United the logo of Continental

I learned to love Continental Airlines although it was hard at times – particularly when I was forced to cab it to LaGuardia to avoid their monopoly pricing on certain routes, but all in all the experience of travelling via Continental airlines has grown comfortable and predictable over the years. Perhaps I have modified my expectations but as any frequent traveller will tell you flying is not at all a glamorous experience. It has probably never been for any who started flying in the early 1990s. I’ve never been much of a United Airlines customer and I wonder how the merger of Continental and United might negatively impact my travel experience.

Gaining trust and ‘comfort’ with a brand represents a complicated dynamic and in their plans for integration, there’s no doubt significant time has been spent on allying all manner of fears their customers will have over the merger. The combined airline will be named United but will use the Continental livery – the color pallet, fonts and the Continental tail fin image. In this effort, which reflects I think their entire approach to the merger, management has taken the worst of all possible alternatives. Firstly, the word “Continental” connotes a far more expressive and international travel image than the word “United”. This is not because I am biased but “Continental” is aspirational, it reflects a big picture view of travel. “United” on the other hand has more to do what they are doing – uniting two transport companies – than to what they are offering customers. I can image the two management teams sitting in a big conference room agreeing to use “United” to make them all feel like a team. Sadly, nothing to do with what the customer may feel about the new airline.

The same is true of the “new” corporate strip. The Continental logo looked old and dated ten years ago. Oddly, while bland, the new United strip that they were in the process of rolling out prior to the merger looked more up to date. But that’s been cast aside in process as has brand strategy.

The combination of the two branding efforts has created a new corporate image which is jarring to anyone familiar with either company. It neither takes the best of each, nor inspires existing customers to expect a new and improved experience from the combination. The merger team has missed an opportunity, in a very basic way, to excite their customers (me) and, I fear this lack of inspiration will color the entire United/Continental merger effort.

Juxtapositions: Cap't Bob and the Digger

In the early 1970s, Robert Maxwell lost out in his attempt to buy the News of the World, which was purchased by Rupert Murdoch, who went on to create a newspaper empire in the UK. At the same time, Maxwell was castigated by UK financial authorities as someone unfit to run a public company, a charge that dogged him for the rest of this life. As it turns out, he was correctly categorized as 'unfit' when, many years later, he perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in UK history. In the intervening years Maxwell and Murdoch 'battled' each other for media supremacy but, in reality Maxwell was never a match for Murdoch and, this was confirmed when Cap't Bob 'fell' off the back of his boat as his media empire was crashing down around him.

Murdoch on the other hand played aggressively and seemed to have won hands down when he finally acquired the newspaper jewel he had long sought in the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the triumphalism that accompanied this huge media purchase knew no bounds, especially when it came to the fate of the New York Times. Murdoch and his revamped WSJ would 'destroy the Times' or so the pundits - and the Digger himself - suggested. The Times didn't help matters with a rapidly falling share price and a seemingly confused electronic strategy. And, the company was even 'forced' to take a loan from a Mexican.

Well, how times change: Murdoch won't be falling off his boat but, he may be out of a job when it becomes clear that the phone hacking at the News of the World wasn't so much the rogue activities of a small group of reporters but a significant element in the business strategy at News Corp. In my view, the phone hacking will be prevalent at other UK newspapers but it seems likely that nowhere else was it so embedded in their operations than at NewsCorp. For that, it will be easy to show NewsCorp as a company out of control and without a moral compass and, for that, the boss will have to go.

And, about that loan from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim that the New York Times got so much heat about? They just paid it back early. The Times may not be out of the woods yet, but I bet things don't look so bad from eighth avenue at the moment.

Technology: Now It's Personal.

Technology: Now It's Personal. Thinking strategically about how technology impacts what we do as publishers.

This speech was conducted several weeks ago for a group of Pace University students in the publishing business program. It is a long speech but traces some of my business experience and history.

“Technology: It’s Personal” is the general theme of this commentary. Though long anticipated, this transition has been a slow burn in publishing. I remind people all the time that, while at PriceWaterhouse in the mid-1990s, I participated in several high-profile pitches to large publishing companies which focused on “format-neutral publishing,” which meant delivering content in whatever form the user wanted. I could dust off some of those presentations even now because many publishing companies still face some of the same challenges.

I even go back to my bookstore days.

Good evening. I am honored to have been asked to address this group this evening as part of the Eliot Schein lecture series. I’ve been looking forward to imparting some of what I’ve learned since I started my career, as many of you are about to do. My topic this evening covers how I interpret the influence of technology on publishing and what we as publishing professionals should try to do to think strategically about how technology impacts our businesses.

Watching and participating in the transformation of the publishing business, as technology has become embedded in everything we do, has been not so much a choice as a job requirement. When I think of technology in its broadest possible definition over time, it seems to me that technology has always represented an impersonal rather than a personal experience. In publishing technology has always been a tool rather than something with which we interact from the invention of the first printing presses to the Mac computer. Each radical new technology delivered incredible benefits, but there was always a separation between its use as a tool and the final published product.

It is only recently that this separation has become compacted so that the tool has now become part of the product. Increasingly, we are beginning to see technology embedded in the personal relationship we have with publishing products. These products are now delivered uniquely, manipulated for a unit of one and offer many other benefits, such as the ability to mix and remix content. In concert, there is virtually no difference between the capabilities the user has access to in their job and at home. The consumer can be sitting at home creating his own photo book or working in a hospital emergency room referencing medical information at the point of care. Technology both enables this and has become part of the experience: Technology is now synonymous with our relationship with content.

“Technology: It’s Personal” is the general theme of this commentary. Though long anticipated, this transition has been a slow burn in publishing. I remind people all the time that, while at PriceWaterhouse in the mid-1990s, I participated in several high-profile pitches to large publishing companies which focused on “format-neutral publishing,” which meant delivering content in whatever form the user wanted. I could dust off some of those presentations even now because many publishing companies still face some of the same challenges.

To be clear, I am not a technologist. I have a ‘manager’s’ knowledge and understanding of technology and I am always most concerned with the utility of the technology and how it serves to achieve business objectives.

I often underestimate how interested people are in my background, so let me give you an overview of where I came from as a context for my comments.

My parents met each other… Oh wait-different speech.

In my final semester at Boston University, I had amassed enough credits to graduate but BU had a three-semester residency requirement for graduation so I took a light course load and an almost full-time job at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After graduation, I became the book buyer for the store making $12,400 per year. As you can imagine, basic survival – shelter and food - was only possible by working 20 extra hours of overtime each week.

I learned more in that job than I think I appreciate: How to deal with staff, merchandising, customers and customer relations and working with vendors, for example. I dealt directly with many publishers’ ordering and customer service departments and, as a result, became eternally grateful for the Ingram Book Company. We did everything on paper. I counted inventory on index cards – by literally walking around the store to count titles and I ordered stock on order forms in triplicate.

My boss got a computer and on it was the spreadsheet software LOTUS 1-2-3. Unbelievable -you could do your numbers on a machine! But no one was allowed on it except the boss. I snuck on when I was working late but never really got the utility of the thing. Nevertheless, I was inquisitive and, at one point, I tried to reprogram our store point-of-sale consolidator. As a result, for about a week our cash reports and receipts were puzzlingly out of balance. I learned that being correct in theory isn’t any good for accounting and we put things back the way they were.

I enrolled in the MBA program at Georgetown because, I can say without any embarrassment, I wanted to make more money. After graduation, I ended up on the corporate staff at Macmillan, Inc. and, interestingly, my book retail experience played an important role in getting this job. Now, you may think you know Macmillan; in fact, this company in the late 1980s was not the company that now works out of the Flatiron building. Macmillan was a $2billion publishing holding company that operated virtually every type of publishing going: adult trade, trade reference, database and professional, language learning, education and even bookclubs. If there was ever a great introduction to publishing, it was working at this company at the corporate level where my colleagues and I had a front-row seat on how publishing companies operate. Macmillan was broken up by the mid-1990s after the media empire of Robert Maxwell collapsed.

From Macmillan corporate I transferred to Berlitz International – an operating unit – and over three years I got to travel a lot and manage a business. I applied to a classified ad in the New York Times and, amazingly, ended up working at PriceWaterhouse Coopers as a consultant in their Media and Entertainment consulting practice. At PWC, I worked on many different engagements - not just in publishing but also in the advertising industry - which was tremendous fun. To this day, my best project was an intensive, four-month project for an international advertising agency that defined the gaps between the agencys’ existing technology and their ability to match their clients’ technical sophistication.

After PriceWaterhouse, I joined RR Bowker and ran that company as President. Since 2006, I’ve been consulting on my own, although I much prefer business operations to consulting. Most of the recent engagements I’ve consulted on are oriented around the marriage between technology and business strategy. I really have no idea how this focus developed but the direction of my career does reflect the way the publishing business has been transformed over the past 20 years so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise.

As I thought about this lecture, I thought I would first reflect on some ‘lessons learned’ relevant to the use of technology in publishing and then illustrate how I interpret the personalization of technology within the publishing context.

Lesson 1: Perspective and relevance are very closely related partners in planning.

As I noted earlier, I believe that each successive new technological advance is eroding the distinction between “the thing” and the technology that enables it. Publishing is increasingly illustrating this trend. For the average consumer, technology is becoming more and more personal. Traditional publishing long ago lost any lead position as a technologically innovative industry and is left to adopt and adapt the technologies others have developed.

The danger in this for all of us is in maintaining some perspective in this rapidly evolving world: This is so important as we try to define the products and services we want to offer our customers. Technology is so embedded in consumer behavior and moving so quickly that we really don’t have time to appreciate or reflect on our past experience so that we might anticipate its future direction.

When I joined Macmillan in the corporate planning department we had no computers. Any presentation material, charts or graphs – numbers or not – went into “typing”. Anyone watch MadMen? All those desks lined up in the middle of the floor – that’s ‘typing’. Our department at Macmillan wasn’t as extreme since we only had one typist.

Shortly after starting, I was tasked with putting together the initial proposal for four new IBM personal computers. When these arrived, one of them went on the desk of the boss and the other three went on these little carts. So the five analysts in the department shared the three computers on carts for about 18mths. We were perpetually wheeling them around from office to office. What’s interesting about that experience – while funny in retrospect – is that our perspective was so narrow. These machines, while not even convenient, represented such a huge advance in our capabilities that we lost our perspective. None of us at Macmillan spent anytime really thinking what a computer could or would mean to our customers and, more importantly, we didn’t think about how computing might evolve.

That might not have been that important had not the members of the department represented the future management of the company. And it strikes me that we can often get so wrapped up in the newness of something – like an iPad – we miss the implications of the new technology we have at hand. I didn’t see the future iPad as a derivation of my IBM desktop experience just like some of you might not in see the connection between the iPad and the chip imbedded in your eye socket in 20 or 30 years – or whatever. Sure, I agree it is impossible to be fully predictive, but if you want to be a leader in this business you should show a willingness and desire to challenge your current perspective and extrapolate. That’s where true insight comes from and that’s what will make you valuable to your employer.

Alvin Toffler might find predicting easy; for the rest of us, it’s quite difficult. The important thing to realize is that thinking about the future isn’t really about being ‘right’ but about extrapolating beyond your current circumstances. One fun workshop I have conducted tries to accomplish this by proposing as many as ten future scenarios to a group who then vote independently on the likelihood of these scenarios occurring. As a group, we then pull each scenario apart and discuss them separately. Each scenario needs to be relevant, thought out in advance and managed correctly to get the participants really thinking about the implications of what might happen in their market and, in turn, what the impact might be on their company. Activities like these, and work that you do can on your own, will help to balance your perspective and make what you are discovering relevant to your business.

Which leads to my second lesson related to strategic planning:

Lesson #2: As technology moves faster and faster, planning – methodical and accountable - should be a counter weight.

I’ve noticed that traditional methods of planning and accountability to get short shrift as technology and rapid prototyping push us to operate faster and faster. In this environment – which is becoming the norm - it is important to be more accountable to time, money, resources and, most importantly, business objectives.

The rigid requisition process at Macmillan - by which every purchase had to be justified - was also mirrored in the annual strategic planning process. One of the functions of my old department was to put together the annual planning meetings for each business unit. In doing so, we had to gain a deep understanding of each business in a short period of time and, as I reviewed prior business reports and plans, I began to notice that, each year, many business units had simply recycled their strategies. Often word-for-word. So, in the agendas for my meetings, the first item was always something like ‘Describe how successful last year’s objectives and strategies were: Which ones worked and which ones were abandoned or failed to execute?’ My boss at the time rejected this item before any were sent out to the operating units and I still laugh at her reasoning: That it would be an unfair question because they hadn’t been told the year before that we would ask them in the following year to reflect on how they did.

Even as a wet-behind-the-ears recent grad I knew this was crazy thinking and, thankfully, publishing has now moved on from the attitude that accountability is “nice to have”. Defining return on investment and being accountable for the business strategies you support and promote is critical to a manager’s success and questions should and will be asked. I find, however, that few managers really grasp the fundamental concepts behind the idea that an investment has to return something to the business. You don’t have to be an accountant to understand this but, if you do, you will have an edge over your colleagues – (and, let’s face it, even some managers senior to you).

Thinking about the planning process, Macmillan’s strategic planning cycle (typical of many companies) was yearly and in today’s world that just doesn’t work. Business simply moves too quickly for a rigid annual planning program. In my recent experience, we’ve developed three-year strategy plans that we revisit in detail, at minimum every six months, and adjust and change as required. We also include frequent discussion of strategic objectives in monthly reports.

Translating strategy into tactics leads to another lesson.

Lesson #3: Your customers will be both intensely frustrating and also your most effective resource for executing your strategy.

I think of this in two parts: Firstly, you will overestimate how much your customer knows about your product (which is the frustrating part) and, secondly, only products that make the customer’s life easier or more productive are likely to be successful.

At Bowker, as our sales and marketing strategy matured, we began to reduce the number of sales reps in the market and replaced some of them with in-the-field product trainers. Trainers were responsible for educating our customers about the product after they had already purchased the database. Our trainers organized sessions at libraries and colleges across the US and I happened to attend a couple. In my very first one, the trainer was describing a basic component of the product – the inclusion of over 1million full-text book reviews – which, on the basis of sheer quantity alone are hard to miss – to a room of over 30 library staff who had had access to the product for over six months. Most attendees had no idea the reviews were in the product! My trainers frequently told me that type of response was typical of their sessions but that education and training always helped. If left unchecked, this type of disconnect can be devastating especially if you are dependent on recurring subscription revenues. Never take for granted that your customers will immediately appreciate or utilize any features of your products.

This leads to the second related lesson which is that we will only be successful if we solve problems for consumers and make their lives easier or more efficient. Many of you will have heard the catchall ‘workflow solutions’ to describe products intended to replace static databases or information products that have been converted from print to electronic. In many industries there is a ‘land-grab’ here because a publisher wants to be the platform deliverer of many database and information products and lock in the customer to a single-source arrangement. In professional segments such as legal, tax, medical, risk, etc., the competition is fierce and each vendor has built solutions that meaningfully improve the working life of their customers.

Simply launching some new application or feature is not a strategy for success. Technology is adopted only if it helps users do what they need to do in a better, easier, more efficient way. Our trainers became our most important asset in renewing customer accounts because they educated the customer about product capabilities and, as a direct result, we increased usage and integrated the database into their daily workflow. We also gained insight into the customer’s working environments which informed product management by providing key details about how customers were using, and could be using, our products.

Gaining active insight into the customer experience is important, and deploying in-market trainers is just one of many examples of ways to achieve it. Focus groups, interviews and “day-in-the-life” reviews are a few more.

Equally important is doing everything you can to expand your personal knowledge, understanding and experience so my next lesson is simple:

Lesson 3: You can be the expert.

If technology is personal, then your experience as a consumer is just as important as your experience as an employee. Expose yourself to as much new technology and as many new applications as possible. Actively managing your own career and recognizing where you need to improve upon your experience or expertise shouldn’t relate to age and my comments aren’t only applicable to those under 30. If you care about your career, constant self-evaluation and improvement is important.

When I left Bowker, I saw in that break an opportunity to educate myself about all the new things I didn’t have time for when working full time. Most of what I did was oriented around technology: I started a blog, put a bookstore up on Amazon, built a website and some other stuff. Each month, I also try to attend the meeting of the NY Tech Group, which brings together over 800 technologists, investors and hangers-on like me. At these meetings, about 10 new companies get to present their big new idea. I find the meetings fascinating. What I’ve been after is the development of my own personal experience with this technology that has suddenly become so accessible and potentially powerful. It is hard to maintain credibility in our media world now – at any management level – if you don’t have some specific experience with the types of technology your customers, employees, competitors, etc. are routinely using.

On a current consulting engagement, I am responsible for a production department in a large educational publishing company. I stole an idea from a friend of mine and gave my direct reports some homework: For the last fifteen minutes of our weekly status meeting, they report on whatever newfangled and interesting stuff they’ve discovered in the intersection between technology and publishing. Why would I do this? Because it helps lower the barriers and the intimidation factor – maybe even alleviate some embarrassment – for a staff that has been focused on technology that is now rapidly changing (to the point where some publishing staff don’t even consider printing to be a “technology”). As this company makes the transition from print on paper to electronic publishing, this production department will undergo incredible change and, unless they’re comfortable with new technology, they may not be able to adapt. And I should point out that I learn stuff from the staff during these discussions as well.

As a team, as we become more comfortable in exchanging information and educating each other, I think my next assignment will be to ask the group to do more interpretation – to take experiences from other industries (or even other segments of the publishing business) and think about how they might apply those experiences to what we do in educational publishing.

When I ordered those computers at Macmillan, they were called ‘personal computers’ but that’s not really what they were. Based on our collective experience with all of Apple’s products, only now are we experiencing technology that is truly personal. We carry it around, we choose our own products and applications, we upload and create our own content, and communicate and manage concentric circles of acquaintances and professional relationships. Arguably, technology has helped bridge the gulf between the personal and private worlds to such an extent that, to many, there is no distinction between the two. And publishers and content producers are following this lead by producing flexible and reusable content that consumers can integrate into their daily lives and activities.

As I wrap up my comments, let’s look at two examples where I see true personal technology: the app and medical publishing.

Firstly, the app world or environment is a true phenomenon that was virtually non-existent only three years ago. Some see the book app eventually replacing the traditional book experience – and remember that the eBook version is really a transferred experience from paper to electronic. The thinking is such that the book app will truly engage the reader in a multi-faceted experience far more expansive than the current book eReading experience. It will be a completely different experience and one significant by-product of this development will be that the publisher will be able to develop a variety of one-to-one relationships between themselves, their authors and contributors and readers. Whereas publishers formerly made assumptions and decisions on behalf of their consumers, the multi-faceted experience I mention will now place far more choice in the hands of the consumer – which will make their experience with the book app intensely personal. In an extreme case, a consumer will be able to turn a travel guide or civil war history book into their own scrapbook and invite others to engage with them around this content. In another, a quizzing app for medical students can serve up a unique set of questions and then adapt those questions based on your performance in answering the questions. And just think about all the fan fiction that could be collected around one vampire app series.

Lastly, to finish, many professional publishers have long proposed work-flow solutions for their customers and, in the provision of these, the relationship with the consumer has become closer and closer. Publishing in these segments used to be about mailing large printed directories; now, their content is embedded in a product or platform that is much more powerful and comprehensive. Using the ReedElsevier platform, a practicing attorney can manage his or her entire legal practice using practice development, research, legal submissions, accounting and more. Content is still important but is now only a small part of a much deeper relationship. The other aspect of this model is that the embedded nature of this relationship makes it harder for attorneys to end their subscriptions to the Lexus product.

And in all these cases, both the creator and the user are able to access and engage in the content via multiple platforms and, increasingly, that platform is some mobile device that further encourages the user to view the technology merged with content as a personal experience. While app development is significant today, we are really only just starting to see the full potential and opportunity in the development of personal technology especially as that transformation impacts our publishing business.

To conclude, I have suggested that publishers long ago gave up being the masters of their domain with respect to technology advances. We have certainly seen that recently with the iPad where trade publishers have scrambled to catch-up. I had been pessimistic about publishers’ prospects in readdressing this imbalance but I now think that view was premature. It wasn’t that long ago that publishing companies like Thomson and Reed Elsevier were dependent on technical advances made by their vendors and partners. Today, information and professional publishers provide the best examples of how content companies can re-write their future from a technology standpoint. These companies lead in the integration of content, technology and workflow tools and are not dependent on new products developed by Apple or Google. It is likely that education and trade publishers will eventually master their opportunities in a similar fashion. I believe we are already starting to see that unfold and it will only accelerate in the coming years.

Thank you.

Repost: Sinatra's Stamp

First posted May 18 2008. Frank would have been 95 on Sunday

Frank Sinatra toured Australia in 1974 and they just wouldn’t leave him alone. Dogged by questions about his alleged connections to the mob and his decision not to give a press conference the press were merciless, and when he described them in true Ratpack fashion as “fags, whores and pimps” it was like chum in a shark tank. In Melbourne, outside The Southern Cross Hotel, he and his entourage were mobbed and one camera man was pushed, fell over and his camera damaged. On top of his comments and this “obvious” aggression by his bodyguard, an apology was demanded. Everyone got on the bandwagon and workers in the heavily unionized country threatened to call their members out if the tour went on without an apology.

Everyone was excited about Sinatra. Across the country, the concerts were sold out and Sinatra was a mega-star in a time when few made the trip “down under.” My father was the manager of The Southern Cross and we lived there for five years. A day or so after the camera-man incident, I had just arrived home from school and was watching Hollywood Squares on TV when my mother shouted out that Frank Sinatra was coming by. I wasn’t sure what to think. Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door, I opened it and in comes Frank, Barbara and a very large man. For some reason, Mom made herself scarce and I hosted Frank in our apartment living room all alone. He said I should continue to watch TV but I shut it off: Truthfully, I was slightly embarrassed about what I was watching. He wished me “happy birthday” (I was soon to turn 12) and asked me what I was up to in school. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Frank--leaning back with his legs crossed--and Barbara—covered in jewelry--sitting on the hotels’ best mid-century furniture. The furniture was upholstered in bitter-orange crushed velvet. I think the décor would have reminded Frank of Vegas in the mid-fifties.

We lived on the first floor of the hotel and Frank was about to escape the hotel through my parents’ bedroom roof terrace and over the roof into a waiting car at the bottom of a fire escape. After about ten minutes, the call came and our casual conversation came to an end. I shook Frank and Barbara’s hands and off they went without a hitch to the airport and his private jet. My father got to ride in the limo with him and on the plane Frank signed an autograph for him. One of my great regrets is that I never asked Frank to sign my book (but I do have my eye on the photo he signed for my father).

The tour was essentially cancelled, but an agreement was reached whereby Frank would do one show at the Sydney Opera House. He did it for charity and the show was broadcast on national TV. Naturally, by this point, I was a big fan and watched the entire show.

Since that encounter, I’ve convinced myself of a personal connection to Frank. Having ended up living in Hoboken-- where he was born--makes the whole thing even more surreal since he is a hero here. This, in spite of the fact Frank didn’t really care for the place and, by most accounts, the last time he visited Hoboken was in 1980 when he joined Ronald Regan on a campaign stop. There was a long gap prior to that but it doesn’t seem to worry many Hoboken old-timers, some of whom were at the unveiling of Sinatra’s postage stamp last week.

Repost: Book Buyers in all the Strange Places

Originally posted on February 25, 2007:

A few weeks ago Mrs PND and I were watching The Daily Show-- and I thought this show and The Colbert Report, which follows it, are really serious about books. And not your run-of-the- mill titles, but some with real meat. Recent authors on the shows have included Ralph Nader, John Danforth, Jimmy Carter and Ishmael Beah. It is curious that the last title seems to have generated some media attention on a number of fronts. Firstly, it was the second title that Starbucks has selected to 'showcase' in its stores (following Mitch Albom's recent book). Recent sales figures indicate that sales through Starbucks are smoking the traditional sales channels of B&N and Borders. Fellow traveller Eoin Purcell noted the reports from Galleycat and wondered several things about the market for these books sold via Starbucks and whether publishers are doing something wrong. In my mind, Starbucks moving so many units has more to do with the power of the Starbucks brand but it could also reflect a deficiency in publishers' marketing philosophy, as I noted in my comments on his blog:

In my mind there is a distinct correlation between a Starbucks selection and an Oprah selection and it doesn’t surprise me that Beah’s book and the Albom title are doing well at Starbucks. The reason I think there is a correlation is that the Starbucks and Oprah brands are so strong we well may trust them to recommend anything (probably some limits!). Certainly there are some other factors at play - no other titles, spur of the moment purchasing, what have you - but I think we believe that the title is available at Starbucks because they have taken the time - like Oprah and Richard and Judy - to select the very best title that they believe their customers will like and value. Five or six years ago, no one would have predicted that Oprah would be able to move so many books and it took the industry by surprise. The point for publishers is that there are ‘influencers’ that captivate the media (and thereby consumers) that publishers need to identify, nurture and exploit. I think it will be the canny publisher that actually starts to build a list specifically of interest to an ‘influencer’ so that this person (or brand) can support and promote the titles as Starbucks or Oprah does. For example, what if Macmillan launched a Starbucks imprint to sell titles (out of every outlet) that were selected and ‘vetted’ by the Starbucks team. The books would be available everywhere else but, at Starbucks, the consumer would associate their warm fuzzy feeling about the brand to the product extension--the books.

I do think that success in non-traditional outlets seems to catch publishers off-guard. A few months ago, the NYT wrote about books sold at weird, non-bookstore outlets such as butcher shops and clothes stores. Many in the industry derided the article because, as 'insiders', we thought the NYT was being disingenuous about something publishers already know. But do they?

Today's article in the Times discusses the book program on Comedy Central and it strongly suggests that the success of the program is an accident - at least to the publishers. Perhaps this is the manner in which the article is written; however, it appears that weighty titles are ending up on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because the traditional outlets utilized by publishers don't work as well as they used to. Thus by default. What is unsaid is that publishers don't really understand their market. The relationship between The Daily Show audience and a publisher's target consumer should be easy to determine. Yet, despite the fact that The Daily Show has been on for 10 years, we are supposed to be surprised at the bump Beah's book received after appearing on the show two weeks ago.

Publishers say that particularly for the last six months, “The Daily Show” and its spin off, “The Colbert Report,” which has on similarly wonky authors, like the former White House official David Kuo, have become the most reliable venues for promoting weighty books whose authors would otherwise end up on “The Early Show” on CBS looking like they showed up at the wrong party.

Perhaps twenty years ago, Rolling Stone magazine ran an ad campaign that showed a hippie tricked-out VW van with weird colors and stickers with a recent Merc or BMW next to it. The ad was headed "Perception and Reality "and was meant to show that the readers of RS were not the hippies of old, but rich yuppies. To some extent, there may be some of this going on here when the publishers say,

Part of the surprise, publishers said, is that the Comedy Central audience is more serious than its reputation allows. The public may still think of the “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” audience as a group of sardonic slackers, Gen-Y college students who prefer YouTube to print. But publishers say it’s a much more diverse demographic — and, more important, a book-buying audience.

There are more book buyers out there and perhaps if publishers spent more time understanding how 'influencers' manage our information flows they wouldn't be taken by surprise. As we know, 'influencers' can be butchers as much as they can be news readers.

The Times isn't necessarily a completely viable messenger and I believe their perceptions are off-kilter to some degree, as they reflect on the subject matter and refer to it as 'fake-news'. Objectively, The Daily Show is not 'fake-news'; it is ironic, funny and sometimes brutally honest news, but it is news nonetheless. I expect they wouldn't suggest that the NBC news is 'real news' just because it is dull and humourless.

It all comes down to knowing your audience. That is the Starbucks way and should be what publishers need to do more of.

Repost: Roger and Me

Originally posted April 30th, 2008. Speaks for itself.


I have no direct connection with Roger Clemens but I did admire him. In the mid-1980's I lived in Boston and it coincided with the time when he came up to the big leagues. When I finished my shift at the Museum of Fine Arts (the work was brutal), I generally walked home around the Public Gardens (making sure to stay out of them so as not to get mugged - that came later). During those summer evenings in 1984, through the heavy moist air, I could hear the crowd at Fenway moan and roar over the roof tops of Backbay Boston as I walked several blocks away. You could tell the night Roger was pitching; it was just electric and I don't consider myself a baseball fan but in Boston there was huge civic pride over the Red Socks and this pitching marvel.

Well things change. Ultimately they were happy to see him go and now his biography is basically writing itself in chapters delivered to the newspapers every few weeks. Some publisher is going to get the deal but not, I hope, without a set of conditions that has him coming clean about every thing. But that is unlikely to happen until he gets indicted and (perhaps) sentenced for perjuring himself. Unless they find proof (which admittedly wouldn't surprise anyone) they may not have a case just the stink of suspicion. Ultimately if he is backed into a corner where he can't escape, he will just do the public apology thing, cash in and we will all go on with our lives as though all is forgotten.

There has been a published bio: Rocket Man: The Roger Clemens Story and this was the booklist review of the book:

Roger Clemens' 24-4 pitching record for the 1986 American League champion Boston Red Sox earned him a rare double honor: Most Valuable Player (usually the exclusive domain of position players) and the Cy Young Award (best pitcher). He also set a new major-league record with 20 strikeouts in a game. And he's only 24 which is good news for Red Sox fans but not so good for readers of this autobiography, since the baby-faced fastballer has hardly experienced enough to merit an extended article, let alone an entire book. Coauthor and premier baseball writer Peter Gammons keeps things moving crisply enough, but ultimately this is mediocre sports-bio fare. There is likely to be demand based on Clemens' name, particularly since he has settled his contract dispute and won't spend the year on the sidelines.

I recall that summer in 1984. Roger had an August night where he stuck out 15 and came back in his next game and stuck-out 10. Sadly, he has struck himself out but we have all long since lost and now we don't even moan and grown about this latest example of Athletic failure anymore.

Repost: Pimp My Print

Originally posted on December 10, 2008

Many pundits pontificate on the demise of publishing (myself included and some others I could mention) and while many of these versions of the future are well intentioned they often lack substance. Today in ComputerWorld - an obvious organ of reasoned strategic discussion about book publishing - is a perspective 'from technology' that decries the effort by Penguin and some others to launch their content on mobile platforms as 'painful'. The author's wider point seems to be that publishers need to place their full content - not just snippets - in as many places as possible so that readers/consumers can access it with as little difficulty as possible. Music publishers did not do that and became the victims of rampant piracy, and some have argued that because electronic access to music content was limited this drove piracy. Had there been easy access and easy payment options perhaps the music industry would be in a different place now. But that is 20/20 hindsight and at the time, you would have to have been a certified genius to have seen that.

Publishers have a different issue. Reading is immersive: We are active readers and passive (music) listeners. 'Pimping' the content so that it appears on a smart phone or a web browser or a flat panel will only ever have limited success. It is tactically important to do this with the current inventory of content that a typical publisher will own, but that's not going to sustain the future of the business. Any publisher who's digital policies and activities are focused entirely on retro-active conversions and the migration of their historic product packaging to an electronic environment will see their market whither. It is possible that some publishers may make a choice to cash-cow the existing content and sell it on every available electronic platform they can. That makes some sense but not if in doing so they believe that model will sustain their future publishing programs built on delivering readers a 250 page novel or a 12 chapter business book with an index limited by the number of blank pages left in the last folio.

Pimping the print compounds an issue publishers have faced for a long time (forever?). They don't really know what consumers want. To paraphrase Wannamaker 'I know only 50% of what I publish sells, I just don't know which 50%' (He said it about advertising). The publisher of the future is going to spend more time understanding the consumer and fulfilling their needs (marketing 101: a need is filled not created) than transferring the current model to phones, screens and digits. If I were heading a publishing house, I would hire a band of 25-30 year old editors/writers, give them a budget to acquire content and have them build a new 'publishing' operation unfettered by print runs, business models and pub dates. Their responsibility would be to create content a target market valued enough to use, to experiment in how to monetize the content and to be able to replicate the model. With guidance - not oversight - provided by the many experienced managers that exist in a typical publishing house the team won't fail. And yes, I would do this TODAY. So forget pimping existing print and think about delivering content consumers need.

Apparatchiks and Ayatollahs of Texas Education and the Other 48.

There are over four million Texas high schoolers and every one of them is exceptional; there are many fewer in Alaska but this makes them no less so. Exceptional? Certainly, when you consider that Texas and Alaska have excluded themselves from the National Governors Association (NGA) attempt to develop common core standards in English language arts and mathematics.

Texas education is dominated by centralized planning that, in recent weeks, has looked Stalinist in its apparatchik-like ability to re-write history. In one example, and with little or no debate, one ignorant school board member was able to effectively rewrite Latin American social history simply because she hadn’t heard of a key participant. Other board members might, perhaps, have pointed out that that’s the point of teaching history but, alas, they did not. In Dallas recently, the school board there decided to “go rogue”--disregarding both the evidence and the testimony of experts and parents-- and select materials for their schools that were characterized by the Dallas Morning News as being ‘riddled with errors’.

Texas seems to revel in its gargantuan-market-sized ability to influence what publishers place in their textbooks. In the words of full-time dentist and part-time Texas Board of Education Chairman Dr. Don McLeroy, board members like him are there to correct the ‘liberal bias of experts’ in the creation of educational texts. In so doing, Texas educators conspire in an almost narcissistic endeavor to create a mélange of fuzzy math, pseudo-science and revisionist materials for their schools. Despite the headlines from Dallas in recent weeks and the resultant slow awakening of faculty, students and parents, the situation is unlikely to change appreciably. Especially when you consider that Dr. McLeroy is from Austin, arguably the most liberal locale in Texas.

Today (April 2) is the day the NGA is closing the comment period for their draft Core Standards document. This set of guidelines for math and English language arts represents an attempt by the states (not the Federal Government) to ensure consistency across the US for students preparing for higher eduction. From their press release:

These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards are:
• Aligned with college and work expectations;
• Clear, understandable and consistent;
• Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
• Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
• Informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
• Evidence- and research-based.

No doubt that last one caused consternation in Texas but, if you read the guidelines as is, they are not revolutionary in scope. Where they do differ from prior practice is that the states have decided to determine their own destinies and not be forced to accept federal dictates on educational reform. In the No Child Left Behind programs (which set assessment and evaluation criteria and then rewarded achievement with money), the states played a limited role in setting the standards. No Child Left Behind is now widely viewed as a very expensive failure and the Obama administration has determined that education policy must change to improve students’ ability to reach college (with a uniform understanding of certain key topics) and to enable America to compete with other countries.

The proactive steps taken by the NGA should be actively supported by all who see education policy as a shared responsibility between the states and the federal government. Hopefully, by so doing, individual states like Texas and Alaska will no longer be able to short-change their students future by imposing their flat world view on education.


Note: How the Texas Board Works and What it Does (Video)

Pirates as Product Development

There were numerous fine presentations at the Digital Book World this week - notably the panel discussion featuring Larry Kirshbaum, Michael Cader, Evan Schnittman and Ken Brooks - which I think added a lot to our understanding of where we are in the eBook evolution.

Not to dismiss any other discussion, I thought the simple, clean direct - almost matter-of-fact - presentation by Liza Daly that described the typical consumer experience in finding, downloading and reading an eBook was one of the highlights. If that presentation didn't leave publishers thinking about the eBook versions of their titles then there's no hope.

During the course of her presentation and almost as an aside, she noted that there are many pirated eBook versions of books that are actually significantly better designed and presented than the legit version. Hence the title of this post; rather than shutting the Pirate down why not adopt the pirated version and use it instead as the legit version? Hey, why not hire the pirate?

I know, I know...

Traveling Home and Baffling Terror

Before we left the family manse on Saturday morning (12/26) I happened to turn the news on to the reports about the Delta Airlines flight in Detroit. I realized immediately that I needed to keep quiet about this but I anticipated a raft of issues when we got to Heathrow. Not so. Our pass through security and the wait in the terminal was no different than any other flight.

As we boarded however, every passenger was re-screened and patted down. I actually have no problem with this if it is done one of two ways: Either no one gets the treatment or we all do. One of my most vivid memories of traveling as a child during the 1970s occurred at Frankfurt's Main airport where on boarding our Pan Am flight security had erected a screened pen where they were selectively strip searching passengers. What goes around comes around but it also shows that not too much has been learned. In a poorly executed exercise that had the entire passenger load lined up the gang way for 2hours, we were lucky enough to get on board early.

After about an hour the first curious announcement was made: All water bottles carried on board had to be handed over. At this point half the passengers had already been searched and were in their seats. The flight crew could only rely on the honesty of each passenger to hand over their bottles. If you were up to no good why volunteer?

The flight took off and we were tucking into our meal watching a movie when the next weird announcement was made: On FAA instruction the in-flight entertainment system had to be turned off. But we could still use our own electronic 'devices'. That was until the next announcement about 20mins later: Anything with an on-off switch had to be turned off. Again, if you were up to no good....

The crew had no idea either and the in flight purser (or whatever he was) was completely inarticulate which only made the whole thing more bizarre (there was nothing from the Captain). The weirdness only got worse when they announced they had to collect all pillows and blankets prior to landing and that for the last hour of the flight no one could stand-up or visit the dunny. (The last bit is not too controversial since that was/is in effect for flights to DC). Mrs PND who was still ignorant of the Detroit issue (it was never mentioned on the plane) was becoming increasingly baffled (and in full bluster).

The whole thing was as though they were making it up as they went along but I am glad we got out before the silliness really got started. Out of all of this is the constancy that the 'security' process is more for passenger's piece of mind, that circumventing 'security' is easy and that we are always several steps behind. Indeed on the last point, a read of Fred Forsyth, Tom Clancy or Mark Burnell represents enough of a blue print as to what the bad guys are up to.

My Apple a Daily and Action Comics

In 1997 I spent a month with Jimmy Lai aboard his rocket-like media story Apple Daily. Who is Jimmy Lai? He's the guy they said swam across from China to Hong Kong with nothing, rose up to found the down-market Gap like Giordano (which he sold for a $1.0billion) and went on to start a newspaper business (complete with his own printing presses) just as China was regaining Hong Kong.

Apple Daily was just over a year old when I was engaged as a member of a PriceWaterhouse consulting team and, even then, Apple Daily was already the most talked-about newspaper in Hong Kong. And they did it sensationally. In the weeks I was there, the scandalous and the salacious were on full color display: I will not forget the images of mobster "Big Spender," who was tried, sentenced and hanged all in the month I was there. There's only room for a summary appeal in China and to the satisfaction - no doubt - of the Apple Daily editors, the story reached its denouement in double-quick time. They promptly moved on to the next story.

Apple Daily has continued to grow and is now also published in Taiwan. The newspaper is also readily available on newsstands in New York City. In the past two weeks, Apple Daily has gained international attention for their recreations of the Tiger Woods story. These 'action comics' (my words) are amusing - and they are also typical of Apple Daily where the scandalous and salacious are often front and center. This is Apple Daily's bread and butter but while the US media seems to be 'taken' with these 'action comics', there is a little more behind the headlines. These action comics are a fairly recent feature of the Apple Daily empire and one of the earliest was a recreation of the Seattle cop killings of a few weeks ago. In total bad taste, but well within the boundaries (or lack thereof) set in the very early days of Apple Daily.

In the biggest story featured while I was in Hong Kong, the newspaper had developed a story around a laborer - no one 'important' - who got mixed up with drugs, girls and gambling. On the face of it nothing too extraordinary: But this blue collar guy had a wife and small child and Apple Daily pursued and tormented him and his family so much he threw himself out a window. This was over the course of four or five days. With a suicide on their hands, the newspaper printed a front-page apology but the 'damage' was done: Higher circulation.

Jimmy Lai and his media company Next Media are a powerful force for good in the pursuit of wider democracy for all Chinese and the elimination of political corruption and cronyism; but, the scandal-mongering is an important aspect of Apple Daily's appeal. The negative implications of the indiscriminate salaciousness have been conveniently ignored because the Woods 'action comics are funny and cute.

Kenyan Birther

Well, I thought it was funny....



Build your own: http://kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com/

Moon Memory

I always remembered the moon walk occurring during the daytime, and it wasn't until recently that Mrs. PND happened to recall 'staying up' to watch a couple of guys walk on the moon. My memory was captured in brilliant white sunshine and air conditioning because in their early twenties in mid 1968, my parents had packed up the family and moved to Thailand where my father took his first management role at Intercontinental. Out of England, Thailand was a magical place but also often fetid, smelly and unbearably hot; however, living at one of Bangkok's few luxury hotels - one also that had created a sort of garden oasis out of the surrounding slums - eased the transition considerably. I had the run of the place since both my brothers were much too young to get out by themselves and while I didn't get up to too much mischief I did have my moments.

My mode of transportation was my peddle car US Army issue Jimmy's Jeep (all green) in which I tooled around the open air corridors of the hotel. This was especially fun during the rainy season when the corridors became particularly conducive to skidding. As three blond haired kids, we were a somewhat unusual commodity to the Thai especially the women and whenever my youngest brother went out they always wanted to touch his blond hair. From my perspective this attention was often unwanted and one particular room service waiter teased me mercilessly, and I had just had enough when on one occasion he snuck up behind me and took my hat. When he refused in the face of my demand to give it back, I took a run at him in my Jeep and rammed him. Catastrophically, he was also carrying a lunch tray which went flying in a cascade of crockery, food and glass. I remember him looking at me half laughing while I was immediately mortified that my father would find out. Needless to say he never bothered me again and I got my hat back. No one ever mentioned it. I always wonder what he told HQ when he had to return with a tray full of debris to replace the order.

There were no televisions in the hotel rooms at that time mainly because there was only one state television station in Thailand which broadcast in Thai. On the morning of July 21st, 1969 (evening of July 2oth on the east coast), my mother took me to the hotel lobby vowing to me this is something you will always remember. I suspect if we were still living in England that I would not have seen the moon walk live because of the time difference. As I recall, there were only a few people gathered around the TV which was sitting unceremoniously low to the floor on a chair. In contrast to the crowds gathered in public places in the US, I was left to recognize the importance of what I was witnessing without the collective endorsement of the crowd, but I am sure our little group clapped and sighed with relief just like everyone else. We also didn't have the benefit of Walter Cronkite's commentary and in the last several days having watched some of the CBS broadcast, he did indeed sum up the penultimate moment brilliantly when he takes off his glasses and just says 'Wow'.

In the forty years since the landing, I am indifferent to the manned space program and I don't see the value of spending billions just to prove we can do something that has no recurring benefit. The Apollo program was important but everything we do in space can be replicated down here and down here we have more than enough problems to contend with.

Back to the Future in Iran

As we slowly made our way toward the airport for our flight home, the car lurched forward as the front wheels fell into a particularly large hole. From the front seat, our guide turned around, rolled his eyes and said "Here, he was mayor of Tehran and now he's President but he couldn't even fix our streets." And so it was during our trip, an imperceptible admission that they - our hosts and others like them - weren't responsible for Ahmadinejad. Sure they voted but not for this guy. On the one hand the events of this week are amazing in a country ruled by fear but on the other-hand less so. The crowd - students, moderate clergy, the middle class - had been invited to participate, but they had had enough and told them so. To many of them Ahmadinejad turned out to be worst than their worst nightmare.

This was my third visit to Iran having stopped over twice before in the mid-1970s. At that time, Tehran was rapidly growing under another dictatorship. Here was a vast city in the middle of nowhere completely outside my experience yet they had skyscrapers, side walks, movie theaters, traffic, jet aircraft, incredible architecture, and a jewelry collection you couldn't believe. Even in the 1970s, the separation between us and them wasn't that great. We stayed at the newly built Intercontinental and there was a Sheraton across town. We visited the souk and we got a carpet and some other souvenirs. We visited all the important sites and we went by plane and back to Isfahan, the holy city. We even frolicked in the hotel pool where off-duty Pan Am air crews wandered around as though they were in Miami.

Over the years my memories remained positive and I was never able to marry Bush's 'axis of evil' with my experience. Wouldn't that be like invading France I thought. Iran isn't some backward country. Regardless, in advance of our trip in November 2005 I did have some trepidation as I left London. I was excited, and when we arrived we were escorted through immigration by our travel guide. We were welcomed. I've had more trouble getting into Canada. Conversations were generally guarded but when we went for our big dinner out the conversation did become looser. During the dinner, males and females interacted, some women did not wear head scarfs and the Iranians proffered an almost laisez faire attitude to their political situation. Almost admitting 'we didn't vote for him but what are we supposed to do?

As chance would have it, when I returned to Tehran in 2005 we were placed in the old Intercontinental. At the height of the 1979 revolution, the hotel was 'liberated' but in the years following the government chose to keep everything the same. While the pool is now out of commission, the Iranians seemed to be proud of their previous more westernized outlook. The hotel retained all the branding of the original Intercontinental - even down to the waste basket in my room - despite a name change. The lobby was identical to the image in my mind from the day we left back in 1974. And in the entry way to their best top floor restaurant they still had on display a famous award for excellence. Encased in glass it was so covered in dust it looked like a funnel spider. Unfortunately for me, that meal caused me to get so ill I couldn't get out of bed the next day and make the day trip to Isfahan.

There were some dark spots: walls painted with 'death to America' and the local Tehran Times English language newspaper was busy interviewing a holocaust denier. There was no interest exhibited by our travel guides to engage on these topics and we didn't press the issue either.

As we saw, life in Tehran was getting harder. Inflation was growing and we saw lines outside gas stations. The roads weren't getting fixed. Corruption was rampant yet the religious police maintained their sweeps of improperly dressed women. So, some bright spark asked them for some feedback on their political circumstance and this is what they got.

Someone's Blinded

Did you hear the one about the blind person that shelled out $350 to buy a Kindle just so they could listen to a book rather than buy a braille version? Assuming they could find the book in a braille version. Deciding the approach is far more convenient for them despite the tinny voice-over, they decide to spend their book dollars on Kindle eBooks rather than Braille books and as luck would have it, they spend more on books now that they have more choice and a far more convenient option. So every one wins: the consumer, the publisher, retailer and author - right? Apparently not.

Even though it could be legitimately argued that enabling the speech to text functionality on the Kindle could actually increase revenues (reasons above), the Author's Guild has 'persuaded' Amazon (who uncharacteristically folded like a deck chair) to disable the tool. AG believes they are protecting the economic rights of their authors. Yes, this is a real and legitimate function of the AG: View their work protecting authors in the Google book scanning suit, but no sooner had the shine on that agreement begun to dull that they stepped into this mess of their own making.

This is not about the Blind but they are now the unwitting victims of this misguided action by the AG. And realistically, who could believe the AG would ever want to take on Blind people? I'm confident there are even some blind member authors of AG. (I wonder how they feel). On the other hand, it is about the AG attempting to maintain an authors right to royalties from audio versions of their books. Yet, I must be missing something. If I buy a book for the Kindle how many times am I going to also buy the audio version? Never, is the answer. Just like if I buy an audio book for my drive commute I am unlikely (never) going to also buy the print version.

Now I am sure some will say "Oh, I did do that once," and on a few occasions I have found my self in the middle of a hardcover book and not wanting to tote it on a trip have bought the paperback at the airport. But rarely; that is, effectively never.

My point is I don't see where the author is out any royalty. It is hard to believe there is any appreciable overlap in formats purchased of the same title that makes this concern of AG's even remotely valid. On the other hand, maybe more people would buy more books if they had more options available in the manner in which they consumed them. Blind people included. Everybody wins.

For the record, if you want to read this aloud to someone -even yourself - go right ahead.

Another Cairns on the Offensive

Apparently some other obnoxious basta'd named Michael Cairns is sticking it to the English cricket board. (Guardian)

Lancashire have launched a fresh and withering attack on Giles Clarke's leadership of the England and Wales Cricket Board, and have also criticised their fellow counties for allowing him to survive the Stanford affair.

Michael Cairns, a heavy-hitting businessman who succeeded Jack Simmons as the chairman at Old Trafford last year, claims in his annual report to members that "there is a serious lack of governance, transparency and accountability within the leadership and administration of the board".

"The Stanford debacle was a disgrace but regrettably only one example of mismanagement that the ECB have been guilty of over the past year," Cairns continues. "If such a performance was evident in any of the organisations that I have been associated with throughout my business career, the management would take it upon themselves to do the right thing and resign, or face the alternative.

Under Clark, the ECB struck an almost pornographic deal with "Sir" Alan Stanford who of course is apparently a crook. Basic due diligence (as with Madoff) would have made that clear at the outset.

NYTimes goes Global

I bet every one who reads this blog reads the NYTimes and so you will have seen the banner across the top of the page that suggested you view their global edition. I think it's great they are experimenting but I was both bemused and affronted. Firstly, I thought they already had a global view. To me the NYTimes isn't the provincial Daily News or Newsday: it's The Times. It has a global perspective so why would I be inclined to narrow my view; why isn't the international/global perspective inculcated into all the news and in-depth items in the newspaper? I thought it was, and it probably is (where appropriate) but of all the 'segmentation' they could do with the newspaper this one strikes me as a little off.

They stumble on execution. I hit the 'switch to global' version and the first thing I did was look at the opinion section. As I expected, they seem to have done is make more prominent those editorials pertaining to the global marketplace. They do have 'foreign' contributors but surely in this section these need to be more prominent. More egregiously, I can't seem to find bio information about who these people are. I know who Ban Ki-Moon is but without consulting wikipedia I don't know who Evgeny Morozov is. Even the comic is American. Wouldn't opinion be where the Times could set its self apart? Since that's what they appear to want to do.

Kindle: Not Much of an Impact

Julia Boorstin (SeekingAlpha) thinks the Kindle won't have much of an impact and lauds the Apple/Amazon 'partnership' as a possible savor of the publishing industry. "Previously, e-Books were only available to the small group of Kindle owners who shelled out $359 for the device." she wrongly enthuses. I just realized in writing my rebuttal in the comments that I missed the most obviously wrong part of that statement: "only available" WTF?

She goes on to gush "Sources in the publishing industry tell me they're really excited about the potential for e-Books." Humm. But this is all good because Amazon has such a hard time struggling to get customers that "This news is also huge for Amazon; bringing e-book capabilities to the iPhone should get millions of users to pay the $7-$10 price for each e-Book download."

It's going to be big, big, big.

The last comment about Kindle not having an impact is a killer.

All Together Now: Apologize!

In the Independent this week Michael Bywater discusses the Apology Culture. Over here, with just this week everyone from the President to A-Rod, apologizing this op-ed is just as relevant. Here is a sample:

The apology has become the defining gesture of the age. Russell Brand had to apologise for making off-colour remarks. Jeremy Clarkson – a man who would eat his own testicles rather than petition for an apology, even though he'd have to remove them from his own personal brain where they've been living for all these years – had to apologise for making a startlingly fine joke about lorry drivers, and, subsequently for calling Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" at a press conference in Australia. His calling Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" would probably have escaped much attention had it not been for the BBC – powerfully complicit in driving the Apology Culture – publishing on its website a video of Clarkson calling Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" accompanied by a story saying that Clarkson's calling Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" had "provoked anger in Scotland".

We might find some comfort across the Atlantic, where the Apology Culture has become even tackier and more insane than here. President Obama apologised for the sins of his cabinet appointees, on five different TV networks in seven different ways. This wasn't for something he had done. It wasn't for something other people had done who had falsely got into positions of power. Obama was apologising for something two other people had done who hadn't got into positions of power because what they'd done had been found out. So what (we might ask) was President Obama actually apologising for?

Read the whole thing.

Lincoln's Birthday

There's been so much written about Lincoln this year it is no surprise that there is more attention paid to his birth date than (perhaps) normal. OUP has a series of three articles beginning with this one on the President where they interview Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction.

Often cited is the fact that Lincoln is the most written about historical figure. Well with little to interest myself last weekend I took a look at BIP via the New York Public Library. According to the database (and this is an unscientific query), there are 1,577 active titles, 25 forthcoming and 519 inactive nonfiction hard or soft cover books on the President. That's a lot especially compared with some other notables such as Washington (1480 active), WSChurchill (521), Napoleon (1143) and Hitler (805). I checked "God" just in case and he/she has 8,312 although I am not sure how those are classified.

OCLC's identities also shows an interesting perspective on books about and by Lincoln. Here. They show fully 18,714 works in 26,693 publications in 66 languages and 1,036,286 library holding. The identities shows how constant has been the flow of books about Lincoln over the past 100 years. It looks like there is always between 350 - 450 new Lincoln books per year.