SharedBook Announces Several New Initiatives

Many readers will know I have been a fan of the SharedBook model for several years now and enjoy keeping track of their new initiatives. Here is a recent update on several new announcements from the company:

Today, Congressman John Culberson http://culberson.house.gov (R-Texas) placed a link on his site that allows his constituents to read and comment on the House Healthcare Bill, using SharedBook’s annotation platform. In the Congressman’s words, “this new website will give you, my constituents in the Seventh District, a choice in the health care debate. You now have an opportunity to read and comment on the bill. I look forward to reading your comments and restoring public trust in the government by raising the level of openness, order and discourse.” We applaud the Congressman for taking Transparency to a new level by allowing his constituents to give him feedback on healthcare reform in a very granular and detailed way.

Meanwhile, Google has informally announced on its blog that they now have an affiliation with SharedBook’s Blog2Print product, to enable users of the Blogger platform to easily translate their blog into a physical book or PDF download. Since Blog2Print was introduced in July of ‘07 ago, tens of thousands of bloggers have created a permanent record of their posts and photos. See http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/09/turn-your-blog-into-book-with.html.

On September 14th, Hachette, through its Twelve Books imprint, with authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, launched three chapters of their best seller “NurtureShock” into the SharedBook annotation platform, to allow readers to discuss their controversial findings on child rearing. The New York Times and others covered this experiment in social media as applied to published works and we are excited to watch the discussion progress. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/business/media/07book.html?_r=1)

And Woman’s Day is using SharedBook’s Smart Button to allow consumers of their web content to create their own cookbooks <http://www.womansday.com/shared_book.html> from Woman’s Day recipes. With a couple of clicks, users can compile a cookbook of their choice, add more personal content to it if they so desire, and save it to their hard drive or create a hard or soft bound copy.

Finally, we’ve added another 50 titles from assorted publishers to www.Inscribe-it.com and are looking forward to the Holiday season, when we are told that some major magazines and media outlets will choose these personalized books as a featured Holiday gift item. A home page redesign will be launched to usher in the 4th quarter.

More posts on SharedBook.

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.

Shared Book Grows

I have mentioned Shared Book a few times here and they continue to gain traction with major publishers. In particular, their personalized books for children. Today they announced several new agreements:

SharedBook Inc., the Custom Publishing Platform provider, announced today new affiliate agreements with First Book, a national children’s literacy organization; Tattered Cover Book Store, the renowned independent bookseller in Denver, Colorado; Capitol Book and News of Montgomery, one of the oldest independent book stores in Alabama; Kidmondo, the online baby journal and organizer, and Grandparents.com, the premier life-stage destination for a new generation of active grandparents. All will link to www.kids.sharedbook.com , the first direct-to-consumer store featuring classic children’s books that can be quickly and easily be personalized. Kids.SharedBook.com is the new online destination for personalized editions of Fancy Nancy, The Night Before Christmas, Bad Dog, Marley and more than 100 other well known classic children’s books.

Visitors to SharedBook’s affiliates are taken to a custom-branded store that maintains the look and feel of the originating site. Once arriving in the store, consumers can create a custom dedication with text and photo that appears in the front of the book and, in some cases, can also personalize the back covers. Books are then purchased and printed in hard cover and shipped free to the recipient.

"SharedBook’s first group of affiliates reflects the broad range of companies interested in affiliating with the next wave of digital publishing. We hope these personalized books will spark lots of gift-giving ideas as we head into the Holidays,” said Caroline Vanderlip, Chief Executive Officer, SharedBook Inc. “We are extremely grateful for the support of our affiliate partners, and are pleased they have joined with us to re-think how books can utilize technology to create something lasting and special.”

SharedBook Launches Partnership with Carepages

I have mentioned Sharedbook a few times recently and they announced today the launch of a partnership with Carepages, Inc. From the press release:

SharedBook Inc., the Reverse Publishing Platform provider, and CarePages, Inc., the leading Internet service for building online health communities, launched the CarePages Keepsake Book today in response to member requests to publish the health updates, photographs and encouraging messages posted in their online CarePages communities in professionally-printed book format.

CarePages.com offers free, personal, private Web pages that help family and friends communicate when someone is hospitalized or receiving care. CarePages.com builds communities of support where families and friends can access resources, tools and guidance to learn what to do and say – and how to communicate and care with compassion and sensitivity.

“We hear from hundreds of families each day regarding how CarePages.com has helped them during a time of need,” said Eric Langshur, Chief Executive Officer, CarePages, Inc. “We value our members’ feedback and are pleased to introduce a feature they requested – the ability to preserve their user-generated content in book format.”

Earlier this month ShareBook also announced an enhanced version of their Blog2Print widget which enables easy production of blog content into book form. From the press release"

Blog2Print now automatically flows photographs and other images into blog book format along with the appropriate text, similar to the way content appears online. Additional enhancements include the ability to format more complex blogs. All updates will seamlessly apply to the Blog2Print widgets that have been placed on blogs to date. "Since we first introduced Blog2Print in beta form, bloggers from around the world have been telling us what works, what doesn't and which features they would like to see," said Caroline Vanderlip, Chief Executive Officer, SharedBook Inc. "The feedback we've received from the user community has been invaluable to date, and we hope to learn more as the public beta program continues."

Seeing how SharedBook can turn your blog into book form is incredibly easy. Anyone constructing publishing a blog for a specific event or commemoration requires very little technical skill (if any) to go the next step to produce a book.

SharedBook And BigOven

SharedBook (which I have featured before) has struck a deal with BigOven to use the SharedBook api so that BigOven users can create their own custom cookbooks. Any registered user can both use their own recipes by adding them to the BigOven database and use any of the 160,000+ recipes already in the database. Long time users of BigOven will find this tool immediately useful since they will be able to choose from their favorites list and from lists of items they have searched specifically for in the past.

The recipes in the database range from Aunt Millie's Down Town Meat Loaf (I made that up) to recipes taken from magazines and added by users. The books can also be collaborative so in addition to creating your own best of title, a group of users can create a collaboratively generated cookbook and add their own commentary and dedications.

The finished version will be delivered looking like something you could buy in a store and it comes in two versions: A slipcased version and one that lies flat that is best for use in the kitchen.

More specifically from the press release, SharedBook notes the following:

Simply visit BigOven.com and type in anything you’d like to print a book about. Then, look on the right hand side of the search results for a “Print a Cookbook with these Recipes!” link, and that will take you right to the bridge page with the recipes queued up. You can then select which ones you would like to include and change the order.

Recipes Contributed by Any Member – visit a chef’s page and click on the “Recipes I’ve Posted” link to generate a search of all recipes that member has posted. Now, look on the search results page, right hand side, about halfway down the page. Click on the link “Print a Cookbook with these Recipes!”

Any Cooking Group – The BigOven Cookbook is an easy way for groups of friends and family to create cookbooks. Groups are free to create on BigOven.com. You can simply create a group on BigOven and join for free, post recipes to the site (at not charge), and add them to your cooking group and then, anyone can print a group cookbook at any time.

There is no question we will see more of these types of collaborative software tools enabling consumers to create their own personalized products using publishers (and others) content and adding their own material whether it be editorial, photos and probably embedded video and audio. SharedBook looks like they are making all the right moves and this deal comes on the heels of a recently announced deal with Random House.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 6): Borders, SharedBook, Tools of Change

Ingram Digital Chief Commercial Officer Frank Daniels has done an audio interview with Karen Holt at Teleread.org and among the topics covered are the following:

–Frank’s most recent title. “If it has to do with customers, it has has to do with me.” Earlier he was chief operating officer of Ingram Digital.

–E-newspapers vs. e-books—how they differ. Frank worked for both the editorial and business sides of the Raleigh News & Observer, which his family owned for many decades.

–Ingram Digital’s VitalSource e-reading software, whose interactive capabilities are especially useful in education-related apps, such as dental training. See video for more. Ingram bought VitalSource Technologies, of which Frank was president and CEO, in 2006.

–E-book prices, which he notes range widely. “E-books are going to be priced on convenience more than they’re going to be priced on format.”

–Kindle vs. iPhone. The device “that’s going to prevail has not been invented yet.” In fact, he’s doubts that the industry will standardize on a particular device the way the Apple iPod dominates music.

–DRM. Frank’s unabashedly pro. His DRM comments begin just short of nine minutes into the interview. Listen carefully. and please be civil in our comments section if you’d like to respond. “We’ve not seen DRM to be any kind of barrier to a sale.”

Borders' is able to extend the terms of their agreement with Pershing Square. It costs them $750,000 for expenses. The company now has until April 15th to repay a $42.5mm secured term loan. Coupled with this agreement the companies also agreed to extend the option to sell to Pershing the PaperChase business. Reuters Two businesses that were attempting to develop music and video "library" services on college campuses have folded. This week Cdigix sited the bad economy for their closure (Chronicle)

Cdigix, a company that focused on selling a service to colleges to place movies and music on reserve online for students, quietly ceased operations at the end of December and is in the process of dissolving. It cited a lack of clients and an inability to raise money to continue. The company initially offered an online music service for colleges, but it ended that service about two years ago to focus on offering reserves of electronic media.

Mark Brodsky, president and chief operating officer of Cdigix, said in an interview today that the company was “a casualty of the economic times.” It had about 25 to 30 colleges either signed up for the service or were testing it, he said, but customers were notified at the end of last year that the service would shut down.

Another service Ruckus also closed this week (Chronicle):

Colleges began signing up for Ruckus five years ago, and in 2005, almost one in five was considering a subscription to a music or movie service, according to a survey by the education-technology group Educause. At first Ruckus charged for campus wide access, but by 2006 it had shifted its focus from site licenses to advertising, still requiring colleges to sign deals, but not to pay.

SharedBook launched Smart Button technology a streamlined implementation of the SharedBook platform that, (SharedBook)

allows partners to apply SharedBook's customized creation capabilities with minimal resource application and maximum flexibility, delivering new revenue sources. Initially, Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors will use Smart Button to create a new line of books culled from their vast troves of content, arrayed to illuminate specific topics for their customers. Soon, visitors to Britannica.com will also have the ability to use Smart Button to make their own works, by selecting various articles and content, and with one click, add them to a custom, one-of-a-kind volume. "Smart Button turns the historical process of publishing a book on its ear, bringing specialized content to our users faster than ever before", said Joe Miller, Managing Director of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Consumer Division.

In addition to EB, Legacy.com and Sohio Blackwell was accused of 'dechristianising' their Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (Guardian):

The Encyclopedia's editor-in-chief, George Kurian, claims that under pressure from an anti-Christian lobby, Blackwell decided that entries in the four-volume book were "too Christian, too orthodox, too anti-secular and too anti-Muslim and not politically correct enough for being used in universities". Kurian also claims that the press wants to delete words including "Antichrist", "Virgin Birth", "Resurrection", "Evangelism" and "Beloved Disciple" from the book, as well as objecting to "historical references to the persecution and massacres of Christians by Muslims".

Proceedings from last weeks Tools of Change Presentations. (TOC) Eduardo Porter writing in the New York Times on what Newspapers do (NYT):

Companies in countries with a larger daily newspaper circulation are fairer to minority shareholders and have a better record responding to environmental concerns. And a 2000 study by Timothy Besley and Robin Burgess of the London School of Economics proved Sen to be right: governments in India provide more public food and disaster relief in hard times in states where newspaper circulation is higher.

It’s easy to forget the role of an independent press in the development of democratic institutions in the United States. Through much of the 19th century, newspapers were mostly partisan mouthpieces. But as circulation and advertising grew, they shed political allegiances and started competing for customers by investigating shady deals and taking up populist causes.

Thinking about The Satanic Versus (BBC):

For Professor John Sutherland, critic and Booker prize judge, The Satanic Verses should now be seen as Rushdie's best novel, prophetic and the fruit of his obsession with on the one hand the magic of the Arabian Nights and on the other the literal truth claimed for the Koran.

"Rushdie is fascinated in the way that novels are true and the ways in which they become true through multiple untruths," he said.

"People looking for something offensive, heretical or blasphemous won't find it. It's not a diatribe, a calculated insult. It's an extremely good novel."

SharedBook Launches Platform Supporting Google Book Search Discussion

SharedBook.com has launched a site that enables stakeholders and the public at large to annotate the Google Book Settlement and other related documents. The website leverages the company's editorial platform so that users can match comments and annotations directly to the locations in the text to which the comments pertain. This technology is already in use with some of SharedBook's clients and users of the GBS application of this tool can also print the official documents together with any comments they think important. These comments can be both their own as well as those of the community. Here is an excerpt from their press release:

Until now, discussions on the Google Book Settlement have been taking place across fragmented forums. Now, for the first time, policymakers, businesspeople, scholars, journalists and others have the opportunity to come together and engage in a granular, contextual dialogue on this important topic. Our platform supports comments and responsive statements in real-time, linking them directly to the Google Book Settlement and accompanying documents through online footnoting, always preserving the original documents in their original form. As a result, the Google Book Settlement site becomes an informed and transparent analysis of key points of the settlement by its most concerned stakeholders, available to anyone on the Web.

The platform also offers a compilation and print capability, allowing books to be created from the content with any combination of annotations, which appear in the book as footnotes. We invite all interested parties to participate in this discussion, and to be a part of the debate on this very important subject.

Visit the website here.

Update:

David Rothman (Teleread) also comments on this announcement and makes a statement that I believe indicates exactly the promise of this SharedBook application:

The obvious questions: What annotation sites exist to let anyone mark up federal documents here in the States? Elsewhere? Any sites from governments themselves? And via APIs, standards and in other ways, just how can governments foster the growth of such sites? Also, what about the issue of special interest groups using the sites without identifying themselves? What place is there for anonymous comments? What to do about deliberate information? And how does the media fit in, given all the enticing linking possibilities? The issues go on and on.

Shared Book Teams with Encyclopaedia Britannica and On-Demand Books

SharedBook is making the following announcement at ALA today:

Visitors to the American Library Association conference in Chicago this week will find a unique, customized book, printed on demand by an on-site Espresso Book Machine®, created to showcase the custom publishing platform of SharedBook Inc.

The new title, A Brief Look at Chicago, is published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, using content its editors selected from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, and SharedBook’s SMART BUTTON™ technology. Output from this one-click process has been delivered for print on demand to the Espresso Book Machine® from On Demand Books. From content selection through finished book, the entire publishing process was completed in less than 30 minutes. Conference attendees can have their personal copy of this new title printed by the Espresso Book Machine® at booth #2446.

“We’re excited to have an opportunity to share this project with our friends and colleagues at ALA,” said Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharedBook. “While this book represents only a small portion of the potential of our platform, it is still a powerful, tangible example of the bright future for the publishing industry as it harnesses technology to create new products and open new markets. We’re delighted that our partners at EB and On Demand Books have joined us in this effort.”

SharedBook in Deal with LucasBooks

SharedBook announced today the launch of the personalized edition of Star Wars: Millennium Falcon by bestselling author James Luceno. The book, published on October 21 by Del Rey Books (Random House) and LucasBooks, is the latest bestselling novel in the STAR WARS series. Every book purchased can now be personalized with photo and text on the dedication page, creating a one-of-a-kind, personal edition. Through its custom publishing partnership with Random House Inc., SharedBook launched a line of personalized Golden Books in September, and will enter the frontlist fiction market with this high-profile title.

Promotional links and pages provided by Random House, direct consumers to SharedBook's online store, where they can create a custom dedication with text and photo that appears in the front of their STAR WARS book. Books are then purchased and printed in hardcover and shipped free to the recipient. Thus, the force is with the consumer.

Shared Book to provide annotation publishing tool to ourenergypolicy.org

Shared Book announces a new partnership today with web company ourenergypolicy.org that empowers OEP users with the ability to add and include comments to source documents without changing the original document. Implementation of this tool allows the user to determine which comments and mark-up is most useful to them and include or attach that material to the document. The user can then decide when to publish the material rather than having to wait for the publisher's publication date.

From the press release:

SharedBook’s annotation platform allows approved experts on OurEnergyPolicy.org to contextually add initial and responsive comments to an energy document through online footnoting, while not allowing the original content to be changed, creating a digital platform for a discussion of energy policy. The platform also has a compilation and print capability, allowing books to be created from the content with any combination of the annotations, which appear in the book as footnotes.

“Integrating our revolutionary annotation technology with OurEnergyPolicy.org is an excellent showcase for the capabilities of the patented platform,” said Caroline Vanderlip, Chief Executive Officer of SharedBook. “By allowing authorized experts to contribute thoughtful comments on the specific energy policies and positions being discussed, our annotation platform allows discussion on the site to evolve in a thoughtful, controlled way. It also gives users the option of creating books, PDFs or other printed output with a specified combination of the annotations, for use in government hearings, outreach efforts, and elsewhere.”

More on SharedBook

Shared Book And Random House

In what I expect with be the first of many similar relationships, SharedBook has formed an alliance with Random House to create personalized versions of Children's books. The Pokey Little Puppy will be the first title in this new venture.

Utilizing SharedBook's Reverse Publishing Platform, consumers can now create a unique, personalized version of The Poky Little Puppy by using an online book-making template. Consumers can create their own version of The Poky Little Puppy complete with a custom dedication and also upload a personal photo to the front of the book. The book is then purchased and sent to the printer for on-demand output in laminated hardcover format.

I saw a sample of this product several weeks ago and other than the personalization the book is indistinguishable from a book found on the shelves of any bookstore. The binding, boards, ink and color qualities are all of a high level as you would expect from a product from Random House.

The price for a unique, personalized edition of The Poky Little Puppy is $25 in laminated hardcover format, which includes standard domestic shipping. Completed books arrive in 10-14 business days. Expedited shipping options are available for an additional charge.

I interviewed Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharedBook a few months ago and here is her interview.

Do it Yourself Cookbooks

This morning The NY Times also has a short note on tastebook.com which allows cooks to create their own printed recipe book by downloading up to 100 recipes from epicurious.com.

For $34.95, a cooking enthusiast can select up to 100 recipes, which come encased in a ring-binder with a customized cover. Although TasteBook will not put the customer’s photo on the cover, it does offer a choice of images (a pie, a bowl of cherries, peas in a pod, corn on the cob) and naming rights to the cookbook (like “Emily’s Holiday Recipes”). The site also accommodates those who want to fill a volume with their own recipes or with recipes from sites other than Epicurious.

As I noted last week, SharedBook also launched a similar product with allrecipies.com (Readers Digest) and it is disappointing that the Times didn't look at their product as well.

Regretfully, while the product concept in both applications will be popular the execution in the TasteBook example is less than ideal. For example, the customer has to assemble the product themselves when it arrives in the mail which immediately removes a valuable sense of ownership and customization. Secondly the cover title which you select yourself is stuck on mailing label-like (on the spine as well) and lastly the heavy card binder is likely to come off second best the minute it is set on a wet counter. (Which of course happens all the time). The book does lie flat however which the SharedBook does not; however, I suspect SharedBook will be correcting that soon.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 47): SharedBook, Virtual Classrooms, Google Legal

Sunday Papers:

• Observer: The Martin Beck crime series and the queen of crime http://bit.ly/8dkNBn
• TimesOnline: The conversation: James Ellroy http://bit.ly/7T7P1B - Author reads from his book and tells of his breakdown, divorce and drugs
• London Times Review: THE JUNIOR OFFICERS’ READING CLUB http://bit.ly/6L0M4b And what fighting in Afghanistan is all about - pretty grim.
• The Age on The Cornwell factor http://bit.ly/5xIr7T That's Patricia Cornwell.

SharedBook (via SharedDoc) has launched their document commenting platform in beta and is looking for testers (Techcrunch):

SharedDoc is an online document platform that lets anyone upload a document online and then share the file to a community, so they can add comments. We have 500 free invites for TechCrunch readers here.

Once you upload a Word or Google Docs document to SharedDoc’s platform, you can send email invites to a friends or colleagues to comment on the document. In order to comment, a user needs to set up an ID. Users can then highlight portions of the the document where they’d like to leave a comment and post their input.

Comments can be seen by by everyone invited on the document and commenters can respond to others comments. Each comment carries the ID of the user, and the date of posting. SharedDoc also creates a permanent record of the comments by saving or printing the document with the comments as footnotes.

Virtual classrooms get some attention from the New York Times:

Teacherless or virtual-teacher learning is described by enthusiasts as a revolution in the making. Until now, they say, education has been a seller’s market. You beg to get in to college. Deans decide what you must know. They prevent you from taking better courses elsewhere.

They set prices high to subsidize unprofitable activities. Above all, they exclude most humans from their knowledge — the poor, the old, people born in the wrong place, people with time-consuming children and jobs.

Champions of digital learning want to turn teaching into yet another form of content. Allow anyone anywhere to take whatever course they want, whenever, over any medium, they say. Make universities compete on quality, price and convenience. Let students combine credits from various courses into a degree by taking an exit exam. Let them live in Paris, take classes from M.I.T. and transfer them to a German university for a diploma.

“This is putting the consumer in charge as opposed to putting the supplier in charge,” said Scott McNealy, the chairman of Sun Microsystems, the technology giant, and an influential proponent of this approach. He founded Curriki, an online tool for sharing lesson plans and other materials, and was an early investor in the Western Governors University, which delivers degrees online.

Google launches legal search tool within Google Scholar and a shot across the bows of West and Lexis. (Blog):

Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role. We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the "How Cited" link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).

Resource Shelf has a complete discussion of the new database. Dan Brown helps Random House to $23m e-book sales (Bookseller)

Gartner sees 2010 and the real year of the eBook (Softpedia):

Gartner Technology Business Research Insight reached the conclusion that even all the heavy promotion of e-book readers during 2009 wouldn't be able to match what 2010 would bring. According to Gartner, e-books and their e-readers haven't become as popular as they can be because of multiple factors. One factor is the limited features of e-readers. Namely, most such gadgets are exclusively built for allowing the reading of books in the electronic format. Although this is their intended purpose and they have perfectly carried out this task, Mr. Weiner believes that e-reader applications are and should be a focus of the manufacturers. “Book applications for smartphones have the potential to become a bridge to other devices such as tablet readers and netbooks. Apple, for example, could migrate the more than 500 book applications in the iTunes store to a tablet device and Google, which recently announced a browser-based e-reader, could offer applications for Android-based devices of various form factors,” Mr. Weiner shared. What this implies is that fixed devices, namely those built solely for reading, such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s family of devices, should not be considered even close to being the final stage of evolution of these gadgets.

E-Travel Guides Redux

Last week I reported on DK's new participatory travel guides (as well as sharedbook.com) and this week I was referred by Michael Holdsworth to a French publishing company Editis. To date I had not heard of them but they tell the world they are,

Editis is the second-largest publishing group in France, a major player in European publishing, and generally a star of the publishing world. Editis is present in the literature, education and reference publishing sectors, and is also a major player in the distribution field through its Interforum subsidiary.

On their site they offer a view of the digital future. It shows a couple interacting with electronic content that bridges the gap(s) between the physical and digital world. Substitute the visit to Bruges with my imaginary trip to Boston (in my DK article) and their depiction is similar to my imaginary world. The video is in French but as Michael told me 'it hardly matters'.

Formidable!

The Price is Right for Cengage

Cengage CEO Michael Hansen discussed the launch of their single price subscription at the recent Bank of Montreal Back to School Conference.

Cengage announced this week that they have extended their “all you can eat” digital subscription package to the Amazon.com store.   Since the company launched this subscription model, students have been able to gain digital access to everything the company publishes, all for $119.99 a semester and $179.99 for the full year (Corrected).   Other publishers are watching carefully from the sidelines – perhaps half hoping this experiment fails miserably – to see how this program does in the market.  This expansion into the Amazon store could be an act of desperation or inspiration.  Either way, I believe it represents a fundamental shift in the way educational materials will be sold and will accelerate the disappearance of the textbook.

At a recent conference, I heard Michael Hansen, CEO of Cengage, discuss his new program and the “affordability crisis” in higher education.  He noted that the industry has long heard that their products are too expensive and that not one person would say that college textbooks represent ‘good value’ for money’.  Pretty damning comments from the head of a college publisher.  But his company is tackling this issue by choosing a “radical change in the model and pricing”.  He went on to say that the notion that “taking the old print model and transferring it to digital, expecting everything to be fine. is simply not viable”.  Cengage proposes a model whereby the student can get everything for $120 per year – forget individual pricing, codes, complicated discount schedules, etc.  It is one simple solution for the student and, under this model, they get hundreds of dollars’ worth of content.

There are many publishers in the college market whose answer to stagnant or declining print textbook sales has been to add more complication: Unintelligible discount models, multiple and conflicting channel relationships, rental programs with demand driven pricing and other models, all designed to prop up a format – print – that is increasingly irrelevant in most other publishing segments.  Most effective will be simple pricing models, supporting an easy to understand value proposition which seems to be the road Cengage is traveling.

Interestingly, Hansen also discussed how their business arrived at this strategy.  Naturally, they did research and found a few things of interest.  Some were obvious, such as the process to deliver student materials is expensive, inefficient and often painful (in a shopping sense) for the student.  They also questioned the idea that ‘faculty don’t care about price’ which I’ve heard a lot and had some experience with at SharedBook.com.  Cengage research showed that faculty did care when they were shown that this subscription option could be available for students because they are concerned about drop-out rates and unprepared students who can’t or won’t buy the textbooks.  (The ‘performance’ of faculty and schools in delivering a quality education was a recurring theme noted in other sessions as increasingly important and educational materials, to the extent they affect faculty performance, are a component of this evaluation).  Another key research finding was that subscription models and different concepts of ownership are already familiar to students and students wouldn’t resist applying those to education content.  In some cases, students may welcome it.  For example, in certain situations, the student may want to subscribe for a set period, drop the subscription and then pick it up later.  This is exactly their experience with other subscription programs like Netflix and Spotify.

Hansen went on to suggest that the educational market and products need to move away from the “expensive” textbook and ‘inadequate’ materials to focus on what publishers are really good at and that is to produce effective course materials.  Hansen believes the top publishers have some inherent strength including ‘franchise’ authors and products and the opportunity and capability to address much wider markets (see my last blog post).  If Cengage can combine affordability and strong branded content Hansen believes, as a company, they have long-term advantages.

During the question-and-answer session, Hansen was asked why other publishers haven’t followed suit.   This is, in my view, inevitable.  But he did note some of the infrastructure and administrative obstacles that were overcome in their own transition to this model.  Real change requires answering the difficult questions and, he noted, their relationship with authors which have been problematic:  At a basic level, does the publisher have the right to include the content in this form?  Cengage believes their author contracts support their online model.  Can the publisher’s infrastructure handle it?  This online subscription model can produce a massive increase in usage and the company better make sure their platforms are saleable and that the user interface (UI) is simple and intuitive to use.

The final point he made was to emphasize that all primary stakeholders need to be aligned and he specifically mentioned his management team and board directors.  The Cengage model really is a case of ‘making it up in volume’ since a massive decrease in pricing has to be made up in higher (subscription) units.   Many scholarly and academic publishers know this ‘valley of death’ from their digital transformations during the late 1990s and 2000s; it can look dire when high-priced print volumes free fall and web subscriptions haven’t caught up yet.   If not well messaged and anticipated this journey can make for some very difficult management and board meetings.  Hansen is not surprised that his competitors have not followed because Cengage is clearly accepting significant risk.  

It is worth noting that Hansen spent time at Elsevier Health and does have a deep awareness of the business benefit of online versus print access to content and the potential upside this transition will have on Cengage’s prospects.   This will be particularly true as students gain access to online materials and the efficacy of the materials becomes transparent creating more accountability and market power in understanding what works and what doesn’t.  Together with the enhanced ability to rapidly deploy more expansive and interesting products, Cengage is positioning itself to move ahead of the field in delivering more effective educational materials for students. Watch this space as other publishers begin to test their own single price models, and I believe we will finally see real change in how we think about the textbook: It will finally disappear completely.

Note: Cengage reached out to me and asked me to correct the pricing above and they also let me know that on their recent investor call they announced over 500,000 Cengage Unlimited subscribers in the first 8 weeks since the Aug. 1 launch. They expect Cengage Unlimited will save students up to $60 million this academic year.

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

Repost: Presuming No Book

Originally posted on 2/17/09:

Henry Ford said “They can have any color as long as it’s black” and, in so doing, summed up what industrial production is all about. What we gain in scale, we ultimately lose in choice becoming - in the process - beholden to the manufacturer to deliver to us what they believe we desire. Manufacturing has obviously come a long way since the age of Henry Ford, and a few industries have even become so flexible that consumers sometimes don’t believe they are receiving specifically made products. I remember the Japanese bike manufacturer that had so improved their production processes that they could measure a client for any model of bike in one of their showrooms, build it and ship it to the customer the next day. The problem: Customers didn’t believe the bikes were made to fit since they received them so quickly. The solution: Hold production for a week and then send out the bikes.

It would be a stretch today for anyone in publishing to agree to the proposition that the future of their business could depend on not publishing a ‘finished’ product. As the industry meanders forward, we are reaching the point when presuming (and, I think, limiting) how a consumer is going to use content will significantly restrict the potential market. Historically, a publisher would codify how their content was to be used by signing a series of agreements for versions in audio, large print, foreign language, book club, etc. Not only are those agreements increasingly cumbersome they are identifiably restrictive as more and more potential consumers are seeking out content which is flexible to their particular situation and purpose ie: I’ll take the French, large print, audio version please: Only they can’t - at least not legally. Making this concoction easy for a consumer to access may seem like a small market opportunity but the point is much larger: Let the consumer decide how they want to use and engage with your content.

There is a huge preoccupation with e-Books today. E-Books are a format and a distribution mechanism and, as such, not particularly interesting. To me, the issue is a little like discussing the capabilities of a new type of printer. The real interest lies in the changing production processes that enable the rendering of content on e-Readers. Not perfect yet (by any means) and many publishers are still vandalizing print files to get to the format they need for the Kindle or what-have-you. Some may recall that, through the 1990s, consultants and publishing “know-it-all’s” spoke about developing production processes that were independent of format, suggesting the end product could appear in any form. Automation and changed processes have, of course, been implemented, but no one reached the point where they could produce multiple versions of the same product in an infinite number of formats and combinations.

At the Start With XML conference (and subsequently at TOC), we witnessed the dawning of a new type of publishing. Fully customizable, adaptable and capable of matching the particular needs of the consumer, XML content will enable the type of flexible delivery of content that is coming. Companies such as SharedBook are positioned to facilitate the unanticipated, unique and creative ways a consumer may want to use your content. And, as a publisher, you should be comfortable with enabling the consumer to - in effect - make his or her own product. As an example, a publisher can make content available to consumers during what historically may have been considered the production process: Consumers can comment, add their own notes and links, perhaps add their own content and, at the point the consumer is satisfied they have a product they want, they can ‘publish’ it. That point of publishing may or may not coincide with the publishers’ date and, in fact, the publisher may not ever ‘complete’ their books in a traditional sense but allow them to live and breath and enable any future consumer to decide when they want to ‘publish’.

Experiments such as those at Future of the Book have enabled a dialog between reader, author and other readers that may allow a ‘user’ to chose to ‘publish’ their book whenever they are ready, even as the conversation continues online.

When the consumer does publish this title, they do it their way. As a publisher, I may be investing in an XML-based content warehouse, but if I continue to think of the traditional output (i.e., printed books where I select cover, trim size, paper or eBooks where I select the formats and ‘extras’) then my XML investment is under utilized. I will also be short-changing my customers. As publishers, we need to experiment (and educate authors) but I don’t need to (or can’t) presume how my customer is going to use the content; all I need to do is to ensure that they have the ability to use it any way they want.

Across all media, we haven’t reached that spot yet. We still presume, based on a limitation of the technology we had at hand, about what our consumers will purchase and how they will use the material. Certainly, there are ‘degrees’ of XML and perhaps some publishers only have a title and header (for Chapters) tag for their titles, but others are experimenting and building more sophisticated products. Any buyer of a business book, for example, should be able to access the full content, read it and hear it, translate it, create a presentation in PowerPoint or download a ‘business briefs’ version. If they want, the user should be able to gain access to the document so if they want to print 75 copies of selected chapters for their executive outing and bundle the content with other material, they can do so.

In the near future, publishers may decide not to print or ‘publish’ a finished product themselves. Aside from selected titles – maybe most front-list where (only as an example) volume may play a role - a publisher may not print any books. Rather, they will enable retailers to print their titles based on demand. Barnes & Noble prints all the titles they carry in their stores for example. They are effectively on-demand with very little, or no inventory carry. B&N has the ability to use the ‘content’ however they want in print form: From premium boxed and signed versions to mass market. In another example, Michael’s the crafts store, enables its customers to integrate ‘how to’ content from a publisher such as F&W into their scrap-book projects or print selected chapters from books at an in-store kiosk.

But these are a small subset of the breadth of content distribution that could occur if publishers stop limiting themselves from thinking about the traditional ‘book’. As described, the application of flexible publishing using XML as a base is easier to comprehend for some publishing segments than others. However, even novels can be read as comic books: long form is always singled out as ‘oh, but we can’t do that with Christie’. Perhaps, but maybe your customers can and enabling that will generate more revenues and more customer satisfaction. A real challenge would be to turn a comic into a long-form novel.

Lastly, some argue that the publishing industry is doomed as the tools to reach customers become easier to access and use. That presupposes that the publishers and the industry remain static. The future isn’t static and, while some publishers are going to fail, those publishers that presented at the Start with XML conference such as Cengage, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and others prove that innovation and experimentation are alive and our future may not be so dire.