Adobe Summit - Evangelists For Publishing

There were some interesting take-always from Monday's Adobe Summit. 

The Adobe $1.5B acquisition of Workfront was one of largest Adobe has made and in doing so, the company was placing a bet on simplified, structured collaboration on the one hand and content and marketing complexity on the other.  Adobe has recognized that managing and recording the content creation process is increasingly important within all organizations as much as achieving effective marketing. Managing artifacts, content items and other similar materials are, and will, continue to consume increasing amounts of staff time as content is deployed everywhere and where measurement of the impact and use of this content is critical.

Workfront is now the workflow solution within Adobe Experience Manager: Using this framework marketing managers connect strategy to execution and can ensure the business is driving to the desired outcomes as it deploys content and creates uniquely personalized experiences for consumers. As user experience is enhanced with more and more personalized content and a widening of the access points to content, the amount of activities and transactions around this messaging will massively increase as these experiences are pushed (or pulled) to consumers. Managing all this activity requires robust workflow and tools which is where Workfront inside Adobe Experience Manager realizes its strength.

Within Workfront, staff map out their marketing campaigns and assign responsibilities which may be completed in any of the Adobe applications. These tasks have approval processes and 'jobs' are routed for review, approval and publishing and each activity is logged in Workfront. As campaigns are executed, managers can review how the entire campaign came together and what the results were. Adobe is calling this the "marketing system of record - a unified solution for sharing ideas, managing content creation and automating complex processes".

While Adobe saw the value of Workfront as supporting marketing and creative functions, within Book publishing the Workfront solution has also been used by publishers to replace spreadsheets and other tools within the editorial and production processes. Even as a 'generic' workflow product,  WorkFront is a strong competitor to the software solutions provided by industry players. National Geographic and Royal Society of Chemistry are two publishers using Workfront. Since Adobe products are embedded in publishing we will likely see an increase in the number of Workfront deployments and this should worry the incumbent software players in our space.

The other interesting news item concerned data privacy. Here Adobe is betting that third-party cookies which store our activities on the internet as we visit websites will disappear (or at least will not be used to identify our traffic). A new concept named the 'consumer data platform' whereby product companies and marketeers build a closer relationship with consumers by better utilizing the first-party data they already own to establish a coherent brand experience. This is explained in a good post here

Where it gets interesting is the Adobe spin. At the event, Adobe suggested a capability to leverage information the customer has chosen to share so that personalized experiences can be created and delivered to the consumer. Adobe has enabled "Segment Match" capabilities which will allow brands with similar interests to share data and to build collaborative engagement and expand their reach with consumers who have cross-over interests. A good example of this would be a travel publisher and an airline. This is in early days and we will see how this develops but for publishers with a broad array of content the opportunities to build partnerships based on real data could be an opportunity too important to miss out on. Just another reason why Adobe, already embedded in publisher workflows could see more expansion within publishing.

For more information check out the Adobe Summit Video.

 

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Michael Cairns is a publishing and media executive with over 25 years experience in business strategy, operations and technology implementation.  He has served on several boards and advisory groups including the Association of American Publishers, Book Industry Study Group and the International ISBN organization.   Additionally, he has public and private company board experience.   He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com

PersonaNonData Magazine: Amazon++, Copyright, Shakespeare + Other Articles

More articles of interest from my flipboard magazine:

Articles:

• New Statesman: Should Books be Free?
• Billboard: Bandcamp changes the discussion about payments
  
• Vox: Amazon's Union
• UC/Elsevier Journal deal
• Dohle - RandomHouse: It's the best time ever
• WAPO: Want to Borrow that Book?
• Stratechery: Relentless Jeff Bezos

Plus an archive of many more of interest to media folks

 

Media Report (Vol 14, No 2): Pell Grants, Black Literature, Cancelling Shakespeare, American Dirt

Raising Pell: How Industry Support and Federal Grants Improve Prison Education (PND)

The Obama Administration recognized that a coordinated and organized approach from the Department of Education and Bureau of Prisons would improve prison education programs. In the years since, quality education programs – where they exist – remain concentrated and reach less than 10% of incarcerated individuals. Allowing Pell Grants to be used by this population is an important step; however, if educational programs are a hodge-podge of well-intentioned but uncoordinated initiatives, they will only ever be partially successful (if success means delivering an efficacious education program to all who seek it).

Black Kids and White dominated Literature: A Do It Yourself Model (The Conversation)

Although much of American children’s literature published near the turn of the last century – and even today – filters childhood through the eyes of white children, The Brownies’ Book gave African American children a platform to explore their lives, interests and aspirations. And it reinforced what 20th-century American literature scholar Katharine Capshaw has described as Du Bois’ “faith in the ability of young people to lead the race into the future.”

Most likely inspired by The Brownies’ Book, several Black weekly newspapers went on to create their own children’s sections. While the children’s publishing industry may have shut out Black voices and perspectives, the editors of these periodicals sought to fill the void by celebrating them, giving kids a platform to express themselves, connect with one another and indulge their curiosities.

Why are schools cancelling Shakespeare? (WAPO)

Why should students be forced to read Shakespeare, as some teachers on Twitter are wondering? Why, indeed? God forbid they should try to muddle through a sentence by Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy or, my high school favorite, William Faulkner. I loved Faulkner not because he was easy to read but because I had an unforgettable teacher whose passion shined light on the beauty and the sound and the fury of words.

Not that I’m a literary snob, mind you. I also read all of Harold Robbins’s trashy novels in junior high, much to the furrowed brow of my mother. One night, while I was reading “The Carpetbaggers” by flashlight under my covers, I overheard her say to my father: “Should we be letting her read those books?”

The Management Lessons in David Simon's Homicide (Strategy + Business)

What can we learn from this acute environment? For one, culture matters. The foundation of the work that gets done in the book is a powerful culture built on tradition and values, which the detectives transmit and reinforce in one another. It is a ferociously masculine culture, insular and to a great extent Catholic, expressed in gallows humor, and exalting duty and strength. Being a cop in Baltimore is so dangerous that a tradition has evolved for when someone returns to work after being shot in the line of duty: The officer gets to pick any assignment he’s qualified for.

As Simon demonstrates, this culture sustains the detectives in the face of nearly overwhelming challenges. But it can also be a problem. “Police-involved shootings” are investigated with an eye toward making potential problems go away. The culture also means that the advent of women as detectives is unwelcome to the men, even as they occasionally accept one.

The Implosion of America Dirt (NYMag).  It didn't stop it being one of the years biggest books,

On the publisher’s side, Miller and Don Weisberg, then the president of Macmillan, did most of the talking. The book’s editor, Amy Einhorn, was mostly silent. The executives expressed interest in the activists’ suggestions, but they also wanted to discuss the tone of the online discourse. Miller comes from a generation that prizes “civility,” one employee noted. “He could be accused of tone policing,” added another. Gurba, who had received a barrage of menacing emails since publishing her essay, was disturbed that Miller seemed to be “equating the criticism Jeanine was receiving with the death threats I was receiving,” she said. As Miller and Gurba began to argue over this, one Macmillan staff member blurted out that Cummins had never received any actual death threats. “Everybody just went dead silent,” Gurba recalled.

 Magazines are turning in to Books (CNN)

While many magazines have shrunk or folded in recent years, some publishers see opportunity in bookazines. They are less dependent on advertising — a once reliable source of revenue that continues to be eaten up by tech platforms like Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG). The issues are big, sometimes exceeding 100 pages, but publishers can fill pages with stories and photos from their archives, making them less costly to produce. And they can seize on current trends like keto diets or cultural moments such as the passing of beloved celebrities and other public figures.

"To me, [bookazines] represent a really nice pandemic treat," said Aileen Gallagher, associate professor of magazine, news and digital journalism at Syracuse University. "We're all still stuck in our houses and the only place we're really going is the grocery store. It's like, 'Oh, here's this thing that will entertain me for a little while that I will invest $10 in.'"

 Digital subscriptions for content businesses are growing across the board (TheNewStatesman)

In a survey conducted for the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2020, 64 per cent of readers in the UK cited “distinctive journalism” as their primary reason for subscribing to any publication, and 35 per cent of those readers said that they subscribe for particular writers they like. This agrees with what our readers tell us about why they subscribe: for Stephen Bush, Anoosh Chakelian, Jeremy Cliffe, Emily Tamkin, Sarah Manavis and Ailbhe Rea, among many others.   

Our investments in technology and data journalism are paying off, as is our expansion into international coverage, led by Jeremy Cliffe. Our coverage of the US election in particular was widely praised for its insight and accuracy.

 More from my Flipboard magazine

MediaWeek Report (Vol 14, No 1): Book Prices, JK Rowling, African Comics, Digital Textbooks.

You might ask yourself: Why do books have prices printed on them? Marketplace

Why are books actually marked with a price on them? Music isn’t. Movies aren’t. Most retail items that I could think of that you would find at resellers aren’t in fact.

Textbooks in the digital age.  More on Cengage's digital textbook offering. (Boston Globe)

Textbook publishers had been trying to shift from paper to digital for years. Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic, giving many reluctant educators and students the nudge they needed to make the leap to online course materials. In Cengage’s case, digital sales now represent 68 percent of total revenue, up from 58 percent three years ago. About half of its sales are to college students, and digital represents 82 percent of the higher-ed revenue now for Cengage.

African comics and their growing market (The Economist)

Kugali is part of a small but vibrant industry. As in many areas of African popular culture, Nigerian brands are prominent; others include Comic Republic and Vortex Corp. But animators are thriving elsewhere, too. Afrocomix, an app for reading comics, was made by Leti Arts, a video-game developer based in Ghana and Kenya. In 2019 “Mama K’s Team 4”, written by Malenga Mulendema, a Zambian artist, and co-produced by a South African studio, became Netflix’s first African-made animated series. Etan Comics is the publisher of the first Ethiopian superhero comic books, “Jember” and “Hawi’’.

J.K. Rowling gets a profile in Vulture (NY Mag) and it isn't that flattering (Vulture)

One of the fans most devoted to Rowling’s exhaustive world building was a former Michigan school librarian named Steven Vander Ark. His website, The Harry Potter Lexicon, had won Rowling’s praise; it catalogued the minutiae of her books in such detail that she said she occasionally consulted it to fact-check her work as she wrote. In the months after the series concluded, Vander Ark contracted with a local publisher to turn his site into a print volume, and Rowling’s appreciation soured. Suing Vander Ark’s publishers for copyright infringement, she said, “I believe that this book constitutes the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.”

Representing Vander Ark’s publisher, the executive director of Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project pointed out that publishing companion guides to existing works was a practice that had been accepted “for hundreds of years.” But Neil Blair, one of Rowling’s agents, said that people who wished to produce such companions typically approached Rowling’s representatives first. Before publishing anything, they would seek her approval and make changes where requested; they would, in other words, “fall in line.” The judge ruled in Rowling’s favor, awarding $6,750 in damages. Vander Ark had broken down in tears as he testified, but after the trial, he avowed that he would always be a Harry Potter fan.

Many publishing folk take exception to any potential ex-trump officials getting book deals (Guardian)

Put together by the author Barry Lyga, the letter, which is continuing to add names, has been signed by bestselling writers including Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere, Holly Black and Star Wars author Chuck Wendig. Titled “no book deals for traitors”, it opens by stating that the US “is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the imprimatur of respectability and a lot of money through sweetheart book deals”.

More from my Flipboard magazine

MediaWeek Report (Vol 13, No 16): Big Mergers - Simon & Schuster, S&P Global, Copyrights & Libraries, Pearson

Bertelsmann buying Simon & Schuster.

No doubt you've read about this acquisition and here are some of the articles.  Many are taking 'it's the Amazon problem' approach:

In The Atlantic: The merger isn't the gravest danger to the business.

NYTimes: The biggest publisher is about to get bigger

The Economist: A biblio-behemoth 

The New Republic: Heading towards monopolistic singularity

In other big media merger news:

WSJ - S&P Global agrees to buy IHS Markit for $44Billion combing two of the largest data suppliers to wall street firms.

Also Benzinga - The merger of the two companies will create a financial data behemoth.

I'm sure that's fine. 

According to Fortune a new copyright champion has arrived from the Internet Archive.  Are publishers on board with this I ask?

For Bailey, the debate is personal. Growing up in an artistic family of modest means on Long Island, she never encountered the Internet until arriving at Brown University in 1995. There, Bailey made friends with a circle of creative types thrilled by the culture and community they discovered on web, from the music-sharing bazaar Napster to blogging platform LiveJournal.

"The Internet seemed like this amazing new thing to distribute knowledge and information," she recalls.

After college, Bailey landed in the midst of New York's cultural elite with a job as an executive assistant to a creative director at magazine giant Conde Naste. But she soon became disillusioned, concluding the publishing industry prioritized money over artistic ideals.

 (Yes, Nast is incorrectly spelled).

Speaking of Random House, here is a good obit of Harold Evans - The Economist

People looked pityingly on him now. That was unbearable, so he left for the United States and a teaching job. His second wife, Tina Brown, soon joined him as editor of Vanity Fair, and he too took up the pen again, editing US News & World Report and founding Condé Nast Traveller before becoming, in 1990, president of Random House. There the copy on his desk was by Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, William Styron and Richard Nixon, as well as the businessmen, artists and poets he added to the list. The glittering Manhattan literary scene revolved around their garden brownstone, enjoyably so. America performed its reinventing magic, and in 1993 he became a citizen. Yet the country’s deepest effect on him had happened years before, when he visited on a Harkness fellowship in 1956. He was already in love with newspapers; with the smell of printer’s ink, and with Hollywood’s depiction of brave small-town newspapermen standing up to crooks. Papers in America might be slackly edited and poorly designed, but they showed a crusading desire for openness that was still rare in Britain.

Bookstores are struggling but rich folk are buying first editions (Bloomberg)

The market for extremely rare books has been healthy for years, dealers say, but quantifying its ups and downs is difficult, because “if you’re talking about a book with many comparables over time, you’ve missed the top of the market,” says Darren Sutherland, a specialist in Bonham’s rare books department in New York.

“It’s so anecdotal,” agrees Christina Geiger, the head of the books and manuscripts department at Christie’s New York. “Everything depends on the quality of the material.” 

Still, consensus among dealers is that the overall market has sustained itself even as the rest of retail has been thrown into turmoil, and that the peak of the market has soared past many participants’ expectations.

UK University staff urge probe into e-book pricing 'scandal' (BBC)

"It's a scandal. It's public money," she said. "Students are shocked when I tell them just how much it costs to get them their texts.

"People just assume we can get books for the prices they see on Amazon and Kindle. It just doesn't work like that for universities.

"The academic publishing business model is broken, and as you can see from the number of people who have signed the letter we think it is time for an investigation," she said.

Lectures are increasingly having to be designed around what texts are available and affordable, not what is best for learning, Ms Anderson said.

Pearson Creates New Direct-to-Consumer Division (Pearson)

Pearson, the world's leading learning company, today announces the creation of a new direct-to-consumer division as it looks to further strengthen its focus on building a direct relationship with learners around the world.

The new division will be co-led by two senior executives: Ishantha Lokuge joined Pearson from Shutterfly last year and now steps up to the role of Chief Global Product Officer and co-President, Direct-to-Consumer.

 As always, more in my flipboard magazine.

Pirated Broadcast Content Worth $1Billion or More - Report

In a new report undertaken by Digital Citizens Alliance suggests that the value of stolen digital content broadcast which is 'resold' as pirated subscriptions to consumers exceeds $1Billion.  This report looks at the infrastructure that supports this 'business' and the revenues and profit margins that can be generated.  Here are some of the primary conclusions:

• Conservatively, pirate subscription IPTV services generate subscription revenues of $1 billion annually in the U.S. alone, even excluding the sale of pirate streaming devices used to receive the content; 
• Because the providers of these services pay nothing for the programming that makes up their core product, they operate with estimated profit margins that range from 56 percent (retailers) to 85 percent (wholesalers). 
• An estimated 9 million fixed broadband subscribers in the U.S. use a pirate subscription IPTV service; 
• At least 3,500 storefront websites, social media pages, and stores within online marketplaces sell pirate subscription IPTV services to the U.S. market; 
• An ecosystem has emerged around such services, including wholesalers that provide turnkey technology, and retailers that offer the stolen content to the public; and 
• The ecosystem also depends upon legitimate players, including hosting services, payment processors, and social media. The extent to which these legitimate players are aware of their role is a subject of debate

Pew Research into Digital Innovation 2030

A really interesting set of predictions expressing how digital innovation with change over the next ten years to 2030.  Pew interview/surveyed a set of digital experts and found,

A majority expect significant reforms aimed at correcting problems in democratic institutions and representation will take place in the next decade. Many say this will result in positive outcomes for the public good; others are less convinced.

The full article is worth a read but here are two snips of interest:

Digitial First Textbooks - My Interview with CCC's Beyond the Book

As print textbooks eventually do give way to courseware, industry analyst Michael Cairns says, college professors, administrators and students will appreciate an education delivered in 21st century models.  Listen to the Audio here

While it has long been foretold that the print textbook would disappear, the revolution has actually taken quite a bit longer than people anticipated.

As print textbooks eventually do give way to courseware, industry analyst Michael Cairns says, college professors, administrators and students will appreciate an education delivered in 21st century models.

“Textbooks served a tremendous benefit and purpose for the last 200 years or more and were quite useful in the marketplace,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.

“But when you see some of the ability to build in and make use of technology in the delivery of the content and the delivery of subjects, [you see that] students can have the opportunity to benefit from better products and more effective outcomes from the materials that they have access to through the classroom.”

The discussion was presented by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association as part of its special summer webinar series.

Alternatively, read the transcript of the interview here.

Digital transformation: A seminar for senior management

This presentation represents a full day workshop for senior executives designed to help define and execute digital transformation programs within their businesses.

Digital transformation: A seminar for senior management from Michael Cairns

Aaron Perzanowski on The End of Ownership

From Youtube intro:

Recent shifts in technology, intellectual property and contract law, and marketplace behavior threaten to undermine the system of personal property that has structured our relationships with the objects we own for centuries. Ownership entails the rights to use, modify, lend, resell, and repair. But across a range of industries and products, manufacturers and retailers have deployed strategies that erode these basic expectations of ownership. Understanding these various tactics, how they depart from the traditional property paradigm, and why some have been embraced by consumers are all crucial in developing strategies to restore ownership in the digital economy.

Aaron Perzanowski teaches courses in intellectual property, telecommunications and innovation. Previously, he taught at Wayne State University Law School, as a lecturer at the University of California Berkeley School of Information, and as a visitor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. Prior to his teaching career, he served as the Microsoft Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and practiced law at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.

His research addresses topics ranging from digital copyright to deceptive advertising to creative norms within the tattoo industry. With Jason Schultz, he is the author of The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy (MIT Press 2016), which argues for retaining consumer property rights in a marketplace that increasingly threatens them. His book with Kate Darling, Creativity Without Law: Challenging the Assumptions of Intellectual Property (NYU Press 2017), explores the ways communities of creators operate outside of formal intellectual property law.

More info on this event here:
https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/lunc...

BISG Report: Student Attitudes toward Content.

From BISG:

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has just relased the first report in its annual two-part study, Student Attitudes toward Content in Higher Education, available for purchase here.

Now in its fourth year, this study provides trend information and analysis about the ways the traditional print textbook is changing to reflect technological innovation and (or sometimes in spite of) student preferences.  Each volume is published annually in two parts: the first each February, reflecting surveys completed the previous fall, and the second each July, reflecting surveys completed in the spring.

Nadine Vassallo, Project Manager, Research & Information said, “Today's students are becoming increasingly flexible about their course materials selections, and more open to new product innovations than ever before. BISG's Student Attitudes survey provides the data, analysis, and guidance publishers need to anticipate challenges and identify emerging opportunities in the higher ed space."

New findings from Volume 4, Report 1, include the following major shifts in content use trends:

·        From October 2010 to October 2013, the percentage of students who report that their courses require “no formal course materials” increased from 4% to 11%. This change in perception suggests students are becoming more flexible about what they consider “required,” and increasingly substitute alternative materials for those assigned by faculty – or avoiding purchase altogether.

·        Required content as reported by students continues to evolve away from one or more core textbooks toward new digital alternatives, although open educational resources have yet have to show an impact.

·        Despite low sales numbers, interest in tablet versions of textbooks is quite strong, especially among students who have already purchased an e-book. Students prefer tablet versions of textbooks over PDF replicas or even print textbooks, assuming at least a 25% lower cost. This finding supports other research suggesting students' willingness to adopt digital formats increases significantly with exposure.

·        Some 17% of students reported renting textbooks for their courses. This is down slightly from almost 19% last spring. In October 2013, about 75% of respondents reported they were either somewhat or very satisfied with their rental experience.

For the first time, the Student Attitudes survey was supplemented by interviews with higher education administrators from leading institutions including the University of Kentucky, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University System of Ohio. This panel of was asked to comment on some of the key strategies, issues, and opportunities they face as instructional technologies continue to evolve for a more contextual analysis of the trends in content delivery.

The report, available as dynamic online access via Real-Time Reporting* or as broad stand-alone PDF summary reports, provides practical guidance to companies working to refine their business strategies and better serve an ever-changing higher education marketplace.  More information is available here.

Student Attitudes toward Content in Higher Education was prepared by the Book Industry Study Group, Inc., with reporting and editorial content by Steve Paxhia and John Parsons. Portions of this information were provided by Nielsen Books & Consumers and used with permission of the Nielsen Company.

Judge Chin Decides and Everybody Wins

About eight years ago I was one of the group at the Association of American Publishers that voted to file suit against Google for the unauthorized copying of upwards of 10million books (and other bound stuff) from the collection of five large academic libraries.  It wasn't long after the vote that I wished I had missed the meeting.

If nothing else, the passage of time since that suit was filed has proven that Google's activities were not the real enemy.  Google wanted to expose content locked away on shelves (off the network) to the same readers, researchers and other content users that the very same publishers were interested in selling to.  The risk publishers anticipated - that all content would be devalued and royalties due publishers would be circumvented - looks with hindsight to have been a red hearing.  The real problem for publishers with respect to the value of intellectual property quickly became apparent from the more obvious culprit: Amazon.com, which has successfully fought off the publishers, Apple, Google and everyone else and has won the battle over value.  After eight years, the (maybe) final end to the Google Books legal wrangle is a side show to the very real problems publishers have regarding their business models.

In ruling that the scanning program at Google was indeed fair use (and so emphatically that you have to wonder what took the guy so long) we may see some new products come out of this content library.  For example, I wrote of a subscription database product that Google could launch, others have spoken about the analysis of language, semiotics and culture that could be facilitated by this database and there will no doubt be other products.  What should be clear, is that access this ruling enables will enhance our knowledge and understanding about the content itself and the evolution of the printed word.  The next eight years might actually result in something useful.

There are four tests for fair use and Judge Chin as ruled as follows on these:

On purpose and character of use:

Google's use of the copyrighted works is highly transformative. Google Books digitizes books and transforms expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars, researchers, and others find books. Google Books has become an important tool for libraries and librarians and cite-checkers as it helps to identify and find books. The use of book text to facilitate search through the display of snippets is transformative.

On the 'nature of the copyrighted work':

While works of fiction are entitled to greater copyright protection, Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207, 237 (1990), here the vast majority of the books in Google Books are non-fiction. Further, the books at issue are published and available to the public. These considerations favor a finding of fair use.

On the "amount and substantiality of the portion used":

Google limits the amount of text it displays in response to a search.

Lastly, on the "effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work":

...a reasonable factfinder could only find that Google Books enhances the sales of books to the benefit of copyright holders. An important factor in the success of an individual title is whether it is discovered -- whether potential readers learn of its existence. (Harris Decl. ¶ 7 (Doc. No. 1039)). Google Books provides a way for authors' works to become noticed, much like traditional in-store book displays.

In his concluding comments the Judge states:

In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books. It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits.

The wider relevancy of this opinion on fair use may well extend the law and could result in implications for other media and content businesses.

The Death of the Copyright Agency

The combined impacts of technology, legislation and judicial decisions on copyright licensing are beginning to show how rights licensing agencies are likely to face a difficult time extending their current business models in the future. In Canada, Access Copyright (AC) has struggled to impose a new pricing model on universities which accords a high per student fee for unlimited access for publisher content covered by an Access Copyright agreement. Since AC imposed their new model about two years ago, the agency has lost out in court over the concept of ‘fair dealing’, with the practical impact being, that universities are now requesting significant revision to their AC agreements. Led by the University of Toronto which has refused to renew their current agreement, academic libraries in Canada believe that their content rights under the court’s interpretation of ‘fair dealing’ are already broad based and that the universities do not require a license anywhere as expensive (and potentially limiting) as the license imposed by CA. As a result of these interpretations it is a widely held belief that CA faces a very difficult future given their main revenue model has been significantly undercut by the courts.

For an interesting review of the legal situation in Canada here is a quote from an interview with Prof Ariel Katz, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto:

So does Access Copyright still have a role to play with universities?

It’s not clear at all. For one thing, it’s not that Access Copyright offers a very generous license. Even though it’s now well established that fair dealing could have a generous application in education, fair dealing doesn’t cover everything, it’s not a carte blanche that allows the free copying of everything. Therefore, educational institutions may still need licenses for activities that go beyond the scope of fair dealing, and they have always been willing to pay a lot of money for such licenses. The problem is that Access Copyright’s licenses do not offer a generous license at all. In fact, the licenses they offer are very restrictive – you can copy no more than 10% of a work or a chapter from a book, and this permission comes not only with payments but also with many strings attached. In fact, many believe that what AC offers for a fee would very likely be considered fair dealing anyway.

Are there any universities still subscribing now?

Yes. About half of Canadian universities (outside Quebec, which has its own collective) are still licensees of AC. U of T and Western were the first to sign new licenses outside of the Copyright Board proceeding tariff, but to their credit they signed a short term license, which expires by the end of this year. Both of them announced that they would not renew it, but invited AC to negotiate a new license on more favorable terms. It’s still unknown whether AC can or will be willing to offer something that would be worth paying for.

Technology is also enabling a shift away from permissions based commerce as more and more content is made available via publisher’s electronic platforms. As these platforms become more sophisticated and comprehensive (as well as easy to use), libraries are able to provide immediate access to content for their academic patrons as part of their base subscriptions. Content on these platforms is then integrated into course management systems and other similar distribution vehicles directly to students. Where in the past fees for this use needed to be negotiated (and the content retrieved), we are increasingly seeing ‘all you can eat models’ which include course pack use, researcher access and on/off campus access to name only a few of the options. Where publishers include these additional rights in their platform agreements, they enable a more functional site for users and will potentially begin to reduce the amount of content fees generated by collecting agencies such as copyright clearance center (CCC) and others.

In the US, CCC is a more-broad based collecting agency with less reliance on the educational segment and the blanket license approach followed by the UK, Canada and elsewhere has not been widely adopted by US academic institutions. In the US, the impact of technology as described above is likely to eat away progressively at their model as publishers place more of their content in easily accessible locations. That said, CCC is unlikely to face the issues that AC and the UK and Australian agencies are currently facing.

In Australia, as documented by fellow traveler Peter Donoughue, similar issues surround the interpretation of ‘fair dealing’ and the elimination in Australia of the so-called statutory license governing academic use of publisher content. As Peter states:

The next five or so years will see most educational publishers sign tailored subscription-based licenses with tertiary institutions and premium school customers. They will have the option of using newly developed Copyright Agency voluntary licenses for the rest if that makes sense.

Under these emerging business models publishers will have the freedom to offer comprehensive content offerings - primarily digital but inclusive of print. And the schools will demand liberal free use provisions as part of the deal, particularly involving content distribution in the classroom. Remunerable 'multiple copying' will be a thing of the past and the concept itself deemed quaint.

Such arrangements are the mainstream future. As content goes digital, primary exploitations (formerly sales of books) and subsidiary 'bits and pieces' (eg photocopying) will collapse into comprehensive content offerings via licenses.

Peter does believe the Australia copyright agency (CAL) will be able to support a business in this new environment; however, he does note that pending legislation in Australia may halve the amounts collected under the current permissions based program. With much less money to go around it will create a challenging environment for any agency like CAL.

Earlier this month I attended a user group meeting for the library permissions tool “Heron” which is one of my Publishing Technology business units. Heron helps libraries manage their permissions reporting obligations to Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) using PubTracker. Pubtracker is a simple tool which saves libraries days’ worth of time each month to compile content usage. At this meeting, there was a lot of discussion about the new CLA universal license which had recently been negotiated and agreed between CLA and academic libraries. Here the issue was less with the model and more about what was ultimately covered by this agreement. The view of most of the librarians in attendance was that CLA had misled the group with respect to the extent of content covered by the agreement. Indeed, most librarians believe the content covered was significantly less than the prior agreement with specific reductions in access to US based content. Some librarians were contemplating not signing this new agreement.

The UK Librarians were most angry about the impact the new limitations would have on their roles on campus. One librarian stated that they’ve been focused on educating lecturers about the appropriate use of content and to seek the right authorizations however; with the new CLA license they would be stuck trying to explain to a lecturer why last year authorization was available but this year it wasn’t (or was much harder to gain). They felt this would lead to more disobedience by lecturers. The crux of the issue is that US content may not be covered by the new CLA license and UK librarians will be forced to go directly to US publishers which almost by definition is a more cumbersome and frustrating process.

By far the most difficult situation is being faced by the Canadian Access Copyright office which has already downsized and faces stiff opposition from it’s’ user community. Other licensing agencies also face challenges related to technology advancement, legislation and judicial challenges, and as more and more content becomes digitally available, all these agencies will need to undergo comprehensive change in order to maintain their role and relevance.  Whether the experience of AC is a trend setter is an open question but there is certain to be much more on this subject over the coming years.

Content Cashier

Buying content is way too cumbersome.  I don't mean the Amazon 1click buy but rather the individual article or chapter you might want to read.  We are seeing how video and audio (Netflix On Demand and iTunes for example) are morphing into single transaction type activities and this should happen for print.  Eliminating all impediments to the efficient sale or transaction of content should be the objective of any content owner yet with all the investment in online retail, publishing processes and efficient supply chains, the media industry has simply transferred the old models to the online world.  Outside of complete books, content is still very hard to transact on.

But there is a simple fix: I've long thought that content should carry with it a 'cash register' which would allow immediate purchase, rent or access (based on user rights).   I'll admit that metadata is not the industry's strong point but part of the reason metadata in media is generally so abysmal is that there is too much distance between the metadata owner and the transaction.  Tighten that space to where there's no difference and you'll see metadata improve fast.

Let's say a publisher wants to make a book chapter salable.  "Content Cashier" (TM pending) will provide the prospective buyer with a price for the type of transaction they want such as buy, rent, etc.  If they have a profile with "Content Cashier" this transaction will occur in the background with a simple acknowledgement (yes/no) that the customer wants to continue.  If not, the user will be able to pay via some other method (Paypal, Amazon) in less than 60seconds.

Publishers would attach their terms of use and pricing within a very simple framework - little different than if you were in a physical bookstore.  The bookstore experience assumes many things notably if you buy a book you are going to transact at the register and walk out with it.  "Content Cashier" will also take certain assumptions for granted about the transaction and the customer to simplify the pricing and the transaction itself.  In our model the publisher will pick up more than 95% of the value of the transaction (we haven't decided yet), but there is no reason why standard retailer discounts, commissions and other fees should apply when we've eliminated all the inefficiencies in the supply chain to shorten the gap between content and the buyer.

Other tools will allow a publisher to create collections and retail 'pop-up' storefronts that maximize their opportunities to reach out directly to customers.  The real benefit however will be that "Content Cashier" travels with the content so that at any time - meaning when the content is out of the control of the publisher - a transaction can be executed.  Pass a link via email, find the article in a database, or list the item on a course outline or LMS, no problem; "Content Cashier" will let the user pay for that content instantly.  When this type of instant transaction can be facilitated at the point of need publishers will begin to improve their metadata, simplify their pricing and engage in experiments with their customers to maximize their revenues.

Providing "Content Cashier" information on your content is likely to enable new business opportunities for new market entrants who want to use content as a component of a product with many more unique additional features and services they have developed.  Enabling these new models becomes far easier when a set of simple terms and conditions travels along with the content.  There are any number of new platforms, store ideas, collaborations, services and tools and these increase by the day.  Many are spurious, some are stupid but occasionally a really new idea will come along.  Since many of these new ideas fight for your attention and time why not make it easy for them, stop the guessing game and start to manage your retail opportunities in at proactive way.   That's what "Content Cashier" is all about.

Pew Report: Libraries 2020

This presentation was made in June 2012. The conclusions are very much towards the end of the presentation regarding the role of the librarian and the expected needs of the library user.  The author uses some research data on use of the library, reading accessibility and mobile penetration to extrapolate the changes that may be engendered.

Libraries 2020: Imagining the library of the (not too distant) future from Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project

In RE Books: Conference on law and the future of Books

I'll be going to this on Friday and Saturday.  It may already be full but looks interesting from New York Law School.  More details HERE:

Frankfurt: Selections from the Show Dailies

Highlights from the show Dailies:

PW Show Daily October 10th:

Interview with James Daunt of Waterstones (Page 12)

So is Daunt’s new boss happy with the way things are going? The Managing Director in whose steady hands so much rests points out that Alexander Mamut, a long-time customer of Daunt Books, lives in Moscow and isn’t here that much, but yes, he’s pleased. Was it a big decision to step back from the chain he founded and had so lovingly created to take on the nightmare that was Waterstones? He turns slightly mischievous. “Waterstones was about to disappear and I don’t think that was going to be great for the British book trade. I’m not sure how Daunt Books was going to survive in that environment. Random House doesn’t run a warehouse to supply the likes of Daunts; it’s to supply Waterstones. Where would we have been a year on from there being no Waterstones? I don’t know.” A thought bubble seems to hang over Daunt’s head. “Waterstones not being there was going to be extremely damaging to our ecosystem. A world of supermarkets and online would have been a pretty bleak one. Independents would have found it very hard to carry on. The writing was on the wall for a very long time. Somebody had to do something.”

Doug Wright on the Future of Content Delivery (Page 34):

Professional networks are increasingly being used to provide services that give real value to the community and improve engagement, alongside content delivery. Examples of this credentialed, peer-to-peer approach include the Researcher Exchange from GSE Research. It has the facility for members to comment on journal content via the open peer-review model or to ask questions of their peers ;and it enables corporations to find expert consultants, and authors to find collaborators, via a sophisticated author search whereby a user can pinpoint experts within a particular field within a particular organisation

Cory Doctorow urges publishers to support ideas such as the Humble eBook Bundle (Page 38)

Yet, one of the biggest surprises to me in curating the HumbleEbook Bundle has been some publishers’ unwillingness to experiment with just one or two DRM-free titles in a new kind of promotion that carries a proven track record of success in a related field.I understand the industry is concerned that the perceived value of an ebook is a matter of credit and psychology, and that no one among the Big Six American houses wants the “fair price” for an ebook to drop. But I also don’t think they can do much about this: there are, by orders of magnitude, more amateur and independent ebooks entering the marketplace than the Big Six produce, and many of them are at low price points. At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundles have a record of enticing people to pay more, on average, than they would pay for the unbundled items. Sure, some people pay nothing. But why not experiment? Isn’t the idea of a successful business to make as much profit as possible; not as much profit as possible from each separate customer

PW Show Daily October 11th:

Michael Bhaskar: Working Together - Digitally (Page 8)

Here’s the rub. Digital is difficult and expensive. Simply to compete with all the other digital media producers out there means constantly raising the bar. We are in a kind of functionality and design arms race, where coming out with what wowed people last week bores them the next. You have to constantly push the envelope and you have to do this in a blizzard of competition in an environment of colossal risk, where abject failure is worryingly common. You are dealing with high upfront costs, at best uncertain demand, unstable, usually low pricing necessitating a high volume of sales and much control ceded to giant technology corporations. Yes, it’s like books–only more so.

Nikko Pfund - A Billion Dollar Process (Page 10):

PW:
Speaking of OSO, you’ve now expanded it into University PressScholarship Online (UPSO), and inked deals with publishers, including major presses such as California and Chicago. What is it like to be sharing your platform with publishers who are technically competitors?
NP:
It has been far more natural and uncomplicated than we’d dared hope. It helps that t he university press world is one of mutual support and commonality of purpose. Ultimately, I think the benefits to the scholarly and the university press community–in terms of access, learning, collaborating with other mission-driven not-for-profits, and tackling some challenges together as a community–far outweigh any competitive advantages that may be derived from our platform. So I don’t fret about the competitive aspect of UPSO at all. Technology is important, but university presses have strong personalities

Making Copyright Work in a Digital Age (Page 22)

The aim of the LCC is that through interoperability, the use of existing open standards (such as the International Standard Text Identifier and the International Standard Name Identifier , and commonality in the area of rights management, to produce a cross-media framework for a standards-based communications infra-structure that will enable businesses and individuals to man-age and communicate their rights more effectively online. The idea is for an automated rights clearance system in which content from all sectors is tagged and can be identified with a single click. The system would then allow users to request permission for specific uses and access the appropriate licences.

Open Access or Open Season (Page 46)

The burning question for publishers is how this greater open access might be achieved without causing the collapse of the publishing industry. One of the options considered by the Finch committee was the mandatory across-the-board introduction of the Green Delayed Access model after a six-month embargo, regardless of the discipline served by the journal or its estimated half-life. The Publishers Association and the Association of Learned, Professional and Society Publishers together commissioned a piece of work to try to ascertain what the likely effect of this would be on academic journals subscriptions (available at www.publishingresearch.net); its headline findings are displayed in the graphs.

PW Show Daily October 12:

Prepare for the Subscription Economy (Page 28)

We talk about data a lot in publishing: “Data is the New Oil” was the mantra of the BICNew Trends Summer Seminar in London. But when print publishers talk about data, theyare talking about product data: metadata. And metadata is crucial to the supply chain. But what we have missed is that when t he rest of the world talks about data, they are talking about “big data”: personal data, customer data, usage data, transactional data etc. They are talking about using data to reach and be relevant to individuals. We need to wake up to this; and when we do we are going to wake up to an unholy mess in our back offices. We already find it difficult enough to use data well at re-seller level (not customer or use level) let alone monetizing on a use basis (unless it is via an aggregator saving us the pain of ever getting to grips with new transactional business models). And it is this that makes Zuora (used by Pearson, by the way) so fascinating to me. They have understood that the internet has changed the whole context and therefore the fundamental basis of commercial transactions.

Publishing Perspectives:

E-Books Offer Silver Lining for Australians:

And all this despite the Fifty Shades of Grey dividend: the three books in the trilogy have sold 2 million copies this year, or over 5% of all sales. Without E. L. James’ enlivening of Australian marital life, volume sales would have been down by over 15%.
Two tough years back-to-back has created casualties. Last month, one of Australia’s hitherto most dynamic trade publishers, Murdoch Books, finally gave up the fight and has been bought by the largest local publisher, Allen & Unwin, with a large number of jobs lost. Specialist R&R Publications has gone into liquidation, and Melbourne University Publishing posted a $2.1 million loss. Sales forces and lists are being trimmed, while one of Australia’s two remaining book printers, OPUS Group (which missed out on printing Fifty Shades), is also downsizing after posting large losses. Adding to the gloom, major educational bookseller Education Works has gone into liquidation following an unsuccessful brush with venture capitalism.

IPA’s Global Ranking of Publishing Markets—US, China on Top

B&N in Frankfurt: We Come in Peace

Why no B&N branding? Because their team was there representing an entirely new company, Nook Media, armed with $300 million from Microsoft and another $305 million committed over the next several years.
“Microsoft?” you say, “I thought they were dead, doomed to second-tier status by Apple.” Yes, well, as we noted last week, users of Microsoft devices are the most active buyers of book content on mobile devices, so it would make sense that they would invest in the book business (after, it must be noted, killing off their own book digitization project several years ago).

Not for Nothing - PW and Publishing Perspectives make it purposefully difficult to collect, cite and link to this content. Well done!