Novice Monks on a Boat, Bangkok

Novice Monks on a Boat - Chao Phaya, Bangkok 2001

It's all hustle and bustle on this river that flows through Bangkok and there are all manner of ferries and passenger boats chis-crossing the river in all directions. It's certainly not uncommon to be on one of these ferries standing next to one or a group of these young men wrapped in their golden robes while you both admire the intense activity all around you.

Most boys receive religious education in Thailand and when they turn 20 they are eligible for ordination. Temporary ordination is the norm among Thai Buddhists, and most young men traditionally ordain for the term of a single rainy season and then return to lay life and go on to marry and raise a family.

Originally posted December 9, 2011

Milan Cathedral 1961

Milan Cathedral August 1961

The PND seniors went to Milan and Florence for their honeymoon and this is one of the images from that trip.  Unfortunately, when I visited Milan in 2004 I didn't know this image existed in our archive otherwise I would have my own more recent image.  However, if memory serves from that trip the building is now far cleaner and the area in front of the cathedral is less like a bus depot and more like a pedestrian precinct.

Originally posted December 16, 2011

MediaWeek (Vol 5, N 38): Career & For Profit Education, Saylor's Free Content, Google Ed Software + More

If employers won't value for profit education what's the prospect? (WaPo):

Education researchers have actually conducted a number of studies about this. As of a few years ago, the findings were pretty bleak for the industry. A literature review in 2009 found that ”all scholarly research to date has concluded that the ‘gatekeepers’ [human resources managers, executives, etc.] have an overall negative perception about online degrees.” But online teaching has gotten a lot better in the past three years, and the results are starting to show up on surveys of employers. One study found that half of executives viewed MBAs earned online as no different from ones earned in person. That’s still substantial stigma, though. If half of employers don’t think your degree is worth as much as those of other people applying for the same position, that’s not a great position to be in.

Can on-line higher education be free? Saylor Foundation thinks it can (IHeD)

This fall will be Saylor’s launch, for all practical purposes. Although the foundation has gotten some notice among higher-education reformers, the fleshed-out majors make the concept tangible. Based in a sleek but noisy office in the Washington's ritzy Georgetown neighborhood, the foundation’s 20- and 30-something employees are working with faculty members to put the finishing touches on courses.

Angela Bowie is one of those faculty members. Based in Philadelphia, Bowie has worked as a lobbyist and teaches political science and history, mostly at community colleges or regional public universities. She saw a job ad for Saylor, and tossed her hat in the ring. Bowie said the foundation put her through the wringer, asking for information on every course she’d taught over the last decade.

“They did a very thorough vetting,” Bowie said. “More than any other college I’ve ever worked for.”

Saylor has a training program for faculty members, which Bowie also described as thorough. In particular, she praised the foundation’s focus on learning outcomes. Saylor's faculty are paid on an hourly basis, a foundation official said. And Saylor is a side gig for most, who work as professors or adjuncts at traditional universities.

Google unveils an open source education software (PC):

"The Course Builder open source project is an experimental early step for us in the world of online education," Norvig said. "It is a snapshot of an approach we found useful and an indication of our future direction. We hope to continue development along these lines, but we wanted to make this limited code base available now, to see what early adopters will do with it, and to explore the future of learning technology."

In addition to offering a new platform for empowering educators, the effort is also a unique opportunity to connect with Google's research team. Over the course of the next two weeks Google plans to directly interact with Course Builder users via Google Hangouts. The Course Builder support site is already live and the free software download has already received its first update. For those unsure about their level of skill as it relates to the possible use of the software, Google's Course Builder Checklist offers a reassuring primer on exactly what to expect and how to get started.

Peter Osnos in The Atlantic on the Cruel Paradox of Self-Publishing (Atlantic):

And therein is the essential fact about self-publishing: Digital and print-on-demand technology has made the manufacture of books and their distribution through the Internet vastly more accessible than the traditional publishing model. But for every instance of a self-published work that gains meaningful traction because its author succeeds in finding an audience for it, the overwhelming majority of books do not. There is a menu of services available from companies like Author Solutions, including editing, design, and basic marketing that can cost up to about $5,000 and will give the book a qualitative boost. But with so many books pouring forth, gaining any attention is a formidable challenge. In its sale announcement, Author Solutions said Bowker Market Research, which is a primary source for how many books are published, reported that 211,000 self-published titles were released in 2011 in print or e-books, an increase of almost 60 percent over 2010. Presumably, that number will grow substantially again by the end of 2012.

Very few books that come from self-publishing companies end up on the shelves of bookshops, but as the percentage of the brick and mortar market gradually declines, the attractions of selling through online retailers and other e-book distributors grows. Amazon, covering all bases, has a thriving self-publishing business and now is also an acquirer of books by established authors.

From Twitter this week:

Chart: Top 100 iPad Rollouts by Enterprises & Schools (Updated Sept. 15, 2012) ZDNet
Today's is the best Doonesbury ever (and education related): Doonesbury

Segmenting Publishing Strategy

A re-post originally from November 9, 2009:

There is a self-publishing conference in NYC this weekend which reminded me of a project I worked on several years ago. After reading an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review about defining a company's corporate strategy, I decided to use the ideas in the article to spur discussion about my client's strategy. The HBS article Charting Your Company's Future is available from the HBS site and is summarized as follows:

Few companies have a clear strategic vision. The problem, say the authors, stems from the strategic-planning process itself, which usually involves preparing a large document, culled from a mishmash of data provided by people with conflicting agendas. That kind of process almost guarantees an unfocused strategy. Instead, companies should design the strategic-planning process by drawing a picture: a strategy canvas. A strategy canvas shows the strategic profile of your industry by depicting the various factors that affect competition. And it shows the strategic profiles of your current and potential competitors as well as your own company's strategic profile--how it invests in the factors of competition and how it might in the future. The basic component of a strategy canvas--the value curve--is a tool the authors created in their consulting work and have written about in previous HBR articles. This article introduces a four-step process for actually drawing and discussing a strategy canvas. Readers will learn how one European financial services company used this process to create a distinct and easily communicable strategy.

The process begins with a visual awakening. Managers compare their business's value curve with competitors' to discover where their strategy needs to change. In the next step--visual exploration--managers do field research on customers and alternative products. At the visual strategy fair, the third step, managers draw new strategic profiles based on field observations and get feedback from customers and peers about these new proposals. Once the best strategy is created from that feedback, it's time for the last step--visual communication. Executives distribute "before" and "after" strategic profiles to the whole company, and only projects that will help move the company closer to the "after" profile are supported.

My client was a medium-sized publishing company in a rapidly growing market and we met to brainstorm about redefining the organization's business strategy. Using the HBR article as a guide, we constructed a set of 'straw-man' profiles describing our client base and key characteristics. Firstly, we constructed the following customer type segmentation as follows:

Publishing Segmentation

Professional nave either a track record of selling titles and/or have commercial interests, such as a seminar business, where the book is a component (but not the main source) of revenue. In the latter case, the author/publisher may be less concerned with the commercial success of the title but retain a strong desire to produce a quality published product in the traditional sense. This group is likely to understand the publishing business.

Amateurs may have significant misconceptions about the industry and their capacity to be successful. They will require significant education and (possibly) even motivation to complete their “product.” They may develop a personal relationship with the publisher rather than a business relationship and will become more demanding of time and effort than the Professional.

Non-Commercial versus Commercial could be a choice of the publisher as well as a representation of the commercial potential of the product. For example, to a "pragmatist", a book could be a 'give-away' that supports some other aspect of their business and is thus 'non-commercial' but to an amateur the book may be 'non-commercial' because it doesn't have a market. My client's customer base had expectations about the commercial merits of their products, which often, did not match reality and this was important for my client's management to recognize.

Most of our customers in the lower-left quadrant would place themselves much further to the right on the commercial spectrum than reality would dictate. We also recognized that placing customers into the lower right quadrant could not be planned with a degree of accuracy and depended on the willingness of the client to promote and market their title aggressively. Realistically, we felt it was next to impossible to anticipate success in this quadrant.

In the upper-right quadrant, we would most likely find established authors, professional speakers and back-in-print titles. (We didn't look at profitability in this exercise but that would be an obvious additional task).

We then selected a spectrum of key attributes that we believed the publisher's customers valued: Price, speed, contact, quality, control, product sales, community, education, ease of use, reputation. Using these attributes (which would be confirmed by research later), we attempted to plot how our customers in each quadrant valued each attribute. Importantly, we understood these drivers to be 'valued' differently by the customers in each quadrant.

The resulting chart for Pragmatists plotted for the client and one of their competitors looked like this:

The Pragmatist

Pragmatists: This draft profile suggests key areas of differentiation from one player to the other. The competitor (black line) operates at the top of the chart for the drivers that their customers view as critical and give low consideration (limit time and effort) on those that do not and which don't support their strategy. In my clients case, we believed customers valued education highly but we also knew this aspect of the business cost a lot to deliver.

The Dreamers

Dreamers:

We also looked at the 'dreamer' segment and chose a different competitor which had made a conscious decision to build sales volume with clients in that quadrant.

To support this strategy their revenue model was partially driven by unit sales (of the finished book), and they determined that many of their authors did not care about quality in the same way a traditional publisher/ author would. The competitor believed that ‘Dreamers’ were interested in receiving the end product as soon as possible.

In contrast, my client publisher sought to actively engage with the ‘dreamer’ to produce a better end product. Paradoxically, in the case of the competitor the ‘dreamer’ may remain blissfully ignorant but happy, while in the case of my client the customer may be dissatisfied because the process took longer, the interactions with staff were frustrating and the choices overwhelming. Same type of customer - "Dreamer" - but different approaches produce different customer experiences and expectations.

Strategy: As we discussed these 'straw-man' profiles we recognized that, for our business, there was a lot of revenue in delivering services to the lower left quadrant if we could get the business driver mix just right. Our challenge was to understand how to produce that revenue profitably. One obvious solution was to withdraw/eliminate costly services the author/customer is uninterested in. Over-delivering to this segment is pointless (which is a philosophy that one of our competitors practiced.)

We also recognized that classic business strategy suggests that companies endeavor to move their customers in the direction of the upper right quadrant. In the self-publishing market it would be virtually impossible to turn ‘Dreamers’ into ‘Moneyed’; however, it may be possible to move a small number into ‘lotto winners.’ The assumption would be that these authors have a product with a ‘hook’ that is somehow unique, and they are willing to work actively on the book to improve it and support it in the market. An added bonus would be one if the author was willing/able to publish additional titles. Rather than expend effort building marketing, promotion and editorial services (add-ons) for clients in the lower left, one potential strategy would be to expend this effort on the select titles/authors that showed promise in moving these titles/authors to the right along the commercial spectrum.

Using the framework we hashed out over an afternoon, our next step was to confirm the key customer drivers by segment (Professionals, Amateurs), to plot our position and our competitor's, and then identify our ideal profile. Once we defined this ideal profile, we would build a strategy focused on moving the company from the 'old' curve to the 'new' one.

In implementing this approach it is important to recognize that customers dictate and research is likely to identify a new driver and confirm that one or more suggested drivers are not important at all. Substitutions could occur and research should be tailored to uncovering these ‘unknown’ drivers not just confirming the ones the staff identifies.

Lastly, communicating the strategy internally is important and using a visual tool like this strategy map makes this easier. Once the ‘big-picture’ strategy is defined, then other tactical aspects of the strategy should be easier to define. This can be both a fun exercise and one critical to the future success of an organization.

Amazon The Monopoly

Re-post from March 28,2008

Trouble at Mill. Manufacturing of old had it that the mill owner owned the means of production and the mill workers toiled within an inch of their lives, lived in company barracks, spent scrip at the company store and if they had anything left they banked at the company bank. Amazon is a latter day mill owner. The company is attempting to tie their client/POD publishers to them to the exclusion of other relationships the client publishers may have through Amazon's web of administrative, financial, distribution and content tools. As a practical matter, it is becoming harder (and may be financially impossible for many small POD publishers) to maintain separate relationships with Amazon and all the rest of the publishing community.

The blog world is enraged at the moment over Amazon's new policy on POD. The company is effectively telling POD customers that if you want to sell your POD products via the Amazon store you need to be on our platform using our tools. If that means all your titles need to be converted then that's your problem. This is not a situation where these POD publishers can say 'I'll just go some place else'. Amazon has sucked them in because of all the wonderful tools they offer the publishers and of course the sales penetration. In announcing the Booksurge/ CreateSpace merge in August 2007, Amazon's senior v-p, North American retail, Jeff Wilke said, "The new CreateSpace Books on Demand service removes substantial economic barriers and makes it really easy for authors who want to self-publish their books and distribute them on Amazon.com." As it turns out this is true, but there are some significant caveats.

The Wall Street Journal was kind (and misleading) in its assessment of this Amazon initiative:

"Amazon.com Inc., flexing its muscles as a major book retailer, notified publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon's Web site. The move signals that Amazon is intent on using its position as the premier online bookseller to strengthen its presence in other phases of bookselling and manufacturing.

Amazon hasn't been merely a book retailer for some time. While many in the industry - PND included - can't help but have admiration for this company they have amassed a level of market influence across the publishing value chain that should concern everyone. Today, the issue is focused on a small (ardent and vocal) minority of POD publishers who's entire livelihood in many cases is dependent on the Amazon retail expanse. The WSJ should know better. Without being too dramatic, the release of Windows 3.1 heralded a period of intense exclusion at Microsoft: If you didn't play ball with them you essentially had no marketplace. Perhaps at first blush the publishing industry doesn't appear to have any correlation to the software world but with the migration to 'platform' based publishing (a publishing version of iTunes for example) we are seeing the germination of a world where there are only one or two legitimate channels to the consumer. If their actions in the POD world over these past two months are anything to go by then Amazon definitely has monopolistic tendencies.

New Model Army of Self-Publishers

News that Pearson has purchased the self-publishing roll-up Author House reminded me of this post from September 19, 2007 which I wrote just after Author House acquired iUniverse.com.  My thought this week was what took so long for a large established publisher to make this acquisition.

The news that Author House and iUniverse.com were merging was not entirely unexpected, but it is interesting to me that the publishing community basically ignored the event. While it was reported in Publisher’s Lunch and Publisher’s Weekly, the report in PW focused on the question of job cuts which may reflect a limited interest in the strategic ramifications this segment poses to mainstream publishers. Led by Lulu.com, this publishing segment is exploding and the last thing being considered will be job cuts. Just look at the capabilities on offer at Lulu. Author House and iUniverse complement each other: A number of years ago, iUniverse.com made the strategic choice to add an extensive selection of professional editorial services to their suite of services, which surpass the service offered by Author House (and others in the market). Tactically, I think the two companies will slot together like jigsaw pieces.

Random House has a relationship with Xlibris and is alone among the major publishing houses in building formal relationships with the self-publishing marketplace. I would expect other major publishers to jump into this space, in the short-term, through acquisition. The leverage these companies achieve over their technology, employees and fixed expenses, the processes they have established and the market they have built make these companies appealing. Ironically, there is a ‘democratization of access’ underway in publishing, which to date, most “publishers” have not participated in; but, this will change as traditional publishers look to the self-publisher market as a natural product extension.

In the case of Author House and iUniverse.com, they each produce over 5,000 titles per year with total staff of approximately 100. In terms of titles per month and titles per employee, they shame a traditional large publisher. Everyone will argue that the quality of the content produced by self-publishers is poor, but this is no more true than the statement that all content produced by traditional publishers is exemplary. How often has a traditional publisher invested significantly in a title’s success only to watch it sell 300 copies? For the self-publisher—with an author pays model, no inventory and no promotion expense—there is only upside if a title takes off unexpectedly (and sells 300 copies).

I am not suggesting that the self-publishing business model will be adopted anytime soon by a major publishing house, but there are lessons to be learned from the success that the self-publishing industry has built in the last 10 years. Enabling technology has produced this ‘democratization of access’ and, while it is hard to imagine that there is that much content to produce, the numbers prove the case. Lulu is producing 4,000 new titles per week for a total of 300,000 newly released titles, Author House has over 30,000 authors and 40,000 titles, and iUniverse says they have sold over 5mm books.

Amazon has invested in this area (B&N is getting out via iUniverse.com) and I see some convergence between the traditional publishing model and self-publishing. The content quality issue is irrelevant: Firstly because good content will always find its market and Secondly, because quality in the self-publishing segment depends not on the content but the service the author received. Get ready to see traditional publishers adopt some of the practices of the self-publishing industry.

Report on Library Publishing Services

An interesting report on the development of library publishing services was published in March (LINK)

Here is a description of the survey and report:

Over the past five years, libraries have begun to expand their role in the scholarly publishing value chain by offering a greater range of pre-publication and editorial support services. Given the rapid evolution of these services, there is a clear community need for practical guidance concerning the challenges and opportunities facing library-based publishing programs.

Recognizing that library publishing services represent one part of a complex ecology of scholarly communication, Purdue University Libraries, in collaboration with the Libraries of Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Utah, secured an IMLS National Leadership Grant under the title “Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success.” The project, conducted between October 2010 and September 2011, seeks to advance the professionalism of library-based publishing by identifying successful library publishing strategies and services, highlighting best practices, and recommending priorities for building capacity.

The project has four components: 1) a survey of librarians designed to provide an overview of current practice for library publishing programs (led by consultant October Ivins); 2) a report presenting best practice case studies of the publishing programs at the partner institutions (written by consultant Raym Crow); 3) a series of workshops held at each participating institution to present and discuss the findings of the survey and case studies; and 4) a review of the existing literature on library publishing services. The results of these research threads are pulled together in this project white paper.

There are several sets of recommendations and here is one set on developing best practices for library publishing:

• Develop meaningful impact metrics for library publishing services to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of library-based publishing programs and inform resource allocations.
• Establish editorial quality and performance criteria to increase the value and longevity of the publications that library programs support.
• Promote sustainability best practices to improve the long-term strength and stability of library publishing programs.
• Develop return-on-investment justifications for funding library publishing programs to support increased library budget allocations in support of such programs.

Several years ago (2007) I wrote a post asking why more libraries didn't have their own publishing programs and here is the link to that post.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 10): The Monkees, PayPal, Self-Publishing, Jeff Bezos + More

I was never that aware of The Monkees but the passing of Davy Jones generated a lot of reminiscing.  Mrs. PND recalls the time her Dad brought home the record - unprompted - becoming 'cool' in the process and in the last few days she has DVR'd what must be 24hrs worth of the show.  Here some thoughts from Neil McCormick at The Telegraph:

One of the most remarkable things about the Monkees is that the show, like the band itself, was sophisticated enough to be open to interpretation. Watching those endless repeats in my teens, I formed further ideas of the pop process. The myth of the Monkees is one of the great myths of pop culture: the manufactured band rebelling against svengali manipulators, briefly shining before burning up in the fires of ego. We see the same story played out again and again in the “real” pop world, from the Bay City Rollers to the Spice Girls, but with The Monkees, we can watch it happen in repeat, from the zany innocence of the TV series to the mad rush of their self-immolating movie, Head, in which the band attempted to break free of their constraints by exposing their own essential fiction, but only ended up destroying the illusion that sustained them.

All of this is really sustained, however, by genuinely fantastic music that has, remarkably, stood the test of time. The miracle of The Monkees is that this exploitative, manipulative, derivative children TV series was underpinned by brilliant pop songs, written to order by some of the great writers of the era (from Neil Diamond to Goffin and King), framed in colourful arrangements that captured the happy essence of the band’s spirit, performed with conviction and emotion. Last Train To Clarksville, I’m A Believer, Randy Scouse Git, Pleasant Valley Sunday … these are songs of such dynamic originality they put the imaginary band shoulder to shoulder with the heroes they were imitating.

PayPal the censorship enforcer?  Stranger than fiction as PayPal says it will strike off certain self-publishers (Independent):

From now on, the firm said, it will begin aggressively prohibiting erotic literature which contains scenes of bestiality, rape, incest and under-age sex. Ebook websites that sell such works will have their PayPal accounts deactivated. "It's underhanded, unfair and ludicrous, and it bodes badly for the future of free speech and expression," said Juillerat-Olvera, adding that Demon's Grace is now banned by self-publishing sites.

Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, one of the world's largest such sites, said the announcement has so far caused roughly 1,000 of the 100,000 novels that he stocks to be withdrawn from sale. "Regardless of whether you or I want to read these books, this is perfectly legal fiction and people have a right to publish it," he told The Independent on Sunday. "It surely isn't for some financial services company to control what is written by an author."

Mr Coker said that attempting to enforce PayPal's effective ban is likely to be impossible. "They say they won't have rape, bestiality or incest presented in a way that might titillate. But deciding what constitutes titillation is completely subjective," he said. "The Bible has incest in it, and rape. Nabokov's literature does. Should we ban the sale of those books?"

Articles about Self-publishing and the death of traditional publishing are as freckles on a haole.  Here's an interesting take from Atlantic author Alan Jacobs

But one of the illusions most common to writers -- an illusion that may make the long slow slog of writing possible, for many people -- is that an enormous audience is out there waiting for the wisdom and delight that I alone can provide, and that the Publishing System is a giant obstacle to my reaching those people. Thus the dream that digital publishing technologies will indeed "disintermediate" -- will eliminate that obstacle and connect me directly to what Bugs Bunny calls "me Public." (See "Bully for Bugs".) And we have heard just enough unexpected success stories to keep that dream alive.
Well, here's hoping. But a couple of months ago I decided to dip my toes into these waters: I wrote a longish essay called "Reverting to Type" about my own history as a reader -- a kind of personal epilogue to The Pleasures of Reading -- and decided to submit it as a Kindle Single. Amazon wasn't interested, so I decided to publish it myself using Kindle Direct Publishing. I announced its existence to the world: that is, I posted a link on my tumblelog and tweeted about it. A few people downloaded it; some pointed out typos that I had missed, but that a copy editor surely would have caught. I thought about ways to promote it better but haven't been able to come up with anything other than becoming a self-promoting jerk on Twitter. Last time I checked it had sold 98 copies.

And from the BBC, no more boring waffle (BBC):

Buy an e-book through, say, a Kindle, and one of the first things you will notice is that the length of the text itself is nowhere to be seen. Unlike a hardback, an e-book doesn’t have to have 250 pages any more than it has to cost a set amount, or sit handsomely on your shelf. There are some great losses wrapped up in these facts. As far as actually writing a book goes, though, the digital format has one significant advantage over the physical: it is much harder to get away with producing boring waffle.
...
Buy an e-book through, say, a Kindle, and one of the first things you will notice is that the length of the text itself is nowhere to be seen. Unlike a hardback, an e-book doesn’t have to have 250 pages any more than it has to cost a set amount, or sit handsomely on your shelf. There are some great losses wrapped up in these facts. As far as actually writing a book goes, though, the digital format has one significant advantage over the physical: it is much harder to get away with producing boring waffle.

From the Economist:

Taking the long view - Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability to look beyond the short-term view of things.

Mr Bezos’s willingness to take a long-term view also explains his fascination with space travel, and his decision to found a secretive company called Blue Origin, one of several start-ups now building spacecraft with private funding. It might seem like a risky bet, but the same was said of many of Amazon’s unusual moves in the past. Successful firms, he says, tend to be the ones that are willing to explore uncharted territories. “Me-too companies have not done that well over time,” he observes.

Eyebrows were raised, for example, when Amazon moved into the business of providing cloud-computing services to technology firms—which seemed an odd choice for an online retailer. But the company has since established itself as a leader in the field. “A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are is that we are willing to invent,” Mr Bezos told shareholders at Amazon’s annual meeting last year. “And very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”

Could they have made Jeff's eyes more freaky in that image?

From the Twitter this week:

Librarians Feel Sticker Shock as Prices for Random House Ebooks Rise 300 Percent - http://goo.gl/2vYex

College Publishing Comes of Age: Highlights of the BISG Higher Education Conference (BookBus)

Jackie Collins experiments with self-publishing The Bitch Guardian Hilarious headline. So is "Queen of bonkbuster"

The PND (Cairns) Photo Archive Vol 1: 1960-1980

As frequent visitors to PND will know, I have been posting images out of my family archive for about two years now. As it turns out, I've mixed images that were taken early on - that is, they are truly from the family archive versus some I've taken as an adult relatively recently. For most of you, I suspect that distinction has been missed but for me I've been really interested in the images my father and grandfather took between 1960 and 1980.  In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Blurb book of some of the images I really thought were special.  In the Blurb viewer below you can see the entire book and I hope you like it.  You can even buy it although it is expensive and I really don't expect anyone to do so.  I am thinking of creating a smaller (cheaper) format so let me know if you are interested.

From The Archive: 1960 - 1980 by James T., Michael A. and Michael P. Cairns

In our attic at PND Mansions (UK) I came across a large box containing almost all the slide images taken between 1960 and 1980.  While a few were still in their original boxes most were all in a jumble having been removed out of carousels after some long ago family slide show.  So, I gathered all these images together and at first tried to select only the ones that looked interesting.  Quickly, I decided to take the entire collection and have them all scanned.  I was tempted to purchase a slide scanner and do this myself but my practical side quickly convinced me this would be a time consuming nightmare.

After one false start, I found an online site named ScanCafe where I sent all the images (in several batches) and had them scanned.  This works really well and I would recommend ScanCafe if you are looking to do something like this with a lot of images.

If you are like me and like organization I can't underestimate how long it can take to reorganize a mass of images that have been thrown together.  Remember, in my case all my images were a jumble but I quickly learned the better organized these were in advance of sending the faster I was able to put them into better order when they came back.

I am very happy with the way this book turned out.  I plan on doing three or four more over the next few years as patience dictates.  I think I have selected the best images from this period (not including any family photos you might notice) and as a set of images that describes my first 20 yrs I think it's a pretty decent representation.  And that's a pretty awesome cover.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 4): Research Works Act, Aussie Fiction + More

The Chronicle of Higher Ed looks at the Research Works Act: (Chron)

Whatever the executive branch decides to do about open-access mandates, it's not at all certain that the Research Works Act stands much chance of becoming law. In 2009, a similar bill, called the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, failed to make it out of committee.
This is an election year, which makes it "a very difficult year to move any sort of legislation, let along legislation that has acquired a certain amount of controversy," Mr. Adler said. A lot of Congress's attention has been absorbed by higher-profile proposals, such as the widely unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. Those bills have created considerable resistance in the tech industry and among advocates of an open Web. Rep. Issa has been one of the legislators most vocally against SOPA.
Still, the introduction of the Research Works Act has public-access advocates on the alert, and it has once again exposed the persistent differences of opinion among scholarly publishers over federal mandates and how to approach the complex issues they present. University presses in particular are caught between wanting to take advantage of the resources of a big group like the Association of American Publishers, their own commitment to spreading scholarship widely, and the need to find a way to stay in business while honoring that commitment.

Seems and annual call for the teaching of more Aussie Classics (Brisbane Times):

Mr Heyward's comments follow a Sunday Age report last August that Melbourne University students had started their own Australian literature studies because there was no comparable course offered by the university.
Barbara Creed, head of the school of culture and communication at Melbourne University, said this was an unusual situation in which the course lecturer had left unexpectedly, and the university had been unable to offer a dedicated Australian literature subject as a result. However, ''The Australian Imaginary'' was back on the syllabus this year.
Professor Creed said that, although there may not be many courses designated specifically as Australian literature, the texts were nonetheless covered in a wide range of other courses, including creative writing, indigenous studies and film studies.
But she agreed with Mr Heyward that more Australian texts need to be adapted to film or television, where they will have a far broader audience reach. Whenever a novel is adapted to screen, she said, there is a boost in sales of the book as a result.

From the Twitter:

Self-Published Authors Still Rarely Make the Jump to Publishing Houses: PBS MediaShift

Apple and digital publishing: A textbook manoeuvre  The Economist 

Bibliophilia: Punches, matrices and fetishists: The Economist  

Salman Rushdie: a literary giant still beset by bigots: Guardian

Is the International Herald Tribune about to breathe its last? Guardian

5 Universities to Test Bulk-Purchasing of E-Textbooks in Bid to Rein In Costs Chronicle

Universities look to get discounts on e-textbooks for students: Inside Higher Ed: 

An Apple for the Teacher

To the average Apple aficionado, today’s spectacle on Apple’s entry into the education space would have seemed just par for the course.  Hype is about everything Apple does in these coordinated announcements and today was no different.  To the average textbook publisher today’s hype would have seemed of another world; that another entity – Apple yet? - would view the staid, traditional and, let’s face it, relatively small textbook publishing business as an opportunity to do big things must seem odd. I also thought, there was some irony today because a company I recognize as possibly one of the first brands ever to enter my consciousness - KODAK - declared bankruptcy.  KODAK sold film and processing and their cameras (hardware) were secondary to the revenue they got from film.  In context of today’s announcement Apple’s model is the opposite and it is unlikely textbook companies and other content providers will see themselves as the ‘KODAK’ in this relationship.  How healthy that approach may be for publishers only time will tell.

According to the National Association of College Stores the average price of college textbooks approaches $70.  Many people make value judgments about college textbook pricing but how does this very real data point jive with the desire of Apple to sell much cheaper college textbooks?  According to the presentation today, Apple plans to hold pricing of k-12 texts at less than $15.  Why would traditional publishers participate in a model that undercuts their business model to such an extent?  While I admit to assuming their pricing strategy will be consistent from K-12 to college, my conclusion is based on a primary premise of their presentation which was that textbooks are expensive.  In education today, what is clear is that there’s significant interest in ‘reinventing’ education from the content perspective and who can argue with the attention that a company like Apple can bring to a slow moving business like textbook publishing?  How sustainable their attention will be is another matter entirely.  Let’s not forget that the hype that preceded the Google bookstore and the Apple iBook store did not result in any appreciable changes in the business.  Apple’s motivations are also suspect: They are motivated by selling more hardware (unlike KODAK) and are only interested in content to the extent that it is cheap and plentiful and helps to drive hardware sales.  A content model with imposed low pricing, just like iTunes, will help sell more units.  I don’t believe Apple’s 30% cut of $14.95 will ever be significant relative to their sales of iPads at $500 a pop (give or take).

While the twitter feed this morning was overwhelming at times it was interesting that some very critical questions were quick to arise regarding Apple’s new self-publishing platform.  Fundamentally, the platform does (will) attempt to address a desire by educators for more control in the content they assign for their students.  That’s a good thing.  This desire/need of faculty is very much in nascent form; however, this may have more to do with expectations - what they see as their options given the concentration of content around less than five large publishers – than true desire to create their own material.  Motivated faculty will want to build their own content for their classes and if they can do this cost effectively and easily so much the better.  Whether they will do this on the Apple platform remains to be seen.

Offering an ‘open’ platform for faculty and others to build their content poses many potential problems.  (Since this is an Apple platform technically it isn’t ‘open’).  The functionality of the platform could be very impressive but, what’s the guessing the ‘store’ becomes full of crackpot theories, spurious pedagogy and denier/revisionist historians unless Apple ‘censors’ (a more polite favorite word could be ‘curate’) the content.  And, if they censor, what will the basis of the censorship?  I am a believer in self-publishing, and it often throws up gems on the trade side, and there is no reason why it won’t on the education side; however, the cost may be a lot of dross (or worse).  Frustration will simply drive people way.

One of the other items quickly identified as a potential problem was the management of copyright; specifically, what’s to stop someone uploading content that they don’t have rights to?  The user will be contravening copyright in using material if they haven’t cleared it appropriately and plan to pay the copyright owner for use.  Most publishers price their content at a level that inclusion in a product that can’t be priced above $15.00 makes the (legal) inclusion uneconomical.  So, that begs the question: Who will clear content properly if they categorically won’t make it up in volume?  If there is a check on copyright what will the process be that enables the use of this content which at the same time doesn’t cause the entire self-publishing process to unravel?

There are more questions over this Apple initiative in addition to those I raise above; however, I believe the only objective Apple wants to achieve is to sell more hardware.  The Education initiative is a smokescreen and we shouldn’t forget that Apple sold a school management platform named PowerSchool that they developed to Pearson in 2006.  At the time, they didn’t find the education market attractive enough even though PowerSchool was considered an impressive tool.  Interestingly, some commentators on the twitter felt the Apple education announcement represented an attack on Blackboard and other LMS platforms.  I’m not sure I see that either.

I believe the involvement of Apple in education will be a good thing for all the players in education and will spur new investment and new initiatives.  This is a dynamic space at the mmoment with technology companies, content companies and wholesalers and distributors all vying for advantage.

Repost: The New Publishing Experience: Build Your Own Book

Originally posted July 10, 2007.

Traveling to a new location for vacation (and sometimes business) can be an exciting event and generally a lot of planning goes into the effort so you make the best use of your time. Often building your ideal itinerary may necessitate the purchase of several travel guides (or in my case diligent note taking in the cafe at BN) and I can only imagine that this situation is even more relevant if you travel as a family. Having had a great time - and probably seeing only half of what you thought you would - you leave the travel guides behind in the hotel room because they don't fit in the bags.

What if you were able to build a specific guide before you left that you could either print out before or carry with you as an electronic e-book? This is an idea that Penguin publishing unit DK are experimenting with which allows users to select content from their travel guides and build their own guide. I found the site a little clunky but the idea is sound and as a electronic platform DK could be in a position to offer far more content than appears in their DK travel books. If Penguin has other travel related content this could also be integrated with the DK travel content to create a distinct product that perhaps has more breadth than a user could get other than buying multiple books.

Travel (book) related websites are (or have the potential to) generating decent advertising revenues. Since a travel guide is a glorified directory it will not be long until the web is the primary mode of distribution for this content as has been the case with traditional data driven directories (i.e. booksinprint). As e-products, the integration with content from other publishers, map applications, photos, video and Podcasting is not far away. For example, I want to visit Boston and I build a travel book that includes a history and background information on Boston, a walking tour of North Boston, a satellite map, restaurant recommendations in an around the walk and after lunch I want to go to the Museum of Fine Arts where I buy admission tickets, add the highlights of the collection tour and download the MP3 audio tour. Ultimately, I want this 'packaged' so that I can either print it out and/or retain as an e-book or e-collection for future use.

But wait a minute, does the interaction end there? Conceivably, I will be taking pictures and forging my own impressions about the visit. And perhaps I want to include experiential things, like what I had for lunch and whether I liked it. So the publishing platform I use to create my travel book of Boston should be something I can edit outside the confines of the publisher supplied content. As such the DK application is not so functional but there are options elsewhere that are starting to appear - and in the future there maybe nothing to stop DK from adding this functionality.

One such application has been developed by SharedBook a software company in lower Manhattan. Sharedbook works with content owners who want to extend their relationship with their customers and enable them to self-select content and build their own book and in the process adding their own content. SharedBook works with customers who may not seem like publishers such as Regent Cruises and legacy.com but the functionality is similar to what I describe above. Clients of Regent cruises are able to select some core content to create their book while also adding their own specific content. So they can add pictures, annotations or full length essays on their cruise experience. There are a surprising number of clients who take advantage of this program since it serves as a high quality memento of their journey.

Sharedbook has a relatively easy to implement solution and their model has enabled 'non-publishers' to treat as 'content' assets that otherwise would remain one-dimensional as marketing or promotional material. In the case of traditional publishers, the Sharedbook platform can allow publishers to engage their customers directly and perhaps with a stronger link because the publishers content goes along with the customers positive experience. Obviously, customers pay for the privilege of creating their unique books but the prices are both reasonable and set by the content owner.

Back to my Boston example and using a SharedBook I could have a coffee table book produced with all the elements I selected before I left, those I added during my trip and the those I added after I return home. Once home I could scan the MFA ticket stub, the restaurant menu and add photos with annotations. Then I have my own memento of my trip. Models such as those I have described above will become more prevalent as publishers see the value in opening up their content repositories and allowing consumers to interact with their content. It is a trend worth following.


UPDATE: I wrote the above yesterday on the train back from Washington. Kassia Krozser of Medialoper and Booksquare was also writing about SharedBook at the same time. Here is her take.

Blurb for Good

Self publishing site Blurb has launched blurbforgood.com that enables people or groups with a cause to create books supporting those causes (Blurb):

Make a book. Make a difference. Whatever you do to make the world a better place, a book can spread your message and support your cause. Joining Blurb for Good enables you to set the price for your book and keep 100% of the profit for your cause. Use Blurb BookShow™ to promote your book online. And we’ll help you get the word out by featuring your book in Blurb’s bookstore. We’ll also handle all the back end stuff, from fulfilling orders to tracking sales to sending checks. If you qualify, we’ll even pitch in with a charitable contribution for every book you sell. It’s the ultimate win-win-win. For you, your cause, and people who want to help.

CompletelyNovel reach the finals of ThePitch

CompletelyNovel a small start-up social book site 'out of' Nawfth Lahdn (North London) has reached the London final of a new business launch competition named ThePitch. The company founders want CompletelyNovel to become the MySpace for books and authors where authors can join a community, showcase their work, interact with readers and hopefully build a market for their work. Readers and publishers can discover new authors and print works they are interested in as well as build relationships with authors and other readers.

In addition to providing a place for authors to mingle, CompletelyNovel is also a retailer and show cases and sells books using Amazon services (I assume) which means they are also making a small percentage on each book sale.

The services for self-publishers look interesting as they offer free display of an authors work online:

It is free to publish your book into the CompletelyNovel BookStreamer and through print on demand printers. This allows you to promote and sell paperback copies of your book throughout the internet. You can easily direct buyers to your CompletelyNovel web address so they can read, review and buy copies of your work.

We will soon be offering a premium account which for a monthly fee gives you advanced printing options such as hardback and also inserts your book into the ISBN database and book catalogues around the globe such as in amazon.

CompletelyNovel's revenue model is based on offering 'premium services' to author, publishers and printers:

We provide a very valuable service to our printers, agents and publishers on our site. Just like our writer premium account, if they want to get more out of the service they can subscribe.

We also receive a small payment when adverts are clicked or when someone clicks through from our site to buy a book from a bookshop.

The company launched last year and they say they are planning to expand into the US in the next few months.

Here is a little more from their press release regarding The Pitch. It is great a publishing business got this far in an innovation competition but admittedly this would be more news worthy if they actually won it. So fingers crossed.

CompletelyNovel.com, book publishing and web start-up, has reached the London final of The Pitch 2009, a competition to identify the most promising UK small business. The company hopes to highlight the great potential for innovation within the publishing industry and also win the prize of £50,000 worth of business related goods and services, including mentoring from former Dragon’s Den panellist, Doug Richards. Their pitch will take place on Tuesday 16^th July.

Oliver Brooks, founder of CompletelyNovel.com hopes that his vision to create a MySpace for the book publishing world, enabling future hit authors to be discovered by the power of the social web, will prove a winner:

“The new technology available through the web holds so much potential for the publishing industry – we want to help authors and publishers take advantage of this.”

Oliver will be pitching in a Dragon’s Den style against five other finalists from the South East region to demonstrate that CompletelyNovel offers the best in innovation, market knowledge, customer engagement and financial viability. A number of business experts and experienced entrepreneurs will select one company for a place in the national final, judged by ex-Dragon himself, Doug Richards, and due to take place in November.

CompletelyNovel’s pitch follows hot on the heels of some very satisfying news for their website. Aspiring author Gary Hurlstone, who published his book through CompletelyNovel, was signed to a publisher last week thanks to his ability to use the reviews, ratings and sales he got on CompletelyNovel to prove his book’s market.

"CompletelyNovel was a great help in helping us decide to publish Gary Hurlstone's book. It provided us with the rare chance to gauge a real audience's reaction prior to release, giving us a headstart in the processes of marketing and preparing the book for publication."

Derek Sandhaus, Earnshaw Books

With plans to expand into the US in the next couple of months, CompletelyNovel are hoping that there will be many similar stories to come.

For more information please contact:

Anna Lewis, CompletelyNovel.com

E: anna@completelynovel.com, T: 0207 249 1850 M: 07900 811075

400,000 Titles Published!

Rachel Donadio in The NYTimes book review section has an essay on the expansion of publishing. As she points out, if reading is generally going down hill this isn't stopping people from adopting self-publishing as a hobby. "Publishing" a book is like putting your photo collection on flickr now-a-days. It is so easy and the hurdles so low that anyone with a half baked idea is doing it. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I happen to believe that the creativity, the experiences and the expression evident in many of these books will become a reference point for our age. Just as letters between family members shone light on a family's history, future generations will browse the published output of family members. I want my parents to do this.

On the other hand, my view may be too prosaic; since many of these self-publishers still think their titles will become the next best seller. As mentioned in the article, the potential for iUniverse.com titles to be on display at B&N garners considerable attention and revenues from their legions of authors. So, there is some delusion but the self-publishing market is estimated to be worth over $1.3billion (although, regretably I can't recall the citation for this number) and deserves significant attention from all segments of the publishing community. As I have suggested before, one of the major publishing houses is going to get into this segment in a big way (Xlibris aside).

As for the number of titles published annually, the absolute number is meaningless without explanation as it grows by 35% from 2006-2007. In order to draw any analysis from this number of published titles the number would have to be broken down considerably. Impressive as the number is it is noted for effect only.

Blurb Again

mThe NYTimes covers the d0-it-yourself self-publishing segment including a focus on the cottage industries that are developing around technology sites such as blurb.com. (I've used Blurb and love the tool).

From the article:

Today, Ms. Leendertse still turns a pile of pictures and paragraphs into bound books, but instead of working just for a roster of major publishers like MIT Press, she helps individuals create books. She is participating in an offshoot of the scrapbooking phenomena, the hobby of collecting and preserving photos and mementos. What was once a pastime for mothers recording family memories for their children has blossomed into a new, fertile marketplace of collaboration. People with stories to tell are creating personalized books filled with pictures, blog entries and even business proposals. While some of these glorified scrapbooks are aimed at the world at large, many new titles were never intended to be sold in stores or marketed in any way. For instance, architects submitting bound proposals for their projects have used some of the scrapbooking tools.

Lulu Publishes 4,000 Titles per Week

The Guardian takes a look at the US self-publishing market and notes some impressive statistics fron Lulu.com.

Lulu says it publishes 4,000 new titles each week and already has a catalogue of 232,000 books. "Our success is that each week we publish between 10 and 20,000 titles; one at a time," said , the senior vice president of operations at the company, Andrew Pate.

The company is only five years old and says it is doubling in size every year. Earlier this year, I noted the growth of Blurb.com which published 80,000 titles during 2007.

The Guardian also discusses Booksurge.com and AuthorHouse as variations on the theme and notes the recent new relationship between Borders and Lulu. More from the article:

It is not only business people who want to self-publish. Lulu's Pate says an ageing population, with more money, more life experience and more time on their hands to write will combine with the new and improving technologies to help drive the self-publish business. The ubiquitous use of Microsoft Word together with desktop publishing software, digital printing technologies and workflow solutions linked to the internet and "bang, you have got a whole new market that could not exist without each of those pieces together".

Blurb.com Sees Huge Self-Publishing Growth

I am a big fan of Blurb.com's publishing solution. I have used it a number of times to produce high quality photo books and I currently have three more elaborate projects I am working on. Not only is the software easy to use, it provides a powerful set of tools that enable a wide variety of layouts and customization. I recently recommended Blurb to someone who have completed a safari in Africa and I have been trying to get Mrs PND to include the product in her Interior Design business. Other products exist in this segment including mypublisher.com and picabo.com but I have found Blurb to be the easiest to use.

Blurb.com has released impressive figures on the number of titles they published during 2007. Approximately 80,000 titles were produced by this publisher during the past year which dwarfs the numbers of new titles published each year by traditional publishing houses.

“Blurb is redefining how success is measured in publishing,” said Eileen Gittins, Blurb’s founder and CEO. “For some, success is creating a book that helps raise money for a foundation, for others it might be selling 25 copies of one’s own book, and for still others it might be a marketing piece like an event book or portfolio. Unlike traditional publishers whose economics drive a focus on the best-seller, Blurb is expanding the book market to include books for millions of very small, niche markets.”

The market for these titles extends from people like me who produce one or two printed titles to others who may print several hundred to support a business or seminar program. The flexibility and variety enable all kinds of applications and it is entirely possible that the market is yet only partially satisfied. Driven by the continued growth in digital camera sales and the adoption of images into a much broader array of applications - from facebook to phones to blogs is likely that Blurb and other companies like it will continue to see rapid increases in usage. More people are taking more photos and using the photos in more places.

My family has boxes of slides from 40 yrs of travels; I am looking forward at some point to scan these and reinvigorate this family history. Over Christmas I went in search of this collection and found them somewhat discarded in a box in the attic. Not only are products like Blurb for current collections but with a little application they can be applied to older collections of images as well. Working with Blurb becomes a new type of hobby and since you can also add text as well is an increasing number of sophisticated self-publishers out there.

Other posts
Blurb and Self-Publishing
Blurb USAToday

Lulu Name New President

Lulu.com the self-publishing juggernaut announced the appointment of Bryce Boothby Jr. as President and COO of Lulu Enterprises. Boothby, 57, will oversee all finance, engineering, and business at Lulu.com as well as Gnack, the Lulu Enterprises company that provides support and services for open media businesses.

From the press release:

"We are very excited to have an executive of Bryce's caliber joining the company," said Lulu Founder and CEO Bob Young. "Because of our rapid growth we must prepare our company to serve millions of customers. Bryce's experience and remarkable track record of success will ensure Lulu's ability to continue to scale rapidly into the future."

Boothby appears to have no direct publishing experience other than a stint at Quebecor in the 1990's. He does have strong manufacturing, process and technology experience which should give you a sense as to where the publishing industry is headed.

New Model Army of Self-Publishers

The news that Author House and iUniverse.com were merging was not entirely unexpected, but it is interesting to me that the publishing community basically ignored the event. While it was reported in Publisher’s Lunch and Publisher’s Weekly, the report in PW focused on the question of job cuts which may reflect a limited interest in the strategic ramifications this segment poses to mainstream publishers. Led by Lulu.com, this publishing segment is exploding and the last thing being considered will be job cuts. Just look at the capabilities on offer at Lulu. Author House and iUniverse complement each other: A number of years ago, iUniverse.com made the strategic choice to add an extensive selection of professional editorial services to their suite of services, which surpass the service offered by Author House (and others in the market). Tactically, I think the two companies will slot together like jigsaw pieces.

Random House has a relationship with Xlibris and is alone among the major publishing houses in building formal relationships with the self-publishing marketplace. I would expect other major publishers to jump into this space, in the short-term, through acquisition. The leverage these companies achieve over their technology, employees and fixed expenses, the processes they have established and the market they have built make these companies appealing. Ironically, there is a ‘democratization of access’ underway in publishing, which to date, most “publishers” have not participated in; but, this will change as traditional publishers look to the self-publisher market as a natural product extension.

In the case of Author House and iUniverse.com, they each produce over 5,000 titles per year with total staff of approximately 100. In terms of titles per month and titles per employee, they shame a traditional large publisher. Everyone will argue that the quality of the content produced by self-publishers is poor, but this is no more true than the statement that all content produced by traditional publishers is exemplary. How often has a traditional publisher invested significantly in a title’s success only to watch it sell 300 copies? For the self-publisher—with an author pays model, no inventory and no promotion expense—there is only upside if a title takes off unexpectedly (and sells 300 copies).

I am not suggesting that the self-publishing business model will be adopted anytime soon by a major publishing house, but there are lessons to be learned from the success that the self-publishing industry has built in the last 10 years. Enabling technology has produced this ‘democratization of access’ and, while it is hard to imagine that there is that much content to produce, the numbers prove the case. Lulu is producing 4,000 new titles per week for a total of 300,000 newly released titles, Author House has over 30,000 authors and 40,000 titles, and iUniverse says they have sold over 5mm books.

Amazon has invested in this area (B&N is getting out via iUniverse.com) and I see some convergence between the traditional publishing model and self-publishing. The content quality issue is irrelevant: Firstly because good content will always find its market and Secondly, because quality in the self-publishing segment depends not on the content but the service the author received. Get ready to see traditional publishers adopt some of the practices of the self-publishing industry.