MediaWeek (Vol 1 No 29):

Amazon.com speaks to the NYTimes about cloud computing.

Customers of Amazon’s new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programs on a cable video-on-demand service. That is different
from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, which require users to download files to their hard drives

Christian book retailing is either treading water and just surviving or being destroyed depending on who you listen to. Here the Washington Post looks at the business.

Meeting customers where they are has become the mantra of the Christian retail industry as its stores face stiff competition from big-box chains and online retailers. With more stores closing than opening each year, industry layoffs and a key publisher staying away from this week's annual International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, retailers and publishers say innovation is key to thriving.

The Bookseller notes that Lonely Planet got their books into the Apple Store in quick order.

John French announced to staffers through an internal memo that he was stepping down as CEO of Penton Media. Speculation about who will replace him included Mike Marchesano currently at JEGI. Folio.

The AP reports on a new book from Mitch Ablom which is being offered exclusively through Amazon.com. The book is actually an eBook version of a commencement speech the author gave this spring.

More on the civil war between the UK office of Hachette Book Group and Amazon.com over pricing. Times Online.

The online bookseller has imposed extraordinary sanctions against the publisher, ... It is listing Hachette books but preventing the public from purchasing them by removing the “buy new” button from its websites.

James Murdoch seems to be moving closer to Big Boss. MediaGuardian. Notes on other Media bosses.

Sadly, Publishing News in the UK is closing down their magazine operation. PN But before they go they note a HarperCollins implant at Amazon.co.uk.

Conde Nast's Portfolio takes a look at HarperStudio. (Briefly).

John Makinson thinks outsides aren't welcome in the publishing world. The Bookseller.

All the Pretty Things

Now I am a sucker for a pretty face as much as the next guy and I probably wouldn't have looked at this short article in the NYTimes this morning if it didn't feature the visage of Kelly Wearstler. The short is about her interest in design books and in particular her favorite bookseller in LA:

Her favorite design bookstore in Los Angeles is Potterton Books, tucked inside the Pacific Design Center. (There’s also one in Midtown Manhattan, on Third Avenue near 59th Street.) “I can always find a book that is amazing that I probably haven’t heard of,” she said. Other shops she loves: the Strand in New York and Hennessey and Ingalls Art and Architecture Books in Santa Monica, Calif.

That's the good part - nothing wrong with that.

There is also an 'interactive' link to some selected photos of books. You could be forgiven for thinking that the intimate nature of the book purchase process described by Kelly would be evident in the slide show as well. Not so. In the small catalog of interesting design titles the NYT supplies links to your favorite - far from intimate - on-line bookseller only one of which is Potterton. Huh? Since Kelly mentions other stores why not use them; especially the Strand, which for the record has a huge selection of design and architecture titles.

JibJab: A Time For Some Campaignin'

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Those on RSS or email may need to return to the site to see this video. Click on the headline. Or visit jibjab.com

Rack Jobbing The EBook

A change, equivalent to the launch of the mass market paperback just took place but did you notice? Months in advance of the expected release of the new iPhone thoughts ran wild on the potential for an Apple iBooks store as much for its potential impact on sales as for its counter point to Amazon.com. With the launch of the 3G iPhone publishers have been found wanting, sadly waiting for the market to be gifted to us rather than proactively setting out to define it. This post from Kassia Krozer sums it up perfectly:

On a weekend when headlines were there for the grabbing and customers were searching for both toys and content, the publishing industry, perhaps practicing summer hours, was curiously silent. Not a single major initiative, announcement, horns-blaring call to check out these great offerings on iTunes.Call me crazy, but I’d expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million “mobile is the future” customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you’re still hiding the goods. I get this isn’t the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines?

Publishers are again about to have a market dictated even as they continue to complain about the market power of the online retailers. Now $9.99 may become a defacto RRP for eBooks and as volume increases via the prodigious iPhone apps store publishers won't know whether to laugh or cry. When mass market paper backs gained market acceptance at Woolworths in the 1930s publishers gained access to a market they never would have developed on their own. Books were suddenly available for a dime and as publishers stood on the sidelines it wasn't until years later that they entered the market directly or bought up the main suppliers. Will history repeat itself with publishers buying ebook apps suppliers like Fictionwise or build their own applications? Hopefully, at least one or the other.

Traditionally, we think of distribution and content development as separate disciplines within publishing companies but in the e-Publishing world they co-mingle. Content optimization becomes the normative state where the end-user builds their own product out of a content repository created by the publisher without limitation on how the end product is rendered. The 'distance' between publisher and end-user (where distribution as a function currently sits) is wide but becomes virtually non-existent in the future state.

To bring us back to the iPhone circumstance, as long as publishers continue to think in terms of traditional functional silos and roles and responsibilities they limit themselves in their ability to leverage their assets. In contrast witness Amazon which has never considered any aspect of the publishing value chain to be off limits and more publishers need to think in this manner if they want to redress some of the advantages Amazon and others retain (or new competitors develop) in the marketplace.

Some other views on a similar theme:

Teleread
Adam Hodgkin
Shimenewa
theDigitalist

The Beatles on IPOD?

A report in Rolling Stone says that Bloomingdales (of all people) will be selling a limited edition IPOD with every Beatles tune on it. Many have speculated that the Beatles catalog would be available on the IPOD but who would have thought Bloomies would be the one to bring it to us. RS is saying there will only be 100. If the mock-up is any thing to go by that is one ugly IPOD. I suggested that the front and back of the special Beatles IPOD when and if it came would be suggestive of the center label on all vinyl albums: the green apple on one side and the cut-away inside the apple view on the back.

On another related Beatles note, fellow traveller Joe Esposito has a look back at the Beatles and how their touring lead to popularity and record sales but the model ultimately broke down when the band stopped going on the road.

A peculiar fate befell the Beatles, however, in that they, like a very small number of other musicians, found it impossible to continue the touring to promote their records. Touring became dangerous and, playing in huge stadiums to screaming teenage girls, artistically unrewarding. The Beatles thus left the road, risking their business model, as the essential relationship between live performance and the sale of records was broken. Famously, the Beatles responded by inventing a “live” audience: the first thing we hear on “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is the sound of the invented audience. The imaginary audience did not contribute to the Beatles’ economy, however. That economy continued to be based on the sale of records. It was the Beatles’ good fortune that their fame was such that they no longer had to go on the road to promote the sale of their intellectual property. Perhaps it was just as well: when asked about the relative benefits of a live performance over a recording, John Lennon remarked, “Well, I’m a record man myself.”

He suggests the time of their break-up coincided with the "apotheosis of a particular business model for the media industry, the now-derided practice of creating copyrighted works and selling them, copy by copy, for profit." Read the whole article.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 28)

Some headlines from this past weeks publishing and media actitivity. The Canadian Publishing industry sees a slight decline from the prior year: A report from the government agency released Thursday said operating revenues from the book publishing industry in Canada edged down 1.2% in 2006 to $2.1 billion. NationalPost. The NZ Herald reports that New Zealand sees an increase in booksales but is the future ominous? Last year, the New Zealand consumer spend on books and similar merchandise topped $1 billion for the first time - capping off a trend of phenomenal growth that seems, for the moment, immune to the speed wobbles hitting other retailers. Informa Deal News: At a function held by private equity investor Alpinvest Partners in London last week, dealmakers from Permira, KKR, and Blackstone all talked openly about how they could come up with an offer for Informa to rival the 506p-per-share approach submitted by Providence, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman. Telegraph TimesOnline reports on a lost Shakespear portfolio that has turned up in suspicious circumstances: The folio, printed in 1623 and valued at up to £3 million, was among a number of valuable books and manuscripts taken from the Durham University Library in December 1998. Last night a middle-aged book dealer was being questioned by police after the discovery of other historic manuscripts at his house in Washington, Tyne and Wear. There is a curious tie in with this story in the TimesOnline about Hemingways House in Havana. I think there is a connection and I wonder if the gent "helping the police with their enquiries" has even visited Havanna. PW reports that Susan Driscoll is taking a senior role at Wolters Kluwer. Wiley has purchased some titles from Cengage as part of Cengage's need to divest titles as part of their deal agreement with JD. The acquisition provides Wiley entry into the Introduction to Business course area, with a market-leading title, Contemporary Business,12th edition (13th edition to publish early in 2009), by Louis E. Boone and David E. Kurtz. These titles serve the first business course and offer Wiley an excellent opportunity to showcase its other business titles. The acquisition also will leverage Wiley Higher Education's language program, which is currently centered on Spanish, transforming Wiley into a more full-service provider to college and university language departments by offering learning materials in Introductory and Intermediate Italian and French, German grammar, and Business French. Business Week reports on actions to limit the influence of ratings sevices like Moody's and Standard & Poors and also argues why these firms are still needed. With investors' losses topping the hundreds of billions as many once highly rated securities have tumbled, ratings agencies have come under withering criticism for issuing scores that have proven far too optimistic. Already, under rising pressure to rethink their roles, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced a deal with the three largest ratings agencies to reform the way they collect fees from debt issuers. Now, the Securities & Exchange Commission is moving to lessen investors' reliance on the scores. Reuters also report on the ratings services: Many financial companies, including banks and lenders, have been sued following the housing market bust; but the cases against ratings agencies may be among the most closely watched. As reported on earlier in the week, USAToday looks at textbook pricing but more specifically 'open' online textbooks. Frank [ex-Pearson] and his business partner, Jeff Shelstad, in January plan to launch Flat World Knowledge, the first commercial open textbook publisher. It will offer free online textbooks that can be printed and bound, for about $25 for black and white and $35-$39 for full-color copies. The average price of a traditional textbook varies by subject; many new textbooks cost about $150, Allen [director of the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign by Student Public Interest Research Groups] says. Comments are interesting. CNN Money looks at the Indian Educational market and estimate it to be worth over $120bill. US publishers are jockying for position in this market. Technopak, a Delhi-based investment consultancy, estimates that the current private-education market is worth $40 billion a year, and that this could roughly triple to $110-120 billion in ten years’ time. The potential is attracting foreign companies such as Pearson Education (PSO), part of the UK-based publishing group, and McGraw-Hill (MHP), as well as private equity firms that include Blackstone (BX), New Vernon, and Deutsche Securities, part of Deutsche Bank (DB). Reuters reports Bertelsmann has sold its US book club business. TimesOnline notes that ReedElsevier is starting a search for the successor to Crispin Davis. The will look internally and externally. PDN prediction: it will be a current employee. Guardian picks up PaidContent parent company (for reported $30mm). WSJ on textbook pricing. PND

Penguin and The Generational Chasm

I wrote about the Generational Chasm between the current book reader generation and the youth market in a post several weeks ago. (Happily it has proven quite popular). In that article I stressed that the old publishing model is not transferable simply because the content is available in e-book form. I noted that Harpercollins is exploring different ways to build new content and interaction with their younger consumer base and news comes now of a similar effort by Penguin to tap this market in a new way. The following is a report on the Penguin blog site about Spinebreakers:

The site is an online community created by teens, for teens as a platform where they can share their love of reading and other creative mediums. The site showcases some of the most unique stories, poetry, songs and videos, all in an attempt to unite and encourage youths to read more and stand tall in their belief that reading is cool. I personally think such a site is much needed and is a breath of fresh air, especially when England has fast become a place for teen violence and crime, and using one’s imagination in a positive manner has now been replaced with the ease of picking a fight. Spinebreakers is going offline at an up and coming road-show at the Roundhouse Studios in Chalk Farm, on the 25th of July. I have been fortunate enough to work on this event which will be inviting sixty teens to sign up and participate in three brilliant workshops which will include learning to use film equipment and creating a mini film on the day with Anton Saunders.

Also of note on the Spinebreakers site (and there is a lot), you might want to avoid Bath in September when there will be hordes of teenagers descending on the old Roman city to engage in a festival about Books. It could be violent, there could be some agro but old folks better leave town:

At this year’s Bath Festival of Children's Literature, Penguin Books are teaming up with young people in Bath to create a groundbreaking event run for – and by – teenagers. From poster design to the layout of the venue, this is an event where YOU call the shots. Opportunities for you include:
Working with top-name teen authors Meg Rosoff and Marcus Sedgewick
Deciding the format of the event, eg live music, food, DJs
Choosing the venue, eg theatre, coffee shop, out on the street (!)
Deciding how the event is promoted with a real budget to organise the event
Free books
A chance to work with Penguin, the UK’s leading publisher and a real opportunity to have YOUR voice heard
To get involved, you will need to be oozing with enthusiasm, available to attend 2-3 creative meetings in Bath between now and September and be prepared to create the most cutting-edge event at this year’s festival

Well done to the Penguin folk.
(Hat tip to Brantley - again).

Paid Content Snapped Up By Guardian Media

Guardian News & Media has bought ContentNext, the parent company of digital business website PaidContent, as part of its US expansion. The company was founded in April 2002 by business journalist Rafat Ali, a former managing editor of Silicon Alley Insider and reporter on Inside.com. From the press release:

Guardian News & Media today announces a significant expansion of its US presence with the acquisition of ContentNext Media, the leading B2B media company which covers digital media, the entertainment and technology sectors, and publishes the influential paidContent.org. Its founder and editor Rafat Ali, and CEO, Nathan Richardson, will continue to run the company as a stand-alone business.

Here is the full story.

Hail Mary

Both Zondervan and Thomas Nelson are being sued by a gay man who claims versions of the bible sold by these publishers refer to homosexuality as a sin and as a result directly violate his constitutional rights and have caused him emotional pain and mental instability. To say nothing of society. One might assume it is difficult to put a price on this pain (and instability)but Mr. Bradley LaShawn Fowler has assessed the damage at $60mm for Zondervan and a measly $10mm for Nelson. (He hasn't even murdered anyone and he is getting the full barrelled name treatment - perhaps because it is so colorful - I mean Bradley LaShawn WTF?)

You know the plot twist in Law & Order when the defendent decides to represent himself? That's when you know the guy is whacked and he's going down. BLF is defending himself. After refusing to appoint an attorney in his case against Nelson the judge said, "The Court has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of these claims." As part of his "brief", BNF claims, (USAToday)

because Zondervan's text revisions from a 1980s version of the Bible included, and then deleted, a reference to homosexuality in 1 Corinthians without informing the public of the changes.

The intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group's conclusion to cause "me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder,"

He's got a better chance of seeing Jesus than winning this one. Yet another waste of judicial time and resources. I wonder if Mike Hyatt will be twittering about this one.

WSJ Looks At Textbooks

In this mornings WSJ, an article on textbook pricing but with a twist. The article notes the mutual interest that exists between publishers and institutions in maintaining revenues from the sale of texts. They note the uneasy relationship at the University of Alabama where a 'custom version' of a workbook is required reading for English Comp but in reality the workbook is little different than a non-custom version.

The spiral-bound book is nearly identical to the same "A Writer's Reference" that goes for $30 in the used-book market and costs about $54 new. The only difference in the Alabama version: a 32-page section describing the school's writing program -- which is available for free on the university's Web site. This version also has the University of Alabama's name printed across the top of the front cover, and a notice on the back that reads: "This book may not be bought or sold used."

Custom textbooks are the fastest growing segment of the education market but this aspect of publishing is likely to generate more scrutiny as publishers make even more extensive use of custom versions to circumvent the used book market. There are numerous state legislatures attempting (in some cases have done so) to write and pass legislation that will govern textbook pricing and place restrictions on the relationship between academicians and publishers. In NY, even the Attorney General's office is getting in on the action:

The book-royalty arrangements resemble a practice exposed during last year's student-loan scandal, when some universities steered students to particular lending firms and received a secret cut of the loans. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo called those payments "kickbacks" and forced universities, many of which said they used the money to fund scholarships, to halt the practice. Mr. Cuomo recently launched a broad conflict-of-interest investigation of the relationship between colleges and vendors, including book publishers.

Central to the WSJ article is the growth in the provision of 'royalty' payments back to course departments (via the Bookstore) as though this were something new. What is glossed over is the recognition that the bookstore has always made some margin on the sale of both new and used textbooks. In this article we would be forgiven for believing there was never any mutual interest in the sale of textbooks between college and publisher.

As with many things, technology will march on ahead of those that what to govern commercial interests, and while custom textbooks are a focus now, educational companies are already establishing deals where electronic versions of their titles will be paid for like lab-fees. If a student takes a course they are automatically charged a fee for access to the text material online. This subscription model will revolutionize educational publishing as it has legal, tax and financial information and this is not news to anyone in the business. It may be news to legislators. Fellow traveller, Alison Pendergast notes an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Colorado Community Colleges Online, a consortium of 13 institutions in the Colorado Community College System, has teamed up with Pearson Education to offer digital textbooks at a one-time cost of $49 per student. The deal is the first of its kind between a major publisher and a public college system according to Rhonda M. Epper, co-executive director of learning technology for the Colorado online system. The $49 fee is rolled in with tuition.

In the above case, even though the fee appears low the total dollars paid by all students for access to materials may exceed what Pearson would have received were the books sold as print versions in the bookstore. This is because most students either don't buy a textbook or buy a used version. In the e-book world they may not have that freedom. The Colorado experiment is likely to become preferred by publishers and institutions over time but the market will also become a battle ground for publishers attempting to build delivery platforms for their content. Pearson leads in this development but the two other major publishers are spending fast to catch up. For many other educational publishers they may find themselves having to establish content licencing agreements with the major players so that they can deliver their content to students. Other than the largest publishers most will not have the resources to build a delivery solution and nor will their solution ever be as complete as the offer from Pearson or Cengage. It is dynamic stuff and in five years educational publishing will be unrecognisable versus what we see currently.

Best Travel/Food Show on TV

In case you don't know this already, Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations show on the Travel Channel is the best Travel/Food show going. So forget little Rachael and even gorgeous Giada and check out some real life travel and cooking. A new series has just started.

Chark Blog in Book Form

Exact Editions is reporting that Richard Charkin's blog posts, made when he was Chairman of Macmillan UK may be coming out in print. As Adam says,

The Charkin blog was a very good read while it lasted, it will be interesting to see if it can work in volume form.

Strange Mr. Charkin hasn't reestablished a new blog. He seemed to relish the first version so much.

Later on....

Coincidentally, CNet writer Caroline McCarthy notes the trend (not sure it is one) in blog to books:

This blogs-to-books trend seems to keep chugging along, despite the fact that none of their predecessors have been particularly successful. Gawker Media's Guide to Conquering All Media sold dismally, as schadenfreude-happy blogger Jeff Bercovici gleefully pointed out. Options, the book takeoff of the wildly popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, wasn't exactly a chart-topper, either. And now there are books either just out or on the way for blogs Stuff White People Like, I Can Has Cheezburger, Postcards From Yo Momma, Passive-Aggressive Notes, and a heap of others.

Personnally, I can't begrudge any of these people/sites from taking publisher's money to turn their free stuff into book form. If nothing else, the ability to construct a sentence and acheive meaning coupled with the development of a market should make the blog world a ready proving ground for many a book author. I would have thought the limitless talent of many blog writers will have made the agent and editor's life a little easier.

BTW, I'm still waiting....

Ebsco Launches New Interface

Ebsco has made available their new interface to subscribers for several months and is about to launch it officially sometime in July. This is the first revision in over five years and the company seems to have taken a very focused approach to designing the new interface. First impressions are impressive with the simplified Google like search page which can expand to include 'drop-down' advanced search options. The manner in which they have done this is elegant negating the need to click to a separate page.

The full results page renders further options to narrow a search - Source, Author, Subject, etc - as well as by timeframe. Missing is an indication of the number of results that occur within each of these related search terms which can potentially result in proceeding down a dead end. The timeline limiter is executed using a sliding bar: Some users will like this but an equal number will dislike it. To me it looked like an attempt to incorporate some 'trendy technology' when using date ranges with a number indicating the articles falling within that range would have been more useful. As the user makes decisions on the direction of their search, these are recorded in a query chain that runs across the top of the page. As a result the user can jump back several steps at a time to retrace their search steps. The user can also use the same trail of queries to drop terms out of the string as well as start new queries. Users will find this feature highly useful.

The 'narrow/limit' your search boxes which run each side of the results set can be closed or opened and aids navigation especially when the user has narrowed their search closer to their objective. In short, closing these boxes alters the look of the page and improves usability; however, closing them makes the page less cluttered but does not seem to increase the number of items above the fold.

Ebsco has also included images from their image collection which are presented as part of each search result and can be viewed in pop-up form. Images include photos, diagrams, illustrations, graphs, and tables and Ebsco promises to have 3mm+ available by 2009.

While there are many other features included in the product, the preview tool is worth noting. Hovering over the magnifying glass icon brings up a pop-up preview window that enables the user to determine whether the article is worth accessing. From this window the user can save the article citation to a folder for review later. In practice, this means a user can scan through a list of results, rapidly identify the items of relevancy and save them all in one place for detailed review once their first pass research is complete. This is a nice feature and will prove useful to any researcher. (Export to all standard citation tools is also available).

For those more interested in looking at the other features here are some Ebsco documents. Of interest will be the Visual and Advanced search features which in the case of visual search offers an interesting approach to mapping the results set of any search.

(On a side note, I wish they would drop the 2.0 moniker; this is so 2005).

A Real Celebrity Bio - UPDATE

It is almost hard to believe that Ingrid Betancourt has been set free and even appears healthy. With all the drivel published about the lives of vapid insignificant people, this would be a story worth telling.

Rodrigo Arangua/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, was one of the hostages rescued.


Update:
According to several sources Ingrid Betancourt is wasting no time meeting with publishers (and who can blame her). Discussions may center around her writing a play about her experiences as a captive in the jungle. This weekend she was interviewed by French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche and suggested as much in the following:

Votre vie désormais ce sera vos enfants, la politique, mais aussi
l'écriture?

Je ne vais pas avoir la prétention d'écrire beaucoup mais je veux laisser un témoignage de ce que j'ai vécu à deux niveaux: l'histoire telle quelle, mais il y a des choses qui ne peuvent pas être dites. C'est très difficile à expliquer. A un moment, lorsque j'étais en captivité, je me suis dit: "Il faut que les gens comprennent, mais je ne peux pas l'écrire tel quel. Alors je ferai une pièce de théâtre. Et là, je montrerai des choses que les gens doivent sentir." Il faudra une mise en scène pour que les gens comprennent ces choses qui tiennent plutôt à la condition humaine, à ce que nous sommes au fond de nous. Nous pouvons être des anges mais nous pouvons aussi être des démons pour l'autre. Ceux qui verront ce que j'ai vécu comprendront qu'il faut faire attention à ne jamais tomber dans cet abîme. Chacun de nous. Pas seulement l'autre: chacun de nous dans notre intérieur peut être extraordinairement bon et extraordinairement méchant. On peut être les deux en même temps. Il faut vraiment prendre conscience de ce que nous sommes et prendre garde: nous pouvons tous tomber dans cette horreur d'être des loups pour l'autre.

MediaWeek (Vol 1 No 27):

Some headlines from the week in media June 30 - July 6. Penguin Blog: Nick Hornby bemoans both e-books and the lack of interest in reading. Radar Online: Gawker media keeps lowering their pay scales. Bloomberg: Reports on the rapidly rising cost of newsprint. As if news wasn't bad enough in newspapers. Reuters: Security Analysts following the newspaper industry are abondoning ship as well. Forbes: Axel Springer are on the look out for acquisitions. SF Gate: Is a Kindle to books as an iPod is to tunes? Telegraph: Review of a book about 'the grandest name in [British] publishing' John Murray Open Access News: Latest bruhaha in Journals publishing regarding Open Access Publisher Public Library of Science. Private Equity Hub: Reed offering sweatener for Reed Business Deal TimesOnline: Newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror may cut dividend after dropping its share buy-back program

Neil Young's Living With War Movie

Mrs PND and I saw Neil Young when he was in NYC for a four night stop at the United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights. Of the four or five times I have seen him, this was the best show which saw him play a varied set covering much of his 40 year career. He did not play cuts from the Living With War album which he released in 2006, but those songs formed the backbone of CSNY's 2006 tour which is now the subject of a tour documentary. The movie is scheduled to be released later this summer and in advance TimesOnline caught up with Young at his local diner (really).

The film is a documentary about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Freedom of Speech tour, staged during the US midterm elections in 2006. But it is a far cry from Michael Moore-style agitprop. Young/Shakey has gone out of his way to present an impeccably balanced picture of America’s reaction to a tour whose repertoire consisted entirely of antiwar songs, from Buffalo Springfield oldies such as For What It’s Worth and CSNY’s era-defining Ohio to selections from Young’s 2006 album, Living with War. To this effect, their trip is narrated by an award-winning television journalist, Mike Cerre, who has covered both Vietnam and Iraq, where he was an “embedded” reporter.

Set List from the December show:

From Hank to Hendrix
Ambulence Blues
Sad Movies
A Man Needs a Maid
Harvest
Try
Journey Through the Past
Mellow My Mind
Love Art Blues
Cowgirl in the Sand
After the Gold Rush

Mr Soul
Everyone Knows this is Nowhere
Dirty Old Man
Spirit Road
Bad Fog of Loneliness
Winterlong
Oh Lonesome Me
The Believer
No Hidden Path

Cinnamon Girl
Cortz the Killer

Jordan Edmiston Deal Report

JEGI just published their first half review of M/A in the media business. As most will realize, deal flow is off considerably at the top end of the market; however, JEGI has seen some resiliancy in the middle market.

From their press release:

M&A activity for the first half of 2008 was increasingly cloudy, but with continued bright spots in several areas, especially in the Online Media & Technology and Marketing & Interactive Services sectors, as well as in sub-$1 billion transactions. High-quality, innovative mid-sized companies continued to trade at a brisk pace, as diversified media and marketing groups, major technology companies, and private equity investors continue to participate in the “retooling” of the media and marketing services industries. In spite of economic pressures, ongoing turmoil in the financial markets, and concerns about consumer confidence, the total number of transactions for media, information, marketing services and related technologies increased slightly to 404, versus 397 in the prior year. Deal value, however, was down dramatically to $23.2 billion from $65.8 billion in the same period in 2007.

They also offer some consolidated highlights thus far on the year:

M&A activity in the first half of 2008 showed less than half the number of transactions for business-to-business magazines, compared to the first half of 2007. Deal value decreased 85% in 2008 from 2007 levels, as there was no transaction in this sector to offset VSS’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Advanstar in the first half of 2007.

* Consumer magazines also slowed significantly in the first half of 2008 in number of deals (down 38%) and value (down 82%), compared to the first half of 2007. In the first half of 2008, there were no transactions over $500 million in value, compared to Source Interlink’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Primedia’s Enthusiast Media group last year.

* The number of deals for the database and information services sector was up 29% in the first half of 2008. However, the first half of 2007 included Thomson’s $18+ billion acquisition of Reuters. Without this transaction, deal value for this sector would have nearly tripled in 2008 over 2007 levels.

* Half as many transactions occurred in the educational and professional publishing sector in the first half of 2008 versus the first half of 2007. 2008 includes JEGI’s sale of CQ Press to SAGE. However, total deal value was down considerably mainly due to the $7.75 billion acquisition of Thomson Learning by Apax Partners and Omers Capital Partners in the first half of 2007.

Stealing Education - Update

CHE has managed to interview the student behind the website Textbook Torrents. Mr Anonymous characterises his activities as 'civil disobedience' and he described his web site as

operating in a “legal gray area.” He said he is an undergraduate at a college outside of the United States, though he would not name the institution or country, and that he operates the Web site from there.

More here.

Following is the original post from earlier this week.


The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on illegal text books scanning which strongly suggests the situation is getting worse and may soon be out of control. Publishers will be forced to revise their textbooks far more frequently in order to keep ahead of the scanners. That of course is a strategy that will only work for a limited time.

From the article:

One Web site, called Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with the original textbook layout and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent.

"In any given two-week period we found from 60,000 files all the way up to 50,000 files," said Edward McCoyd, director of digital policy for the publishing association. Mr. McCoyd, who leads the Online Piracy Working Group, said the group has been performing periodic scans for piracy since 2001, and that it has seen a gradual increase in the number of titles available.

Ewww, There're All Old

I went to a book reading and signing last week. I don't go to these often but this was an author I really like and I took along some older titles for him to sign. The room at the Lincoln Center B&N was full - about 150 people - and I was the one of the youngest people in the room. Now, maybe at 7:30pm other younger people are out on the town or still at work but I think here in a microcosm is the publishers problem. All the readers of books are getting on a bit and there is less and less interest in the product from the younger generation. I don't believe this is news to most of us, what with the steady stream of official reports suggesting that reading books is going the way of the dodo and I wouldn't have thought the above worthy of comment except I saw the following news report from Variety.

According to a study released by Magna Global's Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That's the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago -- and the first time the nets' median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo. Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS -- the oldest-skewing network -- has remained fairly steady. "The median ages of the broadcast networks keep rising, as traditional television is no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set," Sternberg wrote.

I guess the news on CBS proves every cloud has a silver lining. Young people spend money and buy stuff. Why would anyone be trying to reach them via the networks. Are they smoke?

Millennials, Screenagers call them what you will are not bound by tradition or habit or convention. Those characteristics are not necessarily unique to new generations. It is the insertion of the power of personal choice into the mix - the ability to select from a far wider range of activities, options and/or content (with no diminution in quality or access) than was ever the case in years past - which has undercut the appeal of traditional media to the 'youth of today' (...said grandad).

In publishing, as I noted a few weeks ago, I think the traditional method of telling a story in book form is dead. It has no future. Telling stories has a future but the vehicle for that may be more a kin to the holodeck on the Enterprise than print on paper. For example, what if as an introduction to Shakespeare I get to read King Lear with Ian McKellen interactively on stage (and never leave my bedroom). What if I don't know who Ian is and decide Cordelia should be 'played' by Miley Cyrus. What if I decide to set up my own theater program and invite my friends to participate online/in game? All of this is going on now. Some of this content is the same as the stuff we struggled through in book form but not so the milennials. Question is where are the publishers?

Informa Bid Tops $4.3Billion

Informa announced this morning (via Reuters) they are considering a $4.3Bill private equity bid for the company from a consortium led by Providence Equity partners, The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman. The bid is established at 506 pence per share and the Informa share price rose by 12% its largest gain in two years, however the current price (423 pence) is still far below the offer price. The company stressed that discussions are at an early stage and that there can be no certainty of a bid being accepted.

If this bid is successful it will be the largest PE play since the markets froze earlier this year. Analysts have suggested this deal has more likelihood of being completed because the company can be broken into its constituent parts and sold off relatively easily. This mitigates some of the inherent risk in the deal.

Haights Cross Sells Oakstone Unit

At the turn of the year, Haights Cross placed itself up for sale but as the capital market situation went from bad to worse a successful resolution has seemed increasingly out of reach. However, the company announced today that they have sold their Mediacal Information publisher Oakstone to Boston Ventures and they are also withdrawing from sale the two other Haights Cross business units. For their most recent reported full year, revenues for the Oakstone unit were $34mm. Terms of the sale have not been announced.

From their press release:

Haights Cross also announced today that it has suspended its previously announced plans to offer for sale its test-preparation and intervention business, Triumph Learning; and its audiobook publishing business, Recorded Books.

According to Paul J. Crecca, HCC President and Chief Executive Officer, “Earlier this year, we announced plans to offer for sale each of Haights Cross’ operating businesses. However, conditions in the capital markets, particularly in the leveraged finance market, remain challenging. With these factors, and considering the timeframe in which sale transactions could be completed, the HCC Board of Directors has concluded that the company should suspend the sales efforts for Triumph Learning and Recorded Books. We believe Triumph Learning and Recorded Books have leading positions in their respective market segments and represent attractive growth opportunities.”

Publishing Technology Rumor

From the TimesOnline:

Publishing Technology, which sells software and consultancy services to book publishers, managed to lift its hard-pressed shares last week with a contract win. They were flat at 0.7p yesterday despite talk that it was set to reveal a share consolidation and the imminent launch of its “iTunes for books” software, allowing books to be downloaded as easily as music

Some may know PT as Vista.

And from The Independent:

The tiny company, which has a market capitalisation of less than £6m, has hitherto concentrated on providing an online service for academic publishers...the group is preparing for some innovative online expansion. As you read this, the firm is trialling a product that it reckons will be a cross between Apple's iTunes and a YouTube for books. The chief executive, George Lossius, said the technology will allow publishers to sell parts of books, say a recipe, or the whole thing. Moreover, publishers will be able to market particular authors and genres to particular customers. Mr Lossius admitted that some of the bigger publishers are probably already planning to do it themselves, but Publishing Technology might well be left alone to scrap for some of those lucrative smaller deals.

Riverdeep Syndication Update

The Irish Independent is reporting that the banks supporting Riverdeep in its acquisition of Harcourt may be able to syndicate some of the debt they financed in the deal. The company had been saddled with over $7.0bill in debt but have reduced the debt by selling their college division for $600m. Credit Suisse the lead bank has sold down their senior debt and is now working on the secondary loan. The company also reaffirmed it will achieve operating efficiencies amounting to $320mm per year within three years from the combination of the operations of Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt.

From the article:

Credit Suisse is in the process of selling down EMPG's €1.7bn second-lien loan, which ranks behind a traditional senior credit facility in terms of security. "We expect this tranche to be fully syndicated by the end of the summer," said Barry O'Callaghan, executive chairman of EPMG in a letter to shareholders. "This demonstrates that, notwithstanding the current issues with credit markets globally, investors have sufficient confidence in our business model and prospects to purchase our debt."

MediaWeek (Vol 1 No 26):

Some headlines from last week: June 23 - 30, 2008 Guardian: Investors and Wall Street institutions would be forced to rely less on credit ratings under new rules proposed by the SEC. Rating agencies such as Moody's, McGraw-Hill Cos' Standard & Poor's and Fimalac SA's Fitch Ratings could be negatively impacted by the rules. FoxBusiness: Interactive Data Corporation a leading provider of financial market data, analytics and related services agreed to acquire Kler's Financial Data Service S.r.l. (Kler's), a leading provider of reference data to the Italian financial industry, for a purchase price of EUR 19.0 million (or approximately $29.5 million based on current exchange rates) in cash. IDC is majority owned by Pearson plc. Forbes: ImageSpan Inc., which provides enabling infrastructure for digital content licensing, today announced that it has closed a second round financing of $11 million from a group led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI). Guardian: The boom in online news sites does not mean the UK should relax its media ownership laws, according to an influential House of Lords report. The report is a rebuke to media executives such as Rupert Murdoch, who believe the advent of online news should herald the relaxation of ownership laws. Murdoch himself told the committee that the UK's laws were "10 years out of date". MediaDailyNews: Gannett has purchased a minority stake in Cozi, a Web site that allows families to communicate and coordinate schedules. The deal will give Gannett readers access to Cozi via the Internet and mobile devices, including various features like virtual family calendars, shopping lists, blogs and instant messaging. PRWeb: Australian book printer BookPal has launched an audacious bid to challenge Amazon.com's Booksurge and Lulu.com for global market share in the rapidly growing book self publishing market, a market estimated to be valued at U.S. $13-$17 billion per year according to SelfPublishingResources.com. FoxBusiness: Elsevier, the leading publisher of science, technology and medical information announced today that it will implement CrossCheck, the plagiarism detection service offered by CrossRef in collaboration with iParadigms. With plagiarism a growing problem for journal editors, Elsevier has invested in CrossCheck to develop, pilot and implement, a single database of published articles enabling publishers to easily verify the originality of submitted and published work. The Telegraph: Executives from Amazon's MP3 store, which launched in the US last year, are understood to have been in London last week to thrash out details of the launch with British record company bosses. Amazon MP3 will compete directly with iTunes, Apple's online music store, and other digital downloading operations when it goes live. People familiar with Amazon's plans say its site is likely to be unveiled before the final quarter of the year, when a string of high-profile artists, including the Scissor Sisters and Snow Patrol. TimesOnline: The American private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman has emerged as part of the consortium in talks to buy media firm Informa, publisher of Lloyd’s List. The Sunday Times has learnt that Hellman is part of a private-equity trio that includes Carlyle and Providence Equity. TimesOnline: Springer Science & Media, the business-to-business publishing group owned jointly by the private equity groups Candover and Cinven, is still considering a bid for Informa despite the exhibitions group receiving an approach on Tuesday from private equity rivals. Springer, which previously made an offer in 2006, has been looking closely at Informa, the shares of which have fallen on concerns over its high debt levels. TimesOnline: Helen Alexander, the outgoing chief executive at the Economist Group, is ending her tenure on a 23-per-cent rise in profits to £44.3 million. The profits increase for the 12 months to March 31 will allow the privately-held business to continue its policy of paying sizeable dividends. In total, £36.7 million in cash was handed over during the year to the shareholders, which include Pearson and members of the Rothschild, Schroder and Cadbury families.

ISBN's On All Formats: Some Comments

Comments have been added to the original post from last week. Given the traffic reports several thousand visitors are transfixed by ISBN issues. Here are a few opinions from around the web:

Martyn Daniels at Booksellers Association (Brave New World):

Forget the posturing and politics this is about product identification and is a basic foundation to all inter-company ecommerce and communication. It is as much about upstream as it is downstream and is fundamental to trade. An old friend Tom McGuffog, Director of Planning and Logistics Nestle and ex chairman of the UK Article Numbering Association (the UK EAN standards governing body now know as GS1 UK), once said ‘ uncertainty is the mother of bad trading, only by removing uncertainty can we trade efficiency’. So what if there are; 10, 20, 30, different ISBNs against a work? Each will be a unique rendition, may have different rights associated with them; different commercial models, even have different features and apply to different channels. Surely identification and consistency is a must.

Today many believe that we also desperately need a work identifier and the best practices to adopt it and deploy it. Some believe that it exists today in the form of the ISTC but that it has stalled, lacks a champion and roadmap and now needs to be adapted, adopted, marketed and deployed. Is it an identification silver bullet? No, firstly it is an attribute associated with and ISBN (a secondary reference), but it can go a long way to enabling the consistent grouping of ISBNs under a work, which will help everyone manage more ISBNs and will also help consumers select and choose the right rendition, which after all is what its all about.

Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions:

I have a suggestion: where titles go into a format where there are in effect many individual instances of the work then that format should have a separate ISBN attached to it. The ISBN system was introduced so that books would have a standard method of stock control. ISBNs are SKU's. So digital platforms where copies of books are handed/downloaded to readers/purchasers the SKU specific to that channel serves a purpose. For digital platforms which are based on an 'access' system, which would include Google Book Search, and Amazon Search Inside, there is no need for a separate ISBN, because there are no 'units' that need to be tracked. Exact Editions is another such access system and there is no need therefore for publishers to assign separate ISBNs to their titles in the Exact Editions platform. The identifiers that matter for 'access' systems are the urls which comprise the book's web presence.

The post was also noted on TeleRead.org where in the comments Jon Noring had this to say:

The fundamental problem is that ISBN is not designed, nor intended, to be used for different renditions of a book, and each different format of an e-book is a different rendition. As a small e-book publisher myself, I am very sympathetic with the ISBN cost issue, though, and the entity to blame on this is Bowker. If Bowker wants ISBNs to be used per the standard, then it needs to set up a better pricing structure for small lots of ISBN numbers. I’ve not heard any justification for the current pricing structure.

(I think that point is partially noted in the statement from Bowker).

There is more feedback including a comment from the US ISBN agency on the original post here.

John Hiatt On the Music Business

One of my favorite artists, John Hiatt has an interesting perspective on the music industry woes via Reuters:

"People have to be 'record men' again," Hiatt said. "They actually have to learn a living. You get a record out there, it sells 50,000 copies over the course of 18 months. You have to work it, because they don't buy 50,000 the first week. It's great to see people who actually love the music back in business in these smaller concerns. I've never seen people take more vacations than these big record company people." It also helps that Hiatt keeps his overhead low by recording his albums at his 97-acre (39 hectare) Tennessee farm. He spent about 10 days recording the basic tracks for "Same Old Man" a year ago with guitarist Luther Dickinson and drummer Kenneth Blevins. Since Hiatt owns his masters and his publishing, he has complete creative control.

His new album is titled Same Old Man and I'll be seeing him in August.

ISBN's On All Formats

According to ISBN official standards, each format of an e-book should be given its own ISBN. This means if a book is sold in mobi-pocket and Adobe formats each would be given a separate (unique) number by the publisher even if the content is exactly the same. During the revision process for the current standard, this point received intense discussion mostly focused on the burden that applying what could amount to several hundred ISBNs to a single work would have on publishers' processes. We resolved this issue for the standard with judicious use of words such as 'shall' and 'should' but the issue was raised again recently when the ISBN board released a 'policy statement' reaffirming the need for separate ISBN's on each format of an eb0ok.

The reasons for this action is simple. Downstream supply chain business such as wholesalers, distributors and retailers require a unique reference to all products that pass through their operations. If one doesn't exist these businesses tend to apply their own numbers. In actuality, the practice of downstream partners applying their own numbers has been going on since the establishment of ISBN and isn't unique to e-books, but the issue is coalescing now around the obligations of a publisher to 'correctly apply' the ISBN standard to e-books.

At a meeting this week at AAP NYC a number of publishers expressed doubts about the need for this requirement. As a participant in the revision of the standard my view was simple. A publisher should want to manage and control the meta-data associated with all their products and enabling - by omission - the need for someone else to apply their own information never seemed prudent to me. Secondly, the veracity of the ISBN system is brought into question if more than one entity applies separate numbers to the same content. This occurs if B&N and Amazon sell the same e-book in the same format but in the absence of a publisher number they apply their own identifier.

At least one major publisher at the AAP meeting is not following the standard and after several years of distributing e-books and applying one ISBN irrespective of format (.epub for example) they are seeing no issues with confusion or misuse of their meta data. This is a powerful argument and comes from a publisher that is highly protective of their bibliographic information. If reflective of a general consensus the ISBN board should reconsider the wording of there directive. For example, simply changing the wording by inserting the words 'publishers may apply ISBNs to separate formats' would give enough latitude to those publishers that see a need to apply separate ISBNs and those that do not.

There are several qualifications (and others may raise more). Firstly, the issue of downstream partners which need identifiers for their internal process requirements must be governed. For example, in those cases where a publisher expects detailed sell-thru data they may provide ISBN's. If a downstream partner can only use a 13 digit identifier in their systems the publisher may require the partner to use an ISBN provided by the publisher. If the partner can use a non-ISBN (but NOT a dummy ISBN/13 digit id) such as letters and numbers the publisher may see no need to apply ISBN's. Secondly, the danger that rogue ISBNs that are intended to operate only within the operating systems of specific partners (wholesalers, vendors, etc.) escape into the supply chain causing confusion and much remediation is a real one and should be recognised. Currently, there aren't that many e-books and there aren't that many publishers working outside the recommendations of the standard. As e-books explode in distribution, data integrity problems that are virtually non-existent today may become very relevant issues very quickly.

Lastly, in a supply chain world where suppliers and retailers are racing (admittedly not a sprint more a marathon) to apply unique identifiers on individual items via RFID, this discussion runs counter to the logic other more sophisticated industries are following. Quite rightly, with volumes as small as they are, it may not be interesting to know which e-book versions seem to perform better, or get less customer service/help desk calls, or which package of products seem to show up on what platform or which segment of buyers seems to have what behavioral characteristics, or which partner seems to sell what types of products or formats, or which formats tend to be pirated more or less, and on and on and on. As the chain becomes flatter - as it is - publishers are going to want to know this stuff and tying a user to a format may be critical to all aspects of what they do.

Reed Business Sale Delay

The FT reports that Reed is delaying the circulation of information relating to the sale of their Reed Business unit in advance of finalizing a financing package that could be made availale to prospective buyers. The newspaper also establishes expectations that the unit could sell for $2.5Billion. From the article:

Another source close to the situation said that there is ”an irrational fear of a downturn in advertising revenues,” and there is a lot of advertising in the group. The source added, however, that Reed is still an attractive deal with senior leverage unlikely to be more than 3x EBITDA. Those low leverage levels should be enough to encourage bidders against a possible downturn in the economy, specifically advertising revenues, the source added. While Reed Elsevier is hoping to encourage a sale of the whole of RBI by offering a financing package to prospective buyers, it is also offering financing packages for parts of the business, one source said. The source said he thought that Reed would ultimately still sell the business as a whole despite marketing a sale of parts in tandem. This way, mid-sized players would also be in the process to drive up the end price for the asset, the source explained

Generational Chasm

Publishing used to be predictable across generations. Parents read the same books in the same manner as their children and grandchildren. Not so today. Today's publishers for the first time in their history have no confidence that their child's generation will be (or are) interested in their published output. It is not that publishers aren't making an effort; however, I have a disturbing belief that there is an preponderance of focus on forcing existing content into a format and delivery mechanism (e-books and e-readers) that is not ideal only to have that e-book content used by a market - my and my parents generation - that is in long term decline.

In other words, migrating content so that it is available on an e-book may provide a false sense of security for publishers who believe this is enough to 're-launch' their content to the newest generations. No publisher should not have an e-book strategy just like they shouldn't have an Ingram or POD strategy but today's one dimensional content is no longer enough. This is why experiments like the recently announced agreement between Harpercollins and 4thStory are so interesting. From the press release:

4th Story Media and HarperCollins Publishers today announced their partnership in The Amanda Project, the first multi-platform series to be written in part by its audience, girls ages 12-14. 4th Story Media, which owns all rights for the property, will produce the content for The Amanda Project with a creative team including web design agency Happy Cog, young adult authors, artists and graphic designers. HarperCollins Publishers, which is a strategic partner in the venture and an investor, has acquired the rights to publish an eight-book The Amanda Project series worldwide."It feels like the art and craft of publishing great stories for children is on the brink of revolutionary change," said Lisa Holton, founder and CEO, 4th Story Media. "We are exploring new ways of using the web to tell stories, while also leading kids back to the joys of reading. By combining talented authors with creative web designers we are fusing traditional storytelling with the interactive world of social networking, online games, and user-generated content. We are thrilled to introduce 4th Story Media with the launch of The Amanda Project and are delighted to be partnering with the exceptional team at HarperCollins to bring this series to life."

More of this 'web first' publishing will be seen as the normal way to launch a new product or title. Harpercollins is one example but the methodology is appearing across the publishing spectrum. For example, the publisher of Bass Fisherman (no I don't subscribe) creates targeted web sites that combine social networking, a minimum of editorial content and rely on users to power the content build with their own youtube videos and podcasts. Having built an interest group, the publisher is now planning a print product targeted at this group. Doing it the other (traditional) way would have been expensive and speculative; moreover, it wouldn't have engaged the market in the manner that the web-first approach does.

Tomorrows version of the monograph is unknown but it is not the e-book version of today's book. The hype around Bezos' appearance at BookExpo was troubling to me because of the manner in which we hang on his every utterance. Certainly Amazon is important, but we are the content providers and I hope we are all looking forward to the day when a panel of publishers gets up and serially announces game shifting developments in content and content delivery. Will it be next BookExpo?

The Resilient Bookshelf Motiff: Done Better

Read Write Web takes a look at a new 3rd party application of Amazon.com data and services. A company named Zoomii has developed a book browsing UI that mimics the experience of walking through the isles of a local bookstore. (As a side note, with technology implementations like this why would Amazon need to buy Borders)? As RWW notes,

Launched to the public earlier this week, Zoomii is one great bookstore browser. Built on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), interacting with Zoomii is reminiscent of Google Maps. You can zoom in and out of bookshelves or pan around to navigate the service. The site design feels just like you're browsing a bookshelf at any bookstore except the books are facing cover-forward instead of spine-out. To keep up with the feel of a bookstore, books are organized by author and you can also compare book sizes to get a feel for how big or small a book is.

And gosh, my Canadian readers will be happy! (Via Brantley-again). Also Amazon Web Services Blog.

Note: The product is subject to Amazon.com's meta data which is why Simon Winchester's book The Man Who Loved China comes up on the "Mystery" shelf.

Blackwell to Implement Espresso Book Machine

News from The Bookseller that Blackwell will be implementing the Espresso Book machine in their 60 store chain of retail stores. From the article,

"The deal makes Blackwell the first UK retailer to install the EBM. The academic chain will trial the machine from this autumn at a yet-to-be-determined launch site, and will then roll it out across its stores. It is also looking at possible international retail sites and library supply for the machine."Blackwell c.e.o. Vince Gunn described the technology, the brainchild of former Random House US editorial director Jason Epstein, as "trailblazing and pioneering". He added: "From a retailer's point of view, even allowing for the first--generation technology and publisher challenges, this is a fantastic opportunity—sell to demand with no risk to inventory and an opportunity to create incremental revenue streams for ourselves and publishers."

"The EBM is already installed in 11 sites worldwide. It can access around one million titles, of which more than 600,000 come through a partnership with Lightning Source; the rest are in the public domain. It is also in talks with publishers about adding their content, although On Demand c.e.o. Dane Neller stressed the model was not to own content but to act a facilitator."

Clearly the EBM is rapidly growing in acceptance and existing users of the machines appear to be the biggest supporters and proponents of the technology. Close readers of this blog may recall my brain wave of book vending machines that I thought could be useful in non-traditional book outlets. Well this technology goes a significant step forward and I predict we will begin to see EBM in outlets outside the traditional publishing supply chain.

(Hat tip Brantley).

Food, Style and Felony

Apparently Martha Stewart will be denied entry into the UK if she attempts to travel there for some business meetings in the next several weeks. The denial stems from her conviction for lying to investigators over stock purchases she made back in 2004. A spokesperson commented that Martha loves England and hopes the matter can be resolved.

This was just too funny to miss. BBC

Wiley Reports Blackwell Benefits

Wiley released their fourth quarter and full year results yesterday. From their press release:

Revenue for the fiscal year 2008 increased 36% over the previous year to $1.7 billion. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (Blackwell), which was acquired in February 2007, contributed approximately $485 million of revenue to Wiley's fiscal year 2008 results. Excluding Blackwell, revenue for fiscal year 2008 increased 5%. Favorable foreign exchange contributed two percentage points to the year-on-year growth excluding Blackwell. On a U.S. GAAP basis, earnings per diluted share for fiscal year 2008 was $2.49, compared to $1.71 in fiscal year 2007. Excluding Blackwell and various tax benefits, adjusted earnings per diluted share improved 15% to $1.89. Blackwell’s performance was accretive to fiscal year 2008 earnings per dilutive share by approximately $0.29, excluding non-recurring tax benefits.
Revenue for the fourth quarter increased 11% to $433 million from $390 million in the same period of the previous year, or 8% excluding foreign exchange. Blackwell's performance was included in the fourth quarter of both years. Earnings per diluted share for the quarter was $0.49 compared to $0.25 in the prior year.

More details here.

Informa UBM Talks Collapse

After the close of the markets in the UK yesterday, UBM announced it had broken off talks about an all stock merger with Informa. Informa's shares have declined 7% this morning even though new potential buyers have emerged. Reuters cites a Times report suggesting Carlyle is behind a new bid but other parties Cinven, Apax, Candover are also potential entrants. At this point the most likely buyer would be Springer which is owned by Candover and Cinven. From Reuters:

A private equity consortium led by Providence is behind the latest bid approach to British media group Informa (INF.L: Quote, Profile, Research), media reports said on Wednesday. The Times newspaper, without citing sources, said that private equity firm Carlyle was part of the consortium and that talks were at an early stage.

Analysts must also be wondering what type of deal UBM would do if this one wasn't to its liking. The company has remained on the sidelines for much of the media buying frenzy of the past several years. It has no debt to speak off but it remains relatively small. Under what circumstances would they consider expanding the company?

Found In Books

AbeBooks has an interesting article about items found in books. My family (well, me and my father anyway) tend to leave boarding cards in books. They turn up some times nosing themselves above the edge of the boards. You take the book off the shelf to peak at the document and it says something like HNL - SFO or BKK - SYD. These always tend to be Pan Am boarding cards although many of my recent books have lots of BA cards - which are virtually all EWR - LHR or return. The older ones tend not to have dates; you are left to contemplate when the travel occurred and who was travelling where. I can sometimes remember but generally the circumstances remain a mystery.

The AbeBooks article is far more interesting;

Adam Tobin, owner of Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, New York, has created a display inside his bookstore dedicated to objects discovered in books. “It’s a motley assortment,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for about two years since opening the store. The display quickly took over the back wall and now it’s spreading to other places, and there’s a backlog of stuff that we haven’t put up yet. There are postcards, shopping lists, and concert tickets but my favorites are the cryptic notes. They are often deeply personal and can be very moving.” Used booksellers often take ownership of books that have been in a family or a household for decades or even generations. “It’s easy to find things in books that are very dated,” explained Adam,” Such as a newspaper advert for elastic bands from the 19th century. My personal favorite is an ad from the 1950s that reads ‘Rinsing Dacron Curtains in Milk Makes Them Crisp, Stiff, Just Like New.’

Read the whole article. If you are like me and immediately on seeing an interesting book in a second hand bookstore you thumb through it in the hope of finding something significant you will be wondering when lady luck will present herself.

I have found and lost at this game myself. As a book buyer at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston we routinely bought job lots of remainders. One day before the store opened, I picked up a photography book from the remainder pile. This book had clearly been in a store somewhere and not simply shipped out of a warehouse. As I thumbed through the pages, the book opened up and there was a like-new sheet of writing paper from The Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne Australia. Remember I am in Boston and it is 1985. If you will have read this post you will remember that I lived in that hotel as a child between 1973-77. I bought the book and I still have the paper, but how that writing paper got there remains a mystery.

On the downside, I believe I left a Manchester United signed team photo of their 1968 European Cup winning team between the pages of a book consigned to a second hand store. Worth several thousand by now and I just hope the person who found it knew what it was.

Hat tip to QuillBlog

Politicans Royalties

Teleread takes a look at a number of high profile political leaders and wonder's whether they will be influenced on copyright legislation.

But what does it mean when, according to the Post, more than twenty of the 100 Senators are enjoying book-writing income? Oh, well, I suspect that other things count more—such as the Senate being home to dozens of millionaires, not to mention the number of lawyer-politicians.

Richard & Judy Sell Books

The UK has its own book selling machine similar to Oprah's Book Club. The Richard and Judy show's support of books has had an impressive impact on bookselling in the UK. The TimesOnline has a profile:

Franklin admits that, like many other “literary snobs”, he had regarded the start of a book club by daytime television’s supernormal couple with mild derision and not-so-mild scepticism. The audience didn’t read and, if they did, they restricted themselves to Jeffrey Archer and ghosted packs of lies by barely human celebrities. O’Connor’s, however, was a real book, as were others on that list - William Dalrymple, Alice Sebold - and R&J were shifting them like Tesco burgers. In fact, they were shifting them on a scale unprecedented in the long and undistinguished history of book-promotion scams. They were changing the entire market.
Four years and many real books later, the R&J Book Club accounts for 26% of the sales of the top 100 books in the UK, and Amanda Ross, the club’s creator and book selector, is the most powerful player in British publishing. Now, though, the club faces a crisis. Richard & Judy are ending their early-evening run on Channel 4 and moving to a new UKTV channel. Can the club survive the shift from a terrestrial to a cable channel?

Informa and UBM - Update

Informa and UBM are in discussions about a possible merger. It is anticipated that a financial player may enter the ring and compete and currently Apax is the likely contender (Independent).

Meanwhile the TimesOnline has a profile of Peter Rigby Informa's CEO:

No wonder colleagues say Rigby is different. “Peter’s an Alka-Seltzer dropped into water,” says Derek Mapp, Informa’s senior non-executive director. “You can’t imagine him ever sitting still.” You can’t imagine him ever sacking anyone, either. He’s too nice. The smile is handsome, the eyes twinkle, he cracks jokes with flat, near-Manchester vowels. “Born in Southport, now part of Merseyside, but proud to call myself a Lancastrian,” he laughs. Beneath, there must be a flintier core. The son of a painter and decorator, Rigby has built Informa into one of the biggest conference organisers in the world, and a leading technical publisher with titles including Lloyd’s List among its jewels.

Amazon's Tactics

The NY Times reports on the on-going feud between some UK publishers - specifically Hachette - and Amazon.com. Amazon is doing the physical store equivalent of taking the books off the shelves or out of the front window and putting them in the stock room for all those publishers that will not give them better terms. The tactics point to Amazon's willingness to go after the biggest publishers as well as the smaller ones that have fewer resources. From the article:

The struggle comes at a time that Amazon’s power as a bookseller is increasing, with sales growing online in an otherwise tepid global book market. Some publishers fear that with the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle electronic reader, the company will rise into a position to be able to demand more concessions.
“The buy button is their weapon of choice and that’s how they impose market discipline,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, an American trade group that also briefly lost the buy icon, for titles sold from BackinPrint.com, a print-on-demand service for infrequently purchased works. “This is such a clear indication that once they have the clout they are willing to use it to the full extent that they can. It’s ugly with Amazon and will probably get uglier.”

Youthful Folly, Jubilance and Hyjinx

I have been looking for a reason to post this clip of Russel Brand who is a UK comedian, writer and actor and now I have it. Brand's book My Booky Wook was a surprising hit for Hachette and he has now jumped to Harpercollins which will release the title in the US. In the UK, his title sold 600K units and topped charts for weeks. The deal also covers an expected sequel. Brand was in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshal. released earlier this year.

Here is some video from Letterman.

Electronic Publisher Catalogs

Arsen Kashkashian is the Head Buyer at The Boulder Bookstore and has written a long piece on the way booksellers use publisher catalogs. First he explains how the current systems work and then proposes a better way to buy. The full post is definitely worth reading for publishers who strive to understand the bookstore process. He concludes thus,

HarperCollins held a meeting at the recent Book Expo America in Los Angeles with buyers from many of the top independent bookstores in the country to discuss their plans to implement an online catalog in the next nine months. It was a fascinating study in how people react to change. I was leading the charge into the online world with a handful of other booksellers. Many other buyers were much more hesitant to change a system that has worked for them, despite its inherent flaws. To them, the rush to change seemed reckless.My biggest concern is that bookstores are some of the most under-capitalized businesses you'll ever find. Most stores do not have state-of-the-art computers and speedy internet connections. If an online catalog features too many bells and whistles, (HarperCollins is planning on having video and audio components to many pages) it could take too long for bookstores to load the individual pages. Staring at a stuck screen for more than an instant is going to bring the whole appointment to a crashing halt. There has to be a quick-loading basic page, with the exciting, colorful features all offered as something booksellers can access only if they want to learn more.

On a related note, at Bowker we did a number of focus groups with Librarians to better understand their buying process in order for us to potentially build applications to improve efficiency. I was able to attend one of these all day meetings and was astounded by the obvious appreciation for the inefficiency, cost and lost productivity of the process exhibited by the participants (librarians), but at each suggestion of improvement (often made by the participants in the process) the glue of decades of institutionalized processes inexorably pulled us back to the status quo. It was torture.

One of the biggest negative impacts of this inefficient buying process is that it doesn't encourage deviation from a fairly static list of publisher products. (Or over reliance on pre-packaged buys from a wholesaler). Buyers simply don't have time to look at a wider range of material. Of course, having every publisher set up their own on-line catalog is in the long term not going to make buyers happy either because visiting several thousand imprints on the web will try anybody's patience. (And, I am assuming all kinds of order forms and added bells and whistles are included in these sites). Now, if I were a publisher of an industry wide books data base or transaction site wouldn't I be marketing and promoting this 'one-stop shop' solution really, really, really heavily? Probably, but with a lot of changes.

(Hat tip to Nora Rawlinson).

Speaking of Desperation

Border Stores investor William Ackerman is providing some color commentary on the Borders sale process. As a major investor in Borders (over 30%) he is trying to gin up some interest in the bizarre idea that Amazon.com should buy Borders. Is there really so little interest that this idea is posited?

Handicapping the buyers:

Private Equity buy: Pershing to take it private 1:2 Odds on Favorite

Some other PE firm: 3:1 (Pacific Equity Partners, Others)

Follett Stores: 5:1 (Borders would be a good match with Follett College and a concern for B&N/ B&N College)

BAM: 7:1 (Interesting match with BAM store locations. Combo would would be impressive)

Indigo Books & Music: 7:1 (No where to go in Canada what better opportunity will there be to become a bigger more significant player - could be the dark horse).

B&N: 33:1 (Similar odds to the winner of the Belmont so anything's possible. Probably not a real contender unless Borders goes Chapter 11 then they can renegotiate the leases).

Ingram 100:1 (Would they try this again? The environment is significantly different than 1999 but this is a long shot).

WH Smiths: 200:1. They just got out of this market so unlikely they would get back in.

Target: 200:1

Walmart: 500:1

Amazon: 1000:1 (Maybe worth a flutter).

Well that was fun...

Virtual

This video takes video conferencing to a whole new dimension. Quite astounding.

The ‘Cisco On-Stage TelePresence Experience’ was an ambitious collaboration between Cisco and Musion Systems, which took place during the opening of Cisco’s Globalization Centre East in Bangalore, India. Musion seamlessly integrated their 3D holographic display technology with Cisco’s TelePresence’s system to create the world’s first real time virtual presentation. Cisco CEO John Chambers, who was live on the Bangalore stage, ‘beamed up’ Martin De Beer, the Senior Vice President of emerging Technologies, and Chuck Stucki the General Manager of TelePresence, live from San Jose, California. Chambers was then able to have a ‘face to face’ discussion with De Beer and Stucki on the future of Cisco TelePresence, demonstrating first hand the potential capabilities of the system in front of the watching audience.

Hat tip to Brantley.

Jane F - The Blow by Blow

The NY Observer prints their version of events leading to the resignation of Jane Friedman at HarperCollins.

That same morning Ms. Friedman received a phone call from someone at News Corp. asking her to please come see Mr. Murdoch at 4:30 in his office six blocks away. According to one of Ms. Friedman colleagues, who spoke to her recently, the caller did not explain what Mr. Murdoch wanted to talk to her about. And so Ms. Friedman, fresh off a triumphant turn at Book Expo America the weekend prior, and with strong fourth-quarter results expected at the end of the month, went to the News Corp. building and took the elevator to Mr. Murdoch’s office. When she arrived, he told her that he had given her job to her deputy, a talented young businessman named Brian Murray who had been with HarperCollins since 1997. By midnight that night, the entire publishing world knew that Ms. Friedman was out, and her spokeswoman issued a statement announcing that she had decided to retire and would do so immediately.

Some of this rings true from my own experience; maybe I'll elaborate one day although it is no where near as interesting.

Where the Web Is Taking Us: The Inevitable Future and the Publisher's Role In It

Mike Shatzkin has uploaded a transcript of a speech he gave to small and independent publishers at this years BookExpo conference. Here is the first paragraph (and you can find the rest of it here):

The basic premise under which we're operating here, I'll summarize for those of you have never heard or read my work before, is that horizontal, format-specific media entities are oh, so 20th century, and won't work very deep into the 21st. The reason for that is the web, which almost forces vertical organization. Horizontal presentations across subject matter -- like CBS, Random House, or The New York Times -- were the products of a capital-intensive, limited-distribution universe. CBS came out of an era when there were three national TV networks: they all tried to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Daily newspapers, to support their printing and distribution infrastructure, also had to appeal to just about everybody; the Times could get away without a comic strip page, but that was its only concession to verticality -- a more intellectual audience. And book publishers were relying primarily on promotional media -- newspapers, radio, and TV -- and distribution outlets -- bookstores -- that were also appealing to people across the board. It didn't matter what subjects Random House or Harper or Simon & Schuster published; what mattered is that each book have a large enough audience to be worth employing the powerful machine they controlled.

Borders Close Sale

Five days after announcing an agreement to sell their Australian and NZ stores, Borders has annouced the deal has closed. All regulatory hurdles were overcome in the first go-around earlier this year and substantial due dilligence must also have been completed before the original deal fell apart. Press release