MediaWeek (Vol 14, No 8) Pearson Sues Chegg, B&N goes COVID Book Crazy, UK Copyright, Open Access Policies + More

Pearson plc is suing Chegg for Copyright Infringement over test packs. (CourtListener)

As part of Pearson’s focus on pedagogy, Pearson and its authors devote significant creative effort to develop effective, imaginative, and engaging questions to include in the textbooks it publishes. Pearson’s end-of-chapter questions are strategically designed and carefully calibrated to reinforce key concepts taught in the textbooks, test students’ comprehension of these issues, enhance students’ problem-solving skills, and, ultimately, improve students’ understanding of the subject matter. Pearson’s textbooks can contain hundreds or thousands of end-of-chapter questions. These end-of-chapter questions form core components of the teaching materials contained in Pearson textbooks and are frequently hallmarks of Pearson titles. As such, the availability, quality, and utility of these questions are often important considerations when educators select which textbooks to adopt for their courses.

Barnes & Noble has done well during COVID.  News reports suggest double digit growth unseen 'since before Amazon (NYPost)

Industrywide, US sales of books are up 12 percent so far this year through August compared to the same period a year ago —  and up 20 percent from 2019 over the same time period, according NPD Group, a market research company. CEO James Daunt says B&N sales have risen 6 percent since 2019.Jon Enoch Photography

“Double-digit growth in books has not happened since Amazon came along,” Barnes & Noble Chief Executive James Daunt told The Post in an interview. 

Those kinds of numbers are encouraging for Elliott, a fund known for taking big positions in public companies and agitating for change: In this case, it bought B&N whole as a fixer-upper. A source familiar with the matter says Elliott is about halfway through its plan that would eventually spin the bookseller back onto the public markets — or sell it to another private buyer.

Guardian Opinion on proposed changes to UK copyright law: 

It might sound like good news for book lovers too, but only in the short term. While books might become a bit cheaper, the long-term loss for readers has the potential to far overshadow the gain. “The loss of revenue will make publishers more risk-averse and close down access for new work,” Hilary Mantel has warned, with knock-on effects including cramping the innovation that feeds our film and TV industries.

Researchers and publishers respond to new UK open-access policy (Physics World)

IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, broadly welcomes the UKRI’s new open-access policy, which it says “aligns with our mis­sion to expand physics globally”. However, it thinks that the require­ment for researchers to deposit the final version of a manuscript in a repository under no embargo will be “harmful to the significant OA pro­gress already made”. “This approach cannot form the basis for an econom­ically viable publishing model for physics journals seeking to maintain the highest standards of peer review and publication.”

That view is echoed by the Inter­national Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), which says it is “deeply con­cerned” that the UKRI policy gives equivalent status to the “subscrip­tion-tied accepted manuscript and the full OA publication of the version of record”. This, the STM says, could “jeopardize the continued progress of the open-access publishing tran­sition by enabling an entirely unsus­tainable route”. The STM urges the UKRI board to “carefully consider these issues”.

 An App called Libby (New Yorker)

The sudden shift to e-books had enormous practical and financial implications, not only for OverDrive but for public libraries across the country. Libraries can buy print books in bulk from any seller that they choose, and, thanks to a legal principle called the first-sale doctrine, they have the right to lend those books to any number of readers free of charge. But the first-sale doctrine does not apply to digital content. For the most part, publishers do not sell their e-books or audiobooks to libraries—they sell digital distribution rights to third-party venders, such as OverDrive, and people like Steve Potash sell lending rights to libraries. These rights often have an expiration date, and they make library e-books “a lot more expensive, in general, than print books,” Michelle Jeske, who oversees Denver’s public-library system, told me. Digital content gives publishers more power over prices, because it allows them to treat libraries differently than they treat other kinds of buyers. Last year, the Denver Public Library increased its digital checkouts by more than sixty per cent, to 2.3 million, and spent about a third of its collections budget on digital content, up from twenty per cent the year before.

 Wuthering fights! Will this priceless book collection be preserved or broken up at auction? (Stephan Fry -Airmail)

The story in brief: over their lifetimes, a pair of childless, mid–19th century North Country millowner brothers named William and Alfred Law assembled, with knowledge and discernment, a private collection of books and manuscripts. This library passed to successive descendants for a century, neither supplemented, catalogued, nor open to visitation by academics or enthusiasts—save on a few occasions which served only to enhance the legend of the collection’s existence. And now the entirety is for sale at Sotheby’s in London.

Very little is known about the Laws, but their taste and judgment give the lie to that snooty stereotype—vented if not invented by Dickens in Hard Times—of the hard-nosed industrialist for whom art and books are nowt but fancy folderols for fops and fools.

Barnes & Noble Education Financial Results (Edgar)

•  Versus same period last year: Revenues up $40mm and Net Income flat on higher selling and admin costs
  

 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Financial results (Edgar)

• Revenues up 30% for same quarter in 2020
• Significant improvement in Net Income
• Gain on sale of trade business $218mm 

Wiley Financial Results (Edgar)

 

 

Publishing Technology Report 2021 - Insight into software and services companies supporting publishers and content owners. 

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

 

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

Textbook Class Action Case versus Publishers and Booksellers

A six person Chicago law firm which engages in class action and personal injury cases has taken on the education publishing industry over the relatively new "inclusive access" programs which provide day one access of educational materials for students.

According to FeganScott’s managing partner Beth Fegan, who is representing the students, the agreements require students to obtain their required course materials from an “Inclusive Access” program by paying full-price for a digital access code from their official on-campus bookstore. When the semester ends, students lose access to the textbook, eliminating the possibility to resell to secondary purchasers.

“Textbooks have always been a major expense for college students, but for most, the free market allowed them to purchase or resell used textbooks to blunt the cost,” Fegan said. “These agreements rob students of that option, forcing them to play by the rules set by publishers and bookstores.”

Press release

MediaWeek (Vol 13, No 5): Pandemic Books, Hate Publishing on Amazon, College Returns?

I pulled together a quick list of pandemic books a few weeks ago and here is a CNN article about a rejected book (by publishers) which is now getting a lot of attention from the market

A pandemic thriller, once rejected by publishers for being unrealistic, is now getting a wide release (Amazon).

The book, which was rejected by publishers at the time for being too unrealistic, was finally published on Thursday. The thriller is set in London, the epicenter of a global pandemic that forces officials to institute a lockdown. The story isn't entirely based on May's imagination. He used British and US pandemic preparedness documents from 2002 to make it was as realistic as possible. (CNN)

On Amazon and how they don't police hate publishing from their outlets:

Propublica: The Hate Store: Amazon’s Self-Publishing Arm Is a Haven for White Supremacists.

“Kindle will publish anything,” a third user chimed in. They were basically right. It takes just a couple of minutes to upload one’s work to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon’s self-publishing arm; the e-book then shows up in the world’s largest bookstore within half a day, typically with minimal oversight. Since its founding more than a decade ago, KDP has democratized the publishing industry and earned praise for giving authors shut out of traditional channels the chance to reach an audience that would have been previously unimaginable.

A crazy political 'dirty tricks' effort in Australia where a high ranking advisor to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pirated the unpublished biography of the prior Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (Guardian)

Some of the biggest names in politics will be drawn into the controversy over pirating of Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography after his publisher reached a settlement on the issue.  On Tuesday evening Hardie Grant reached a settlement with Scott Morrison’s adviser Nico Louw over claims he distributed unauthorised copies of Turnbull’s book, A Bigger Picture, before its formal release on Monday.
“An undisclosed sum was settled for and he’s given us where he got [the digital copy] from and where it went to,” the chief executive of the publishing house, Sandy Grant, told Guardian Australia Wednesday.

Also from Australia a state of the market from The Guardian

Interesting effort by Digiday to offer services to publishers challenged by todays events.

Joint announcement by the ABA, AAP and Authors Guild urging readers to help save bookstores:

“Sadly, after a decade of recovery and growth that affirmed the importance of reading, writing, and publishing, bookstores are suddenly facing a moment of monumental crisis at the hands of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the three women write. “In some instances, these beloved institutions, which mean so much to so many communities, face the very real possibility that they will never open their doors again.
“We cannot let this happen because we need bookstores now more than ever. As award-winning poet and writer Jen Campbell wrote in her book The Bookshop Book, ‘Bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.’”

PEN America sends a letter to demand an end to access fees for eBooks in Prisons:

We, the undersigned, are a coalition of groups and individuals concerned with the rights and dignity of incarcerated people, as well as with their access to reading materials alongside other sources of information and recreation. We write to ask that you waive your fees for incarcerated people to access digital content on your tablets during this pandemic. 
As we speak, millions of Americans are confined to their homes in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. Yet, they have a multitude of options to continue to engage with the outside world through educational and recreational access to information. In fact, several major companies that offer digital content–like Audible, JSTOR, and Cengage–have taken steps to make more of their content freely available during the pandemic, to help lessen the burden of isolation on readers.

Schools around the world are coming to the realization that things will never be the same:
From WAPO:

College students want answers about fall, but schools may not have them for months

From SMH:

Australia's school system will be forever changed and possibly improved by what we learn from the COVID-19 closures. Parents will develop a renewed appreciation for the critical role of teachers, and outdated educational practices will be questioned.
Worldwide, there will be a rethink of education when we come out the other side. We may discover through this process that there are other ways to better engage children and develop more attractive styles of learning in this technological age.

Do schools really need to operate from nine to three for 200 set days of the year? Do we still need to rely on the HSC as the major way of credentialing students for future pathways? I think this crisis will force us to think differently.

Flipboard Magazine

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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

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

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

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

Open Access Mega-journals Losing Momentum:

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

Online bookstore to benefit Independents:

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

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

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

 

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

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

PND: Pearson's Future of Education (2012)

PND: Pearson's Blue Sky Project (2012) 

PND: Open Education Resources Gain (2018)

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

View my Flipboard Magazine.

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

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

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hummm, The radical transformation of the textbook (Wired)

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

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

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

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


Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

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

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

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

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports 

 

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

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

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

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

...

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

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

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

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

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

Seoul, Korea: Book store

My email newsletter is here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles on my flipboard magazine:

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

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

PND: A Stab in the Dark

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Esquire, Bennington College has some literary chops:

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

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

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

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

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

And the counter discussion: Keeping with print:

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

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


Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

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

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more articles on my Flipboard magazine:

*******

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

PND: Digital Transformation: A Seminar for Management

PND: Blockchain for Publishers

PND: Technology News

PND: The Price is Right for Cengage  

PND: The Opportunity in 200MM Students

PND: Mediaweek Reports

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