Disaster Books

This year has been a year of disaster books for me. In a small way. Earlier this year I read A Crack in the Edge of the World By Simon Winchester about the San Francisco earthquake, and I have just finished Curse Of the Narrows by Laura MacDonald which is the true story of a massive explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917. Both books were excellent and prove interesting reading given the current situation of New Orleans. Most know about the San Francisco earthquake and the resulting fire that destroyed most of the city but in his book Winchester – a geologist by formal education – spends much of the book describing the geological background to the earthquake. Using as a narrative tool his drive across the United States, he describes the geology and geography of the country and provides background on other lesser known earthquakes and geologic points of interest. He actually finishes his journey in Alaska and ‘passes through’ San Francisco to describe the Earthquake. What is comparatively interesting about San Francisco’s reaction to the disaster is the manner in which the city leadership went about dealing with the immediate aftermath and reconstruction. Almost as a circumstance of location and the timeframe in which they lived the city leaders knew instinctively that they couldn’t rely on federal government help and that they needed to take rapid responsibility for their own wellbeing. Help soon arrived and there was an organized mechanism for disbursing and rebuilding the city which got going rapidly. Additionally, it was always assumed that San Francisco was vital to the economy of the west and there was never any doubt of the economic viability and need to rebuild the city.

In December 1917, a munitions ship collided in Halifax harbor with another ship which set off an explosion that remains earths largest conventional explosion ever. The ship exploded in ‘downtown’ Halifax and the force was so strong that Robert Oppenhiemer studied the effects while researching the A-Bomb in 1944. Thousands died and the town was leveled. To make matters worse a blizzard, rain/flooding and another blizzard followed over the next five days and obviously further hampered rescue efforts. Help was sent from the US particularly Massachusetts. Local doctors, who themselves were in shock, were forced to work in terrible conditions for many days as residents were dug out or suffered burns from the ensuing fires. Eye wounds were particularly prevalent because the ship’s explosion was preceded by a fire which ignited the explosives. Many people were caught watching as the shock wave from the explosion blasted every window in town into the faces of the on-lookers. As relief flowed in a citizens emergency group was formed to manage the rebuilding and recovery of the town and a concerted effort was made to take responsibility away from politicians. This was one learning that was gained from the San Francisco recovery effort which some believed had been slowed by politics.

In all these were interesting well written books which are relevant today given the real recovery issues faced in New Orleans. It is fascinating to note that with so much less resource in these two cases, results were fast, early and effective in dealing with the problem at hand. In both cases, the cities were happy for the assistance but they weren’t waiting for someone else to set the priorities and do the job for them. They got stuck in immediately.

Lastly, Laura MacDonald quotes from Disasters a book by J. Byron Deacon published in 1918 which struck me as relevant to our current approach to disasters:

“It is the province of emergency relief to provide for immediate, common
needs. The promptness and completeness with which they are met are the
sole tests of efficiency. The province of rehabilitation is to help each
family meet the needs peculiar to it and return to its normal manner of
life. Its efficiency is tested by the degree to which it succeeds in
accomplishing these results. Emergency relief plans and acts to meet
present needs, rehabilitation plans and acts for ultimate welfare. All
disaster relief should be a process of evolving from dealings with its victims
en masse to treatment of them as individual families…need, not loss, is the
basis of relief; there must be the fullest possible utilization of community and
family resources for self-help; accurate determination of need, family by
family, is the only basis for a just and effective distribution of relief; in
addition to the needs which can be met by monthly gifts, there are others which
can be met only by wise counsel and devoted intelligent personal service.”

More on Google Archive

Eion Purcell had a forthright and not disagreeable commentary on the Google Archive announcement. I have a similar view that indeed newspapers are realizing they need the traffic to support the web presence and having allowed Google to index their content is great for us users (with a caveat) but also a monumental shift for how these newspaper publishers view themselves. That would be especially true for the New York Times which has visions of being the Nation’s (some think the World’s) newspaper and a destination themselves. I think that this announcement is also a harbinger of things to come and all database providers may find themselves having to open up to Google (and the others) and be indexed. That is just the way things will be.

The library and information database business is currently characterized by monolithic “packages” and all the largest publishers have invested huge amounts to create “platforms” and “solutions” that represent delivery mechanisms for their proprietary content. Google Indexing will become a large federated search engine for all this content progressively (not immediately and maybe not universally) undermining the ‘platform’ approach that publishers have pushed. Having said that, Google Indexing (for want of a better term) is not the total answer and in fact is – in the example of Google Archive – missing a key element. Missing is a navigation tool/enabler that allows a searcher to identify content during their search that they have rights to access via their public or academic library (or other contract with the data owner). This represents the caveat that I mention above.

The technology called ‘link resolver’ has been around for many years and if implemented between the search query and the location of the material would enable the searcher to ‘skip’ the part where they would otherwise have to pay. Authentication that the user has access is as easy as inputting the users library card number. Ideally and logically this only needs to be done once so that the searcher can conduct another search in three weeks and skip even this step.

Now, it is early days in this initiative and I expect improvements will be made rapidly. I did however wonder what libraries were saying about this announcement. Universally, the list serve comments on Web4Lib were that they were disappointed with the implementation. Comments include “..the predominate number of articles were not free but pay-per-view..” or “…people will end up paying for things they have access to” or “..the search doesn’t return anywhere like amount of content available via the library.” (If you want to read them here is the link). As I said above, this is early days and I think the general public will enjoy playing with this Archive. For libraries, I think this represents another opportunity to ride the Google coat tails and via link resolver bring searchers into the library and turn them into patrons.

More Amazon Movie News, Google Newspapers, Bertelsmann

I wrote a post about Amazons new 'movie platform' (my words) and the The LA Times has a story on the anticipated Amazon Movie Service. Here it is. (It is interesting the correlation to the EPIC 2015 video I linked to last week).

Again, the Google factor at play generating huge coverage this morning, but when I heard this story about providing search users with access to digital archives of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others, I wondered what happens to Proquest which relies so much on revenues derived from thier newspaper databases.

As many news outlets are reporting this morning Vivendi has purchased Bertelsmann Music Publishing division for over $2.0billion.

Ads In Textbooks

A number of recent articles about advertising supported textbooks got some media attention recently. I recall ads in travel guides and they never did well – perhaps it doesn’t help that many travel guide purchasers are arm-chair travelers. It was also difficult to manage the currency of the advertising. I am doubtful that ad supported textbooks will have much success either but I did wonder whether this idea could be taken a little further.

As long ago as 1995, TV Guide were producing as many as 52 separate weekly editions of their guide. Their desire to do this was to create local versions of the guide to gain local advertising (on top of the national advertising in all editions). Print production should allow multiple (economic) versions of a textbook. The question is would publishers as a group be interested in including advertising in their text books? If there was interest and the costs of incorporating the ads was significantly less than the revenue – both big ifs – then a market for the advertising inventory would need to be established. Since the publishing schedule for textbooks is highly seasonal and inventory expires at a certain point it could be relatively straight forward to set up an auction site for textbook ad inventory. (In a perverse way, could advertising in textbooks drive the students need to have the current year's edition...hmm?)

Key to this market would be how automated the activities could be. This would reduce expenses as much as possible. Guidelines on page layout, ad size, image resolution, content, payment, etc. would be easy to establish and using a formulated process such as ebay would also reduce expense by leveraging existing processes. Recently, the advertising industry began experimenting using Ebay as a marketplace for broadcast advertising.

It would seem more likely that an advertising model that enabled an advertiser to reach across multiple markets using multiple publishers and titles would have a greater chance of success than trying to create a publishing program based solely on advertising to justify a titles viability. Who knows? It would seem to me that ad based textbooks sounds interesting when everyone is debating a publishers right to make a reasonable profit but in reality the idea is a sideshow.

Google Lets it All Out

Any time the word Google is attached to anything everyone reacts like it is the second coming. Google opened access to the public domain titles they have scanned as if as Mr Charkin points out there aren't enough opportunities to get these already. Here thanks to a link at Library TechBytes is a vblog from Mobuzz tv that takes a surprising view point in support of the library catalog.

Also, I still wonder about those 'out of copywright' titles with introductions penned in the fifties, sixties and seventies. What's with that?

And since we are on the topic (Google), you may have seen this both really cool and kinda frightenting view of the future c2014. Well now they have updated it by a year. Here is the link to EPIC2015. Off to the Google Grid...

US Open, Andre Agassi and Video Line Calls

The US Open has been great so far, with one of the best and most exciting games played in recent memory between Baghdartis and Agassi. Agassi's match with Blake last year was pretty good to but this one was a true classic. Watching it live until 1:30 in the morning and jumping around the living room was exhausting.

Agassi has said this is his last tournament and I wonder if he is going to publish his biography in the coming years. He is certainly a personality that could move some units. Whereas he has traditionally been very closed about his upbringing and sporting life, he recently expressed more of himself in an article in Sport Illustrated.

This year marks the introduction of video line calls. A player gets to challenge via instant replay a set number of calls per set. When I heard about this it seemed to me games would become similar to The Price is Right with the fans screaming advice to the players. In fact, the implementation has been far better than that, but I am not a fan of introducing this type of technology into sport. I don't approve of goal line video or the camera used in cricketfor runouts. I don't want to seem old fashioned but the ref is as much a part of the game as are the players. The ref gets it right and wrong just like the players and as such the human element adds to the enjoyment and frustration of the game. If we wanted it perfect we should put a bunch of robots out there who never put a pass wrong, always score and are never bowled. Now how much fun would that be to watch? Sure England would have beaten Portugal in the European championship but it is the element of chance and unpredictability that makes sports so fun and interesting.

I can almost guarantee that someone is going to say the technology used to predict where the ball landed isn't good enough and will want improvements. Next thing you know there won't be any refs actually at the games they will all be in a dark room watching remotely as a computer makes the decisions.

Healy New BISG Executive Director

Congratulations to BISG in the hire of Michael Healy to the Executive Director position. Having worked with Michael on ISBN matters - he succeeded me as Chair of the International ISBN committee - this is an exceptional choice. Michael succeeds Jeff Abraham who rebuilt BISG into relevance and is now with Random House.

International Number: India, China & Turkey

India is the profile nation this year at Frankfurt and as the industry gears up for representation there have been a number of articles on the subject of Indian publishing. This article in the Indian Business Standard suggests that while there has been some change since the last time India was the guest of honor at Frankfurt many of the same issues remain. The local market is still problematic - although it must be stronger than 20 years ago. The middle class in India is significant and has rapidly growing wealth. External markets however are underleveraged and the article calls for more translated titles to open up Indian publishing to the west.

India is also publishing a broader array of products in addition to trade fiction etc. This article surveys some of the new illustrated titles on the way. Introduced with a Seinfeld reference. Gotta love their sense of humor.

Cambridge University Press purchased Foundation Press and formally entered the Indian publishing market.

Here is a little more background on children’s publishing in the South. Interesting to see Scholastic is a player.

Here is an article in the Guardian reporting on preparations for Frankfurt.


In China, Jane Friedman is quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying Harpercollins wants to expand into China. It is the Beijing Bookfair this week.



Lastly, in Turkey, there seems to be an issue on censorship. Not satisfied with simply banning a book that they don't agree with, publishers there are changing some well know Western books. For example, "In Dumas' Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan while on his way to see Aramis is stopped by an old woman who explains: “You can't see him right now. He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness.” At least the government seems to be acting reasonably.

Zoom Cloud

There is some new script on the right of my page that I just added. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not - although I think the technology is really great. I am having second thoughts about Blogger mainly because of the limitation on classification. I will likely change to something more robust. I really didn't know where I was going to go with blogging and thinking about better navigation to content was the least of my concerns when I started. Anyway, this ZoomCloud is a neat half way house for visitors to quickly find some of the content I have produced over the past several months. Let me know what you think.

While I am at it, on the right there is also a link to my web calendar where you can see all kinds of media events and conferences. A feature I had added to it allows you to download a vfile into Outlook - no retyping. If I am missing any conferences there is a submit form. I am happy to add. (Although under no circumstances will I add the Arsenal FC annual shareholders meeting).

News: Amazon's Digital Platform. Book Pricing. Harlequin. Cody's Bookstore.

There is an interesting article in The Economist this week about what Amazon is up to and how they face a very real threat of being disintermediated relative to digital music, video and book content. Some of this story has been discussed before because in their last financial report they recorded significantly less net income because of materially higher spending in technology. Analysts have speculated that the company is readying itself for the provision of non-physical content and they are building some type of platform (my term) for delivery of this. The unsaid aspect of The Economist article seems to imply that since no one at Amazon is talking about this that some announcement is imminent.

I thought this article about comments made by Sumner Redstone was relevant to book publishers and their approach to pricing. Publishers are too rigid in the manner in which prices are set and managed. As digital publishing becomes more prevalent and deeper knowledge and understanding of how markets work - via The Long Tail type analysis - these trends should almost force a rethink about how books are priced. It would seem to me, that a rigid approach to pricing results in lost revenue. As we all know, airlines are masters at the yield curve and this is not to say publishers should be that sophisticated but if they adopt more flexible approaches to pricing it could result in all kinds of impact on remainders, returns, the second hand market and so on. For example, could a publisher 'recover' a portion of the used book market by offering new copies at market rate prices (plus a small premium for new)? This would be long after initial release of the title. Would buyers by willing to pay a little more than the used price for a new book especially if they knew that in doing so the author would receive a share of the purchase price whereas with the used copy they do not? This idea is not a new idea nor is it a panacea but I think it suggests some market testing.

Harlequin.
I hate to harp on this, but this company with one of the strongest brands in publishing and with a huge market opportunity staring them in the face still seems weak kneed and hesitant.
My other blog on this.

Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley a famed independent for many years closed recently. Here is a perspective on what went wrong. It reflects more than a bookstore issue.

Lastly, watchers of the Booker List will note three Australian authors made the long list. As far as I can gather - no comment from The Australian newspaper regarding their 'gotcha story' about Patrick White and the in ability of great Australian writers to get published.

Album Liner Notes Books

As a teenager, I like many buyers of record albums, used to pour over the album cover devouring the artwork and learning all the lyrics for the songs - assuming they were printed on the cover. Sadly, with the advent first of the CD and now with music downloads the art of the Album cover has diminished. I have over 1,000 CDs which are all loaded into CD carousels. I have saved the liner notes that came with all the CDs but these all sit in a drawer. There is really no useful way to access these which is a shame because the content in the liner notes add a lot to the experience of the music. I have long thought that there is a different model for the written content that typically went along with music. As music is increasingly vended online would music retailers such as HMV and Virgin be interested in published products that supported the music? Selling this book could do two things - raise the average price paid per unit and possibly bring consumers to retail stores. Each album collection, when released would also be accompanied by a book that provided much more published content than just the liner notes. The book could include interviews with each band member of aspects of the recording process, interpretations of the lyrics, photos of the recording sessions and detailed session notes. Mr. Pete Townsend has been blogging about many things but also the recording process for new Who album; it would be great to include this material - and perhaps something from Roger in a complimentary published product. Lastly, back to my existing CD collection, I would purchase a book of all the liner notes from all the Neil Young albums together with (perhaps) interviews with Neil, critical essays/reviews and session notes. This to me would be a much more practical way of interacting with the music I enjoy listening to. How about it publishing folk?

Snakes on a Plane

Sorry - I couldn't resist....Youtube The Daily Show on Friday.

ShakespeaRe-Told:

BBC America - which is a premium channel over here - is broadcasting adaptations of four of Shakespeare's plays. So far, we have watched Much Ado About Nothing which was excellent. Macbeth and Midsummer Night's Dream are in the Tivo and The Taming of the Shrew is on next week. Apparently, The BBC produced a similar 'updating' for The Caterburry Tales last year and these four shows are a result of that shows success. I don't recall Canterbury Tales being broadcast here but I may have missed it. The BBC 'hand selected' several screenwriters and actors to 'radically revise and update' the Bard's plays. If the first one is anything to go by then these shouldn't be missed; they have really bought these plays to light for potential new audience.

(A search for a clip turned up this funny clip of The Beatles doing Midsummer; why or when I have no idea but I have never seen it before).

Cybersex, Secondlife and Myspace

In the office this week we got on a discussion about how books are represented on social sites like myspace and game sites like secondlife. I hate games but I have been interested in the secondlife phonom where you can literally create a new you and there exists a trading network that includes everything from real estate to clothes. So I signed up for secondlife to try to see how books were represented in the game.

Anyone for CyberSex? Predictably, sex plays some part in the content available. Derivations of the For Dummies series include CyberSex for Dummies and Escorting for Dummies. I have no idea whether these are official Wiley titles - what are the chances? A search on bookstores and books found a few store locations and navigating to them was relatively easy. Content including the above was not significant in choice. Some other titles covered topics specific to creating an identify within the game and some additional sex titles. One store was selling e-books which were on 'display' enabling the ability to page turn and review the content. In all the book stores were underwhelming but I expect the customers were engaged elsewhere in the game and within this context books aren't particularly interesting. I suspect some enterprising person will think up a unique application connected to the game.

On Myspace there are many bookstores represented with profiles with their ranking determined by the number of friends. Atomic books is typical of the stores that have profiles. It is difficult to say how many there are but clearly this is a viable method of advertising/PR to a very targeted group of consumers to whom it can be hard to introduce to books. Leftbank books located in Seattle is also similarly edgy; they describe themselves as 'anarchist' booksellers. Some stores look like they do more to promote retail than others.

Searching 'groups' for 'books' and 'mystery books' results in a few groups dedicated to reading but the result set is also 'polluted' with results that clearly have little if anything to do with books. There are over 5000 profiles returned for 'books' but only eleven for 'mystery books'. Lastly, I searched for library and I was unexpectedly surprised. Librarians have seen the virtues of setting up a myspace profile for their libraries and they use it to engage the young adult community. This is exciting because it shows that some libraries are willing to experiment and engage a target audience on their terms. Hannepin County Library in MN is representative of the libraries on myspace. Central Falls Public library (a Hannepin friend) is also a great site. Myspace definitely represents an opportunity to engage. Here is their note for the summer reading program:

Summer Reading Program Current mood: excited.
Our Summer Reading Program has officially begun! So if you're a kid (or the parent of a kid) between 6 and 12 years old stop by and sign up to read and win prizes! To kick off our program, Katie Latimer (check out http://www.katielatimer.com/) will be here Wednesday, June 28th at 2p.m. to tell stories. She's a native Rhode Islander who's been telling stories since she was thirteen. In 1998 she won the National Youth Storytelling Olympics and has been captivating audiences throughout New England every since!

Hannepin allows myspace creators to add the a script to their web pages that provides a search box on their web page:

Need to find a book or other library materials but are busy on your MySpace page and don't want to leave? Don't worry you can now add the Hennepin County Library catalog search box right to your MySpace. It's fun, it's easy and you can have the convenience of the library on your own MySpace page. Instructions for adding the library search box:
http://www.hclib.org/teens/MySpace/AddCatalogsearch.cfm

As I mentioned on another post it will be interesting to see if the influence of Harpercollins will result in any changes on the myspace site that effects more support for books and reading. The viral nature of some of the video advertising Harpercollins is experiementing with is perfect for the myspace environment and I can't believe they are not looking at how to take advantage.

Laslty, to bring this full circle, a number of enterprising individuals have established a Secondlife library. It is still a work in progress but it will be interesting to see how this evolves. Will content vendors make their content available via database license to the Secondlife Library?

Old Gunter Grass

In our media intrusive world it is astounding that no one found out that Gunter Grass was a 17 year old Nazi. Admittedly, who of recent generations could really understand what was going on in Nazi Germany in 1944, but... given the circumstances of those years wouldn't the experience be indelibly stamped on your cortex. Not to be forgotten.

Grass is a 20th century master. Why did he expect no one to think his decision to keep quiet about his SS call-up to go un-noticed? And why the SS? His biography is on sale today and is expected to sell out immediately. He will make a few bucks (Euros) but I tend to agree with this opinion in the IHT; that this is less about money than about him dealing with the inevitable likelihood that after his death some cub reporter is going to find the evidence. I guess he believes that his comments and arguments while he is alive regarding this experience is better than nothing at all and could help mitigate the inevitable reversionary review of his master-works. His initial public comments and I suppose his narrative that it was some impetuous action of a boy who wanted to get out of the house seems to me to be a little gratuitous. But who am I to say. The fact he kept this quiet all these years seems more than accidental and particularly calculated. If he joined the regular army and then 60 years later told everyone he wanted to defend his country I am not sure anyone would have paid too close attention.

Audio Book Publishers Report: MediaBay, Audible

MediaBay reported their financial results this week. MediaBay has over 75,000 hours of audio content distributed through our consumer brands, Soundsgood.com, AudioBookClub, Radio Spirits and Radio Classics. Content is distributed on the internet via digital download subscription services, websites, mail order, retailers, and even via a cell phone (ring tones) offering. (What is that? Just a few words per ring? TO BE!, TO BE!). MediaBay are also MSN Music’s exclusive provider of spoken word products for downloading via the Web, and have a growing list of digital distribution partners that include Real Networks, Loudeye, and XM and Sirius Satellite Radio. MediaBay has been in business for 12 years.

MediaBay has had some reported financial difficulties recently and unfortunately, their financial results are not great for the first half 2006. Net sales were $2.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2006, down from $5.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2005. The company made a strategic decision to migrate thier business model to one based on digital distribution through partnerships with MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc. so their content is available via these music services. As a result revenue comparisons year on year are misleading. Net loss applicable to common stockholders for the six months ended June 30, 2006 was $15.7 million, or $1.49 per diluted common share, compared to a net loss of $22.2 million, or $4.36 per diluted common share for the six months ended June 30, 2005. With allowence for extraordinary items their net income was virtually the same as last year which will not be enough to raise their market cap. This is important because it is currently at $3mm and NASDAQ issued them a warning in June that they needed to raise their value to over $5mm. The press release doesn't mention this or what their plans are and they have until September 25th to comply. The company retained a Banker in February for the generic 'review of strategic options'. Since the press release on the results was sparse I am thinking something is brewing.

Some of MediaBay's digital content partners include BBC, Blackstone, CBS Radio, Harper Collins, Hay House, Oasis, Penguin Audio, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Sound Room, and Zondervan.

Audible Inc. reported their six month numbers in late July which were better with revenues for the six months up over $10mm versus the same period last year. Net income however was significantly lower than the same period last year due to higher royalty payments. Audible has benefited significantly from its relationship with Apple and the IPOD. It should be interesting to see if there is any negative impact to the Audible business model if the new IPOD is equiped with with an e-book reader as most people expect. Audible may be a legitimate channel for Apple to work with in suppling them with ebook content from publishers. Apple wouldn't have to deal with the toublesome publishers directly. Audible's stock price is slightly higher than their 12mth low but half their 12 mth high. Other stats are in the press release.

Here is a little more on Audio books from a prior post.

Who's moving my E-Book?

A month ago the Gutenberg Project organized a World e-Book Fair that was designed to bring attention to the e-book format by making over 300,000 e-book titles available for free download. Apparently, the amount of attention gained exceeded expectation (and initial IT capability) to such an extent that over 30million downloads were delivered according to the Boston Globe. This is interesting news given the ambivalence to e-books by publishers and traditional retailers. As Nick Bogarty of the International Digital Publishing Forum comments in a Washington Times article there are still only 60% of bestsellers available in e-book format. It seems strange to me that the publishers production processes don't automatically produce e-books for all new titles. I do recognize that the larger trade houses are creating digital repositories but the information from IDPF still surprises me. As I have commented on before, there is some form of chicken and egg situation here where publishers don't perceive demand and consumers don't perceive choice. Regardless, what will really spur e-book content and sales will be the integration of e-book content on the next generation of IPOD which most people myself included expect in the new year.

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.