticism. If just anyone could start a blog, what role could bloggers have?

Eventually, that skepticism faded. People who like to read books, it turns out, were reading things on the Internet. Those things included blogs. They included book blogs. As time passed, many early book bloggers, many of whom focused on literary titles, moved on to other things -- book reviewing, publishing short stories, writing novels, even writing for newspapers.

Two articles about beautiful books from the NYTimes:

Many new releases have design elements usually reserved for special occasions — deckle edges, colored endpapers, high-quality paper and exquisite jackets that push the creative boundaries of bookmaking. If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.

“When people do beautiful books, they’re noticed more,” said Robert S. Miller, the publisher of Workman Publishing. “It’s like sending a thank-you note written on nice paper when we’re in an era of e-mail correspondence.”

The eagerly anticipated 925-page novel by Haruki Murakami, “1Q84,” arrived in bookstores in October wrapped in a translucent jacket with the arresting gaze of a young woman peering through. A new novel by Stephen King about the Kennedy assassination, “11/22/63,” has an intricate book jacket and, unusual for fiction, photographs inside. The paperback edition of Jay-Z’s memoir “Decoded” features a shiny gold Rorschach on the cover, and in March the front of “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller will bear an embossed helmet sculpted with punctures, cracks and texture, giving the image a 3-D effect.

And from the Guardian:

Publishers have started building their marketing strategies around form rather than content. The Everyman Library, which is coming up to the 20th anniversary of its modern relaunch, makes much of its books' elegant two-colour case stamping, silk ribbon markers and "European-style" half-round spines. In 2009, to celebrate its 80th birthday, Faber republished a collection of its classic poetry hardbacks illustrated with exquisite wood and lino cuts by contemporary artists. Not to be outdone, Penguin will next year be reissuing 100 classic novels in its revamped English Library series in what its press release describes as "readers' editions". What other sort could there be, you might wonder? The press release elaborates that these will be "books you will want to collect and share, admire and hold; books that celebrate the pure pleasure of reading". Translated into the material realm, this means cover designs that pay their respects to the classic orange spine of the original Penguin English Library, but modify its iconic "grid" in order to luxuriate in whole-cover retro prints.

It is not just the big publishing conglomerates that are paying more attention to the way their products look. Several boutique outfits have recently been established dedicated explicitly to making beautiful books. Full Circle and Unbound are just two, founded by the veteran publishing stars Liz Calder and John Mitchinson respectively. In their new incarnations as producers of exquisitely crafted books, Calder and Mitchinson spend more time than they probably ever did when they were helping to run companies including Bloomsbury and Orion pondering such arcane matters as cloth-slip covers, numbered limited editions, artwork that really is art, and paper so creamy you long to lick it.

Some other articles of interest:

Dr. Justin Marquis talks about the difference between "custom" textbooks and custom textbooks.

Richard Byrne points to an open math supplement, which reminded us that one of the benefits of using a custom text is that you can choose your own supplements from anywhere on the internet (or even create your own).

Nelly DeSa, a student, writes about the Textbook Pinch.

And finally Ken Ronkowitz at Serendipity35 asks if your students are buying the textbook...

 From the twitter:

 Thomson Reuters chief Glocer makes his exit http://tgam.ca/DI0Z

Save the UK's libraries? It's beyond me, admits US guru - UK - Independent

Best of PND

With over 1000 blog posts since I started back in mid 2006 some of the more interesting material is now buried, so I have decided to retrieve a wide selection of material which I consider a level above the average. I have manipulated Blogger a little by creating a new blog and I have linked from the new site back to PND for the full content.

As always, feel free to email any of these blog posts to colleagues since I am always looking for more subscribers.

The Best of PND is located here.

Also don't forget I am on Twitter @personanondata.

I have also created a web site for Information Media Partners which gives some information about my consulting practice.

Wikio Top Blogs

I don't know if this means much but I have as many above me as below me. Pressure is on to maintain my position. I have no idea what drives it although I am sure if I have more subscribers and more people linking to me then I should do OK. So, tell your friends and check out all these links. Wikio ranks blogs across a number of categories.
1 The Conscience of a Liberal
2 Calculated Risk
3 Seth Godin's Blog
4 Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Brad DeLong's Se
5 DealBook - New York Times blog
6 Greg Mankiw's Blog
7 Real Time Economics
8 naked capitalism
9 Law Blog - WSJ.com
10 A VC
11 Economist's View
12 Infectious Greed
13 DealBreaker
14 Market Movers
15 Robert Reich's Blog
16 Econbrowser
17 Vox
18 CARPE DIEM
19 Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
20 MarketBeat
21 The Digerati Life
22 24/7 Wall St.
23 The Financial Page
24 Information Arbitrage
25 Global Neighbourhoods
26 BizzyBlog
27 Interfluidity
28 Adland
29 FoundRead
30 Brazen Careerist
31 Environmental Economics
32 Odd Numbers
33 Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture C
34 Common Tragedies
35 EconoSpeak
36 Small Business Trends
37 Chronicle of the Conspiracy
38 Kudlow's Money Politic$
39 Business Pundit
40 The Austrian Economists
41 Global Development: Views from the Center
42 Information Processing
43 Groundswell
44 Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog
45 Macro Man
46 Accrued Interest
47 The Marketing Minute
48 Organizations and Markets
49 Diva Marketing Blog
50 PersonaNonData
51 Macro and Other Market Musings
52 Dinocrat
53 ataxingmatter
54 Jaffe Juice
55 26econ.com
56 Who Has Time For This?
57 The Bonddad Blog
58 American Shareholders Association
59 Dr. Housing Bubble Blog
60 China Financial Markets
61 Sramana Mitra on Strategy
62 Footnoted.org
63 YouNotSneaky!
64 Cassandra Does Tokyo
65 Freelance Folder
66 Trends in the Living Networks
67 The HR Capitalist
68 Compensation Force
69 Economics and...
70 The Swine Line
71 The Bayesian Heresy
72 Economic Investigations
73 Joel Makower: Two Steps Forward
74 Fast Food News
75 Business Opportunities Weblog
76 Parisian Party
77 Venture Hacks
78 My Quiet Life
79 The Oregon Economics Blog
80 american copywriter
81 Advergirl
82 Entrepreneur's Journey
83 Ask a Manager
84 Futurelab
85 flyteblog
86 Boston VC Blog
87 Evil HR Lady
88 NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Eradicating Poverty through Profit
89 The Entrepreneurial Mind
90 Branding Strategy Insider
91 Small Business Trends Radio
92 CityEconomist
93 Phil's Blogservations
94 The Constant Observer
95 Black in Business
96 Wake-Up Wal-Mart Blog
97 Ask The VC
98 Shaping Youth
99 Gannon On Investing
100 Business Blog Consulting

Social Recommendations

In Business Week, author Sarah Lacy has some suggestions for publishers on how to develop, market and sell books by taking advantage of Web 2.0 opportunities. This is only one of her five suggestions:

Create stars—don't just exploit existing ones.When an author is established, publishers have to do less to make a book sell. So bidding wars start. As a result, even some best-sellers aren't very profitable. Instead, publishers should take a page from the handbook of Gawker founder Nick Denton and create stars. Find micro-celebs with a voice, talent, a niche base of readers, and most important—enthusiasm. Then leverage the publisher's brand (and the techniques I advocate, of course) to blow them out. Require as part of the contract that the author blog, speak on panels, attend events. Give them incentives for delivering—say, though Web traffic of the number of followers they amass on Twitter. Sure, publishers would have to spend more on promotion. But because they're spending less on an advance—say, $50,000 for a lesser-known writer than the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) they'd spend on a star—they can afford the bigger promotional budget. "It's taken some time for publishers to recognize that a successful site is as
strong a 'platform' as a magazine, newspaper, or TV gig," says Patrick Mulligan,
my editor at Gotham.

Trust in Book Lovers Not Reviewers

The termination of several book review sections across the country in recent weeks has reignited the same discussions that took place last year regarding the future of reading and books generally. The arguments remain sentimental suggesting a Utopian book-centric world where every reader weighs the careful words of the reviewer before making a particular purchase. Yesterday, Lissa Warren in HuffPo lamented the demise of the book review section of the LA Times and calls out those who believe (like I do) that blog reviewers are filling the void left by 'official' reviewers:

But I'll tell you what does make my jaw drop: the seemingly widely-held notion that these book sections are being adequately replaced by blogs. To be sure, there are some excellent book blogs out there: Mark Sarvas's The Elegant Variation. The National Book Critics Circle's Critical Mass. MediaBistro's Galley Cat. Jessa Crispin's Bookslut. The Boston Globe's Off the Shelf. And, of course, the New York Times' Paper Cuts. They're all bookmarked on my computer. I read them often for news on new titles (and older ones I missed) and Q&As with authors. Many of them are also good for stories on publishing trends, which as a book publicist and editor I appreciate a great deal. But, for the most part, these blogs don't actually review books.

In my view there is a macro point that makes her argument largely irrelevant; that is, we are beginning to see the development of trust networks. As consumers of information we are starting to build our own networks of people and entities we rely on to support everything from our political philosophy to our choice in vacation spot. Reading falls squarely into that paradigm and it no longer matters whether a book review is produced to the standard of the LA Times or The NYTimes book section (and many blog reviews do), what matters is the impact the review has on a purchase decision. Those interested in reading are finding bloggers that they 'trust' (even of the blogspot variety, a comment which baffles me), and these reviews do indeed 'adequately' fill the void created by the demise of some of the larger newspaper reviews sections. Interesting, some of the arguments presented by Warren as to why these blogs are not of a standard are precisely the items that lend reality, personality and connection to the readers of these reviews.

I'd also advise that book reviewing bloggers jettison the use of personal pronouns (yes, I've used a slew of them here; you can nail me in the comments). And for goodness sake, I wish they'd stop telling me what their father and their girlfriend -- or their father's girlfriend -- thought of the book. Also, I don't need to know how they came to possess the book -- how they borrowed it from the library, or bought it at B&N, or snagged a galley at The Strand, or got the publisher to send them a copy even though they average four hits a day. The banal back-story is of little interest.

It is my own personal view that the back story is of little interest; however, that might only be because I haven't found a (blog) reviewer that I identify with. The point is, many consumers reading these blog reviews do find the back story interesting and the great thing is they can move on to someone else if it becomes too tedious. Warren also speaks of 'self-indulgence' and surely nothing could be more self-indulgent than reading a Salman Rushdie review of a Martin Amis title in the NYTimes book review section. (If you would).

Trust networks will define how many people (maybe all of us) communicate - that's what myspace, facebook, linkedin, etc. are starting to show us. The blog network is a fundamental part of that and the continued development of trust networks has implications for all consumer interaction including recommending and buying books. The word 'recommend' is better than review. The word 'review' in conventional terms and as used by Warren is used pejoratively when referring to blog reviews. This is wrong, because a book review doesn't have to conform to a standard; this is a convention that has been constructed by old school journalists. What is relevant is what the opinion/review/recommendation means to the consumer. Someone yelling over the back fence to their neighbor that they really liked The Corrections is a 'review'. And that's synonymous with replying to the Facebook 'what are you doing' by typing "I'm reading The Corrections and I really hate it".

Lastly, who was reading the reviews in all these newspaper reviews sections anyway? Most people in the US who read (and that's not many) only read one book a year. That book is likely to be something like the Da Vinci Code, a diet book, Dr Phil or an Ophra pick so what's the return? It is (was) a mystery. Not so on the web. These evolving trust networks concentrated around people who love books, talk about books and opine about books provide publishers with a window on the community they never had. Stop with the whining and recognise that as a publisher you have a tremendous opportunity to understand your consumer in ways you never could before. Rather than lamenting the demise of the newspaper, publishers should be rejoicing in front of the window to a vibrant community of book lovers and opinion makers.

To answer Lissa Warren's question: Blogs may not save Books but they may be all we have so pay attention.

Chark Blog in Book Form

Exact Editions is reporting that Richard Charkin's blog posts, made when he was Chairman of Macmillan UK may be coming out in print. As Adam says,

The Charkin blog was a very good read while it lasted, it will be interesting to see if it can work in volume form.

Strange Mr. Charkin hasn't reestablished a new blog. He seemed to relish the first version so much.

Later on....

Coincidentally, CNet writer Caroline McCarthy notes the trend (not sure it is one) in blog to books:

This blogs-to-books trend seems to keep chugging along, despite the fact that none of their predecessors have been particularly successful. Gawker Media's Guide to Conquering All Media sold dismally, as schadenfreude-happy blogger Jeff Bercovici gleefully pointed out. Options, the book takeoff of the wildly popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, wasn't exactly a chart-topper, either. And now there are books either just out or on the way for blogs Stuff White People Like, I Can Has Cheezburger, Postcards From Yo Momma, Passive-Aggressive Notes, and a heap of others.

Personnally, I can't begrudge any of these people/sites from taking publisher's money to turn their free stuff into book form. If nothing else, the ability to construct a sentence and acheive meaning coupled with the development of a market should make the blog world a ready proving ground for many a book author. I would have thought the limitless talent of many blog writers will have made the agent and editor's life a little easier.

BTW, I'm still waiting....

New Links

In the last few months or so I have started reading a couple of new blog sites.

Tools of Change: Is published by the O'Reilly TOC conference organisers. They have been nice enough to mention me once or twice. Here is there article on Treating E-Books like Software.

Alison Pendergast is an executive at Pearson and has many interesting insights into Educational publishing. Here she speaks about digital music - slightly off topic but minic my own experience and I thought interesting.

Abbeville has launched a blog to support their publishing activities. I liked this post on The Art of Rocking Podcasts. In this post is also a link to a series of podcasts entitled "so you want to work in publishing". Listeners are advised to ignore the sound of tinking glasses, laughter and smoking.

Subscribing to PND

Subscribers to PND continue to grow every week which is gratifying. I hope that all readers will consider referencing the site and also referring new subscribers to the blog so that readership continues to grow. I am prepared to offer the bribe of a PND T shirt to those that refer the most new subscribers. Over the past few months, the articles that current subscribers may want to forward or reference to colleagues include my posts on Amazon the Monopoly, the Borders situation and my Five Questions series.

I also have a standing invitation to anyone wishing to step on the soap box with me and offer their thoughts on the publishing industry.

Someone emailed me this week asking how to subscribe to personanondata. Other than visiting the web page directly (presumably using a bookmark), there are two subscription methods. An email subscription will deliver an update to your designated email address once per day and the message will contain any posts made since the previous email was sent. Approximately 25% of my subscribers use this method.

The second method is to use RSS. Using the PND RSS feed enables you to get updates when they are made on the site (rather than see them only in the next email message). RSS is simple to use and very functional. The RSS link is here.

Let me know if you have any problems (to do with this blog) and I hope you continue to enjoy my commentary.

michael.cairns @ infomediapartners.com

Charkin Returns

Just as the opening credits role in High Plains Drifter, we discern the image of the returning fighter but its not Eastwood it's Charkin returning from the blogging wilderness to post a brief effort on Eoin Purcell's site.

Sales of some novels are spectacular but even the most spectacular compare in revenue and terms very unfavourably with, for example, a drug, a car, an airline, or an oilfield. As an industry we should be very grateful for all the attention (and I am) but why this journalistic obsession with the economics of books and fiction in particular?

Still no news about his permanent return.

Year in Stats & Popular Posts

By way of thanks to all my loyal readers I thought I would list some of the stats for the blog. I am not sure how 'auditable' these stats are but between google/analytics and feedburner there is some consistency. Currently I have nearly 800 subscribers via RSS and over 100 via email. During the year I had approximately 30,000 visits which resulted in 45,000 page views. On average, those who browsed the content spent 2.25 mins per page. Nearly all of this growth happened since May.

The top label (subject) was 'thomson'. Rounding out the top five were playboy, future of biblio, Harcourt and Educational Publishing. Seasonally, I had my heaviest traffic during the summer when the education publishers were in play. Thomson, Harcourt, Houghton, McGraw Hill and OCLC all provided the most traffic other than that delivered via commercial operators like Comcast, Roadrunner, etc. Top referring sites included the normal suspects: Google, Blogger, Technorati. Additionally, I thank Charblog, Eoin Purcell, Exact Editions, Schlagergroup, Bill Trippe, Lorcan Dempsey, Ed Champion, The Millions, Gladys Bembo , Teleread and PW for their support. (I don't do enough to return the favors and I hope to do better).

The most popular blog posts were:

Amazon & Self Publishing, Headline Guaranteed to Get Attention, Penguin Sued over Dot Parker, High Voltage: Australian Publishers Upset, Five Questions with Rosetta Solutions, Harpercollins reports Higher Revenues, .epub: What it means for Publishers, Endorsement for PND, Scholastic, the future, Five Questions with Lonely Planet.

Perusing my traffic reports, I always notice the 'Hilton hotel' or 'Marriott' network ids and think some poor shlepper is on the road and all they want to do is read my humble blog. Well, thanks to all of you stuck in some bland hotel getting your Personanondata fix. I appreciate it and I've been there myself.

The network addresses throw up other interesting items such as spelling mistakes. It always makes me smile when I see my friends from "Nielson" have come to visit. I always say, one thing you should always be able to do correctly is spell your name.

Search strings are another source of (my) amusement. Here is a sample of actual searches that landed on my site from the past 30 days:

“non german or non chinese customer who engage in electronic commerce”
"Motor Mouth barnsley”
"who is an actor"
"supply chain for a gym”
"2007 2008 email contact of chear holders in france @yahoo.com”
"Mr. Katz is in the widget business. He currently sells 2 million”
"escorting for dummies”
"Local news on the 7 October 1997 in London”

While for obvious reasons I hope these people left my site disappointed there is a reason I look at these queries because they often throw up leads for blog posts.

I hope next year is even bigger. Thanks for the support and please tell colleagues, friends and family members about the site.

Stephen Fry Is An Actor

Stephen Fry is as about as likely to be writing a blog about consumerist technology as I am about Opera. Which is pretty unlikely, but one of us is going against presumed character (and it isn't an act and it isn't me).

Stephen Fry has started writing a blog for the Guardian newspaper and the posts are very entertaining. Apparently, it didn't start that way. He initially launched the blog by himself with a 6,000 word (I think) post about his love of all things digital. The Guardian came calling and by the third post he was writing for them as well under the title "Welcome to Dork Talk." How's that for the power of digital media! At times his proselytising for Apple may come across as a cry for help; but, I suspect once the excitement over the launch in Europe of the IPhone dies off he will move on to other matters. (I wonder what he would think of Tivo?)

Here is how he described his viewpoint:

Digital devices rock my world. This might be looked on by some as a tragic admission. Not ballet, opera, the natural world, Stephen? Not literature, theatre or global politics? Even sport would be less mournfully inward and dismally unsociable. Well, people can be dippy about all things digital and still read books, they can go to the opera and watch a cricket match and apply for Led Zeppelin tickets without splitting themselves asunder.

My sentiments exactly. And he is certainly not without an opinion. Here he is reviewing a new mp3 player from Philips:

But that’s of no importance compared with the cheap, clumsy and dreadful nature of the device itself. I wanted to throw it in the ocean after five minutes (I am in America right now), but instead gave it to a friend who threw it away after 10. One knows the instant one plays the bundled video content, a truly pathetic and dated home movie of some dudes skiing, that we are dealing with a dog. The blocky, pixelated images are so poor as to beggar belief (220 x 176 pixels) - and this is the footage that’s meant to show it off!

It gets worse. It has touch controls, but not touch screen. In the desire to jump on Apple’s multitouch bandwagon, Philips have come up with something worse than an old-fashioned knob. The Streamium offers fiddly controls with terrible delay, so you’re always pressing them too often and reversing their function. The sound level is poor and the phones inadequate. The whole thing’s a gift to Apple.

It should prove entertaining reading from a very unlikely source.

Endorsement for PersonaNonData

It is always gratifying to receive an endorsement but in this particular case the effort is highly creative. Ann Michael lists a number of useful and interesting blogs she considers great sources of information about publishing and media. I agree.

Thanks!

Publishers Must Blog!

As publishers we are in the content creation and information business. As owners of the means of production we have always been the gatekeepers between creation of intellectual works and the consumers of this material. It should be no surprise to any of us that the expansion of new media application erodes the foundation of these gates as individuals gain direct access to an audience and leverage facilities to comment and opinionate about the very output that we in the publishing industry labor hard to select for them. At the same time, search undercuts and demythologizes the power of branded content, and provides the average Joe with information and content that is good enough for their immediate requirements.

If you can’t beat them join them: Developing a social media strategy that encompasses blogging should be a foundation of all publishing house marketing and promotion plans. I have mentioned before (in relationship to book reviews) that I am less convinced of the value of typical marketing programs supporting book promotion. My macro view above can only be mitigated by joining the new media fray and developing networks of interested parties that can nurture, support and perhaps develop content that you produce as a publishing house. As market segments evolve, I think they will become narrower and more defined and publishers that support communities (via social) must be able to participate in these communities in a meaningful way in order to be successful. This is already the case on computer book publishing.

When I started this blog, like everyone else I sought links to place on my blog. I found many but few from established publishers. Over the past year, I have seen more publishers enter the blog world but the numbers still seem small for an industry dependent on words and information. Authors and publishers should develop a blog strategy and blogging should be a natural extension of any publishing house. This idea was the genesis for the panel presentation I am hosting at BookExpo this week.

• As I thought about the theme of the panel meeting, my thought process mirrored the approach I took and the benefits I saw in establishing a blog.


• Blogging gave me an opportunity to experiment with new technology


• I became a publisher/content producer and, as traffic increases, one with responsibility to an audience


• Develop a personality beyond a ‘resume’ or existing professional reputation


• As popularity increases, the blog becomes a center of a growing network of interest


• Expands a professional network: who knew there were as many people with shared views and perspectives?

As I mentioned, there are a number of very popular publishers who are actively blogging but in my view every publisher should have numerous blog sites: some official but the company should also support individual blogs by its employees. Developing a code of conduct is relatively simple and in some cases the employees themselves can be instrumental in formulating this code. (Obviously, the company cannot police every corporate blogger; however, every employee has some fiduciary responsibility to act responsibly towards the company they work for). While affiliation with a publishing house is powerful, as an editor, marketing director, or publisher, I would recommend developing your own blog – so that you can build an online personality that is somewhat separate from the corporation. That is not to say that you can’t blog for the house, but developing your own blog enables flexibility and individualism that can and will be important to you professionally. While you support your current publisher you are also developing your own brand.

As a publisher, or one who works in a publishing organization, it seems redundant to explain the mechanics of getting started as a blogger: You really should know this stuff because it is what your audience (and some competitors) has been doing for a few years now.

• Choose from any number of hosted tools: Blogger, WordPress, Icerocket, Moveable Type and many, many others. I use Blogger but if I were to do it over, I would pick one of the other popular tools. Blogger has only recently added basic functionality that others have offered for a considerable time.


• Pick a name: Perhaps not as easy as it would seem and I would err on the side of professionalism rather than something like ‘monkeyboy’. (Unless you are a publisher at National Geographic in which case it may be appropriate). Using your name is perfectly acceptable - as many do. I would not recommend tying the blog name to the name of your publishing house (they may not allow it anyway) because the blog wouldn’t be portable.


• Plan out your first few weeks of blog posts and use your experience as material. If you are an editor your titles and authors should be the focus of your interests and don’t expect that you will ‘hit your comfort zone’ in terms of content immediately. It took me several months before I started to deliver content in a thematic way.


• Learn from what the other publisher bloggers are doing and link to as many sites as possible. The more links you establish the more you will be noticed. Establish a del.icio.us account and ‘clip’ the articles and blog posts you find interesting. Not only is this a valuable resource for your own research but you can use these links as material for your blog posts. Once a week, I capture my ‘clips’ in a blog post.


• The marketing and promotional aspects of blogging are still evolving but establishing a social network that links consumers, authors, publishing executives, agents, etc. will be a powerful tool to support the house’s publishing product. The social community can be useful in developing markets, expanding reach and gauging interests and/or trends. All important aspects of marketing and content acquisition functions.

A few months ago, I heard Joe Wikert (of Wiley) speak about publisher’s blogging activities and why they can’t afford not to. I asked him about the branding issue: Was he the brand or is it John Wiley. He pointed out that while he promotes Wiley incessantly there are no Wiley logos on his site. The site is supported by Wiley in the sense that they do not edit or ask him to manipulate any content. Wikert suggested that the company did take a considered look at employee blogging activity and decided on a ‘common-sense’ approach which meant self governance by the bloggers. Wikert said his blog is really not a Wiley product but he believes his blog is valuable to Wiley because it proves to an important community (the IT world and technical book authors) that Wiley understands the community and environment. The separation from Wiley does allow Wikert to express his own opinions which as a purely corporate blogger he might find difficult.

Establishing a personality as a blogger should be a professional requirement of all of us in the publishing community. Don’t forget to let your employer know and understand what you are doing and what you want to achieve since full disclosure may eliminate problems later on. Don’t be afraid to use your contacts and network of professional relationships to get the word out and if you are really lucky the company may link to your blog from their web home page which should drive more traffic to you. Lastly, use web analytics tools available from Feedburner or Google Analytics (and others) to track your traffic and let you understand what works and what doesn’t.

Get started.

Increasing Traffic and New Authors for Personanondata

The past four months have seen a rapid rise in the traffic to Personanondata for which I am very grateful to the readers who have found me and stayed with me. I have also benefitted from multiple links from a variety of blogs and websites which have raised awareness and interest. Significantly, I have also seen some links from industry leading trades such as Mediabistro/Galleycat, Publishers Lunch, Library Journal and Book Business Magazine and these links have served to endorse some of what I have published.

But it is not enough (for me), and I would like to encourage all my readers to tell people about the site and hopefully build some discussion around some of the themes I talk about. (I have exhausted my contacts and don't wish to bother them too frequently).

I am also interesting in publishing material from other people in the industry with a point of view. Over the past three months I have published articles by Andrew Grabois, John Dupuis, Michael Healy and Michael Holdsworth. All have been well read on the site and I hope they will all return at some point but I would also like to include more perspectives. Along those lines if anyone is interested in blogging about sessions at BookExpo in a few weeks please let me know.

Thanks for the support.

Self-Serving List Of Best Blog

Eoin Purcell has been kind enough to include me on his list of best Blogs. I hope I can keep up with the expectations. The list was also nicely picked up by Richard Charkin. I owe someone a Guinness....

Blogging In Baghdad

From the NYT via the British Library here is an article about and link to a web diary about the National Library and Archive in Baghdad. A flavor,

Written in a flat, unemotional style, the entries relate the bombings,
blockades, shootings, threats, shortages and petty frustrations that make up
everyday life for the cadre of civil servants working at Iraq’s main cultural
and literary storehouse. A complaint that heating fuel prices are 40 times
higher than in the fall is followed by a report on the assassination of one of
the library’s bright young Web designers and the need to ask the government to
keep the electricity on.