Toss'in and a Turning; Can't sleep - What to do?

So there is research on all types of things but I thought this was amusing. Who could imagine that something as fundamental and supposedly regenerative as sleeping is now regarded as "challenging." Apparently, this guy didn't reflect on the uses of the second bedroom for those with troublesome sleeping partners. By the way, the guy is available for interviews - hopefully he has had a good nights sleep. Here is the amazon page. (I wanted to say something caddy about the rank but it isn't out yet).

Blurb.com & Self-Publishing

There have been many print on demand offerings over the years – the first one with considerable money and resources was IUniverse which has had a relationship with Barnes & Noble for a period of time. IUniverse has been followed by many other full-service publishers such as Authorhouse and lulu to name two who cater to the self-publisher. Recently I came across an intriguing new group of publishing companies which offer to take your photos, blog entries and other content and turn them into a book.

In the case of Blurb.com you download software which turns out to be some limited editing tools and a set of templates. These templates are organized by the type of book you want to create: cookbook, blog, photo album. The thing that got my attention was that you can create a photo book of your photos for less than $30. It did seem to be too good to be true so I decided to try it. The result was beyond my expectation; the book is professional looking, well bound, the images are great and it has a dust jacket. The software was ridiculously easy to use and if I hadn’t decided to add more photos I could have had the book in my hands within five days of downloading the software. My forty image book cost $30 plus shipping. I treated this as an experiment and will do it again and will use more of the functionality which allows text and differing layouts. Blurb offers books up to 440 pages in length ($80). The end product is so well produced that I suggested to my better half that she could provide a book of before and after pictures for her interior design clients by way of a parting gift.

My book is now on their web site as part of the catalog and anyone is able to purchase the title. It doesn’t appear that you can preview the title and I hope they add this functionality. (The software is in beta). Anyone can visit the site and buy my book for $40 – although I get nothing of this amount, but then, that is not why I did it. If someone did want to sell their own titles they can buy them from Blurb.com and then sell them on at a higher price. I have thousands of slide photos and I have been putting off going fully digital; this is now my motivation.

Lastly, this blog entry has been forming in my head since I got my book last week and low and behold Blurb.com just got $12mm in new funding. The other sites I was told about were picaboo and sharedink.com if you want to try them.

More on Patrick White

Those irreverant reporters from The Australian can't leave this story alone. Again, it crops up in their Book Section. Still nothing in the story about changing tastes and current strong Australian fiction.

Christian Retail: Dead or Just Breathing Hard

Close readers of this blog will remember that in reporting about the Random House acquisition of Multnomah Publishing last week, I mentioned that the Christian bookselling marketplace has been struggling for years. While I was President of R.R. Bowker, we forged an agreement with the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) to provide the reporting mechanism for their point of sales reporting tool. During this time, I and a number of my staff attended meetings and events and heard of the issues that the Christian booksellers were having in the market.

Recently, in reporting on the Harpercollins results, Jane Friedman commented on the decline in their Christian imprints as one reason why their results were not better. These comments were reported at Publishers Marketplace. She commented that the segment was “seeing hard times”. Harpercollins has had impressive wins with Christian titles particularly The Purpose Driven Life and their acquisition of the publisher Zondervan a number of years ago was prescient. While all of this made sense to me, I wasn’t too surprised to see The Bookstandard release a story with the headline Is Religious Publishing in Trouble (although the use of the word Religious versus Christian should have been a give-away). The article promised to “investigate what is going on in religious publishing so far this year.” But is doesn’t; it is entirely superficial and I would have thought that a company with more resources than me could do a much better job.

Firstly, there are a few items wrong with this story. 1. There are no primary references. 2. There are no relevant stats quoted (Bookscan data is not relevant). 3. The Christian retail market is not homogeneous; in recent years there has been a close partnership between ECPA and Christian Booksellers Association (CBA). 4. Religious books don’t equal Christian books just ask any ECPA member. This simple error tells me the author is missing something fundamental.

So what is going on. ECPA publishes annual statistical data derived from their POS data and from industry market research. ECPA has not released recent sales numbers to the public but it is a good bet that book sales through the predominately Christian retail outlets have continued to increase in line with prior years. Additionally, as this press release reports Christian buyers buy more and buy more frequently. And look at the following quote from CBA:

"According to CBA, the international trade association for Christian
retail, sales of Christian products are on the rise. Sales of religious
books grew from $4 billion in 2000 to $4.34 billion in 2004, the CBA reports.
Christian retailers still sell a majority, about 53 percent, of the goods,
while warehouse clubs, big-box stores and national, general bookstores sold
31 percent."

Competition is a bigger deal with Christian retail than in years past, with more and more ‘mainstream’ retailers such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, Sam’s Club and Costco taking Christian publishing more seriously. This is taking volume from the Christian independents. Unfortunately, many industry participants believe there will be a reduction in the number of independents similar to what happened to the ABA stores during the 1990’s. Additionally, the two largest Christian chain stores Lifeway and Family Christian are growing more sophisticated and market savy which could have an impact on independents as well.

With over 2000 CBA stores, the reference to the Bookscan data in The BookStandard article is irrelevant because these stores don’t report to Bookscan. Their numbers maybe directional but in the manner in which they are used they could result in a wrong conclusion. Quoting the Bookscan manager makes no sense when they could have called ECPA and CBA directly for some relevant insight.

Lastly, aside from the Religious versus Christian semantics the product mix is very different for Christian retail. In addition to the traditional fiction/non-fiction, there are devotionals, music and gifts and other merchandise and published products which don’t fit the traditional bookselling model. For a true analysis of whether Christian retail is dead, some understanding and analysis of this issue and it’s impact should be discussed.

It seems there has been some interest in this topic whether driven by Jane Friedman or not and below are some links to other news reports. To understand what is really going on in Christian retail there is a report published by Simba in conjunction with ECPA if you are interested.

Nashua Telegraph
Ventura County Star

News Update: Google, Pearson, VNU

Google has formally announced that the University of California will be a partner in their library digitization project. The Google 5 are now the Google 6. UC isn't concerned about the copyright issues and they vow to continue to work within the law. They also add that they will continue to work with the Open Content Alliance which they joined last year. Brewster Kahle who founded the OPA was less than thrilled by the news.

On the heals of the private equity purchase of VNU, the company has announced a high level executive change at VNU business media. Long time information and business publisher Robert Krakoff will join VNU to run their US publishing operation out of New York. Recently, Krakoff had his own consulting company but has spent long stints at Reed Elsevier and Advanstar. He replaces Mike Marchesano who is bumped upstairs to run a corporate wide efficiency initiative named Project Forward.

Pearson announced yesterday - first in error and then formally - that they have purchased Mergermarket for just less than $200mm. The acquisition will integrate with the FT group. The company has made no secret of adding new companies to each of their operating units and this is the second major acquisition for the FT group in six months.

News From The Library Side

There have been a number of interesting news items relating to the library business in recent weeks. I commented on the OCLC initiative to open their WorldCat database to openweb searching earlier this week. OCLC is also a partner in a new Amazon.com initiative to supply shelf ready books to libraries who order through the Amazon.com bookstore. It has long been the case that libraries have purchased some (meaningful) percentage of thier titles through the commercial online bookstores. It looks like this initiative will eliminate the often tedious process issues that resulted in librarians having to manually check in, catalog and make shelf ready the titles they purchased from these vendors. What with the vast second hand marketplace available through the Amazon site it is easy to see how reducing process costs (and time) will result in more purchases being directed away from full service providers like B&T, Brodart, etc. to Amazon who can supply like new titles for a much lower unit cost. Here is the news article from Information Today.

At the Library of Congress, management have been attepting to deal with two major problems they and the rest of the library community must address. These are the vast increase in the amount of information and 'published' product they need to catalog as part of their remit and secondly the decrease in qualified people to do the work. There have been a number of initiatives undertaken to deal with these issues and the library is looking at all types of things from outsourcing data entry tasks to radically changing how they catalog items and material. Clearly one of the more fundamental changes they have to accomodate is the growth of electronic products - where there is no longer a print version - which raises storage, versioning and access issues that they have never had to deal with before. Having said that, LOC has had multimedia collections for at least 100 years and recently created a digital archive in Virginia for their audio and film content. One of the best aspects of this - aside from preservation - is that access to this content is now so much better.

As will all change however, there are questions that need to be addressed by interested parties and as Library Journal reported recently ALA has recently raised some issues about changes the Library is proposing.

Lastly, Eric Hellman at Openly Informatics refered me to this podcast from Georgia Tech. The podcast tells of various intiatives Georgia Tech are attempting to improve the library experience.

Thomson Corporation Reports Strong Results

The Thomson Corporation reported their second quarter results on July 27th which reflected strong organic revenue growth and flow through profit. Among the highlights, revenues increased 7% (organic growth was 6%) and operating profit increased 15% versus the prior period. The operating profit improvement was both the result of higher revenues and also represented the results of a corporation wide cost improvement initiative. Earnings on an adjusted basis were $0.34 per share versus $0.23 per share in the period a year ago. Thomson also said the growth was broad based across all four business units.

Thomson President and CEO Richard J. Harrington commented on the results:

"We are pleased to report strong results for the second quarter. Our performance reflects our continued ability to execute against our three strategic priorities - driving organic growth as well as business and portfolio optimization. Notably, Thomson achieved another solid quarter of organic growth, up 6% over the prior-year period, with each market group contributing to the increase. Further, Thomson continued to translate revenues into profits, growing operating profit margin 100 basis points over the second quarter of last year.”

The company said their full year revenue estimate will be in line with their goal of 7-9% revenue growth. Full-year 2006 revenue growth will continue to be driven primarily by existing businesses, supplemented by tactical acquisitions. Thomson expects continued improvement in its operating profit margin in 2006. Thomson also expects to continue to generate strong free cash flow in 2006.

More information as follows for each of the business units:

Legal & Regulatory
- Revenues increased 9%, to $923 million, and segment operating profit grew 13%, to $277 million. Organic revenue grew 8% and growth from acquisitions was 1%.
- Organic revenue growth was largely driven by strong double-digit global online solutions, software and services, as well as the timing of certain bar review courses that were recognized this quarter versus the third quarter in 2005.

Learning
- Revenues were $456 million, a 5% increase over the prior-year period. Excluding the effects of currency exchange, revenues grew 4%, virtually all of which was organic.
- Revenue growth was driven by a 6% increase in the global higher education businesses, particularly custom publishing services, and Arts & Sciences and Business & Economics textbook sales.

Financial
- Revenues increased 6%, to $499 million, and segment operating profit increased 23%, to $92 million. Organic revenue growth was 5% and growth from acquisitions was 1%.

Scientific & Healthcare
- Revenues were $229 million, up 6% from 2005, and segment operating profit increased 9%, to $47 million. Organic revenues grew 5% and growth from acquisitions was 1%.

Here is a link to their webcast details.

Open World Cat Database Access

You will notice on the side bar a link to the Worldcat database. Worldcat is the bibliographic database of OCLC which represents the book, music, document, etc. collections of over 18,000 libraries around the world. After much debate the nonprofit library cooperative has created a method for individuals to search library collections over the open web. It is a great step forward in opening up these collections and it will also have the effect of encouraging all of the collective's libraries to improve and speed the exposure of their collections. It will in turn drive traffic to their libraries. OCLC is all about improving the discovery and access to their library's collections.

Also, on the side bar is a link to Lorcan Dempsey's blog at OCLC. He is the chief brianiac over there and routinely links to all kinds of important happenings in library land.

News Update: Random House, Bertelsman, Smithsonian, Indigo Books

Random House purchased Multnomah an evangelical Christian publishing company located in Oregon. The US Christian publishing market is a growing market despite the fact that the Christian book retail market has been struggling for a number of years. Driving the growth is the increasing distribution of Christian titles through big box retail and traditional B&N, Borders and Books A Million stores. Titles such as the Left Behind series and The Purpose Driven Life have also drawn Christian titles into the mainstream. Random House now joins Harpercollins with the strongest stable of Christian imprints. Look for more acquisitions over the next few years.

Bertelsmann have said this week that they are closer to selling their music publishing business which they need to do to enable them to pay for the 25% equity stake owned by Groupe Bruxelles. It doesn't hurt that they will get a great price for the publishing catalog.

Smithsonian announced that it is consolidating and expanding their web presence.

Indigo Books And Music of Canadian fame reported this week. Characterize these results (and that stock chart) with the results from Borders recently. Indigo have some great looking stores - great open layouts, coffee bars - which makes the experience fun. OK, they also have the benefit of being the only large chain book retailer in Canada but in all Canadian cities there are many great independent booksellers for competition. For many years, there have been rumors that Indigo was being prepared for sale to a big book retailer across the border. In the case of Borders, perhaps the acquisition should be the other way. Heather Riesman is now a successful book retailer and perhaps she could do a lot more with Borders than their new inexperienced management.

Related to Jesus and The Holy Grail

A recent novel received a seven figure advance for a book that revolves around the descendents of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The author apparently has seen ancient family documents (presumably scrolls) that form the basis for the novels ideas.

The story reminded me of Monty Python:

The lady of the lake, her arms clad in the sheerest shimmering schamite (?), held aloft Excaliber, to exclaim that I Arthur shall become King of the Britons.

Eh, strange wimmin lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system
of government..... Listen, if I said I was an emperor just because
some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me they'd lock me away.....

It is interesting that the author was "laughed out of New York" a few years ago. Post DaVinci she is getting a better audience. Here is the title on Amazon just in case you want to improve its sales rank. I liked the review from PW "...unadorned facts numbingly narrated.." OK, so the quote might not be on point but it is still funny.

Simon & Schuster And Torstar Report

Simon & Schuster
The new Viacom division CBS corporation which was created earlier this year reported for the first time this week and the financial results for Simon & Schuster were separated out. It is a the first time these results have been segmented for a number of years because Viacom used to combine them with other revenues. S&S revenues for the half year period were $357mm up 7% versus last year. Operating income of $12mm was up 35% versus 2005. The improvement was due to increases in distribution but how much this impacted the full six months versus the recent quarter.

Torstar Still Having Problems.
Torstar, which owns under leveraged (my opinion) Harlequin Enterprises, revenues "slumped" according to Reuters for the quarter ended September 30th. Revenues for the book division apparently lead the decline. S0me of the decline at Harlequin was due to a supplier bankruptcy which disrupted a mailing campaign. Operating profit for Harlequin was off 30% ($3.7mm) which was ascribed to "underlying operations." The US direct to consumer operation accounted for $2.4mm of this variance. No mention was made whether they would recover this income although they have completed the mailing via in-housing the operations. Full year 2005 revenues were $526mm down 2.5% from the prior year. Operating income was down by a similar percentage. This business is crying for web applications but in a recent presentation by Harlequin I have seen they are incredibly conservative in spite of the resounding success of their tests (look for the presentations on the right of the page under "Connected Mobile Presentations"). Think about what Harlequin could do with the type of web initiatives that Harpercollins announced yesterday.

Wolters Kluwer Reports

Earlier this week Wolters Kluwer reported their first half results. Revenues were up 12% and EBITDA up 9%. Organic growth was up only 2% but they believe this is consistent with their full year plans. After a few years of management disarray, the company is now in the midst of a 3 year strategic plan executed by Nancy McKinstry who has been Chairman for a number of years now which has leant some degree of stability to the organization. The company also commented that they continue to invest in new products with development spending up 13% over the same period last year.

WK has five operating divisions: Health, Corporate and Financial Services, Tax, Accounting and Legal, TAL Europe and Education. Full year the company expect to exceed their organic growth target of 2%, hit a 16% operating margin versus a target of 17% (due to higher product development and sales and marketing expenses) and cash flow will be on target. Acquisitions made (and presumably planned) will be dilutive with EPS down 10% versus target. Here is their financial presentation.

More Book Videos

In a recent post, I noted the launch of some video content promoting books. The NYT reports today about how this is becoming more and more prevalent. What is interesting is that these videos are considered content not advertising, although the article does note that the edges between the two are starting to blur. Here is one for Stuart: A Life Backwards. Some mainstream advertisers have recently allowed individuals to create advertising for them - in a somewhat controlled manner - and these efforts have resulted in some remarkable refreshing advertising. The NYT article mentions a contest that sought book video ads/trailers from film students undertaken last year. Wouldn't it be interesting for Harpercollins (to use an easy example) to speak to their MySpace colleagues about capturing the creative output of the Myspace population to create homegrown videos for books. Some might call that synergy.

Also on The Times website today is an article on a 'see inside the book' application from Harpercollins.

(Why I had to go search for these ads and they weren't linked to in the NYT article is a mystery to me. Hitting on the VNU link - owner of The Bookstandard - got me a share price quote. How awesome!).

Publishing E-Books - Long Tail?

At a recent conference on digital publishing a number of the service providers (Amazon.com predominant) offered some frustrating comments regarding publishers willingness to submit titles into their digitization programs. Publishers don’t see consumers buying e-Books. Amazon commented that they are stuck in a place where selection is limited; while millions of print titles sell at least one per year, the number of e-Books available ranges between 50 -100,000. Of course, a few issues are at play here.

Firstly, publishers have finally realized they need to have their own digitization strategy and not be driven to service providers. A number of high profile trade publishers (Simon & Schuster, Harpercollins, VHPS) have announced their own digitization projects. Secondly, despite some significant efforts there is no IPod product for books. It is increasingly likely books will not have their own reader (don’t tell SONY) but you will be able to access books on game consoles, PDA, and IPods. Apple will launch a new version of the IPod next year and books are likely to be part of the mix. Lastly, the fact that there is little actual choice means that consumers have a better than average chance they will be disappointed with selection. Which begets the apparent disinterest in e-Books.

Assuming publishers begin launching their titles – including backlist - in a big way over the next few years how will they change their pricing models and distribution? In publishing, a title is aggressively marketed well in advance of publication to get the big buyers to purchase. Then in immediate advance of publication, co-op advertising and author tours, public relations, etc. are rolled out. In most cases the promotion doesn’t last that long after publication. This is particularly true if the title doesn’t sell at retail as expected. With the introduction of e-book titles in significant numbers, the publishers will need to determine how, when and at what price they market these titles. For example, assuming there is an IPod application, Barnes & Noble will not be happy if the e-book titles are available when the print book is still on tables in their store. Will B&N get a piece of the revenue from the e-book sale, will there be cross promotion discounts, isn’t in-store placement advertising for the e-book? There are a multitude of questions but as I think about it the application of the principles of the long tail will be important.

I ran a direct mail business for a short time (no prior experience) and I was so proud of myself because I figured out that I could determine the total number of units sold for each promotion with as few as three data points. (This is basic direct mail – go figure). Some of these promotions could run six months but the experience from promotion to promotion was always consistent. Book titles sold on a title by title basis or aggregated as in the long tail analysis will act the same way. What this means is that publishers will be able to choose their spots and maximize revenue by bringing e-book titles out at logical times according to where units sold indicate they are on the curve. Additionally, they can – and should – manipulate (lower) prices the further out on the curve the title is.

When these titles are available it will be interesting to see how promotion and pricing are handled. Will they launch them all in one go, or will they ‘celebrate’ the release of selected titles periodically and try to get some buzz going? Will the whole effort full flat because users crave interaction and/or TV will also be available on IPod? We will find out, and regardless it will be a much more preferable situation when a reader can visit a web site and select any title they want no matter how obscure. Or have titles periodically pushed to them like NetFlix. Oh, a rental/lending model – now there’s another issue…..

Penguin Blog

When I first saw this story last week it immediately struck me as odd. Penguin ardently (and blithely) announcing their new blog as the first from a major publisher. This couldn't be true. And indeed it isn't as this lovingly maintained but nevertheless short list of publisher blog sites attests. Why say this? Do they not even know of Carl Lennertz and his blog? Have they not been scouting the competition at Simon & Schuster? Perhaps they found the content at OUP too advanced? And of course, they would never have heard anything of Richard Charkin over at Macmillan - he is in England so perhaps that doesn't count in some way.

It does beg the question, that if the people over at Penguin could be this oblivious what will they have to tell us that could be relevant? Personally, I don't look forward to a 'corporate' site - why doesn't every author have their blog at author.penguin.com? They could stuff these sites with all kinds of interesting items supporting the books and the author. That is far more compelling than what they seem to have come up with nervousness or not. What Penguin can do at a corporate level is to guide visitors to author sites to other related authors via linking, related information, rethinking the book guides to incorporate more compare and contrast, etc. It also seems to me that the whole announcement is one big yawn. The only people that may have noticed this at all are "in the trade." Are we their target audience or are they going for readers/consumers? It is hard to know at this point but I don't see consumers rushing to the penguin blog and I am not at all sure about us "in the trade".

Pearson Announces Second Half Results

As expected, Pearson announced strong half year results reflecting growth in all segments. Revenues were up 8% and operating profit up a mighty 57%. The company is confident about the full year and commented that due to the seasonality of the book business the preponderance of revenue and most of its profit is in the second half of the year. The company continues to have good organic growth and is growing faster than the markets they serve.

In Education, the company expects to grow revenues in the 3-5% range (which is a wide range but reflects their need to be conservative at this stage) but also commented that the first half was stronger than expected. Operating margins are set to improve further in k-12 and remain constant in Higher Ed. Both K-12 and Higher Ed were strong during the prior six months with both segments performing better than expected. Additionally, both have continued to beat the competition in key adoptions, open territories and with new editions of important College subject titles. The company continues to expand its online online and assessment programs in Higher Ed with a 29% increase in registrations for their online learning systems.

The trade group at Penguin is also doing well with a record number of titles on the NYT best seller lists and 43 top ten titles in the UK. They also won a number of literary prizes including their second Pulitzer in a row, Orange and Whitbread Awards. Operating income is higher than the prior period and they expect further improvements.

The Financial Times group, which has come under fire from analysts for at least the past 12 months is showing improvement with more expected. Circulation is up 5% and advertising revenues are up 11%. They expect further operating income improvements over the balance of the year and continued steady organic growth. They have made recent announcements about integrating the print and online publishing operations which will improve content, raise efficiencies and reduce some expenses.

In the first half of this FY, the company has spent over $500mm on acquisitions in Education and the FT group. As the company stated in their annual report, it is their intention to invest in testing and administrative software companies which are compatible with the strategic goals of the education unit. This they have done with the purchases of National Evaluation Systems, Chancery Software and PowerSchool. (The last two are noted in prior posts). Incredibly, Pearson believes they have an installed based of half of all students in US schools which is over 29,000 schools and 25mm students. This must represent a long term strength of their US School business. At they FT they purchased Quote.com earlier this year.

There was no word on additional acquisitions for the full year.

Here is the Pearson web site with their earnings press release and powerpoint presentation.

Here is a summary of their comments:

PEARSON 2006 INTERIM RESULTS:

• Good start to the year. Sales up 8%; adjusted operating profit up 57% to £73m.
• Sustained organic growth and market share gains. Pearson Education sales up 11% with
  leading position in US School new adoption market and 4% growth in US Higher Education; FT Group sales up 6% with FT advertising revenues up 11%; Penguin sales up 2%.
• Strong profit growth in all businesses. Pearson Education, traditionally loss-making in the first half, breaks even (loss of £21m in 2005). FT Group profits up 23% to £55m and Penguin profits up 38% to £18m.
• Full-year outlook maintained. Pearson’s profits are always heavily weighted to the second half of the year. With this first-half performance, we continue to expect strong earnings growth and cash generation and a further significant rise in our return on invested capital in 2006.

Marjorie Scardino, chief executive, said:

“These results provide further evidence of the quality and potential of our business. All parts of Pearson are making strong progress, and our steady investment in new content and services is paying off with sustained organic
growth, market share gains and margin improvement. We remain confident that 2006 will be another good year for Pearson both in competitive and financial
terms.”

Pelecanos

Hearing George Pelecanos speak about Washington, DC you hear him reflect on how the life of the city since WW II has mirrored all of what has been good and bad about the American experience during that time. It is as though Washington DC is microcosm of everything going on in the US over those years. In his novels, which are all set in and around DC, he touches on all the big themes; the returning soldiers in The Big Blowdown and the small business explosion, the sixties Race Riots in Hard Revolution and the 1980s drug wars in The Sweet Forever. Pelecanos is getting some attention this month with the release of his new title The Night Gardener. It is well justified and I have been reading his books for a number of years now and have all of them in my collection.

This week there were two articles in the New York Times and I suspect there will be more over the coming months in news titles across the US. As the articles point out, his writing life has not been easy but I am glad he has stuck with it. I was also in DC around the time he began to write full time and it was very hard to like the city. Everyone was on coke; we had a mayor caught in the act, newscasters were in trouble for it and a top athlete killed himself with it. The city had one of the largest murder rates in the US with over 2000 killed in 1988 - and it is a very small city. I couldn't wait to get out, but Pelecanos' novels offer a truer, more complex view of the city that in the 1980s was hard to appreciate. Gentrification has come to DC in subsequent years and I wonder how he will deal with this trend.

I first came across his work, while walking through the aisles at a BookExpo (Los Angeles) and I happened to pick up a ARC which was two titles bound together. The book sat next to my bed for six months and when I finally read Hell To Play I immediately read the other novel Right As Rain. I was hooked and I have been able to pick up first editions of his first three novels which are hard to find. Interestingly, St Martin's was his initial publisher and he didn't do so well with them. In my experience, St Martin's seems to find good mystery writers but can't take them to the next level. Pelecanos has been compared to Richard Price and Denis Lehane - both excellent authors - but I believe Pelecanos breaths more culture and texture into his novels that either of these authors.

Pelecanos has also recently edited an omnibus of short detective crime fiction published by Akashic. DC Noir follows on from Brooklyn Noir which refected short stories located in Brooklyn NY and was excellent. I haven't got the DC one yet but will be looking for it.


Here is an interview with NPR on the novel True Grit which is one of Pelecanos' favorite books.

Reed Elsevier Reports First Half

It all seems to be coming good for Reed - other than the Educational market that is. Reed released their mid term results this week and they are quite good. (McGraw Hill also seems to be having a good year and Pearson is to report on July 31th). Revenues are up 8% and profit is up 14%. While they are not over exuberant about the full year, it would seem they are in a strong place to exceed their full year budget. Here is their presentation.

Their first half was expected to be stronger but they haven't down played the full year results. Sir Crispin:

"The first half of 2006 has seen a good financial performance and further
encouraging progress in the development of our business in an increasingly
digital environment. Trusted information, technology enabled, and increasingly
integrated into customer workflows, is making our customers more effective
professionally and making Reed Elsevier a more valued partner. The first half
financial performance provides a good platform to meet our 2006 financial
goals."

Organic growth is 1% greater than their budget at 6% over the first half last year and their adjusted EPS is up 16% versus their budgeted expectation of 10%. The EPS number has been due to more favorable tax payments and better performance in Exhibitions versus last year. They are however cautious and expect some of this to reverse in the second half.

All their business segments performed with strength with the exception of Harcourt which had much lower operating profits than expected. Management suggests that the second half is far stronger for revenues and profit - although they would have budgeted that way. Operating margin was down more than 1ppt versus last year while revenues were actually higher. Management is also saying that operational issues are being addressed.

Reed also mentioned that they may speed up and add to the share repurchase plan thay have in place. (Incidentally McGraw Hill also have a similar repurchase effort underway). Reed have also built up an employee share benefit plan. The divisional results were summarized as follows:

• Elsevier: Good subscription renewals and growing online sales
• LexisNexis: Strong growth in legal digital solutions, risk and international
• Harcourt Education: Encouraging success in US textbook adoptions; supplemental building; assessment underperformed
• Reed Business: Strong growth in online and Exhibitions; benefit from biennial show cycling
• Phasing of business this year benefits first half growth
• On track to meet 2006 financial targets
• Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV dividend up 11%; total of £288m/€420m shares repurchase

McGraw Hill Reports Second Quarter; Scholastic FY 2006

McGraw Hill:
McGraw Hill reported their second quarter results and they are quite good. They have now had two strong quarters this FY and as a result they have improved thier guidence for the full year EPS. Terry McGraw:

"Our new EPS guidance for 2006 is $2.44 to $2.49, and again that also excludes
the incremental impact of all stock-based compensation. To be clear, that
excludes $0.13 per incremental stock-based compensation this year and $0.04 for
the one-time charge for the elimination of the restoration stock option program,
which was already announced in the first quarter. With more robust opportunities taking shape next year, we expect to return to double-digit earnings growth in 2007."

This is a transcript of the call from SeekingAlpha.com. Later in the call they discuss the education unit which they indicate has later adoptions this year but which they must believe will be stronger than budget. During their second half is education represents a larger percentage of total revenue, but margins are lower than their information business. The information businesses appear to be driving their first half growth.


Scholastic FY 2006: Revenue up 10% versus 2005.
Scholastic reported their full year last week and the 2006 results retained some revenue from Harry Potter but not for the entire year. Here is their corporate presentation. In the presentation, management spoke of a challenging year and in looking forward spoke about an expense reduction plan designed to hold operating margins and EPS. Revenues for FY 2007 are forecasted to be flat ($2.3bill versus $2.1Bill and EPS lower (1.66 versus a range of $1.55 - $1.85). Management of the Scholastic balance sheets is a significant positive story for the year. They have $300mill in debt maturing in 2007 but multiple options to fund or refinance this debt.

American News

I wrote a post a few month ago about the type of news reporting on offer by the US networks. Here is another more authoritative view point by the Director of The New Media Certer at Amercian University in Cairo. Given all the time and effort spent by network news in gathering and reporting, there seems to be a moron filter applied immediately before broadcast. It's almost like we can't handle the truth.

Laurence Pintak spent some time on vaction in California but was astounded at the lack of depth and base knowledge given to some of the reportage of the current Lebanese crisis. For example:

"At times, the coverage has seemed as much a fantasy as Disney's Space Mountain, and the level of Middle East knowledge on the part of some television anchors
only a few notches higher than that of the tattooed biker couple waiting in line
for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride".

He goes on further to address the lack of basic geographic knowledge and the rush to salaciousness in the declaration of "World War Three". Given the proliferation of news channels and reporting it is bizarre that so little time is given to each story no matter how important. (Although if you are pretty, blond and dead you might get more coverage). Just last night on the BBC news at 7pm, fifteen full minutes was given over to the Lebanese situation - interestingly from a Southern Lebanese view point. Nothing like the coverage on NBC that evening.

It is however great that we have The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to keep us all grounded. On the brink of war? it was Jon Stewart (here from Youtube) who told us he was scared as crap about the events and quite stark in his explanation. It is Steven Colbert who routinely makes fun of other reporters inability to correctly pronounce the names of foreign leaders, lack of basic knowledge and general yypocrisy. Here he is on World War 3 or 4.

It is not too surprising that generally speaking, as Laurence Pintak points out the US public really lacks an understanding of the issues at hand in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Floyd Landis - It's all about the Hip

Who will end up with the book deal. Most had barely heard of Landis three weeks ago, and it is amazing to believe that the Tour de France could have created as compelling a story as Lance Armstrong in back to back years. Collectively, we wondered if we would bother to watch this year after Lance retired, but this effort by Landis was incredible. Here is the Landis web site. Will the book deal publish now or wait until he has the surgery and makes his comeback? Either way there must be an announcement in the works.

Coping with Rejection

Having completed your version of The Great American novel, you mail it off to your favorite publishers. You may be happy to receive a response like ..."it will take us three months to review this." After all, at least you got a response and against the other nine rejections this may not seem so bad. That is unless you happen to have won a Nobel prize for literature and are one of your country’s preeminent cultural icons; namely author Patrick White of Australia.

With apparently little else to do except embarrass a number of large Australian publishing houses, The Australian set out to prove that Patrick White couldn't get published in Australia today. The article doesn’t' really get that far but nevertheless all kinds of recriminations and navel gazing have erupted from the story. Some may recall that the UK Sunday Times conducted a similar "survey" using a title by V.S. Naipaul.

Since A Fringe of Leaves has been sitting on my parents bookshelf since publication, I thought I would look up what is said about White and his style. Here is a review of Fringe which suggests this may be a hard book to get into and understand. Words like complex and [un]pleasant are used to describe an allegorical story. Perhaps I will give this a go. Of course, White won the Nobel for his body of work, but here is a review of Eye of the Storm which is the book The Australian used for its "experiment".

Missing from the Australian article is any reference to the significant amount of new Australian publishing that these publishers are partially responsible for. Examples include, Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Shirley Hazzard and Andrew McGahan. (Even Bryce Courtney - for some anyway). In a weird way, I am not sure this scam could be tried in the US because I don't think the American public has a view on 'literary' heroes the way the UK, other European nations and Australia seem to.

Perhaps some in the US would get excited if under similar circumstances Portnoy's Complaint was rejected; I hate to say it but I think largely the story would disappear rapidly.

Harpercollins Does Video Trailer

Londonstani, a book released recently in the UK which is generating critical discussion, is about to be released in North America. HC Canada is doing something unique in creating movie trailers for new book releases. This is something more publishers should do and is perfect for a YouTube type application - why leave it buried on their web site? While HC get an A for effort they get a C for execution. This needs to work as easily as YouTube. That's what we are used to; the download took way too long. But I should not be so critical since this use of video and audio to sell books in the staid world of publishing is innovative and Harpercollins deserves credit for developing this promotion. As far as I can tell they started this in March, and I hope they not only continue the effort with many other new releases but also push the content to other web sites and make the downloads faster.

As book readers become more readily identifiable via reading groups and sites like librarything.com, publishers will have a ready market to focus promotional activities on. Enabling some level of direct contact with readers has represented nirvana to large trade publishers and in recent years, aided by the growth of internet use, publishers are finding ways to get direct access. For example, it is now very easy to gain reader notes and book club questions for front list titles from all the major trade publishers. Not so long ago, most readers didn't give a thought to who the publisher of their book was (unless it was Harlequin). There will be much more integration of audio and video content to sell books in the short term. Additionally, I hope we will also see low production 30+ minute video programs similar to the material produced by the BBC to promote The Big Read promotion in the UK a few years ago. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any video examples of the books the BBC committed to video. (These were not the Masterpiece Theater type productions). They were great and were an important component in driving enthusiasm for The Big Read programs.

Rent A Book

At the Columbus, Ohio airport, Paradies Bookstore has a decent book collection for a store selling snacks, mementos and books. Having spent an unfortunate amount of time milling around the airport, I am reasonably familiar with the store and I was a little taken aback recently when I saw sticking out of every hardcover book this bookmark. While this is not a unique idea, what is interesting about this program is that it is national. This may be a chain you haven't heard of. You can buy your book in Columbus, read it on the way to San Francisco and return it at their store at SF International for a 50% refund. Repeat the process for the return home. It would be interesting to know what the stats on this program are. As a concept this isn't new; however, I suspect that this is more marketing gimmick than anything. Buyers may think they will return a title but I am betting that only a small percentage actually do so. Purchasers think of the 50% discount and impulsively make a purchase decision. Generally there are few discounted titles at your typical airport store and adding the discount to a return is an interesting way to use discounting without giving money away on every purchase.

Paradies has also announced a partnership with The New York Times to launch NYT branded stores at airports.

What's next a book version of NetFlix - perhaps not so far off.

Business Travel

When waiting for a plane at the airport, you notice the Pilot and Co-pilot arrive at the gate and introduce themselves. They have clearly never met before. I don't know about you but that doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. I think about that Japanese Jumbo jet careening into the mountain because no one in the co pit had any social skills. What about people who don't know each other?

Business travel is horrible. It is no secret to most that the gloss went off traveling some time ago (like 30yrs ago) and with good reason. Traveling in small aluminum tubes, interacting in closer proximity to strangers than you might with your own family and dealing with the socially inept who have such limited sense of themselves that within in a five minute conversation (or overhearing their phone conversation) you know they are getting divorced and are putting their parents in a home.

I am sitting in an airport in Ohio - nothing especially going on except I have entered the 'shortly' time zone. That is your inbound aircraft will be landing 'shortly', the cabin crew will be arriving 'shortly', traffic control will be giving us a slot! 'shortly'. Hopefully I will be getting home shortly.

Digital Rice University

Many of you will have seen the announcement that Rice University is re-launching their Academic Press as an entirely digital publishing operation. One thing they might think about is removing the announcement that they shut it down back in 1996. The recent pr announcement is here. This is an ambitious and in some ways courageous effort. As their Provost points out, very few Academic Press make money and most loose a lot. Often their only function often seems to be the aggrandizement of certain academics. Assuming Rice is able to fulfill their goal of truly looking for new models of scholarship and publication this could become a model for other presses to follow. Certainly some are already going in the e-book direction but what Rice hints at in their announcement is an acknowledgement that academic publishing has been constrained by the physical print product. What is on offer is the capacity to engage the author, other scholars (peers) and students in an active relationship facilitated by the content produced. As Rice University and others experiment we will see less publish and hope than publish and republish and republish (or revise) but probably without the long term publication delays which are common in academic journal publishing. The resulting published products will become interactive with link resolvers interlacing all the supporting content and perhaps data sets supporting the conclusions thereby allowing others to recreate the results. The social aspect will enable feedback on relevancy and ranking. Cool stuff - they better get to work on it.

Publishing News: Steinbeck, E-Books and The Long Tail

It has been a slow two weeks in the publishing world due to the July 4th holiday.

There has been more reporting on the Steinbeck’s retention of their fathers material. This article focuses more on Thomas Steinbeck’s budding literary career. A book of short stories has been completed and it this success that has emboldened Thomas to be more forthright about his plans as an author.

Speaking of old literary history, I came across this article about a Canadian author who was incredibly successful in her day but is now largely forgotten. Mazo de la Roche wrote 16 novels - making her "rich and famous" - about an upper Canadian rural family named the Whiteoaks. She began the series in the 1920s as an entry in a writing contest and by the late 1940s she was one of the biggest selling English language authors. She sold over 11million copies and she even had a miniseries. On Amazon.com her titles are readily available but don't have a very impressive rank. Similar to Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta the town of Mississauga has created a museum out of the authors residence.

A number of news sources quoted this story from Bloomsbury in the UK about e-Book titles mainly because they are the publisher of Harry Potter and the word "spellbinding" appeared in the headline. The story picks-up on the continuing confusion on e-book formats but notes Bloomsbury is ready to jump when a standard emerges. Bloomsbury currently produce 24 titles which even given the format issue appears tepid at best. Related to this article (but not noted in it), an industry wide format was recently announced by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and here is the website for review and comment on the draft standard. The IDPF has evolved into a very important industry group that is addressing format and other important issues relevant to e-book publishing. On the association website are presentations from their recent industry forum including a session that addressed why publishers aren't publishing more e-books particularly from their back list.

There are two articles this week in the UK Guardian on Chris Anderson and The Long Tail.

Publishing News: Waterstones, Google and Copyright

Waterstones: It's the World Cup's Fault
I know it can't get over England's premature exit from the World cup, but I don't blame the world cup for a decrease in my productivity. (That would probably be due to the quad combo of US Open, Wimbledon, WC and Tour de France). Waterstones can't seem to catch a break, and as we noted when the Ottakars deal went through, the shine has gone off the UK book retailer market and this isn't good news for Waterstones. Remember Borders also referenced slower UK sales in their report a few months ago - no mention of the world cup though.

Google vs the Publishers - reprise
No idea why the Guardian is rehashing this story about Google being sued by the US publishers for their indiscriminate copying program. What is interesting is the sub-head suggests this could be a really interesting article about the future of publishing say 2020 but no. The article restates what many have already said about the Google program. What should be interesting to everyone is whether Google will change publishing and if so what does that mean? What will publishing companies look like? What will libraries be? Where will bookstores be? I have yet to see an article presented in the national press that thoughtfully discuss these issues.

Free with Purchase: Ferrari
I will have to look into this. The owner of Charterhouse Publishing is selling the business and the purchaser gets to keep the company car - a 308 Ferrari.

Is a Blogging Academic Publishing?
Interesting view point from the NY Observer and perhaps an accurate reflection of the direction of academic publishing. While blogs will retain significant attention when topical and intelligent, if the writer wants to condense the subject into something like book form it seems to me the book is still the answer. This is definitely not a bad thing since publishing via a blog is of course kinda like market research.

Gourmet Magazine to Publish Summer Book List
Phillips Electronics is sponsoring a 102 page supplement to be distributed with the August issue of Gourmet. Authors Conroy, Pratchet, Smiley are just some of the authors writing about food.

Publishing News: Clinton's Activism, Open Access, Audio Books

The News:

Clinton's Activism
Bill Clinton is to write a book on citizen activism and responsibility for Random House UK. The title will be released by Knopf in the US. According to the press release, Clinton will draw heavily on the time he has spent since leaving office where he has championed UN efforts in Africa, East Asia and more broadly through his Clinton Foundation.

Open Access Again..
While journals publishers were united in their disparaging disregard for the open access movement their arguments suggesting that their value add to the editorial and peer review process couldn't be replicated carried a grain of truth. So far, the open access movement has had only limited success and the large journal publishers continue to maintain and build strong revenue streams. The Royal Society in the UK, which has not supported the open access movement has launched a hybrid author pays/reader pays publishing model for journal articles. The RS has been attempting to get industry players to at least try different models for journal publishing and this is their attempt to lead the way. For the most part the rest of the industry appears indifferent to new methods; for them the old way works just fine.

Audio Books at the Library:
Walk into many large metropolitan library these days and the layout can remind one of a cross between Virgin Music and Blockbuster. Audio titles very much in the mix at your local library and are seeing increases in circulation due to the increasing number of titles available, the ramp-up in acceptance of audio books and an aging population that sees audio titles as a legitimate way to entertain themselves. The LA Times recently published an article which focused on the popularity of audio titles as well as pointing out the booming opportunities for web based access to library collections. With the increasing availablity of content downloadable from your local library, I wonder how long the current business model is going to last between publisher and library. It may be that we will see payments per patron check-out and embargoing enter the mainstream. This may not be a bad thing for libraries if a program were developed that reduced the initial purchase price - perhaps to zero - and paid publishers a fixed fee per check out. Libraries continually face budgeting issues and selection is always an issue when funds are limited; a model like this could enable a library to have access to all electronic and audio titles available thereby providing significant increased value for their patrons. "Selection" and to some extent collection development would become user/patron defined. An interesting model, and I think we will see more discussion of the role of libraries in an electronic and download world.

Former LA Times owner Big Second Thoughts:
The Chandler family cashed out a few years ago and threw their all in with the Tribune company, but after a few depressing years they want the whole thing broken up. Tribune on the other hand are content to buy back shares. Unfortunately, the Chandlers don't have enough support or equity to make more than a public fuss. Regretably, for the readers of the LA Times, Tribune, Newsday and others there don't appear to be too many innovative ideas being presented. Given the interest that the Knight Ridder titles eventually generated, it would seem there are many people who have high hopes and interesting ideas for reputable newspaper publishing companies.

Interview with Jane Friedman while on a fact finding trip to OZ.

Summer Reading from The Seattle Times

The Future of Educational Publishing

Educational publishing is an exciting place to be. I know, you think they have a pr problem with pricing and ripping off the poor student and perhaps the print environment isn’t forward thinking and what about used books, but despite all that they are going to gain not loose business over the next five years. Educational publishing is changing rapidly with the largest publishers investing in their content, the distribution of that content, and establishing social networks to engage the educational community. What is really exciting in the higher educational market is that the publishers are in a position to create a community of interest between the publishers, the educator, the student, and the administration. Additionally, it is even possible to see the parent in this community as well.

A few seismic changes have fractured the industry’s paradigm over the past five years. The migration to electronic educational material, the development of electronic platforms at institutions and a more recent focus on the benefits of social networking which take their form in testing and tutoring tools. What a publisher is now able to do is offer a student a range of content – in addition to the material required by the professor – which they can refer to for their entire student life as part of their “ electronic bookshelf”. (Obviously, this relationship can extend to life long learning thereby in theory extending the revenue per student significantly). As an electronic desktop the student may use one of the enterprise-wide educational platforms installed at many schools such as Blackboard and webCT. These tools aid the institution in tracking usage, feedback on materials, grade and maintain advisor to student links. Other benefits enable course management and content management for the institution. Lastly the more recent phenomenon of social networking is taking form in the expansion of testing and evaluation. Pearson for one, has invested heavily in the past twelve months to acquire testing companies that have established positions in the education market. What Pearson and others will do is to forge a tight bond with the students through evaluative testing, additional problem sets and assignments, feedback and tutoring. While these acquired companies may not operate completely as a myspace.com of education now, the intent is there to build a networked community of interest around the content the publisher has created.
Certainly not every course taken by a student is one which will retain their interest for life; however, most normal students will take courses in areas where they have some interest and this interest stays with them for life. Publishers have an opportunity to nurture that interest for an extended period of time and will be actively promoting life long learning programs via online courses, webinars, tutoring, offline seminars and travel, as well as the capacity to interact online with a large group of interested students and faculty.

Part two: How will the Publisher price their content and what is the position of the bookstore in all of this? Coming Soon – when I get around to it.

Newspapers: The Wave of the Future

For years until six months ago, I spent $9.50 a week on the New York Times. Now I only buy the Sunday edition and I wonder how long even this will last. For me, and many others, the NYT website is excellent and more than a replacement for the paper version. Of course, The New York Times and many other newspapers have a problem because increasing numbers of people like me are migrating to the web for free.

Many have written off the newspaper industry as just another – perhaps more spectacular – victim of the internet age. They were saying that five years ago during the first internet boom but it still hasn’t happened. While subscription revenues and advertising numbers are off, many newspapers continue to operate near monopolies in their local markets and the larger metropolitan newspapers are finally starting to proactively incorporate new content and new delivery mechanisms into their web offerings. The NYT is just one example of the integration of traditional reporting and video, audio and extended coverage that is becoming routine. The one aspect of the web site versus the print is that I actually miss seeing the display ads in the print. In a weird way there is a ‘community’ aspect of the newspaper delivered by the local advertising that I don’t get on the web site.

The NYT doesn’t require a fee for access to their site – other than for some premium content and the archive - no doubt the newspaper companies still have to go through that “valley of death” where revenues migrate from the legacy model to the new internet model but the new world on the other side will offer many more opportunities.

If my survey of one is typical with respect to revenues, why do I think that newspapers have a future? Firstly, the World Association of Newspapers recently reported that global advertising revenues increased 5.7% driven by growth in China, India and SE Asia. Newspapers are still a valued part of the media landscape. In the past several years, the NYT has expanded its presence in Europe with the purchase of the International Herald and a number of UK newspapers have announced they will launch US versions of their papers. The WSJ has long had a successful Asia edition of their newspaper. According to the WAN the global advertising market for newspapers was only marginally lower in 2005 versus 2004. While the UK market fell 3% the revenues in the rest of Europe pulled the overall up over 4% versus 2004. In the US circulation was down over 2% but due mainly to evening newspapers. Another report from the Newspaper Association of America, indicates that online newspaper advertising rose 35% last year; the eighth successive year they did so.

While these numbers are hardly compelling enough to run out and buy a newspaper company the numbers are also not catastrophic as some predict. Many commentators have documented the decline in classified advertising – cars, real estate, etc. – as the harbinger of extinction for newspapers which brings me to my next point. Most local newspapers have both a virtual monopoly and strong brand identity in their markets. They are in most cases high margin low capital operations with high customer loyalty. As is becoming clear, and some newspapers are leading the way, search and discovery is increasingly more local. Newspapers are integrating the types of services – mash-ups even – that are familiar to web search users and classified searches are integrated with mapping, video and social networking like user recommendations and reviews. In many local communities, it was the newspaper that helped define the locality – citizens identified with it and what it stood for. I see this continuing as newspapers rebuild an electronic version of their franchise and also extend their revenue model beyond what the print could offer them.

Not to be overlooked is the filtering function that Newspapers can offer. In providing editorial oversight to classified advertising the newspaper can act as an additional layer of ‘protection’ for their users. This is something which free classified ad sites like craigslist.com are unwilling to do. While ads and the local community will drive revenues this is not to forget that the newspapers can continue to deliver the local audience to national advertisers at a very narrow level.

Many newspaper companies have been experimenting/participating with the web for many years and have had reasonably advanced sites for a while. With the integration of video and the rapid deployment of broadband access these newspaper companies will be in a strong position to challenge local television for media dollars. As mentioned above these companies are not cash poor and have ample resources to continue to invest and build their local presence. A good time to be in the newspaper business.

Publishing News: Ken Thomson, John Cleese, John Steinbeck, WorldCup

The News:

Ken Thomson dies at 82.
Just a week after Thomson head Richard Harrington suggested the company would consider divesting its educational publishing assets, the company patriarch and son of the founder has died. The company under Mr. Thomson was transformed into a content and electronic publishing giant and both culled low growth assets and added new companies with regularity. The comapny also owns the Global and Mail in Toronto. No news on what his passing will mean for Thomson.

Penguin loose one to the Steinbecks.
Who knew Steinbeck's novels were still in play. Today a judge in California has ruled that the rights to Steinbecks novels should revert to the family. Here is the news report from the LATimes. Additionally, here is a review of what this decision means from a legal perspective.


US World Cup Talking Heads are Horrible.
The US broadcasters are spending a lot of money this time around to broadcast every World cup game. Nevertheless, they still haven't got it right. The broadcasters on ESPN and ABC have been horrible and have rightly come under attack from viewers. Apparently, the NYtimes WC blog is the second most visited part of the times site and the post about the announcers received incredible response. Here is the blog That is not withstanding an hilarious Stephen Colbert report on his expectations for the Worldcup.

I am an England fan and my work days for the next four weeks are organized around the games. Last time in 2002 during a business trip, I watched games in Canada, US and Australia but thankfully this time I am not traveling so much. Univision has announced early viewing figures for the Worldcup and they say it is on track to be the biggest ever - possibly double the level last time. Given the appalling US announcers I would rather listen to the German commentary on Setanta than the US commentary on ABC. Apparently, you can hack the UK websites so you can get the blacked out UK commentary. I haven't tried it.

Cleese to Write History of Comedy;
John Cleese has announced he is retiring from performing and will instead work on writing a history of comedy and teaching as a this one myself.

Borders Announces Lay-Offs:
Their results just aren't good enough.

Pearson Acquires Chancery, Macmillan Publishing Wins Borsenverin Contract

Pearson Acquires More
On top of last weeks purchase of the PowerSchool product from Apple, the company announced that it has acquired Chancery Software. The two operations will be merged together and will represent a formidable competive entity in this fast growing segment.

Macmillan (MPS)signs up Germans for Digital Archive.
Interestingly, MPS has had little luck in convincing other publishers that their solution can create a much more controlled environment for their intellectual products than the Google and Yahoo options. So far few takers. This will be a great opportunity for MPS since the company has been aggressively selling the "Bookstore Online" product since the latter part of last year. The MPS product is impressinve and moreover they have both significant expertise in technical development and publishing product knowledge having been one of the first major publishers to create an outsourcing operation in India. At there locations in India I believe they have over 6,000 employees and they do work for both the Macmillan (VHPS) companies and other publishers.

Pearson; Bertelsman, Random House, Quills

Pearson buys Apple “PowerSchool”Pearson has agreed to purchase the Powerschool school information system (SIS) which manages student records including attendance and grades from Apple Inc . This represents a solid strategic move into school administration tools in a core education market for Pearson. As more details become available it will be interesting to see how Pearson integrates content onto the IPOD platform which is assumed to be part of this deal. One could assume under Apple this development work must be significantly underway and will gain greater urgency with a clear path available to the Pearson content. http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index_mail.shtml?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-25-2006/0004368633&EDATE==

Bertelsman buys back stake:As reported earlier this week, Bertelsmann did the expected and purchased the 25% stake owned by Groupe Bruxelles and thereby avoided an IPO. The amount paid $5.8bill was on the high side of expectations. Financial markets had generally anticipated this would be the outcome and therefore there was minimal impact on their debt pricing. Some debt agencies have indicated they may reduce their ratings and are reviewing the deal accordingly. It is doubtful this deal will materially impact the Bertelsmann investment and product development cycle. As noted in earlier releases the company is selling its stake in BMG Music Publishing.http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=ousiv&storyID=2006-05-25T105303Z_01_L25267303_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESSPRO-MEDIA-BERTELSMANN-GBL-DC.XML


Random House, Starbucks and RabbitsThe two companies have announced that Starbucks will sell newly issued copies of the Velveteen Rabbit and The Night Before Christmas audiobooks. The titles will be exclusively available at the end of August for four months at the coffee stores.http://finanzen.net/news/news_detail.asp?NewsNr=401357

Analysts’ Positive View of Educational Publishers.http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8HQ7GSO0.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db

Quills Awards:Further information has been announced on broadcast dates and benefactors of the Quills foundation. The awards will be held at the Natural History Museum on October 10, 2006http://www.wnbc.com/entertainment/9268537/detail.html

Bloomsbury has bought drama publisher Methuen: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2006-05-25T113351Z_01_L25742994_RTRUKOC_0_UK-MEDIA-METHUEN-BLOOMSBURY.xml

The News:

Bonnier on Shopping Spree:
Swedish publishing company Bonnier has announced it is working with Admediapartners to acquire media assets in the US. The company is a $2.5 billion dollar family owned company operating in 22 countries. In the US they are using as their base World Publications LLC a publisher of niche specialty magazine titles in which they have purchased a "major interest" from Boston Ventures. http://www.bonnier.com/8856.asp?newsid=40101&year=2006

ABE Books Buys a Library:
ABE books have purchased TheLibraryThing.com a web site devoted to book lovers who want to actively manage their book collection. Since the site launched last year they have signed up over 35,000 members. There are two tiers of membership (free and not free) and there is some functionality at the free level but only for a maximum of 200 titles. It is not clear if all the members are paying; nevertheless, the site does represent a cheap way to catalog your book collection, match it against other collections and mingle with other book lovers. I plan to give it a go (luckily I have a bar code scanner). What is also useful about sites like these is that they can serve as a digital archive of your collection if something catastrophic occurs (Fire, Water, both). http://www.abebooks.com/docs/CompanyInformation/PressRoom/library-thing.shtml

Also of note is the announcement that ABE purchased Fillz a book order and inventory management site earlier this month and the acquisition of Alibris by a private equity firm (Oak Hill Partners) which they say will enable them to contine to actively investment in the company. http://www.alibris.com/about/press_releases/050806.cfm

Will it read like a Press Conference?
Senator Chuck Schumer and Rodale announced he will publish a book about democratic policies and strategies for publication in early 2007. http://www.rodale.com/1,6597,5-106,00.html

New York's Village Voice on book retailing.
In May 22rd edition of the VV, they report on the state of US book retailing. http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0621,collins,73282,10.html

Steve McQueen:
Long missed Steve McQueen may soon have his dream movie production hit the big screen as noted in the New York Times earlier this month. The article centers around a collection of diaries and albums that the actor created to document and detail the movie he wanted to make in the dunes of Mexico. What is not mentioned in the article is whether there are any plans to publish the albums which are apparently very detailed. I suspect someone reading the article had the same thought I had. The article written by Paul Callum (May 15, 2006) is now archived on the NY Times site. http://www.nytimes.com

Ottakar's Looking for the Exit:
I didn't think Ottakar's would disappear and perhaps if the market in the UK for retailing had been stronger perhaps they would have remained independent; however, it looks like HMV will absorb Ottakars at a much reduced price to the one they agreed last year. http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/12/hmv-ottakars-giles-cx_cn_0512autofacescan06.html HMV are being cagey about when they might bid and there is some speculation that WH Smith may also jump in. Smith's may do this but it would only be to muddy the waters; there would be limited synergy between WH Smiths and Ottakars and Smiths' have more than enough problems as it is.

Commentary:

A National Language.

The country is at war, universal healthcare is a joke, no one has a solution for the immigration "problem" and the economy may be in the crapper, but all this is on the back burner because we spent half of last week debating the designation of English as the national language. Hooray for our venerable Senate leadership! When our public high schools continue to under-educate the young and 'native' young english speaking students can't read or write, our Senate is busy trying to eliminate the 'press two for Spanish' option. Where is the focus on what is really important? Cynicism dictates that this initiative is just another highly effective ploy to direct the citizenship to an attention grabbing flag waiving topic so we miss the real lack of attention and effort directed at what should be really important. To me, it is just further confirmation of our political leaderships' continuing lack of initiative and confusion on how to deal with the immigration 'problem' and all the other major issues impacting the country today. Deflecting attention by suggesting a national language or assigning an inadequate contingent of National Guard troops to the Mexican border sounds good but won't fix the problem at hand. There was also talk about making understanding of English a pre-requisite to citizenship which sounds practical but isn't and anyway all citizens know that to excel in the US they need to learn English. Hey, if we are going to pre-qualify our immigrants screw English; how about chemistry, electrical engineering, software engineering or physics!

There is a Satan!

Apparently, there were strong feelings at this years Eurovision Song contest (aka The Competition Taste Forgot) where the entry from Finland boldly banished the mousy teeny bopper bubbly pop music in favor of some fun loving satanic inspired metal. Hard to believe this didn't start as a bar bet over the winter solstice but nevertheless against the odds and calls for their banishment the Finns won the contest. I want to know how they would have stood against such prior winners as ABBA - perhaps a battle of the bands would solve it. On the other hand, will we witness the Broadway hit musical Lucifer Now! sometime in the next ten years? During a pre-finale interview the band - in full regalia sitting beside a hotel pool in Athens asked the interviewer to hurry the questions because they were freaking hot in their outfits. This I found amusing given who some thought they represented. They refuse to remove their outfits and {presumed} make-up in public and as a result no one has seen who they are. (There was probably a group of Finish postal workers suspiciously missing from work last week).

Here they are in all their finery thanks to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5Of-4kJ70.
Doubtful I am looking to buy the album...

The News:

Attorney General: Jail the Reporters!
Our Attorney General believes the courts have the right to prosecute reporters for publishing secret material and information. Speaking on This Week he indicated that it was a possibility but further stated that it was up to Congress - which is a bit of a cop-out since he's the one doing the indicting. This story is covered extensively.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/22/MNGHDIVTMH1.DTL

VNU: Under new Ownership.
It is no doubt a relief to the management and employees of VNU that the venture capital backed acquisition of the company has been completed. As the dust settles, it will become clearer how much of a distraction this has been to management over the past 12 months reflected in potential asset sales, management changes and potentially more acqusitions down the line. Having completed this very large buyout, it also raises a question whether other venture capital deals will be struck with some of the other large information and content business.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12901694/

Bertelsmann in Public Offering:
The date by which Bertelsmann will have to decide whether to proceed with the offering forced on them by their Belgium partner is approaching. My money is on it not happening. http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1780128,00.html

China and Electronic Content
An interesting although short story in the Shanghai Daily speaks of a rapid rise in the comfort level with online books and articles. Perhaps this is no real story; however, like the generation jumping that took place with mobile phones versus land line phones in developing nations like China could we be witness to a similar trend for publishing. Admittedly there has been a lot of traditional publishing in China for hundreds of years but it is the US and European content the population craves and this material may be available only in digital form thereby forgoing the print format. Link: http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/05/22/278690/More_bookworms_turn_to_Internet.htm

Duggan moving on From Disney:
Disney has appointed R. Russell Hampton as President of Disney Publishing. This is the licensing arm of Disney Publishing and doesn't impact Hyperion. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=industryNews&storyID=2006-05-19T171913Z_01_N19429088_RTRIDST_0_INDUSTRY-MEDIA-DISNEY-DC.XML


BISG Annual Sales:
There are too many reports attempting to document the size of the US publishing marketplace. Last year, under the guidance of Jeff Abraham, BISG set out to take a new look at the manner in which data was compiled and the constituency represented in the sales data reported. The BISG reports had remained static for many years and it was about time that this revision was done. The results were extraordinary in that the surveys BISG compiled resulted in the addition of $8.0 billion to the generally accepted market value of the US publishing industry. The methodology stands up although there is some debate as to whether there is any double counting if the 'under the radar' numbers are added to the traditional sales numbers. This year BISG has combined what were essentially two reports last year into one. I believe BISG will continue to make progess in the next few subsequent reports that will address the remaining veracity issues and that we will end up with vastly more accurate data versus what has been available over the past several years.
http://www.bisg.org/publications/trends2006.html

Starling Laurence
Interesting article about the editor in chief of W W Norton. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/18/features/novel.php

AMS hires Gary Rautenstrauch.
I recall a personal call from Philip Blackwell to tell me he had hired Gary to run their US operation based in Oregon - that was in November and things change fast. Gary is now the 'safe pair' of hands to get AMS back on the right track.
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=69436&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=856454&highlight=

Starbucks and Books:
Author tours and promotions, in store sales and events and of course coffee. What could be better? Will thier own publishing program be far behind? http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/books/16read.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Watching the News

I watch a lot of news; NY local news, NBC, BBC, Local NJ news and Jon Stewart. Virtually without fail each evening we ask ourselves while watching the BBC news 'was this even mentioned on NBC'. It is readily apparent to me that the US news - in this case NBC - is bland, bias and boring. That is not to say the comparison - in this case the BBC - doesn't have its faults but we used to watch the network news for the broader view point and a bigger national and international perspective but network news just doesn't cut it. Routinely, the BBC news will have deeper analysis and reportage about US relevant issues - particularly the situation in Iraq and will also offer perspective and insight on stories domestically - New Orleans and the illegal immigration situation. In contrast NBC and the other networks are the comic book version of the news, providing glossed over stories, bland reporting and limited coverage.

Perhaps the strangest confluence of news stories this week, Newsnight with Jon Stewart did a story on illegal border crossings from Canada to the US and interviewed some poor misguided gent who singlehandedly is holding back the tide of illegal Canadian migrants (hockey players?). In the nature of Comedy Central this was conducted tongue in cheek but in a similar vein, the BBC interviewed a similar gent earlier this week from the South who was just as hard to understand and just as confusedly dangerous.