MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 23): Book Titles, E-Books and Text Books, Orphans,

Some of these appeared on The Twitter. Robert McCrum does some thinking about book titles: (Observer)

Actually, if you're stuck for a title, Shakespeare is a good place to start: Brave New World (The Tempest); Remembrance of Things Past (The Sonnets); The Sound and the Fury (Macbeth); The Dogs of War (Julius Caesar); Cakes and Ale (Twelfth Night). Apart from quoting Donne (For Whom the Bell Tolls) or the Bible (The Power and the Glory) or TS Eliot (A Handful of Dust), you can fall back on theory. Some say a good title must contain a conflict (Crime and Punishment); others that one word is best (Atonement; Money); or that exotic confections (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) make good box office.

The truth is, as William Goldman has it, "nobody knows anything".

Seth Godin rants about Marketing textbooks.

The solution seems simple to me. Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. (it's part of their job, remember?) When you have a class to teach, assemble 100 of the best pieces, put them in a pdf or on a kindle or a website (or even in a looseleaf notebook) and there, you're done. You just saved your intro marketing class about $15,000. Every semester. Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness.

Burning a 'gay teen book' in Wisconsin could become a legal matter (Observer):

Siems said there was clearly "a bit of theatre" in the lawsuit which followed. "They've filed a lawsuit which has little possibility of going forward legally, and they're asking for damages which include the right to burn a book. It does seem more to gain publicity than a real serious challenge." But, he said, PEN remained very concerned about the impulse behind the claim. "This is a group of people trying aggressively to rid the library of these books and that's very serious - it needs to be fought."

The claimants, he said, "have a right to continue to express their views, and this in a way is a creative attempt to express those views". But it's "also a dangerous game when you're talking about something like book burning, calling on the law to burn books. It's certainly completely un-American, and if they paused, I think they would agree."

JISC (UK) produce a report that suggests that the potential Orphan work problem in the UK could extend to 50mm items. It's not just about books.

The scale and impact of Orphan Works across the public sector confirms that the presence of Orphan Works is in essence locking up culture and other public sector content and preventing organisations from serving the public interest. Works of little and/or variable commercial value but high academic and cultural significance are languishing unused. Access to an immense amount of this material, essential for education and scholarship, is consequently badly constrained, whilst scarce public sector resources are being used up on complex and unreliable ‘due diligence’ compliance. Without any kind of UK or European Union-wide legal certainty, there will remain a major risk for all users of Orphan Works. The quantity of Orphan Works and their impact is only accelerating as content is being created and digitised without adherence to any single internationally recognised standard for capturing provenance information.

Six lessons from an e-Book project at Northwest Missouri State college: (Chronicle)

Then the university ran a pilot study with the Sony Reader, a device much like the Kindle (Sony was more responsive to the university's calls than Amazon was). University officials learned some sobering lessons about electronic books. Students who got the machines quickly asked for their printed books back because it was so awkward to navigate inside the e-books (though a newer version of the device works more gracefully).

Mr. Hubbard still dreams of lighter bookbags and lower costs, but the university is now moving more slowly — and running tests involving several different types of e-books. Publishers are clamoring to be part of the experiment.

Peter Olson examines what the Kindle really means: (BookBusiness)

The real issues are:

1. How can we enhance the reader’s overall experience—not just reading, but browsing, purchasing and library-building, and not just through print or digital media, but through a combination of both?

2. How can we create pricing options that will increase demand for books and offset the decline in book readership?

3. How can we build a new business model that is attractive to authors and sufficiently profitable for publishers and online retailers?

Asking baby boomers whether they will forego their affinity for printed books is irrelevant. The key to the future is whether e-books will be interesting enough to Generations X, Y and the millennials to capture a significant portion of their entertainment spending.

In Connecticut they take the development of Math courses into their own hands: (NYTimes)

So the district’s frustrated math teachers decided to rewrite the algebra curriculum, limiting it to about half of the 90 concepts typically covered in a high school course in hopes of developing a deeper understanding of key topics. Last year, they began replacing 1,000-plus-page math textbooks with their own custom-designed online curriculum; the lessons are typically written in Westport and then sent to a program in India, called HeyMath!, to jazz up the algorithms and problem sets with animation and sounds.

S&S and Proactive Digital

When the Bowker team launched our first online product we learned by experience, but one thing we got right was perspective. Even though nearly 100% of our revenue was in print, from that day forward we became an online database company. There was nothing we didn't consider to elevate our online product in the consciousness of our customers minds: not pricing, content, sales support or marketing. Our goal was to migrate all our customers from the print to the web product as fast as possible. Admittedly, there were many before us in the online database world who we could point to for guidance but we still managed to make mistakes. For example, we quickly understood that customer service was no longer about tracking a book shipment as it was about technical support, and selling wasn't about cold calling from New Jersey rather it became training on-site. Still, we were fast learners.

In the process of proactively migrating our customer base we aggressively increased the price of our print version while also reducing the content. We continued to add new content and new functionality to the on-line product while only moderately increasing pricing. We pulled back from third party data licenses and migrated these customers to our platform so we could maintain a direct relationship with all our customers. We placed sales reps in the field which hadn't been done for many years, and later added trainers in the field to ensure our customers were using the product to its capability.

All of these proactive tasks were established to not only support our new on-line business but also eliminate our print business. We always knew online and electronic was our future and we wanted to get there as fast as possible. Our product was better online and our relationship with the customers was more positive and engaged than it ever had been in the print environment. Most importantly, the company was able to survive and gain in strength which never would have happened had we not proactively engaged a digital strategy.

This week Simon & Schuster appears to have taken a similar proactive step in defining their own online future by placing 5,000 titles with Scribd. Many trade publishers at BookExpo seemed content in commenting on eBooks counting less than 5% of revenues (I'm being generous). In shugging off the (in)significance of the stat they also seemed to be saying 'it's not really up to us' to drive these numbers faster. And why would they want to drive eBooks when print is still so important? (This is the point where I point back to my example above).

In working with Scribd, S&S has said "we want to have some say in our digitial future" are we are not going to leave it in the hands of Amazon to dictate to us. I applaud this somewhat isolated example of a publisher taking control of their fate - however small the effort may appear to some at this stage - and look both for S&S to seek other relationships and for other publishers to join them. Which publisher will be first to eliminate a first edition print in favor of digital only?

Doing Away With Textbooks In California

California is one of the holy trinity of HS text book states and thus tremendously important to the success of any textbook program. E-texts have been gaining and programs by Cengage, Pearson and MGH have begun to make inroads into schools as legitimate supplemental (and in some cases substitutions for) printed text books. Recently in an interview in the San Jose Mercury News, Governor Schwarzenegger indicated he would like to replace printed textbooks in HS as a way to battle his budget issues. He is suggesting starting this process in August which must have some executives in the educational community running frantic. There is an undoubted significant opportunity that may both reduce expenses and provide for a better educational experience; however, given the politics of both California at large and the materials selection process don't hold your breath thinking a change like this will happen in August.

From the Guardian:

Schwarzenegger, trying to plug a budget hole of $24.3bn (£15bn), thinks he can make savings by getting rid of what he decries as expensive textbooks. The governor is serious about an idea that might make Gutenberg turn in his grave. He appeared in class yesterday to push an idea he set out in the San Jose Mercury News newspaper.

"It's nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form," Schwarzenegger wrote. "Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators' hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources."

Schwarzenegger points out that California last year set aside $350m for school books and argues that even if teachers have to print out some of the material, it will be far cheaper than regularly buying updated textbooks.

The Governor's point of view on this matter is also warped: He believes textbooks are expensive and e-Book versions will be cheaper but neither is necessarily the case. E-Books will be better - especially true when they are integrated into a networked environment - but cheaper? Maybe but unlikely since there is the cost of the reader, (and some of these will inevitably have to be replaced every year), as well as the on-going cost of creation that publishers will want to cover on the same basis as they do now. Schwarzenegger has the objective correct: Replacing print texts with electronic versions is a good idea, but his motivation will focus the argument in the wrong place. It won't be what is best for the student but what will save California the most money, and on that basis why not just buy one text book for every three students and be done with it?

Are Characters Possible in a Fragmented World?

Interesting article in The Economist on Stan Lee the graphic artist and creator of many Marvel comic characters. The article explores how characters ended up on screen but also looks into how markets are fragmenting thus making the ability to be successful as Marvel was far more difficult. (The Economist):

But there is a hitch. Mr Lee’s most celebrated creations appeared at a time when comic books were widely read. The heroes were honed over many years by other writers and artists. As a result a great many people of diverse ages are familiar with them and will happily spend $10 to sit in a cool cinema and renew their acquaintance. Blockbuster audiences are built not of enthusiastic fans—there are never enough—but of people who are vaguely aware of a character or a story and want to see what a studio does with it.

These days it is extremely difficult to propel new characters or stories into broad public consciousness, and therefore hard to mobilise a mass audience for films based on them. Take Alan Moore, a revered writer of comic books. His works have inspired five ambitious films (the most recent is “Watchmen”), none of them hugely successful. And what goes for comic books also goes for television shows, computer games and other fodder for summer blockbusters. As audiences fragment, there is simply less mass content to throw into the Hollywood recycling machine.

About Being Semantic

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has just published one of their periodic Technical Reports where they discuss and forecast the impact of the semantic web on business operations. This report is readable - although the concepts are complex, and there are several examples that elucidate the practical implications of adopting some of the theory (BBC).

Fundamental to the development of the semantic web will be the Resource Description Framework (RDF) which builds on the experience of xml and improves on the benefits provided by relational data. Central to RDF are Universal Resource Identifiers (URI) which are 'supersets' of URLs - your garden variety web address. In a semantic context, URIs are more specific than URLs and on page 7 of the report, the authors explain how this interplay works.

There are three key themes noted in this report:

1. Establishment & Use of Ontologies and Taxonomies. Increasingly anyone in data and information management is going to understand and recognise what these terms mean. In the publishing business, far more attention is now being paid to the the way data can/should relate to other data (Ontological) as well as how data can be structured hierarchically (taxonomy). As hierarchical classification schemes, taxonomies can/are limiting - although this factor may not be apparent until an organization considers utilizing one advantage of ontologies which is that they can be linked to other ontologies.
   
   
2. The ability to link your data with data from any third party will ultimately create better business information and support both more accurate and faster decision making. The Linked Data Initiative is a standards based approach to try to make this happen. In a linked data environment data can be shared and the interrelationships between data understood within the confines of a shared understanding of a common ontology. In the report, PWC examine how establishing a new retail location using complex data from a variety of sources can be aggregated and made actionable all using a linked data framework. As the report says, linked data is about both 'supply and demand': Accessing the data you want but also allowing others to access your data as well.
   
   
3. The report also addresses SPARQL and SQL. Theres much more in the report but SPARQL supports interpretation of graphical data representing an improvement over SQL. This discussion challenges the upper reaches of my pay grade so you will have to read this yourself.
   

I would have liked to quote directly from the report but ironically the pdf is disabled for copy and paste. However the report is free and runs about 50pages and I won't spoil the ending for you.

Also of relevance are two presentations I made at the Frankfurt supply chain meeting. Digital Age and Intelligent Publishing Supply Chain.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 22): University Press, BookExpo, BordersUK, News Corp

If you are on Twitter you will have seen these. Apologies. Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed takes a look at some of the University Presses at BookExpo and their comparative investments in eBook formats:

Many people take it for granted that the economic downturn amounts to a a tipping point in e-publishing, at least for scholarly presses, and perhaps especially for them.But even the publishers moving steadily deeper into the digital terrain are doing so watchfully.

The expression "tipping point" (with its implication of "point of no return") hardly seems to apply, to judge by this year's Book Expo. A more fitting term might be the one used by Ellen Trachtenberg, a publicist for the University of Pennsylvania Press. "We're at a tension point," she told me. "We don't have any e-books, but our board of trustees is keen on doing them, so we are looking into it."

PW's BookExpo content is here. Elizabeth Eaves took a walk around BookExpo last weekend (Forbes)

Why write books? The compulsion to try to entertain, persuade or make meaning is irresistible. At the very least, the industry appears to be handling technological change more gracefully than the music business or ink-on-paper newspapers, in ways that are reassuring to an author. Publishers will automatically make new books available in a digital format, suitable for the Kindle or other e-readers--though mid-list authors may have to ask, or arm wrestle, publishers into digitizing their older books. Nobody knows whether sales in the still-tiny digital books market will cannibalize print book sales or add to them, nor whether margins on e-books will be enough to keep publishers in business. It seems wisest, though, to give the people what they want, how they want it.

Borders UK denied they are facing critical financial issues rather that they need some external help to rightsize their retail space. Nevertheless, the appointment of a financial adviser raises speculation about the company's future. The Bookseller

More from News Corp - this time newly hired Jonathan Miller - on developing a paid content model. (Hollywood Reporter)

Paid digital media services are the wave of the future for media giants, and the only question is how fast they will become reality, News Corp. chief digital officer Jonathan Miller said here Tuesday evening, adding that the conglomerate will push to develop new business models that work for the industry overall. "We will see a return to multiple revenue streams," Miller predicted after his chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch recently hinted more of his empire's digital content offers may carry a price tag in the future. "Free versus pay is one of the really big issues out there," and this is the time the industry seems ready to find answers, he said. We want to see a (business) model established.

Also on The Twitter, there was a publishing boot camp in Toronto over the weekend and here is the link An interview in The Observer magazine with crime novelist Martina Cole:

I've run down the batteries of not one but two tape recorders. My note-taking hand is aching. And when I finally arrive home, I have to spend some time sitting quietly in a darkened room. It's not unlike being kidnapped, interviewing Martina Cole, although if you've read any of her novels, you're probably thinking a claw hammer through an eye socket, or a shank in the neck and a severed artery or two, whereas in actual fact it's a constant, non-stop stream of stories, opinions, homilies, exhortations and offers of tea, coffee, wine, cake, ham salad, water, coffee. Ah go on, a little glass of wine. And when I come to transcribe it all, I manage 29 pages, or 16,000 words, or to put this into context, roughly a fifth of a novel, before I simply give up, overwhelmed. God, she can talk, Martina. It's non-stop. The stories just keep on coming. She doesn't even need to pause for breath. I begin to suspect that she might have gills. Or that she breathes through her skin like a frog. But then she's written 16 novels, all bestsellers; in fact she's far and away the bestselling British author today, translated into 28 languages, trumped in the charts only by the likes of The Da Vinci Code, so it really shouldn't be surprising that she knows how to spin a yarn, although somehow it is.

Simple Analyst

Robert MacMillan over at Reuters MediaFile observes some facile 'research' from Moody's on the future of newspapers (which he cites) and then concludes with this:

This seems to leave managers with only one way to stay in business for now. If you want your credit rating not to fall further, lay off a few hundred or thousand more employees and make sure the newspaper features a bunch of under-edited news, lame stories and mostly wire copy. Repeat process as often as possible until shareholders and bondholders have a chance to cash out. Then look for another job, maybe as a McKinsey-style efficiency consultant.

Well done. It's no wonder these rating agencies contributed to the mess we are in. I do hope no one pays for this report.

Google on Orphans

On their public policy blog, Google addresses how the Google Book Settlement will increase access to 'out of print' works and also aid to decrease the number of 'orphan' works by enabling a comprehensive process for identification of rights owners. (Google):

As “parent” rightsholders claim their books through the Book Rights Registry, we think it will become clear that most out-of-print books are not actually “orphans.” Books that were once difficult for anyone to license will become books that are very easy for everyone to license, either through the Book Rights Registry or directly from their owners. Furthermore, many books that some think are in-copyright orphans (including a large percentage from 1963 or before) are actually out-of-copyright, and Google is working to make more information available that can clarify their copyright status.

Of course, some rightsholders may still be too difficult to find. Under the settlement Google will be able to open up access to truly orphaned books, but we still think more needs to be done to allow anyone and everyone to use these works. Any company or organization that wants to open up access to this untapped resource should be able to do so. The settlement is not a panacea, since it only covers a subset of orphaned works, provides only certain uses, and is not able to extend these uses to other providers. The need for comprehensive orphan works legislation is not diminished.

Australian Territorial Copyright

The Globe and Mail has the text of a speech given by Australian novelist Richard Flanagan (Sound of One Hand Clapping) during the Sydney Writers Festival two weeks ago. In this speech he makes and impassioned call to the Australian government to abandon their review of the policy of territorial copyright retention of which Flanagan believes is essential to the continued vibrancy and health of the nations written word.

Here are several samples from this long speech:

The battle to understand this world in our own tongue that Tyndale's Bible represents, to make the universal particular, the sacred secular, and the secular in its turn sacred, is a battle that has strangely resurfaced here in Australia this year.

For it falls to us to once more to defend the right – our right and our deepest need – to our own stories in our own voice, which is also, historically and perhaps inevitably, that same battle between truth and power.

At this moment, as many of you would be aware, the Australian government is giving serious consideration to a proposal that would see the ending of territorial copyright for Australian writers.

This dullest and dreariest of phrases – territorial copyright – is the drab motley thrown over a measure which will do untold damage to Australian culture. I cannot begin to convey to you the destructive stupidity of what is being proposed, nor the intense sadness and great anger that so many Australian writers feel about this proposal.

.....

But Australian publishing over the last four decades is an extraordinary cultural achievement. In an era when national cultures suffered greatly from globalization, ours grew stronger, in no small part because of our book industry. We read Australian stories from cradle to grave, and the best of our writing is judged around the world as globally significant.

....

Writers and books that matter will become like an endangered species with no habitat left to support them. The fate of most of them in the large chain and discount mega-store culture will be that of marsupials in new outer suburbs, dicing with death on freeways, not knowing until that short moment of blinding light dazzle that this is no longer their home.

That is but a small sample.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 21): BookExpo, Newspapers, China,

We are lagging behind this week due to BookExpo and the resulting back log of work; nevertheless, here are some of the news stories I found interesting over the past week. Many (all) of my twitter feeders (is there such a thing) will have seen most of these. From PW describing the seminar "Stupid Publisher Tricks"(PW):

Among the more provocative proposals were one from Miller that booksellers start publishing and Madan’s request for a good clean data feed, or virtual catalog of all publishers' books, so that independent booksellers could effectively sell books online. Fifteen years after the rise of Amazon, he said, there is no such catalog, and independents have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ingram or Baker & Taylor for data that should be free.

Peter Preston points to some stats that suggest all is not doom and gloom in newspapers - perhaps though only where we notice (Guardian):

Cue those WAN statistics one more time and find that 81% of American online users also say they read a printed paper at least once a week. In sum, for the moment, it's not one or the other: it's both. And transition from one to the other, where it's happening, comes unpredictably and patchily from city to city and country to country. Gurus with web fish to fry sing a different tune, sure enough. Burgeoning tycoons who got their debt mountains wrong (like David Montgomery at Mecom) invoke broken old revenue models. It all seems so obvious boiled down to a ritual sentence or two in some TV script.

But too much "doom and gloom", according to O'Reilly? Absolutely: and perhaps he should look at his own Independent web figures - up 63% in a year - for some added personal cheer. But it's still a melee of hopes, dreams and disappointments out there - and, certainly, too many glib simplicities.

Paul McGuinness the manager of U2, isn't satisfied with copyright protections despite the Pirate Bay case and service providers required to do more (CNET):

I would really like them to willingly go to the movie studios and the music companies and say this is how we can collect money from the people who are listening to your stuff and watching your movies. We acknowledge that it's the fair thing to do and we have some responsibility for doing it. Let's do it together and let's make some money. I've heard the estimates that half of traffic across the Internet is technically illegal non-paid-for content. That can't go on. It's such a waste. Future generations of artists will face a vacuum where payment used to be. Artists are entitled to get paid, whatever kind of art they do, the same way technologists are entitled to get paid.

But if the technology you develop prevents artists from being remunerated then there's something wrong with it. I'd like to get a moral tone into the discussion. I think there is a big moral question for civilization. It's not good enough to say that the Internet is free to all and there should be no restrictions on its use. I had the experience last year of making a speech to a group of (Members of European Parliament) in Brussels and they were very hostile to the idea of any kind of monitoring or regulation of the Internet, which they regarded as the precursor to a form of taxation. And of course, as politicians, they were against any kind of increased taxation. But it's not taxation. It's paying for something that people are consuming.

NYTimes is becoming its own ad agency (Forbes)

In the past month, the Times has unveiled a real-time news wire feature wrapped in ads for software outfit SAP ( SAP - news - people ), as well as a Web campaign for the AMC series Mad Men, which includes a mini-archive of Times articles about the show within the ad unit. The Times' recent efforts demonstrate a realization that newspapers and magazines can't wait for Madison Avenue to create lucrative new ad models online. J.P. Morgan estimates newspaper revenues will decline 20% this year to $30 billion. Last year, the digital arms of newspapers only contributed an estimated $3 billion. Along with experimenting with new ad mechanisms, the Times has said it is considering various plans to charge users for access to NYTimes.com.

Days after BookExpo you may recognise the truth in research that suggests that Publishing and Media professionals lead all industries in binge drinking (Independent):

People working in media, publishing and entertainment sectors are the heaviest drinkers, according to the Department of Health. They consume an average of 44 units a week, almost twice the recommended maximum amount of three-to-four units a day for men, and two-to-three for women.

Plans for the Plastic Logic reader device were discussed at the All things digital conference (FOX)

A big highlight from the event is Plastic Logic’s new e-reader that is bigger and thinner than Amazon’s (AMZN) popular Kindle and targeted at business users.

This device measures 8.5 inches by 11 inches, the same as the standard letter size for the paper you load into your printer at the office.

Plastic Logic CEO Rich Archuletta told FOX Business in an interview the device will be available at the start of 2010 and that it will be able to handle all different types of content, including PDFs, Word, and Excel files. He showed a working prototype of the device displaying a cover of Fortune magazine as well as a couple of documents.

Very interesting (and generally off the radar) article about publishing mergers in China (Economist):

At a recent industry forum Liu Binjie, the director of China’s General Administration of Press and Publication, the industry regulator, said China would like to see such partnerships between studios and publishers lead to a massive consolidation, leaving half a dozen giant companies capable of spreading Chinese words internationally. Small firms not swept up in the various deals would be able to auction manuscripts. Instead of indirect censorship through publishers, there would be a government clearing house.

The result would be a better organised industry, somewhat similar to what already exists for Chinese films. Production is largely done by government studios, censorship is overt, productions have a global audience and there is strong consumer demand. However, much of that demand is met not by Chinese films but by black-market consumption of foreign films blocked from entering China legally because of tight controls.

Readers at BookExpo?

If like me you have stayed over the weekend at the Frankfurt bookfair on even one occasion you will know that the fair opens to the public. A public largely interested in reading and publishing. The startling thing about this is that on each day YOU CAN'T GET DOWN THE AISLES FOR THE PEOPLE!

I bring this up because not only do the US and UK publishers bitch and moan about having to man their booths at Frankfurt - and generally, myself included, the executives tend to evacuate early Saturday anyway - but these same publishers are not interested in opening up BookExpo to the public either. Admitting there are some logistical issues, but in the face of a BookExpo where the most common statement on the floor seemed to be 'will this be the last or second last' one, I would argue opening BookExpo to readers and customers might not be such a bad idea. Actually, I don't have to argue it because Richard Nash has done so on the PW show blog this morning:

I draw the following conclusion. The publishing business is not in trouble because there's no demand for books. It is in trouble because there are changes afoot in how best to satisfy the demand, changes to which there are suitable responses, two of which are fostering fan culture, and generating a sense of occasion, and the leaders of the largest publishing organizations are failing in their professional responsibility to implement these responses. By reducing their participation in BEA at the same time the media participation has increased by almost 50%, by refusing to open the Fair to the readers on Sunday, these CEOs have effectively thrown in the towel. They are managing the demise of the book business, pointing fingers at any generic social forces they can find, failing to see the one place the responsibility can be found, their own damn offices.

Kindle Sales: Nothing, Nada, Never

News - not too shocking - that Amazon may never release Kindle sales not only adds a new dimension to the developing problem of how the industry counts itself but there's also a possible darker side. Since the company attributes their attitude to competitive issues that to me also indicates a willingness to disemble; that is, they will continue to provide misleading and partial information regarding these sales. As a result we will continue to see a variety of interpretations of the data that is provided, both by people who should know better, and worse, by people who have no grounding in publishing dynamics. It's the last set we worry about.

Don't Forget: Blogger Signing at BookExpo; 1pm Saturday

Firebrand Technologies has organized a 'blogger signing' at their booth 4077th during BookExpo and I am participating. It sounds like a lot of fun and an opportunity to meet a lot of blog readers across a spectrum of topics. Firebrand is the owner of a great application named NetGalley which automates the process of providing review copies to reviewers. Sign-up if you are a reviewer and don't forget to come by the 4077th booth to meet all of us.

I will be at the booth at 1pm on Saturday - pen in hand.

(Bare in mind however, that I will not be signing any body parts and generally speaking a hand shake will do).

Here is a note from Firebrand:

Firebrand is thrilled to announce that 44 bloggers signed up to be at our booth (#4077) during Book Expo America. It’s clear from how quickly this idea went from concept to reality, that book bloggers need and want to create community-to-community relationships with publishers, retailers, and readers. This is an incredibly exciting time in publishing!

We invite every publisher at BEA to review this schedule and mark their calendars, so they have a chance to meet the bloggers who are helping to sell their books.

The schedule is below. We have a couple of new entries (Sarah Weinman, Ed Champion, and Austin Allen) not listed below, or if you have trouble reading the layout below, Click Here

You can also see the list here.

Publishing Under 25

It was nice to hear Eric Hippeau of Softbank say pretty much the following from my Pimp My Print post:

If I were heading a publishing house, I would hire a band of 25-30 year old editors/writers, give them a budget to acquire content and have them build a new 'publishing' operation unfettered by print runs, business models and pub dates. Their responsibility would be to create content a target market valued enough to use, to experiment in how to monetize the content and to be able to replicate the model. With guidance - not oversight - provided by the many experienced managers that exist in a typical publishing house the team won't fail. And yes, I would do this TODAY.

He actually said round them up from within your own organization and he did intersperse a 'good luck' but essentially the point was the same. Unfortunately, Eric and the moderator Chris Anderson were off the subject for most of the discussion and there was little real information about "directing investments into new media" which these two were/are uniquely qualified to address. Pity.

BookExpo: Session Picks

These are the sessions today and tomorrow that I think you would want to attend:

Thursday:

The Impact of Free (and Piracy) on Book Sales: An Update on The Piracy Project
9:30AM - 10:30AM (Thursday, May 28, 2009)
As digital content has become more available and more commonly distributed in book publishing, fears of piracy and lost sales have grown. While the debate over the impact of free content has been at times heated, the discussions are more often than not characterized by a lack of hard data. To address this data gap, O'Reilly Media began a project in 2008 to characterize the free universe, catalog and assess recent experiments, establish ways to measure the benefit or cost of free distribution and conduct some follow-on experiments of our own. Come to this session to hear an update on this ongoing study.
Presenter: Brian O'Leary - Principal, Magellan Media Consulting Partners

Stay Ahead of the Shift: What Product-Centric Publishers Can Do to Flourish in a Community-Centric Web World
11:00AM - 12:00PM (Thursday, May 28, 2009)
Publishers have necessarily been focused on short-term changes in their market environment because they've been happening fast. EBook sales are rising more quickly than anything else But Mike Shatzkin is thinking of much bigger changes than these. He looks out a couple of decades and imagines a world more different than today's than the world of 20 years ago is different from today's. He challenges the most basic assumptions we have always accepted that a book is "finished" when an author turns it in, that audiences are mostly reached through intermediaries, even that publishing is about products and paints a believable picture of a completely different media and content world which, he maintains, is coming whether publishers like it or not. so they require attention, but they don't amount to much yet in the way of sales. Individual title marketing, which worked through a bunch of "usual suspects" that hardly changed year to year, has become a game of Whack-a-mole, with new blogs and social networks popping up for every book between the time you get a manuscript and the time you print a book. And sales channels and how you reach them are shifting with new online accounts sprouting while many brick-and-mortar accounts are dying and catalogs, sales conferences, reps dedicated to bookstores, and even "publishing seasons" themselves are endangered species.
Presenter: Mike Shatzkin - Founder & CEO, Idea Logical Co, Inc

A Discussion with Softbank Capital's Eric Hippeau on where VC Dollars are Flowing and What it Means for Publishers
1:30PM - 2:30PM (Thursday, May 28, 2009)
New and radical innovation has accompanied each recession for the past four decades. And though the financial meltdown is historic in its roiling of hedge and mutual funds, there is still a substantial amount of uninvested money that will be invested soon. Couple this with the impact of new broadband and mobile media applications changing consumer behavior, and publishers are left with a future of media influence uncertainty. That is, unless you are talking with a major player who is directing investments into new media. Don't miss this discussion between Wired's Chris Anderson and Softbank Capital's Eric Hippeau as they dig into the detail of what's hot and where the VC dollars are flowing.
Host: Chris Anderson - Editor in Chief, WIRED, author, FREE
Guest: Eric Hippeau - Managing Partner, Softbank Capital

The End of the Supply Chain and the Beginning of the True Book Culture
2:30PM - 3:30PM (Thursday, May 28, 2009)
Knowing what we now know, about media and content in the digital networked age, and recognizing we may not yet know that much, let''s now ask ourselves: what might the ideal publishing company look like? Had we it to do over again, how would we build a system for connecting writers and readers? Richard Nash gave up his job in order to start to answer those questions and here offers his thoughts so far...
Panelist: Dedi Felman - (formerly) Sr. Editor, Simon & Schuster
Presenter: Richard Nash - (formerly) Publisher, Soft Skull Press

Friday:

D2T2: Digital Debut Tool Time
9:30AM - 10:30AM (Friday, May 29, 2009)
An insider’s presentation of new and soon-to-be-mainstreamed web-based entities providing innovative digital services and tools to authors, publishers and readers.
Moderator:

Mike Shatzkin - Founder & CEO, Idea Logical Co, Inc
Presenter: Peter Clifton - President & Ceo, FiledBy, Inc.
Mark Coker - founder & CEO, Smashwords, Inc.
Hugh McGuire - co-founder & President, BookOven

Do Publishers Still Hold the Keys to the Kingdom? A Panel of Authors Weigh In
2:00PM - 3:00PM (Friday, May 29, 2009)
Book publishers have been criticized for their reluctance to adopt new technologies. Yet their tepid forays into the digital media world have been due in part to flavor-of-the-day platforms that leave even the experts guessing what technology will be around tomorrow. Our panelists will discuss some of the thorniest issues facing old media today, what old media can learn from new media and what both must do to adapt and survive. NOTE This panel will be held on the Downtown Author Stage
Moderator: Steven Johnson, author of The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, Everything Bad is Good For You, and other bestsellers
Panelist: Chris Anderson - Editor in Chief, WIRED, author, FREE
Lev Grossman, Sr. Writer & Book Critic, Time and author, The Magicians
Tom Standage, Business Editor, The Economist, and author, An Edible History of Humanity

Canon Tales: 7x20x21 - Sponsored by The New Yorker
4:30PM - 5:45PM (Friday, May 29, 2009) A unique event designed to inspire conversation, creativity, and passion for the future of publishing. It was born in the UK, where the most recent event at the London Book Fair was presented to a standing-room-only crowd.
Our panel will be the first US adaptation. Ten presenters who are at the forefront of what is exciting in publishing now will be given seven minutes each to present their stories to the crowd. Their presentations will be accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation of 20 slides, with a strict 21-second limit per slide, which forces the presenter to keep the presentation moving forward quickly. Our guidelines for what they discuss will be left wide open, in order to encourage a wide range of topics and styles of presentation throughout the panel. NOTE This panel will be held on the Downtown Author Stage.
Presenter: Debbie Stier, Harper Studio; Richard Nash, former publisher of Soft Skull; Lauren Cerand, PR rep; Jeff Yamaguchi, Digital Marketing, Random House; Mat (Some one - name cut off on program).

SharedBook Launches Platform Supporting Google Book Search Discussion

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

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

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

Visit the website here.

Update:

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

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

Borders Looks for "Selling Culture"

Admitting that hand selling is nothing new, Border's CEO Ron Marshall spoke about returning the company to one driven by sales rather than cost containment and supply chain improvements alone. In the press release accompanying their first quarter results he expands on this point,

"We continued to strengthen the financial structure of the company by making further improvements to cash flow, debt and adjusted EBITDA," said Borders Group Chief Executive Officer Ron Marshall. "Make no mistake about it, we have much more work to do and will continue to maintain our financial discipline. At the same time, we know that we cannot save our way to prosperity. Our long-term success will come from doing a much better job of driving sales and that's where our focus is right now."

The company reported significant top line declines in comp store sales; however, the company is making significant improvements in store product mix, supply chain costs and other key areas. The company saw significant improvements in certain product line gross margins but the proactive reduction in multi-media sales (DVD, Music) hid much of the improvement. The company also appears to have improved its debt position and according to their CFO is in compliance with all debt coverage obligations.

Other key metrics from their press release:

• Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter was $3.0 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $14.3 million a year ago.
• First quarter cash flow from operations improved by $19.5 million over last year.
• Operating SG&A expenses and inventory were reduced from the prior year by $48.1 million and $254.9 million, respectively.
• Debt at the end of the first quarter was reduced by $266.0 million to $325.9 million a 44.9% reduction over a year ago and $10.3 million or 3.1% less than the end of fiscal 2008.
• Total consolidated first quarter sales were $641.5 million, down 12.1% from the prior year.
• Comparable store sales for the first quarter declined by 13.5% and 5.5% at Borders superstores and Waldenbooks Specialty Retail stores, respectively.

On an operating basis, the company generated a first quarter loss from continuing operations of $15.9 million or $0.27 per share compared to a loss of $30.5 million or $0.51 cents per share for the same period a year ago. On a GAAP basis, the first quarter loss from continuing operations was $86.0 million or $1.44 per share compared to a loss of $30.1 million or $0.50 per share a year ago. The $1.44 per share loss includes $1.17 per share of non-operating charges that were primarily non-cash.

On a side note, it looks like someone hacked their web site, (Link) and I am sure they will get that fixed soon.

Houghton Mifflin Owner EMPG set for Refinancing

The Irish Independent is reporting advanced debt for equity discussions with loaning banks of troubled Houghton Mifflin Harcourt owner Education Media Publishing Group. The refinancing is likely to significantly reduce CEO/Chairman Barry O'Callaghan's 38pc ownership in EMPG. (Independent)

Other items of note:

• Operationally EMPG appears to be doing well with 'strong cash flow'
• Synergy and savings are pushing EBITDA close to $1bill up 20%
• The company has pulled out of the ratings service after downgrades
• Lending banks have agreed to relax some of their covenants
• Bertelsemann offered to invest $300mm in EMPG but was rejected
• The debt to equity swap will further dilute Reed Elseviers share
  

File Under WTF?

OK, so Peter Olson has been gone a while but apparently he still lives in Marion Maneker's memory: (Reuters)

Legendary Simon and Schuster CEO Dick Snyder was the figure who turned publishing companies into public corporations. And it is as corporate enterprises that the book barons lost their distinctiveness, acumen, and clout. Indeed, Peter Olson's lasting legacy was not making a business of Random House but making it a business that was too big, wasteful, and flabby to succeed.

As head of U.S. operations, he presided over the purchase of Random House from the Newhouse family and combined it with Bertelsmann's own Bantam, Doubleday, Dell operation. The resulting empire controlled 10 percent of the book market but could never outrun its own massive cost structure. It lumbered from hit to hit without making progress toward greater profits. By the time Olson left for Harvard Business School—pity the students he teaches—Random was envied by no one.

As an intro to the above the author chastises Olson for a comment (taken out of context by him) quoted in Portfolio about having a hand in being "part of a process of making something that was a gentleman's hobby into a real business."

Truth is, you could drop the three or four paragraphs in question out of his commentary and I don't think it would matter at all. If you are going to do a hatchet job on a managers' legacy, do the job don't bury it in an article about ebooks.

(Gender corrected - thanks SW.)

Art of Kindle Forecasting: What's a $100mm between friends?

As noted in paidcontent Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal is predicting that revenues from Kindle sales will approximate $300mm this year and generate $70mm in profit. Even more he projects $1.6bill in revenues and $400mm in profit by 2012:

Aggarwal argues that sales of the Kindle grow almost 80 percent a year from ‘09 to ‘12, and that subscriptions will also jump as a result. (Amazon gets 70 percent of subscription revenue). Some 30 percent of Kindle owners subscribed to a service on the e-reader last year, a number that Aggarwal will grow to 75 percent in 2012 as more products are offered and the device becomes more mainstream.

Who's he arguing with? Maybe this guy from Piper Jaffray who suggests 2009 revenues of $405mm going up to over $1bill by 2010. What a nice growth curve that is. eMarketer goes on to note that analyst Mark Mahaney from Citibank believes 10% of all books sold in the 1Q 2009 were Kindle books. Impressive, but nontheless unknowable unless you are looking at real Amazon sales numbers and who is doing that?

Being eMarketer they go on to quote some stats on consumer purchasing. But surely some of these stats seem to undercut the basic tenants of the stratospheric growth:

Importantly, people are increasingly willing to try e-book readers.

Piper Jaffray found that 5% of consumers surveyed were interested in buying a digital book reader, and 9% were interested in buying one after a price drop. Nineteen percent of respondents had never seen a digital book reader but wanted to check one out.

I am not sure I could take anything meaningful from that set of results. The first question is a killer. We all know eBooks and eContent and devices are important but this 'analysis' is banker talk and look where that got us.

And another thing, there aren't that many $100mm publishing companies out there: Here we are just talking about the delta between these two forecasts.

Harcourt Houghton Mifflin in Anti-Trust Suit

There is no back up to this news item at this point but updates if and when they are available; however the news gets no better for Harcourt Houghton Mifflin. The state of California is investigating the merger of Harcourt and HM in 2007. As part of that agreement Harcourt devolved some assets at the request of the Feds but this action assumes that that wasn't enough. From the Courthouse News Service:

California filed a federal antitrust complaint over the $4 billion merger of textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt Education Group, claiming "The merged entity now commands over 50 percent of aggregate primary and middle school textbook sales in the U.S." Combined with its competitors Pearson and McGraw, the three giants now "account for roughly 87 percent of the aggregate commerce in U.S. primary and middle school textbooks." California claims that December 2007 merger will reduce competition, raise prices and "the value of the materials and services likely will decline."

Not the news that HHM would be in the mood for. (Post: Credit Rating)

Update: In the complaint (and there is a link to it on the Courthouse web page at the bottom) on page 9 the complaint is dated May 15, 2009. This is being contested under the Clayton Act which is more stringent that the Sherman Act. (And I know that sounds like I know what it means but I really don't). Here is more on the Clayton Act. Look for references to section 7.

Pete Townshend on Pete Townshend

Long open interview in The Times with Mr Townshend where he discusses Quadrophenia and the up-coming stage version. Some samples (Link):

But the supporting structure of music theatre somehow began to show itself like a manifesting ghost in early British rock. The Beatles larked about like Arthur Askey in a panto; Ray Davies exalted the glamour of the working-class world; The Who wrote songs about growing up that with a few word changes could have been squeezed into My Fair Lady. Music theatre, and its bastard brother music hall, had created and inhabited most of the venues that early British pop bands used to play in. You simply couldn't get away from the idea that it might come back one day, and of course it has. The musicals of the late 1950s - especially those by Lionel Bart - did try to anticipate what rock soon arrived to do. But Lionel himself told me once that he was just two or three years too old to understand what had been coming - it reminds me today of my anticipation of punk in the early 1970s. I knew something needed to happen, and I knew it would be subversive, but I couldn't see how it would take shape.
.....

Austin Powers has done a lot of damage to the image of swinging London, parodying what had already been parodied by lazy American newsreels over the years. So in a sense my mission is to bring back some of the greyness, the bleakness of those years, and demonstrate to the cast that what happened simply had to happen, otherwise we would all have gone nuts. It wasn't an optional outing of boys playing on scooters; it was a vital rebellion.

Where the Mod movement looks shallow today is in its lack of political, social or ecological interest. But you have to understand that after the ban-the-bomb movement and the failure of anti-apartheid, and then the Cuban missile crisis, young people felt their input was pointless. Fashion, music and daily life was elevated to a form of aloof poetry and was very much a secret society.

....

Have you ever been to see a rock musical based on a back-catalogue?

I live inside one. Musicals based on back-catalogues are becoming a saturated market. How can rock musicals avoid being watered-down exercises in asset-stripping?

....

What's next after the internet?

Compulsory electronic body implants linked to Gordon Brown's base station.

Scribd Create Content Store

Scribd the web site for sharing documents will launch an e-commerce service that will enable any publisher to load any type of document to the service and charge for usage. Scribd will take 20% from this sale. Scribd has become the most popular document sharing site since it was started several years ago. Here is more from the NYTimes:

Scribd hopes its more open and flexible system will give it a leg up on Amazon, which has become the largest player in the burgeoning market for e-books. Amazon sets the retail price for books in its Kindle store and keeps the majority of the revenue on some titles, which has publishers worried that Amazon is amassing too much control over the nascent market. Amazon also allows those books to be read only on its Kindle devices and in Kindle software on the iPhone.

“One reason publishers are excited to work with us is that they worry that publishing channels are contracting as Amazon and Google are gaining control over the e-book space,” said Jared Friedman, chief technology officer and a founder of Scribd.

Blog Roundup: Week 20 - iPhone, DRM, Disintermediation, Platforms

Adam Hodgkin tells us why Apple has enabled the best of eBook readers: (Exact Editions)

Necessity is the mother of invention, in the case of the iPhone, as elsewhere. There is not enough room on the device to support a mouse-device or a touchpad, other than the screen. So the screen had to be touchable. But there is no doubt that the Apple engineers have crafted an extraordinarily effective solution. As more books are piled into the iPhone's eco-system, I think we will see that there is a growing realisation that the digital text of a book or a magazine should be seen as the starting point for network based interaction with it. The text itself is the starting point, within it are located the points, the referrers, codes and symbols which engender user interaction. The digital version of a text, having many explicit or implicit resources for linkage and reference becomes a hypertext in its own right and one which engages the reader in more than mere reading. Much of this interaction will be initiated by finger gestures. For sure, reading is part of the point of a digital edition, but equally, it has to be said that, pointing is fully a part of the reading of a book on the iPhone.

Evan Schnittman (Black Plastic Glasses) looks at disintermediation (Post):

While Michael’s efforts over time will lead to a cleaner and clearer understanding of who owns what, it won’t fix the inherent problem. The works in question will have competing rights holders for a variety of versions. Few will have clear electronic rights ownership, and few if none will have a single entity that controls all versions. This is the key to enabling the kind of content access that is needed for Generation On-Demand, and this is what is missing across the board. This problem is beyond enormous – it is basically one that cannot be fixed. There is no short term or mid term gain for any parties involved with IP contracts to fix this problem and you cannot fix something if the parties involved don’t see their goals as being aligned.

The result – we will become irrelevant as an industry (not just publishers, but publishing in every facet) over time and have no place in the content economy. But lets face it, this doomsday scenario has been sounded for years – who doesn’t think that book publishers will be obsolete in the future?

Michael Hyatt on how to build a "platform" as he points out most of the heavy lifting has been done for you. (Post):

By “platform” most publishers mean the ability to influence an audience that is large enough to make publishing a book less of a risk. Just a few years ago, this meant you had to have a television or radio show or write a regular magazine or newspaper column. This typically required a lot of money or important contacts.

But today, by starting a blog and making use of tools social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, you can build a big platform with little more that the investment of your creativity and time. I’m not saying it is easy, but I am saying it is within reach. (By the way, I consider my blog to be my “homebase” and Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc., to be “outposts.”)

Kassia Krozser at Booksquare reacts to the Mokoto Rich (NYT) article about book digital piracy:

You’ll discover total frustration surrounding purchases. Anger over DRM. You want to hear screams and curses? Listen to the reader who can’t read the book she purchased because the Adobe Digital Editions authentication server is down. Spend some time with a reader who, due to extreme confusion, bought the wrong format of a book and has to deal with the bureaucracy of rectifying an error that shouldn’t have to happen. Piracy is and has been a fact of our lives for as long as we’ve created marketplaces. Books are as subject to thievery as any other product. Same thing, different realm. How you deal with piracy is changing, even as it stays the same (physical piracy still exists). It’s going to be an ongoing battle for the entertainment industries, but unlike your predecessors, book publishers have the chance to get so much right while the market is young.

And in reaction to the same Rich (NYT) article, Mike Shatzkin had a longer piece challenging the widely accepted negative perception of online and free content (IdealogBlog):

The other study was done by my colleague Brian O’Leary in conjunction with O’Reilly Media and Random House. The methodology was similar to what Hilton employed and was reported by O’Leary and Mac Slocum of O’Reilly at Tools of Change last February. Now they have published a Research Paper with O’Leary’s findings which is available from O’Reilly. What O’Leary found, using Random House data on ebook giveaways and O’Reilly Media data on books found on pirate sites, was that there was a correlation between free distribution and a sales lift for the books in question. But O’Leary cautions, “correlation is not causality”; the fact that sales rose after piracy and giveaway doesn’t mean sales rose because of piracy and giveaway. Both O’Leary and Hilton say more data is needed to come to any definitive conclusions.

Richard Curtis notes that 'quickies' are less prevalent in publishing than the average conference goer might assume. (E-Reads):

Though the New York Times's Andrew Adam Newman describes the process as "just a blink of a book editor’s bespectacled eye," it looks pretty glacial to a YouTube generation that knew everything it needed to know within hours of the astounding event. Sure, some of those ten months from splashdown to publication date were taken up by writing the book - something that quickie-watchers tend to overlook. Still, it plays up the immense disparity between pre- and post-digital quickies. “In the old days," says the book's editor Jonathan Galassi, "it would be ideally a year from delivery of the manuscript to publication, but now I’m hoping we can do books in four months.”

Alas, four months is about 119 days too long by 21st century standards, and so no matter what Farrar does to goose (awful pun intended) the Flight 1549 book along, a quickie will always be a slowie unless the publisher goes out with it as an original e-book. And some of us have real problems with traditional publishers releasing e-book originals. Farrar, Straus & Giroux being the quintessentially traditional publisher, it's hard to know what they're going to do if they have to publish a true quickie. But Galassi says help is on the way in the form of "measures that include editing copy electronically and streamlining design."

Champions (Again)

The nill nill draw with Arsenal gives United their 18th title and third successive league title. With one irrelevant game left in the league next week, it's on to Rome to meet Barcelona in the Champions League final. Looking forward to a repeat of our win last year. Old Trafford is the European Capital of Trophies.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 20): Harpercollins, NYTimes, Long Tail,

In the NY Observer this week Debbie Stier from Harpercollins and Harper Studio is asked about social and digital media (Observer):

“Change is easier for some people than for others,” she said. "You know how some people are hoarders and they don't like to throw anything out? I'm the opposite: I get this weird thrill from throwing everything out and having nothing." Ms. Stier is the head of digital marketing at HarperCollins, as well as the associate publisher of HarperStudio, the small imprint there whose stated mission since it formed last spring has been to question conventional industry wisdom concerning advances and returns, and to experiment with untested methods of promotion. Ms. Stier is among the most visible and energetic believers in the idea that publishers must stop relying on critics, journalists and talk show hosts for coverage, and instead start finding creative ways of reaching readers directly through emerging social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

“I’ve been running down the halls screaming ‘fire’ for a couple of years now, and you know, I feel like it’s only recently that people are starting to hear me,” Ms. Stier said. “It’s hard for me because I’m up here in my own little beehive of exciting stuff, and I forget that there’s a world of people out there in the rest of the industry who don’t believe. But there are definitely pockets of people who do, and those pockets are growing more and more, faster and faster, which is good.”

There is a lot of debate about the merits of the central arguments made by Chris Andersen in The Long Tail - that is, whether there is one. A new report (summarized here) looks at P2P and appears to debunk the Long Tail concept:

A study of P2P music exchanges to be revealed this week suggests that the ailing music business is shunning a lucrative lifeline by refusing to license the activity for money. Entitled "The Long Tail of P2P", the study by Will Page of performing rights society PRS For Music and Eric Garland of P2P research outfit Big Champagne will be aired at The Great Escape music convention tomorrow. It's a follow-up to Page's study last year which helped debunk the myth of the "Long Tail".

Page examined song purchases at a large online digital retail store, which showed that out of an inventory of 13 million songs, 10 million had never been downloaded, even once. It suggested that the idea proposed by WiReD magazine editor Chris Anderson, who in 2004 urged that the future of business was digital retailers carrying larger inventories of slow-selling items was a Utopian fantasy.

Via Mr Nash, here is the link to the whole document. (Link)

The brianiacs at the NYTimes are showing off some of their toys. (Nieman)

The R&D group is obsessed with the ability to seamlessly transition among web-enabled gadgets. They’re not convinced that the future will land on a single, multipurpose contraption — like some sort of Kindle meets Chumby meets Minority Report. Instead, they predict consumers will connect to the Internet through their cars, on their televisions, over mobile networks, and in traditional browsers, while expecting those devices to interact and sync with each other.

Reports in the Guardian from the Journalism Enterprise and Experimentation unconference in sunny Birmingham looked at hyper-local success stories (Guardian):

A session in a break-out room featured James Hatts talking about the London SE1 Community website. James was quite candid about getting different levels of support for the initiative from different organisations. Their patch covers Southwark and Lambeth. Southwark Council have, it seems, for years treated them as a news outlet on an equal footing with the traditional local media. By contrast, SE1 have found it difficult at times to even get Lambeth Council to send them press releases. Similarly, Hatt said that whilst Scotland Yard were forthcoming with information about serious crime in the area, the local police forces were more cagey.

The International Coalition of Library Consortia has weighed in on the OCLC data usage guidelines (ICOLC):

The member consortia endorsing this ICOLC statement add our recommendation to others in the library community calling for OCLC to withdraw the proposed policy and start anew to formulate a record use policy. Most notably we add our support to the January 30, 2009 Final Report to the ARL Board by the Ad Hoc Task Force to Review the Proposed OCLC Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records. It includes an extended review of the policy and six recommendations. We concur with the ARL report that OCLC develop a new policy based on widespread member library participation with a clear set of goals and explanations as to how the policy will achieve these goals and how member libraries will be affected operationally and legally.

Caroline Pittis from Harpercollins uses BookBusiness magazine to argue publishers must be less reclusive in order to thrive in the social economy (BookBus):

So, how do book publishers add visible value for their authors and consumers in new ways? What needs to change, and perhaps more importantly, what needs to stay the same? As both a publishing “insider” and a frequent reader of publishing’s critics, I am often struck by how the public discussion of these questions is fundamentally different than private ones, how the focus of those inside publishing houses is different from those in the blogosphere. Beyond publishers’ walls, the tremendous value editors and their publishing colleagues provide in helping an author create a publishable work is often unknown. Yet, the vast majority of publishing time and energy go into just this activity—the core of what publishers do.

In the blogosphere, some opine about how hidebound and irrelevant publishers now are, how slow to change and resistant to risks. It makes good copy sometimes—I know I always bite on the most critical headlines first! Rare are the critics, however, who have concrete, insightful, specific suggestions of how to evolve publishing without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Black-and-white thinking and talk of violent revolution distract many from the natural evolution that is both occurring and will likely be more sustaining for the “book” economy in the long run.

Summary of Making Information Pay

Happily I don't have to do this myself because the nice people at Follow The Reader have done this for us. They note some interesting stats from Bowker's book reader panel and link to the other presentations (Post):

Who was reading in 2008

• 45% of Americans read a book
• The average age of those who read a book was 44
• 58% of readers are women
• 32% of readers are over the age of 55
• The average reader spends 5.2 hours reading per week vs. 15 hours online and 13.1 hours watching TV (In 2008, going online surpassed watching TV as a primary activity)

Who was buying books in 2008

• 50% of Americans over 13 bought a book
• The average age of the most frequent book buyers was 50 yrs old
• 57% of book buyers are female and they buy 65% of books (e.g. women buy books and they buy in volume)
• 67% of books are bought by people over 42; Gen X buy 17% of books; Gen Y buys 10%
• Of books purchased by those who earn $100K or more, mystery and detective fiction represent 16%, juvenile 13%, romance 6%, thrillers 4% and comics and graphic novels 4%
• 41% of all books are purchased by those who earn less than $35K
• The average price of a book purchased last year was $10.08
• 31% of all book purchases are impulse buys

Pelecanos Interviewed by LATimes

I have mentioned I enjoy the work of George Pelecanos, who in addition to publishing 16 books, is also a writer and producer most notably of The Wire. In this interview he discusses his new book but he also touches on community work he has undertaken in prison reform. Here is a 'snippet' (LATimes)

GP: I've been working in adult prisons and juvenile prisons for some time. The prison in the book is based on a place called Oak Hill here in D.C., which is where all the juveniles are sent if they do time. I was out there one day -- I was kind of walking around, I had full access, the boys were in class, and I went into one of the kids' cells -- it just kind of hit me. It was a 6-by-9 cell, it's basically a cot and an open commode sitting in the middle of the room, and there's a dirty piece of plexiglass on the wall that functions as a window, but it's so dirty that you can't see out of it, and very little light gets in. I just started thinking: What's it like? What's it like for a kid to go to jail, and also what's it like for his family? How does this tear them all apart?

I'd been very interested for a long time in incarceration reform. Here in Washington we have a new guy that's been at it for several years now. He's done a tremendous job of trying to change things so that these incarcerations don't just rip up families but neighborhoods and our city, because that's what happens. That's why the book is split into two parts, so you see the way the system was run before, and then these guys go back later in the book when the jail is getting ready to be torn down, and they see how much it's changed for the better.

George is on tour and will also be autographing at BookExpo.

JISC Study on Higher Education

At London Bookfair, mention was made of this report commissioned by JISC in the UK that looks at the educational market. While this is a UK study, there is little doubt most of this is relevant to a much wider audience. Here is an snippet of their conclusions: (Link)

The impetus for change will come from students themselves as the behaviours and approaches apparent now become more deeply embedded in subsequent cohorts of entrants and the most positive of them – the experimentation, networking and collaboration, for example – are encouraged and reinforced through a school system seeking, in a reformed curriculum, to place greater emphasis on such dispositions. It will also come from policy imperatives in relation to skills development, specifically development of employability skills. These are backed by employer demands and include a range of ‘soft skills’ such as networking, teamwork, collaboration and self-direction, which are among those fostered by students’ engagement with Social Web technologies.

Higher education has a key role in helping students refine, extend and articulate the diverse range of skills they have developed through their experience of Web 2.0 technologies. It not only can, but should, fulfil this role, and it should do so through a partnership with students to develop approaches to learning and teaching. This does not necessarily mean wholesale incorporation of ICT into teaching and learning. Rather it means adapting to and capitalising on evolving and intensifying behaviours that are being shaped by the experience of the newest technologies. In practice it means building on and steering the positive aspects of those behaviours such as experimentation, collaboration and teamwork, while addressing the negatives such as a casual and insufficiently critical attitude to information.

Google Print: A Numbers Game

The following post was originally published in March 2007 but I recently saw an up tick in views which prompted me to look at it again. Given the excitement over the Google Settlement I thought it would be interesting to post it once more.


The following post is written by Andrew Grabois who worked with me at Bowker and has (among other things) compiled bibliographic stats out of the Books In Print database for a number of years. His contact details are at the bottom of this article.


On February 6th, Google announced that the Princeton University library system agreed to participate in their Book Search Library Project. According to the announcement, Princeton and Google will identify one million works in the public domain for digitization. This follows the January 19th announcement that the University of Texas libraries, the fifth largest library in the U.S., also climbed on board the Library Project. Very quietly, the number of major research libraries participating in the project has more than doubled to twelve in the last two years. The seven new libraries will add millions of printed items to the tens of millions already held by the original five, and more fuel to the legal fire surrounding Google’s plan to scan library holdings and make the full texts searchable on the web.

The public discussion has been mostly one-sided, with Google supporters trying to hold the high moral ground. Their basic argument goes something like this: The universe of published works in the U.S. consists of some 32 million books. They argue that while 80 percent of these books were published after 1923, and, therefore, potentially protected by copyright, only 3 million of them are still in-print and available for sale. As a result, mountains of books have been unnecessarily consigned to obscurity.

No one has yet challenged the basic assumptions supporting this argument. Perhaps they’ve been scared off by Google’s reputation for creating clever algorithms that “organize the world’s information”. This one, though, doesn’t stand up to serious scrutiny.

The figures used by supporters of the Library Project come from a 2005 study undertaken by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the largest consortium of libraries in the U.S. According to the OCLC study, its 20,000 member libraries hold 31,923,000 print books; the original five research libraries participating in the Google library scanning project hold over 18 million.

OCLC did not actually count physical books. They searched their massive database of one billion library holdings and isolated 55 million catalog records describing “language-based monographs”. This was further refined (eliminating duplicates) to 32 million “unique manifestations”, not including government publications, theses and dissertations. The reality of library classification, however, is such that “monographs” often include things like pamphlets, unbound documents, reports, manuals, and ephemera that we don’t usually think of as commercially published books.

The notion that 32 million U.S. published books languish on library shelves is absurd. Just do the math. That works out to more than 80,000 new books published every year since the first English settlement in Jamestown in 1607. Historical book production figures clearly show that the 80,000-threshold was not crossed until the 1980’s, after hovering around 10,000 for fifty years between 1910 to1958. The OCLC study showed, moreover, that member libraries added a staggering 17 million items (half of all print collections) since 1980. That averages out to 680,000 new print items acquired every year for 25 years, or more than the combined national outputs of the U.S., U.K., China, and Japan in 2004.

Not only will Google have to sift through printed collections to identify books, and then determine if they are in the public domain, but they will also have to separate out those published in the U.S. (assuming that their priority is scanning U.S.-based English-language books) from the sea of books published elsewhere. The OCLC study clearly showed that most printed materials held by U.S. libraries were not published in the U.S. The study counted more than 400 languages system-wide, and more than 3 million print materials published in French and German alone in the original Google Five. English-language print materials accounted for only 52% of holdings system-wide, and 49% in the Google Five. Since more than a few works were probably published in the United Kingdom, the total number of English-language books published in the U.S. will constitute less than half of all print collections, both system-wide and in Google libraries.

So how many U.S.-published books are there in our libraries? Annual book production figures show that some 4 million books have been published in the 125 years since figures were regularly compiled in 1880. If, very conservatively, we add an additional 1.5 million books to cover the pre-1880 years, and another 1.5 million to cover books published after 1880 that might have been missed, we get a much more realistic total of 7 million.

Using the lower baseline for published books tells a very different story than the dark one (that the universe of books consists of works that are out-of-print, in the public domain, or “orphaned” in copyright limbo) told by Google and their supporters. With some 3 million U.S. books in print, the inconvenient truth here is that 40% of all books ever published in the U.S. could still be protected by copyright. That would appear to jive with the OCLC finding that 75% of print items held by U.S. libraries were published after 1945, and 50% after 1974.

If we’re going to have a debate that may end up rewriting copyright law, let’s have one based on facts, not wishful thinking.


Andrew Grabois is a consultant to the publishing industry. He has compiled U.S. book production statistics since 1999. He can be reached at the following email address: agrabois@yahoo.com

Clarification update from Andrew: My post is not intended to be a criticism of the OCLC study ("Anatomy of Aggregate Collections: The Example of Google Print for Libraries") by Brian Lavoie et al, which is a valuable and timely look at print collections held by OCLC member libraries. What I am attempting to do here is point out how friends of the Google library project have misinterpreted the paper and cherry-picked findings and conclusions out of context to support their arguments.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Lose Credit Rating

Speculation about the financial health of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt took another turn for the worst when Moody's debt rating agency removed its' rating on HHM's debt. According to the report in the Irish Times the action by Moody's will impact virtually all the company's debt and it likely to both further raise the cost of their borrowing (although they were already at Caa3 with a negative note) and increase the expectation the company will default. From the Irish Times report:

Moody’s said that it took into account “the business risk and competitive position of the company versus others within its industry; the capital structure and financial risk of the company; the projected financial and operating performance of the company over the near-to-intermediate term, and management’s track record and tolerance for risk”.

Last month, Moody’s downgraded some of HMH’s debts to Caa3 from Caa1, and put it on a negative outlook. The move meant that it classed the company’s debts as high risk.

Earlier this year, long time HMH executive and current CEO Tony Lucki retired and was replaced by Barry O'Callaghan.