MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 21): Larsson all the Time, Pearson, Exile, Appetizers, British Library.

The insert in the NYTimes this morning notes that The Girl the Kicked the Hornet's Nest is available on Tuesday for $16. In addition to that piece of good news the papers are full of articles about the author and the book series. Not too much new but the Times magazine has a good review of the state of play vis a vis the status of the supposed fourth title and the internecine battles between Larsson's family and his non-wife life companion (Times):

Larsson died in November 2004 — at age 50 — before any of the novels were published and with little clue to just how successful they would be. Like Blomkvist, he was a journalist, well known in certain circles for his campaign against right-wing extremism in Sweden, but hardly a household name. “To introduce a brand-new crime novelist like this, someone who is unknown, our goal was to sell 20,000 copies, but we thought 10,000 would be marvelous,” Eva Gedin, Larsson’s editor at the Swedish publishing house Norstedts, told me recently. “You could never imagine that the books would do so well.” Larsson began “Dragon Tattoo” while on vacation in the summer of 2002, thinking of it as a kind of pension fund for himself and Eva Gabrielsson, the woman he lived with. He actually had a series of 10 books in mind, she says. The money from the first three would go to them, they figured, and the rest they would give to charity. Remarkably, he displayed none of the anxiety and impatience typical of first-time novelists and finished two entire books and most of a third before he submitted any of them to a publisher. He considered all three novels a single text and at one point wanted to number the chapters of the second and third volumes consecutively. Gedin says that Larsson never seemed in any doubt about their worth. His was not a view widely shared. Mikael Ekman, a friend and protégé of Larsson’s who collaborated with him on a nonfiction book, recalls sitting with Larsson one night in 2001. “We were drinking a little too much whiskey,” he told me, “and Stieg started talking about what he’d do when he was too old to work anymore. He said, ‘I will write a couple of books and become a millionaire.’ I laughed at him. I thought he was crazy.” Kurdo Baksi, another friend, had pretty much the same reaction a year later when Larsson told him he had written a thriller and offered to show him the manuscript. Baksi declined, saying: “Stieg, I don’t think you’re so good at literature. It’s not your business.” Baksi told me: “I thought he was joking. His talent was for writing about Stalin, Lenin, Bush — not for thrillers.”

(I liked that end quote - surely there were several leaders left out). There was also a shorter article contemplating the genesis of the character Salander (Times):

An old colleague of Mr. Larsson’s has said they once talked about how certain characters from children’s books would manage and behave if they were older. Mr. Larsson especially liked the idea of a grown-up Pippi, a dysfunctional girl, probably with attention deficit disorder, who would have had a hard time finding a place in society but would nonetheless take a firm hand in directing her own destiny. That musing led to the creation of Lisbeth Salander, the central character in Mr. Larsson’s trilogy. So how does Lisbeth compare to Pippi, the creation of the earlier Swedish author Astrid Lindgren?

Ben Ratliff likes what he hears on the re-issue of the Stones' Exile on Main Street (Times):

It is often called one of the best rock records ever made, and framed as an after-the-fact concept album: a wise horror show, an audio diary of rock stars finally facing the rigors of marriage, children and addiction. (“ ‘Exile’ is about casualties, and partying in the face of them,” the critic Lester Bangs wrote in 1972. “The party is obvious. The casualties are inevitable.”) The notion of the record as story also comes from the strong documentary images around its creation— Dominique Tarlé’s black-and-white pictures of the Stones at Villa Nellcôte, shirtless and dazed in the stifling air of a basement in the South of France. These images dot the 64-page booklet and the DVD film included in the reissue’s deluxe edition and have been part of the avalanche of press around the reissue, released by Universal on Tuesday. Recently, thinking about this alternate “Loving Cup” and why it’s not on the original album made me wonder what the ideal of “Exile” really is. I find most of “Exile” good, but not great. (That era of Stones music, fantastic. The album, not so much.) I can’t see it as a masterpiece, not only because I distrust the idea of masterpieces, but because I especially don’t want one from the Stones, who make songs and albums like birds’ nests — collaborative tangles with delicate internal balances — and have a history of great triage work, assembling bits and pieces recorded over a long period. But “Exile” remains the preference of the most judicious Stones fans. Why? What is its essence?

Pearson is buying another learning company (London Times):

Pearson is to buy one of Britain’s largest vocational training companies for £99.3 million. The publisher of Penguin books and the Financial Times said that the acquisition of Melorio, which runs courses and arranges apprenticeships for more than 15,000 people a year, would boost its educational business. Melorio has a particularly big presence in ICT, construction and logistics and focuses on school-leavers and adult learners. Pearson said that it would combine its educational publishing, technology and assessments business with Melorio’s training expertise to offer a better service to learners and employers. The deal should also allow Melorio to expand more quickly outside Britain.

This weekend's Cory Doctorow article in the Observer:

My Books are free.

The WSJ invents the term 'literary appetizer' and reports on publishers using unique content to engage future book buyers - Gosh! (WSJ):

On June 1, Toronto-based Harlequin Enterprises, a unit of media company Torstar Corp., intends to give away e-book copies of Julie Kagawa's "Winter's Passage." The 15,000-word novella will serve as a link between Ms. Kagawa's February debut novel, "The Iron King," and her second teen novel, "The Iron Daughter," which goes on sale July 27. ... The 6,000-word piece, "The Balkan Escape," is too short to have been published as a paperback original. In effect, it is a literary appetizer, inexpensive enough to attract potential readers who might otherwise not be willing to buy a new novel from an author whose works they haven't yet read, said Mr. Berry.

James Murdoch is upset about the British Library digitizing their newspaper content. Warning graphic image. (Independent):

Mr Murdoch was responding to the library's announcement this week that it would digitise its archive, which aims to be a complete record of British regional and national newspapers. "This is not simply being done for posterity, nor to make free access for library users easier, but also for commercial gain via a paid-for website," he said. "The move is strongly opposed by major publishers."

Less reported, the photographers got in on the act as well (Register):

For Stop 43's Paul Ellis, this is "Big Culture" - what he calls the powerful galleries, museums, and quangos like the Arts Council - taking the mickey. "It's clear now that the whole orphan works programme is one big supertanker, taking just as long to turn and stop," Ellis told us. "The British Library's statement reads as if Clause 43 had been enacted. Unfortunately for them, the supertanker has a new captain. "Big Culture has looked at Google and wants to do the same thing. They just want to get on digitizing and build up a head of steam. Then nobody will be able to do anything about it." The wrinkle is that newspaper copyright is far from straightforward. Only unsigned articles lapse from copyright after seventy years. For bylined pieces and photographs it's life plus 70. And since a newspaper is a bundle of all three, it's a complex picture.

The AP report of the British Library proposal to scan their newspaper collection (AP):

The British Library said Wednesday it was digitizing up to 40 million pages of newspapers, including fragile dailies dating back three and a half centuries.

Once digitized, the British newspapers documenting local, regional and national life spanning to the 1700s will be fully searchable and accessible online, the national library said.

The vast majority of the British Library's 750 million pages of newspapers — the largest collections in the world — are currently available only on microfilm or bound in bulky volumes. Thousands of researchers have to make a trip to an archive building just outside London to look through them.

The library said it would focus on digitizing newspapers documenting historical events in the 19th century, including the Crimean War, the Boer War and the suffragette movement. It also aimed to build material in the fields of family history and genealogy, as well as safeguard the future of the vast archive.

In sport, England won their first international cricketing trophy "Harrah" (Guardian). Mourinho will be on £10million a year at Real Madrid (Times). In food (a new category), Nigel Slater's pork pie recipe (Observer). I've been off the twitter for two weeks now. Have I missed it - I'm not sure....

Repost: Pimp My Print

Originally posted on December 10, 2008

Many pundits pontificate on the demise of publishing (myself included and some others I could mention) and while many of these versions of the future are well intentioned they often lack substance. Today in ComputerWorld - an obvious organ of reasoned strategic discussion about book publishing - is a perspective 'from technology' that decries the effort by Penguin and some others to launch their content on mobile platforms as 'painful'. The author's wider point seems to be that publishers need to place their full content - not just snippets - in as many places as possible so that readers/consumers can access it with as little difficulty as possible. Music publishers did not do that and became the victims of rampant piracy, and some have argued that because electronic access to music content was limited this drove piracy. Had there been easy access and easy payment options perhaps the music industry would be in a different place now. But that is 20/20 hindsight and at the time, you would have to have been a certified genius to have seen that.

Publishers have a different issue. Reading is immersive: We are active readers and passive (music) listeners. 'Pimping' the content so that it appears on a smart phone or a web browser or a flat panel will only ever have limited success. It is tactically important to do this with the current inventory of content that a typical publisher will own, but that's not going to sustain the future of the business. Any publisher who's digital policies and activities are focused entirely on retro-active conversions and the migration of their historic product packaging to an electronic environment will see their market whither. It is possible that some publishers may make a choice to cash-cow the existing content and sell it on every available electronic platform they can. That makes some sense but not if in doing so they believe that model will sustain their future publishing programs built on delivering readers a 250 page novel or a 12 chapter business book with an index limited by the number of blank pages left in the last folio.

Pimping the print compounds an issue publishers have faced for a long time (forever?). They don't really know what consumers want. To paraphrase Wannamaker 'I know only 50% of what I publish sells, I just don't know which 50%' (He said it about advertising). The publisher of the future is going to spend more time understanding the consumer and fulfilling their needs (marketing 101: a need is filled not created) than transferring the current model to phones, screens and digits. 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. So forget pimping existing print and think about delivering content consumers need.

Seoul's Youngpoong Bookstore

In my ignorance, there were many things that surprised me in my visit to Seoul last week. The city's infrastructure from the immaculate and extensive subway, some incredible architecture, to the lack of potholes in the wide boulevards that course through Seoul, there was a lot to admire.

Since we were hosted by publishers, our hosts were obliged to ferry us through one of their primary bookstores which proved similarly impressive. Located in downtown Seoul the Youngpoong Bookstore in Gwanghwamun, is large. Approximately 75,000 sq feet large - on two floors.

In a store this big, they can afford to carry as many as a million titles and 'every classic Korean book ever published'. Some of this may be marketing hype but in our visit the store seemed a poster child for those who don't believe print is dead.

A mostly open layout with flat tables covered with stacks of books, the store didn't feel overwhelming despite its size. It was also full of customers - which was perhaps the most interesting aspect. We visited in the middle of the day and there was easily 500 people in the store.

Their English language section was larger than many independent bookstores in the US (and if you look closely at the photos they carry an eclectic selection). The store also had a Japanese book section that was smaller but also impressively sized.

Clearly, print isn't yet dead in Korea; in fact, it is robust. YoungPoong has one other superstore of similar size in Seoul but their main competitor (with a total of 18 stores) has an even bigger store located a half mile from the store we visited. So arrogant are they in their market position that they could afford to close their mega store for six months to renovate.

In terms of book selection, other than the translated Korean titles many of the books throughout the store were recognizable from UK and US titles. There were few hardcovers and I noticed that their covers were all highly graphic and colorful no matter the subject. While predominantly a bookstore, the lower level included a restaurant, coffee shop, software and gaming products and an event space. All in all, a very impressive operation.

Apple and The Korea Times

As I settled into my seat for the long haul back from Seoul on Saturday, I unfolded the English language broadsheet The Korea Times and happened on the following quote which I found amusing:

Subsequently, the developers of the apps fear of the possibility that their ousting from the App Store could be permanent.

As predicted, Apple Korea, which is consistently the biggest information void this side of North Korea, refused to explain why the previously-approved apps had been pulled, with its spokesman Steve ``No Comment'' Park having this reporter wonder whether he should ever bother to call again.

Journalistic challenges know no boundaries evidently.

The Book Lending Machine

Exhibiting at the Seoul International Bookfair last week was the Korean library automation company Eco Inc offering clients a full suite of automation products including OPAC, RFID and Hardware. It was the hardware that grabbed my attention and in particular the book vending machine - see picture. Designed both to extend the reach of a library and the hours a library is effectively open this vending machine for library books is an interesting solution. I am not sure if it is unique, but it is the first one I have seen.

The vendor explained they designed the machine to provide easy pick-up and drop off of books at places like train stations, offices and shopping malls. Additionally, the machine could also sit outside an existing library location so that patrons can collect and drop off their books after hours.

The machine integrates with the lending function the library offers. A patron selects a book(s) from the catalog and reserves it for pick-up at one of the locations. Once reserved online, the patron visits the machine location and using their activated library card retrieves their book. Each of the numbered slots in the picture is a hinged door behind which is 'mailbox' which can hold up to three books. The door pops open, the patron collects their book together with a printed receipt with their details. The patron can repeat the process to return the book or simply drop it off at the library as they would normally.

The machine isn't cheap: $25,ooo for the unit in the picture which includes the control panel and two vending bays. Additional bays are $5K each sold two at a time. There is a limit of six bays per installation - although I'm not sure if this isn't an artificial limit designed to increase the number of expensive control units they sell. While not new to the market the company only has several locations currently installed and pricing must surely be a consideration. While libraries are decreasing staffing and hours, this machine could be viewed as costing (perhaps) one headcount with the added benefit of extending library hours; however, this is a large capital expense and I suspect beyond the abilities of many libraries to justify. I would think pricing would need to come down below $10K for this to gain any substantial penetration or for leasing to be an option.

Building wider distribution for library materials is also a benefit and even at a cost of $25K there could be payback versus establishing new facilities. Regardless, if installed in a local mall or mass transit location the library would need to see high utility to justify the purchase. There are also practical considerations in that the machine needs to be filled either continuously as 'orders' are placed online or on some set schedule. If the machine is located at a current library location, the process of fulfilling on-line 'orders' is straight forward as books can be placed in the machine as the orders are placed. That would not be the case if the machine sits at the local mall. In the latter case, a schedule for filling (and emptying) the machine would need to be established to manage the expectations of the patrons. You wouldn't want a patron arriving at the vending machine only to find their selection had not been placed in its mailbox. I would also suggest the 'loan' period starts when the order is placed rather than when the book is collected by the patron and I am not sure how the software manages this. If the book is in a mailbox it is not available to other patrons.

In my view, the most likely use of the machine would be where it was located immediately outside a current library location. In this instance the machine could be filled and emptied frequently (but not after-hours) and could be an effective automation tool for both patrons and librarians. Whether that is worth $25K (or $10K) I am not sure but nevertheless an interesting product.

(Of note, it did occur to me that the machine could be used for other completely different applications where materials need to be tracked. For example, it could be used effectively to administer items as diverse as office supplies or even food and groceries - although the mail boxes would need to be re-architected).

CA Bill to Prohibit Proposed Tx Education Changes

From the San Jose Mercury News a report on proposed state legislation that would ensure CA state educators be on the look out for some questionable changes to Texas' education texts:

Under Yee's bill, SB1451, the California Board of Education would be required to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks. The board must then report any findings to both the Legislature and the secretary of education.

The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as "a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings" and "a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California."

"While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes," Yee said. "The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history."

But some publishing industry experts say worries that the Texas standards will cross state lines are unfounded.

"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.

NYC 5:30am Monday

Korea Publishers Conference Presentation

I was in Korea all last week - more on that later - and my presentation and conference speech is here: The full text should be available if the file is downloaded.

Korea Publishing Conference 2010: The United States of Publishing Status and Predictions from Michael Cairns

And holiday snaps.

Booksellers Unite

Here in Seoul things are just the same. That's to say the first question - of a planned 10 to be asked within an hour and with serial translations - was something like ' as small and medium sized independent booksellers how do we complete with ebooks?' Bookselling for these retailers in Korea is little different than many other countries and there are increasing worries about what they sell, to whom and in what quantity.

We never got through the 10 questions but we did exceed our time slot by 30mins; however, I don't believe our suggestions about building community, looking at POD machines such as the espresso machine, selling ebook content and many other suggestions really alleviated the booksellers' concerns about their future.

Books in Korea have price controls but eBooks do not and booksellers here are beginning to feel marginalized and excluded as the business inexhorably migrates to eBook content. As this happens they face an economic disadvantage on pricing and in a marketplace that is relatively small changes often produce significant financial consequences. During the conversation, the theme of our discussion was so familiar to me, having listened to similar concerns from booksellers in the US, UK and Australia that I wondered at the opportunity for some international convention. Sharing concerns and ideas could produce a collective improvement in independent book retailing across the world. It would certainly save a lot of time.

Having said that, as the final set of questions from the group of 10 retailers dealt with ideas about 'other products' and 'other retail options' they should explore I wondered whether the answer isn't more basic. Doesn't success come down to individual ingenuity, the willingness to experiment, building real connections with customers and an understanding that reliance on a single solution is tantamount to failure? The best examples of independent book retailers from Readings in Melbourne to Northshire in Vermont to Hatchards in London all depend on a combination of strategies to survive. Some work out and some don't and that's the lesson we tried to impart to our South Korean hosts.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No19): Book Jackets, Social Media in Education, For Profit Colleges, Mobile Media Forecast

From the Observer this morning an interview with a book designer about why covers have to change from country to country (Observer):

What possible discussions took place in Germany, for instance, when publishers first received the manuscript for Martin Amis's House of Meetings – a novel that describes the misery of life in a Russian gulag – and set to work on a cover that featured six figures body-popping in the windows of a modern apartment block? What prompted Italian book designers to give junior wizard Harry Potter a hat shaped like a mouse, and why did the French opt against the monochrome design that jacketed Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated in the UK and the US, concocting instead a watercolour of somebody fondling a woman's breasts? "What you are trying to get across on a cover is the essence of a book, quite an ambiguous thing," says Nathan Burton, a British designer who created the striking cover for Ali Smith's The Accidental, based on an image of a dead woman. "Designers in different countries read and interpret the fiction in different ways." It doesn't quite explain how Germany arrived at silhouetted dancers for House of Meetings, but "the germ of an idea can come from anywhere," says Burton. He points to the Swedish cover of The Accidental, on the surface a starkly different treatment – "but there's a photograph of a girl, bold sans serif type... You could argue that they are born out of a similar thought process."

And at the end of that is an insult for the designer of the UK versions of the Stieg Larsson books. Survey reveals wide differences in how technology and social tools can be integrated into education (e-School News):

Still, the latest Speak Up survey reveals significant gaps in how education technology is perceived among various groups of users. One of the most surprising disparities was how respondents view the importance of online tools for communicating and collaborating in the classroom. When asked to describe their vision for the ultimate “school of the future,” 67 percent of district administrators and 51 percent of school principals said it should include the use of collaborative tools. But only 27 percent of teachers agreed—and teachers still are much more likely to communicate online with their peers or with students’ parents (90 percent) than with students themselves (34 percent). Evans said there are a few factors that might explain this difference. For one thing, many teachers “are not familiar with how to incorporate these collaboration tools into [their] instruction, and thus … they don’t have the personal familiarity that you need before adoption can take place,” she said. “Second, we continue to hear from students that their teachers are very concerned about the potential dangers of internet use in the classroom—the student safety and personal liability issues. So, in some ways, the ‘fear factor’ may be holding back their interest.” She continued: “Teachers also are still not fully buying into the concept that social networking sites can have educational value for students. They see the social components, but not necessarily how to leverage the tools for academic reasons.”

Interesting rebuttal to a PBS documentary on for profit colleges (and education). It is longish and there are some good quotes throughout (Link):

For instance, viewers are told that students from for-profit colleges have higher debt loads than those from non-profit or public institutions, but do not hear that for-profit colleges have exceptionally high rates of degree-completion, given the students they serve. We hear that Clifford, the former rock star and cocaine addict, admits he is under-qualified to manage a college, but never learn that most instructors at the largest for-profit colleges and universities have advanced degrees and are evaluated and promoted based on how well they educate their students. While Martin Smith tells us that regional accreditors are cracking down on the practice of "buying accreditation," he fails to explain how accreditation is a coarse and often ineffective quality control mechanism. Observers lament online education's lack of meaningful interpersonal interaction, but fail to cite high-profile research by the Department of Education which shows that online education is just as effective as in-person instruction, and that hybrid programs are superior to both. The picture of for-profit institutions of higher education is neither all good nor all bad. Unfortunately for those institutions that are operating in good faith, zeroing in on the sector's blemishes is admittedly easy. As College, Inc. outlines, the story of fraud in the for-profit higher education world is almost as long as the story of the sector itself. In the 1990s, Congress embarked on a series of high-profile investigations of student aid fraud at proprietary colleges, and the revelations were not pretty: some for-profits enrolled anyone off the street, including the homeless, to capture student aid dollars. More recently, BusinessWeek reporter Daniel Golden (who appears repeatedly in the documentary) found that for-profit schools across the country were paying homeless individuals to enroll in courses, flush with loans from the federal government. .... Second, the documentary seems to suggest that for-profit schools are subject to less accountability than traditional colleges and universities, and that these institutions should be subjected to additional regulatory burdens because of their profit motive. Barmak Nassirian, a lobbyist for the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers interviewed in College, Inc, is only half right when he argues that "one requirement for all of their practices to ensue is that billions of dollars of federal money flow with no accountability, no oversight, and minimal regulations." Many non-profit colleges and universities, some of which are of exceptionally low quality, also reap benefits from billions in federal aid; but, outside of the restrictions inherent in their tax status and some licensure requirements that vary across states, they are rarely subject to much more stringent accountability measures than these for-profit institutions. In order to receive federal student aid dollars, institutions must be accredited by the regional bodies, but accreditation is a sorry substitute for meaningful quality control (see here). The idea that the patchwork system of higher education accountability is only lax vis a vis for-profit institutions, but ensures quality and good faith among all public and non-profit colleges, is a fallacy. Surely, the profit motive can lead to severe problems when educational quality cannot be mandated, but the same goes for traditional schools that offer little by way of return on the federal investment. ... Like most business ventures, for-profit colleges are filling a void that existing providers are leaving open. As Smith points out in the documentary, community colleges are unable, or perhaps unwilling, to fill this demand themselves. Clearly, these public schools are under incredible fiscal pressure, and many must often turn students away. However, these traditional institutions, and their four year brethren, have shown little inclination to search for innovative ways to serve more students and leverage their best faculty by harnessing technology. The for-profits have done so with gusto, and may provide lessons to these traditional institutions on how they might create and implement such practices.

Canada's National Post takes a look at economics in the e-Book age (NatPost):

Amazon currently gives authors 35% of the money made from each sale of a digital copy of their books, compared with the 7% to 15% royalty cut authors typically get for each hardcover sold. The publisher gets the same, and Amazon keeps the remaining 30%. But under the terms of a new deal effective June 30, authors that self publish can receive the publisher's cut as well, getting 70% of the revenue from each e-book sale. It is a clear attempt to compete with the 60% fee authors make from e-books sold through Apple. Kobo is staying quiet on the details of their own agreements but Author Solutions, one of Kobo's suppliers, says it typically provides 50% royalties to authors. "I did the math on [Amazon's] new deal," said Peter Nowak, Toronto-based author of Sex, Bombs & Burgers. "If I were to sell my book [on Amazon] for five bucks, I would make more per book than selling the book to a conventional publisher." Stephen King showed the world just how profitable the e-book business can be. In 2000, his novella Riding the Bullet was the first book to be released in a solely digital format. After 400,000 downloads in the first 24 hours, the horror king netted himself US$450,000 after the third day. But self-publishing an e-book is not a sure-fire recipe for riches.

Morgan Stanley Analyst Mary Meeker: Mobile Internet Will Soon Overtake Fixed Internet (GigaOm):

And what does Meeker see in her crystal ball this year? Two overwhelming trends that will affect consumers, the hardware/infrastructure industry and the commercial potential of the web: mobile and social networking. Such a conclusion is hardly earth-shattering news to GigaOM readers, for we have been following these trends over the past year or two, but Meeker puts some pretty large numbers next to those trends, and looks at the shifts that will (or are likely to) take place in related industries such as communications hardware. She also compares where the rest of the developed world is in terms of mobile communications and social networking with Japan. Again, not a radically different approach to the one many tech forecasters take, but Meeker has the weight of some considerable research chops on her side.

From the twitter this week:

Former Lexcycle CEO Neelan Choksi Leaving Amazon - NYT

Court Says Internet Filtering in Public Libraries Not Censorship - NYT Determine it is collection development

White Pages May Go Way of Rotary-Dialed Phone - NYT Hundreds of N.J. librarians protest $10.4M proposed budget cuts. Bad news in library funding for NJ. (NJ.com) "The Sorter" from The New York Public Library. And snazzy music. (NYPL) Off to Seoul Korea this week. Football ended as a dud. In cricket England beat SA in the Twenty20.

Hail the Death of the Book Review Section - Repost

A return to my lazy practice of re-posting this time on the supposed death of newspaper book review sections. Given that PW, LJ and SLJ are now under new management will we see a re-invigoration of the reviewing of books? Originally published on April 30th, 2007.

Over the past several months, there has been a lot of hand wringing and wailing regarding the demise of newspaper book review sections. The prevailing view is that if books are not supported by reviews in these publications then books will be less read. This is nonsense. I am a staunch supporter of newspapers, but they are locked in a vortex of decreasing print circulation which the reviews sections are just a part. Perhaps it should be no surprise that publishers do not want to believe that a paper based medium is fast becoming irrelevant, but rather than try to buck a trend, publishers should be evacuating this medium just as other advertisers have already done. If I advertised on a bill board at an intersection that was made redundant by a by-road, I would be a mug if I continued to advertise on the same billboard rather than seek to advertise closer to the bi-road.

'Advertising' has to morph into something different. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful as is replicating some of the in-store benefits (excepts and chapters) which is how book focused sites and bloggers can support publisher's efforts. It is doubtful that the existing print display ads work at all. They are not frequent enough and obviously one dimensional. Other than for identifiable authors it is unlikely that one of these ads will hit a reader on precisely the right occasion. These print ads also expire virtually immediately when the paper is read. On the web however, a 'body of work' can develop around a title that includes multiple reviews and supporting material from a publisher that will grow in depth and value over time. Think about how this supports the 'long tail' of publishing.

Publishers have more not fewer options when it comes to supporting their titles via review sites however they do not seem to be doing so aggressively. Currently both publishers and book review editors seem locked into presenting reviews in antiquated ways. The branding and site traffic that newspapers exhibit on their web pages could be better maximized by publishers to support their titles. In Sunday’s NYT review section, Clare Messud reviewed Edith Wharton. There were no first chapters (excerpts), no similar titles previously reviewed by NYT, no reviews or books written by Messud and no purchase option. For many years, UK national newspapers have offered more functionality and purchase options (not via Amazon.co.uk) for their book sites, and is a lead US publishers should encourage. (The Times).

The suggestion that eliminating review sections from major newspapers will reduce exposure to books in uninformed. There has been an explosion in the number of sites dedicated to providing good, authoritative reviews of books. Most of the work of identifying the best of these has been done and some sites have become strong ‘brands’ themselves. It may require more administration dealing with these sites/reviewers versus the metro newspapers and Publisher’s Weekly but increasingly the people who buy books are looking to these types of sites to aid their purchase decisions. Not surprisingly, these sites should represent an increasing part of a publisher’s promotion plan suggesting that galleys and pre-publication materials should be circulated to these influencers to support book launch activities. (Librarian’s Place, Grumpy, TheMillions, to name three).

A hidden third benefit derives from the breadth of the web itself that begets a wide expanse of coverage. Reviews of obscure titles can be found to be supported by proficient and/or professional writing and readers do not have to wait until Sunday for the NYT or LAT to tell us what is important or not worth reading. Additionally, these reviews are supported and linked to by other reviewers and together with comments by consumers further ‘legitimizes’ the review (and reviewer). Hence, over time, a 'body of work' to support the titles and continued sales down the long tail. There is so much more the web affords in support of reading and books that it is tragic that so much attention is paid to supporting a delivery mechanism that is not only sub-optimal but in its death throws.

Articles on Reviews Sections:
The Millions
The Century Foundation
GalleyCat

Houghton Mifflin in West Virginia Education Partnership

From their press release:

The School Turnaround Plan is made possible by a $21.9-million School Improvement Grant (SIG) derived from education stimulus funds. West Virginia must use the SIG to transform the bottom five percent of its schools by replacing principals (who have served for more than two years), undertaking curriculum reform, implementing professional development and extending learning time over the next three years.

As one of West Virginia's external providers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt can assist this transformation through its Alliance Initiative, a campaign to achieve success in underperforming schools by developing, implementing and supporting education transformation through a sustained enterprise partnership.

"The Alliance Initiative embodies a creative partnership and a comprehensive reform plan that works to ensure long-term success for districts nationwide," said Mike Lavelle, K–12 President, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. "HMH looks forward to bringing this unique and proven approach to the schools of West Virginia."

The Alliance Initiative model looks beyond content to tangible, proven progress by addressing every aspect of school reform. The district-Company partnership begins with an assessment of needs and benchmarks and continues with a customized reform plan that includes data-driven decision making, quality content and assessment, professional development resources and grant and funding support. All Alliance Initiative content for West Virginia complies with the state's Standards of Learning.

"Predatory" Open Access Publishing

In the early days of the on-line self-publishing revolution when companies like Xlibris, iUniverse, Author House and Publish America were vying for the attentions of authors of all stripes there occured the inevitable 'bad experiences'. Authors making use of some self-publishing companies were taken to the cleaners with bad contracts, poorly printed books, content they couldn't gain access to and a host of other things. Online research into the experiences of others now enables more recent self-publishers to avoid the rookie mistakes and nefarious companies.

That's not the case in the Open Access Journal market which according to a recent article in the Charleston Advisor is seeing a rash of so called OA journal publishers preying on researchers for their content. They are up to many of the same tricks that some of the early book self-publishing companies got up to that left customers frustrated, disappointed and poorer.

In the article entitled 'Predatory' Open Access Scholarly Publishers, the author takes a close look at nine companies that are offering questionable services. They conclude:

These publishers are predatory because their mission is not to promote, preserve, and make available scholarship; instead, their mission is to exploit the author-pays, Open-Access model for their own profit. They work by spamming scholarly e-mail lists, with calls for papers and invitations to serve on nominal editorial boards. If you subscribe to any professional e-mail lists, you likely have received some of these solicitations. Also, these publishers typically provide little or no peer-review. In fact, in most cases, their peer review process is a façade. None of these publishers mentions digital preservation. Indeed, any of these publishers could disappear at a moment’s notice, resulting in the loss of its content. While we were researching this review, one publisher, Academic Journals, was hacked and the site replaced with radical Islamic propaganda for about a week.

Why would authors pay to have an article published when there are so many free outlets where they could publish, including free Open-Access journals? In many cases, the answer is that the quality of the articles is poor, and they were rejected by the mainstream journals.
...
Predatory publishers use words such as “Academic” and “Scientific” in their names to falsely add a veneer of legitimacy to their business. Practices such as these, according to Harnad, “are now being taken to a grotesque extreme because of the ease of entry into online publishing and a perceived instability in the traditional journal publishing trade, owing to the growing clamor for OA.”

More Content, More Screens, More Questions

In their continuing education series beyond the book, CCC speaks to Bill Rosenblatt on mobile applications of content (BTB):

Author and digital media authority Bill Rosenblatt examines how the proliferation of mobile phones and other networked devices is giving rise to an accompanying mobile screen culture – and what publishers need to do to survive and thrive in such an environment. A special presentation from Copyright Clearance Center’s Educational Services team.

To access a copy of Bill Rosenblatt’s just-published white paper, The New Content Monetization Opportunities for Publishers, go to www.copyright.com and in the Latest News and Events section, click “White Paper: New Content Monetization Opportunities for Publishers.” You will have the opportunity to complete a brief survey to help us develop future educational programming, and you will be provided with instant access to Bill’s paper.

Content Farms

The Economist takes a look at the editorial operations of Demand Media and AOL (Economist):

Demand Media’s approach is a “combination of science and art”, in the words of Steven Kydd, who is in charge of the firm’s content production. Clever software works out what internet users are interested in and how much advertising revenue a given topic can pull in. The results are sent to an army of 7,000 freelancers, each of whom must have a college degree, writing experience and a speciality. They artfully pen articles or produce video clips to fit headlines such as “How do I paint ceramic mugs?” and “Why am I so tired in winter?”

Although an article may pay as little as $5, writers make on average $20-25 an hour, says Mr Kydd. The articles are copy-edited and checked for plagiarism. For the most part, they are published on the firm’s 72 websites, including eHow, answerbag and travels.com. But videos are also uploaded onto YouTube, where the firm is by far the biggest contributor. Some articles end up on the websites of more conventional media, including USAToday, which runs travel tips produced by Demand Media. In March, Demand Media churned out 150,000 pieces of content in this way. The company is expected to go public later this year, if it is not acquired by a big web portal, such as Yahoo!, first.

AOL, a web portal which was recently spun off from Time Warner, a media giant, does not like to be compared to such an operation. Tim Armstrong, its boss, intends to turn it into “the largest producer of quality online content”. The firm already runs more than 80 websites covering topics from gadgets (Engadget.com) and music (Spinner.com) to fashion (Stylelist.com) and local news (Patch.com).

I predict this type of content will start to show up on book and (with increasing regularity) magazine publishers looking to maintain consumer interest in their sites and in efforts to build or maintain their audiences.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 18): Granta, Aussie Librarians, Pippi Longstocking, Special Collections

In advance of the Sydney Writers festival, The Australia profiles Granta Editor (and American) John Freeman (Australian):

Gracefully chuffed to find himself in the enviable position of editing a magazine he reveres, Freeman must nevertheless be a little shell-shocked from the barrage of choose-me writing that has come his way since he became Granta's editor. He is also an anti-email campaigner, so it is doubly difficult for him not to feel as if he's drowning in the demands that ping into his inbox unceasingly. He has written an entire book about how new communication methods are turning us into the linguistic equivalent of laboratory rats, churning on endless, meaningless wheels of words. But although he admits to missing the reading time his reviewing life gave him, and finds the "editing, acquiring, stroking and supporting, the making of the thing" more tiring than he had anticipated, he is determined to succeed. Freeman began at Granta as acting editor following the precipitous departure of Alexandra Clark, who had lasted less than a year, as had the previous editor, Jason Cowley. Given this instability after the long and stable editorship of Ian Jack, Freeman says he perfectly understands why the magazine's publisher, Sigrid Rausing, hesitated in appointing him to the role. It was a risky manoeuvre: Freeman is only 35, he is American and he has not had much editing experience. The secret of his success, it seems, is an affable and practical positivism that is pervasive even in a phone conversation. Some of this he puts down to the influence of his grandmother, whose letters taught him how to listen and to give.

Again in the land downunder but this time in The Age, it seems the profession of librarian faces the same issues as it does in the US (The Age):

Like many of her peers, she is also due to retire in the next few years, and her position will be difficult to fill. A national inquiry into school libraries heard evidence last week to suggest that teacher-librarians are a dying breed. While the Rudd Government is building thousands of libraries as part of the $16 billion ''building the education revolution'', experts warn there will be no one to staff them. About 13 per cent of Victorian primary school libraries are staffed by a professional librarian, a recent survey suggested, and the figure is expected to fall as teacher-librarians retire. There are no official statistics. More than 90 per cent of teacher-librarians in Australia are believed to be over 40, compared to half of teachers generally. Many teacher-librarians also retire early because of a lack of promotional opportunities. Meanwhile, there are just four tertiary courses nationally to train them, from a peak of 15, and only about 100 graduates a year. Library associations say job security is poor, discouraging potential students. In Victoria, rationalisation during the Kennett era and dwindling budgets has meant many principals have chosen to hire extra classroom teachers instead of librarians to reduce class sizes. ''The view is that libraries are not important because students just access information online,'' Mrs Ellingworth told The Sunday Age. ''But the thing is, students have got information overload. They don't know where to start.''

The London Times suggests there is a 'real-story' behind the Stieg Larsson heroine. Turns out to be Pippi Longstocking (Times):

As a boy he read Enid Blyton and the much-loved adventures of Pippi Longstocking. His tenacious heroine Salander is a radically reworked — and tattooed — modern version of Pippi with a polymorphous sex life. He explained to a Swedish journalist shortly before his death that he had begun to wonder how Pippi, the classic Swedish children’s heroine, would behave today. What sort of an adult had she become? How would one define her — as a sociopath, a childwoman? Larsson construed that Pippi might have an alternative view of society and transmogrified her into Salander, a girl completely alienated from society. She doesn’t know anyone; she has no ability to socialise. Salander is introduced into the first story in single-minded and skilful pursuit of a paedophile — the sexual abuse of women and children is a key theme of the novel. She is a white-faced young woman of anorexic appearance with facial piercings and a wasp tattoo on her neck. The bicep of her left arm is similarly festooned and on her left shoulder blade she has a dragon tattoo. Her hair is dyed a deep black and her boss describes her as looking like she has emerged from a lengthy orgy. Despite her anorexic appearance she seems able to vacuum up massive quantities of junk food. She is 24, but with her small breasts she sometimes appears to be about 14. Erland Larsson, the author’s father, believes that although “Salander is a mixture of different people”, a possible inspiration may have been Stieg’s niece, Therese, who was very close to him. The two often used to visit each other.

Since my only library work experience was in the special collections department at Boston University, I am always interested to read about these departments. In the Chronicle of Higher Ed, a warning about guarding the hoard (Chron):

Since she hadn't offered to let me search myself, I knew she was determined to make quick work of me. After perhaps three of her very narrow searches yielded nothing unique—only secondary sources I had seen before—I realized I wouldn't find anything useful unless I had the opportunity to search on my own, trying different approaches as I discovered the scope of the collection. That was so obviously not going to happen that I finally just thanked her politely and turned to leave. I had been in her office perhaps five minutes. Realizing she had won her battle even more quickly than expected, she mumbled an apology about how it was just a bad day, what with her being short staffed and having to train a new person and all. And so the dragon succeeded in guarding the hoard. The worst part is that I honestly think she believed she was doing her job—that her behavior was justified because I was foolish enough to just "turn up" expecting to use "her" collection. Let this, then, serve as a gentle reminder to rare-book curators that your job is not to keep readers from your books but just the opposite: to facilitate readers' use of the collections. If altruism or professional integrity aren't sufficient motivators to get you to play nice, you might consider the fact that you have a job only because people want to read what's in those collections, and you will keep your job for only as long as readers feel welcome to approach you to make use of the materials.

From the twitter this week: More Publishers Trying Outsourced Journalism AdAge Fascinating implications and some interesting comments. A new set of police heroes hits the UK small screen based on book characters. Hopefully over here soon. Independent Ian McEwan sees funny side of Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize nomination Independent Funny Not. Cancel Publish - A Call For the End of Tumblr Book Deals GQ Hilarious & True. History on the web "One of the most important collections of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts " BBC News Farrar, Straus & Giroux announced Marilyn Monroe writings to be released this fall - Conn Post In Sports, Liverpool put in a lame, pathetic and typical performance to hand Chelsea the title. Man United should have done better this season.

Survey: Blueprint for Transformation

The Gilbane Group is seeking survey respondents for a study they are undertaking to identify how publishers are re-inventing themselves. From their press release:

The Gilbane Group Survey for Book Publishing Professionals: Take it Today!

The Gilbane Group Web-based survey of book publishing professionals is now active!. This survey is one of the research mechanisms for our upcoming study "A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-Invent Publishing." The study will be published in June 2010, and all participants in this survey will have full access to the full-length study posted on The Gilbane Group website.

This survey, which will take most participants between 10-to-15 minutes to complete, seeks to gain a clearer picture of ebook and related digital publishing efforts underway among the full spectrum of book publishers. Furthermore, the analyst team at The Gilbane Group seeks to identify a number of "pain points" or barriers encountered by book publishers when it comes to developing or expanding digital publishing programs, including areas such as royalties, digital format choices, and distribution problems.

BISG Conference: Making Information Pay 2010

There is a full slate of speakers lined up for next week's MIP meeting at the McGraw Hill Auditorium on May 6th.

From BISG:

BISG's Making Information Pay is a publishing industry conference for senior executives in operations, sales and marketing who are responsible for increasing sales and reducing costs. For the past six years, book industry professionals have attended Making Information Pay in order to learn the best practices driving the success of industry leaders today.

Register today to discover the technological "points of no return" currently facing our industry and identify the new technologies dictating advanced ways in which books -- both digital and physical -- are being acquired, produced, distributed, marketed and sold.

Mike Shatzkin has a full run down of the presentations here.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 17): Professional Publishing, Men Don't Read, Heather Reisman, Digital Texts

In the HuffPo takes some pot shots at professional publishers namely Thomson, Reed Elsevier and Bloomberg and in an 'argument' that's all over the place he concludes (HuffPo):

For this reason, their technology expertise notwithstanding, it is not a given that the professional publishing companies will dominate the media landscape. The organizational foundations of professional publishing companies are expensive to support. Their cost structures require that information also be expensive. However, Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, and Bloomberg have no monopoly on the technology, and the technology to create new information and news delivery platforms is not expensive. In this respect, the professional publishers have returned to being merely ordinary companies. In the future, they will compete with new rivals without the structural advantages that have until now fueled their growth and reinforced their market position. This is good news for the American business community, and for the future development of a vital, healthy, and prosperous news and information industry in the United States.

The Financial Post (Canada) and provides a friendly venue for an interview with Heather Reisman (FP):

Q: Now that Amazon will be allowed to have its own distribution centre here, do you believe Ottawa should ease foreign ownership legislation in a way that would allow you to enter into international partnerships? A: Amazon had a full-on distribution centre here before, but it was run by Canada Post. The change is they are going to run it themselves. In my opinion, once the government [in 2002] allowed Amazon to operate 100% as a major bookseller in Canada with no Canadian ownership, they were de facto saying that they believe in this day and age that you do not have to be Canadian to own a book-retailing company [in Canada]. Q: Do you intend to take that issue up with Industry Canada? How is it that Kobo can have international partners with a substantial stake? A: I don't have any reason to take it up because I am not looking at selling the Indigo business. Our Kobo business is a global business. But I think the government realizes that you cannot put legislation on a digital business - what are you going to do? You just can't.

Jason Pinter in the HuffPo (again) discusses his frustration over reports that men don't read (HuffPo):

Why do I bring this up? Because if you've worked in publishing, you've heard the tired old maxim: Men Don't Read. Try to acquire or sell a book aimed predominantly at men, and odds are you'll be told Men Don't Read. This story is not an isolated incident, but merely a microcosm of a huge problem within the industry. If you keep telling yourself something, regardless of its validity, eventually you'll begin to believe it. So because publishers rarely publish for men and don't market towards men, somehow that equates to our entire gender having given up on the reading books. THIS MUST END. This NPR piece three years ago came to the conclusion that women read more fiction than men by a 4-1 margin. Articles like this madden me because I think they miss the big picture, or perhaps are even ignoring it purposefully. It's like discussing global warming, while completely ignoring the fact that hey, maybe we have something to do with it. In my opinion, this empty mantra has begotten a vicious cycle. I was hesitant to write this article, mainly because in no way do I want to be perceived as diminishing the talents of many, many brilliant women in publishing. That is not the aim of this piece, nor is it my opinion in any way. This is a critique of the system, not those who work within it.

The comments are quite good as well. (I see a 't-shirt': I'm A Man and I Read! Could even add some swear words in there as well).

Xplana (Missouri Book Service) released a report looking at the potential for digital textbook sales over the next five years:

While digital textbook sales currently represent a small portion of the overall textbook market – approximately 0.5% – year-over-year increases show strong and steady growth.

• CourseSmart, a joint venture of five large college textbook publishers, reported a 400% increase in sales in 2009 from the year before;¹
• MBS Direct, representing 900 client institutions and 34 academic publishers, showed increases in digital textbooks sales of more than 100% in 2009;²
• Interviews with representatives from leading textbook publishers reveal year-over-year increases between 80%-100% for the past three years, with sales growth in 2009 topping 100%;
• According to “On Campus Research Student Watch 2010,” a 16,000-student survey released by the National Association of College Stores in fall of 2009, about 42 percent of students have either purchased or at least seen an e-textbook. That’s an increase of 24 percentage points from 2007.³

These growth numbers for digital textbooks are also consistent with the increase in the general digital trade book market. The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) reported that in 2009, e-books accounted for 3.31% of all trade book sales in the U.S. up from only 1.19% in 2008. Sales of wholesale e-books for February 2010 were $28,900,000 for February, a 339.3% increase over February 2009 ($6,600,000). Calendar Year to Date sales are up + 292.2% from 2009.⁴

From the twitter:

Alan Sillitoe dies at 82 Guardian Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Stones in Exile Documentary: The Stones and the true story of Exile on Main St Observer

OUP Launch the 'anti-Google' database product ArsTechnica

A Database of Riches: The Business Model Behind The Google Book Settlement

Late last year, I wrote an analysis of the possible size of the orphan work issue that was core to the initial criticism over the Google Book Settlement. That analysis was a subset of a wider analysis of the business opportunity that the Google Book Settlement represented once the database was cleared for sale.

Following is that further analysis: In this report, I have estimated the market opportunity that the Google Book database could represent and I have organized my review based on which customers are likely to purchase the product, how much and to what degree customers will purchase and I also explore how Google might go about selling and marketing the product. I have excerpted the management summary section below and the full report is available below.

Anyone interested in discussing this report in more detail is encouraged to set up a conference call or meeting with me and I can review in more detail my methodology and explore the options available to Google as they roll out this product.

Introduction:

Almost five years ago, Google embarked on the most ambitious library development project ever conceived: To create a “Noah’s Ark” of every book ever published and to start by digitizing books held by a rarefied group of five major academic libraries. The immediate response from US publishers was muted, until the implications of the project became clear: That Google proposed no boundaries to the digitization effort and initiated the scanning of books both in and out of copyright and in and out of print. Adding to publisher’s concerns, Google planned to display “snippets” (small selections) of the book’s content in search results. Despite some hurried conversations among publishers, author groups and Google, Google remained convinced that what they were doing represented a social ‘good’ and the partial display of the scanned books was legally within the boundaries of fair use.

From the publisher perspective, this was a make-or-break moment, and the implications were more acutely felt by trade publishers who saw the potential for their business models to be obliterated by easy and ready access to high-quality content via a Google search over which they would exert little or no control. Even worse was the fear that rampant piracy of content would also develop – a debated and contentious point - given the easy access to a digitized version of a work that could be e-mailed or printed at will. The publishers determined that if Google were to ‘get away with it’ without challenge, then anyone would be able to digitize publisher content and possibly replicate what has been going on in the music and motion picture industries for almost ten years. In mid-2005, prompted by a law suit filed by The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) led by four primary publishers filed suit against Google in an effort to halt the scanning of in-copyright materials. (The Authors Guild and AAP ultimately combined their filings).

The initial Google Book Settlement (GBS) agreement, given preliminary approval by a court in October 2008, generated a vast amount of argument both in support of the agreement and in challenges to it. A revised agreement was drafted after the Federal District Court of Southern New York and Judge Chin agreed to delay the adjudication and final arguments which were heard in late February 2010. To date, Judge Chin has not given a timetable nor an indication of when and how he will decide the case.

From the perspective of the early leading library participants, Google’s arrival and promise to digitize their purposefully conserved print collections looked like a miracle. Faced with forced declines in the dollars spent on monographs and the ever-rising expense of maintaining over 100 years of print archives, the Google digitization program provided a possible solution to many problems. All libraries believe they hold a social covenant to collect, maintain and preserve the most relevant materials of interest to their communities but maintaining that covenant becomes a challenge in an environment of increasing expenses while also enduring the challenges of migrating to an on-line world(1).

The library world is typically segmented into public and academic institutions and while these often varied ‘communities’ may differ in their philosophy towards, for example, collection development or preservation, they do share some common practices. Most importantly, all libraries are committed to resource sharing and while materials use has historically and primarily been ‘local’ to the library, every institution wants to make its collections available to virtually any patron and institution who requests them. In short, these library collections were always ‘accessible’ to all regardless of geography or copyright: First US Mail, FedEx, e-mail and then the Internet progressively made this sharing easier but, until Google arrived with their digitization program, any sharing beyond the local institution was via physical distribution(2) . In effect, it could be argued that the Google scanning program simply makes an existing practice vastly more efficient.

Even though, the approval of the Google Book Settlement (GBS) hangs in the balance under review by Judge Chin of the Federal District Court of Southern New York, an Executive Director has been named to head the Book Rights Registry (BRR) (3) and is preparing the groundwork to establish the organization (BRR) in advance of approval. This report represents an attempt to analyze the market size opportunity for Google as it seeks to exploit the Google Book Settlement.

Following are our summary findings which are discussed in more detail in the ensuing pages of this report.

Summary Findings of the Report:

• Libraries will see tremendous advantages – both immediate and over time - from the GBS, although concerns have been voiced (notably from Robert Darnton of Harvard)(4)
• Google’s annual subscription revenue for licensing to libraries could approach $260mm by year three of launch
• Over time, publishers (and content owners) will recognize the GBS service as an effective way to reach the library community and are likely to add titles to the service(5)
• Google will add services and may open the platform for other application providers to enhance and broaden the user experience
• The manner in which the GBS deals with orphan works will provide a roadmap for other communities of ‘orphans’ in photography, arts, and similar content and intellectual property

[1] It is important to acknowledge that, initially, the GBS may have been seen as a solution to libraries’ conservation and preservation needs; however, subsequently, libraries have determined that they need to develop their own preservation options in which The Hathi Trust is a clear leader.
[2] Resource sharing and improvements in the ‘logistics’ provided by OCLC (WorldCat) or via consortia such as OhioLink has made physical distribution effective and comparatively efficient.
[3] The BRR is the management body tasked with administering the GBS and representing the interests of authors and publishers once approval has been granted by the court.
[4] Robert Darnton, NY Review of Books
[5] The settlement doesn’t provide for adding content prior to 1/5/09; however, we are suggesting that, by mutual consent, additional published content may be added as an expedient method of reaching the library market.

A database of riches michael cairns from Michael Cairns

Oxford University Press and the "Anti Google"

ArsTechnica reports on the launch of a new approach to patron and consumer research by OUP that will attempt to combat 'information overload' and the prevailing issue of 'authority'. This is a potentially revolutionary approach by a highly respected information publisher to draw back under a subscription model consumers of information who are increasingly dissatisfied with 'good enough' which is endemic to google and wikipedia.

From the article:

The OBO tool is essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines. Users can drill down to a specific bibliographic entry, which contains some descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books or to a subscribing library's own catalog entries, by either browsing or searching. Each entry is written by a scholar working in the relevant field and vetted by a peer review process. The idea is to alleviate the twin problems of Google-induced data overload, on the one hand, and Wikipedia-driven GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), on the other.

"We did about 18 months of pretty intensive research with scholars and students and librarians to explore how their research practices were changing with the proliferation of online sources," Damon Zucca, OUP’s Executive Editor, Reference, told Ars. "The one thing we heard over and over again is that people were drowning in scholarly information, and drowning in information in general. So it takes twice as much time for people to begin their research."
...
To trust OBO's content, you have to trust its selection and vetting process. To that end, OUP is making the list of contributing scholars and editors freely available. Each subject area has an Editor in Chief who's a top scholar in the field, and an editorial board of around 15 to 20 scholars. The EIC and editorial board either write the bibliographic entries themselves, or they select other scholars to do the work.

Springer Expands Author Mapper

Springer's has added more content to its innovative application AuthorMapper.com. The company is now including eBook content in addition to the original journal content. From their press release:

Springer Science+Business Media has expanded its service on the website www.AuthorMapper.com, a free analytical online tool for discerning trends, patterns and subject experts within scientific research. AuthorMapper was launched a year ago offering searchable content from all Springer and BioMed Central journals. The platform now offers eBook data as well. Currently the tool can retrieve useful information across all disciplines, from more than three million journal articles and more than 742,000 book chapters from 29,000 eBooks. Adding eBook data allows all the benefits of specific eBook analysis just as the success of the journal data has shown in the past.

The AuthorMapper tool can provide a variety of analyses, such as keyword tag clouds and "Top 5" bar charts for various important metrics, and includes an interactive world map of the results. AuthorMapper.com’s advanced search function also allows complex queries using keyword, discipline, institution, journal, publisher and author. The results can identify new and historic scientific trends through timeline graphs and bar charts of top statistics, allowing for identification of trends in the literature, discovery of wider scientific relationships, and locating other experts in a field of study.

The trend timeline graph, for example, allows authors to see whether their area of expertise is growing or has already peaked. Users that are only interested in open access content can restrict their searches accordingly, and all search results provide link-outs to content on SpringerLink.For graduates, post-docs and emerging researchers, AuthorMapper.com shows which institutions are the most prolific in specific research areas and allows for their comparison. AuthorMapper.com can even be useful for members of the general public seeking to identify experts, for example, medical specialists, working close to where they are located.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 16): Mad Women, Nigella, Kipling, Review Scams, Elsevier's Peer Review, Higher Ed Retention

Were the mad women of literature really sane? Critical questions asked in a new BBC radio program(me): (BBC)

The violent and feral Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre, the mysterious Woman in White whose escape from an asylum begins Wilkie Collins's gripping thriller, and the terminally delusional Emma in Madame Bovary.

But were they really mad? Would we today recognise them as mentally ill or were our heroines merely misunderstood, not to mention a tad inconvenient?

For Radio 4 documentary, Madwomen in the Attic, medical historians, psychiatrists and literary specialists gave their diagnoses of our troubled heroines.

Nigella Lawson is the latest TV chef to release an iPhone cooking app, Nigella's Quick Collection from Random House, which contains 70 recipes, along with videos. The app costs £5 and is reviewed by The Times:

The first generation of cooking apps has been big on numbers (America’s Big Oven boasts of having 170,000 recipes on its database) but not so great on design, but Jamie Oliver’s 20-minute meals app, launched last year, set a new benchmark. With its sexy graphics, slick videos and cheeky chat, it’s not just a list of recipes with synchronised shopping lists but a way of aligning ourselves with a brand.

From this week, we can cosy up to Nigella in our pockets too. The Nigella Quick Collection contains 60 of her speediest, easiest recipes. Here, we exclusively reveal five of the dishes that will have you rustling up supper in no time.

Kipling's Jungle Book is to appear as a new animated series. I'm not sure about the 52 episodes however since its hard enough to keep track of The Old House. The Times:

Mr Andrew said: “The world of the jungle is looking glorious in the series and will reintroduce this brand to a generation who might not know this fabulous story”.

Others were not so sure, however. Sharad Keskar, chairman of the Kipling Society, a registered charity that guards the author’s legacy said it was doubtful that the new series would be faithful to his book.

He said: “We’re used to this kind of thing. The poor man has often been maligned. The Disney one just wasn’t Kipling, it was amusing and light. Although The Jungle Book is ostensibly written for children, it is quite a scholarly book.

“I don’t think anyone is strongly against these adaptations, but there is general light-hearted disapproval. The text isn’t really represented properly,” he added. Tapaas Chakravarti, chief executive of DQ Entertainment, said: “We are thrilled that Mowgli and all these much-loved characters will be returning to the UK screens in the near future.

“Considerable time and effort has been given to produce an animation series worthy of the rich heritage The Jungle Book represents.”

Several authors with too much time on their hands get into bother over online reviews. This isn't the first time this has happened but why are the leading academics so dumb? Telegraph:

The row has sent shock waves through the normally genteel world of academia as claim and counter-claim have been circulated by email to other top writers.

Prof Service, a biographer of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky; Kate Summerscale, author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher; and Dr Polonsky were the three writers targeted by Dr Palmer's distinctly unfavourable 'customer reviews'.

Questions were first raised by Dr Polonsky after she read comments on her latest work, Molotov's Magic Lantern, on Amazon's UK site.

Higher Ed looks at how retention can be improved for long distance education programs (HigherEd):

A growing body of research has all but obliterated the notion that distance education is inherently less effective than classroom education. But even the most ardent distance-ed evangelists cannot deny persistent evidence suggesting that students are more likely to drop out of online programs than traditional ones. The phenomenon has many explanations, not least the fact that what often makes students choose the flexibility of online learning -- being too busy to enroll in a classroom course -- can also make it harder for them to keep up with their studies.

But Hersh believes there is another major factor driving the gap between retention rates in face-to-face programs and those in the rapidly growing world of distance education: the lack of a human touch.

And unlike the reality of adult students’ busy lives, Hersh says the human-touch problem can be solved. In fact, he thinks he knows how.

Hersh’s solution is to incorporate more video and audio components into the course-delivery mechanism. Most professors who teach online already incorporate short video and audio clips into their courses, according to a 2009 survey by the Campus Computing Project. But it is rarer, Hersh says, for professors to use video of themselves to teach or interact with their online students -- largely because the purveyors of major learning management systems do not orient their platforms to feature that method of delivery.

A new process for peer review is presented by Elsevier (FT):

Indeed, the reliability of peer review is increasingly in doubt. A paper in Nature in 2006 suggested that it was impossible for peer reviewers to detect all fraudulent, falsified or plagiarised research. The writer also noted that feedback from reviewers can be unhelpful, and that ideas from rejected papers can be stolen by editors and used for their own purposes. Many such researchers seem to keep quiet for fear of ruining their prospects by complaining.

Meanwhile, scientific integrity has been called into question on a broader scale. We have had the recent scandal about e-mails between researchers on climate change that appeared to suggest they wanted to alter results. And in the US, an editor of an orthopaedic journal earned $20m in royalties from an implant manufacturer who received favourable press.

From the twitter: InfoToday's review of the revised WorldCat Record Use Policy Changes at OCLC http://bit.ly/aT62Ud Also, LJ follows up with some of the comments that have been generated by the community since the policy was released (LJ):

On that official feedback page and elsewhere, many in the bibliographic community agree that the revised policy features much improved language and clarity (though some have questioned whether that clarity breaks down when it comes to specific use cases). Jennifer Younger, President-Elect, OCLC Global Council and Edward H. Arnold Director of Libraries, University of Notre Dame (and Record Use Policy Council's co-chair), told LJ the Council has been pleased with the commentary they've seen so far "through the community forum on the policy, through individual blogs, tweets, Webinars and e-mails directed to the Council and to individual Council members. We are hearing from a wide range of constituencies and partners in the library community, and we encourage continuing input. Steady input from the community has enabled us to continue to expand the FAQ." The proposed policy will be discussed with the Global Council next week, she said, adding that the Records Council "will be meeting through mid-May to address questions, concerns and comments that have been coming to us since we posted the policy draft last week.”

The Illustrated London News goes on line today. http://bit.ly/d7JQQ9 And in sports, there is slim but slightly more hope this week for MU and the championship. Also the Australian Open 1976 (Flickr).

Repost - How do I love books, let me count the ways.

Bowker released their annual industry stats this week but as Publisher's Lunch showed in their editorial on Thursday, the report tends to the obscure rather than the enlightening. It reminded me of something I wrote in January, 2009.


Well, Elizabeth Browning may not have put it quite that way, but she might have done if her annual bonus depended on it.

Moves are afoot to revise the way in which publishing industry stats are computed but, as we all recognize the industry is changing, so we should be anticipating new benchmarks and methodologies for calculating success in tomorrow’s publishing industry.

In years past, some publishing executives’ annual compensation was partially dependent on how many best sellers and the level of sales they achieved, or how their revenues and expenses compared with their competitors. Historically, those calculations would have been straightforward - just add up the best sellers in the New York Times, or take a look at the annual AAP statistics. It didn’t matter that the “Times methodology” was later called into question because, by then, we had Bookscan and the industry continued to use the AAP numbers even as the industry became more complex. With all the standard measures in use, there was always “leakage” and, just like that above-ground pool that loses a little more water with each passing season, book industry sales have been spread across a wider array of outlets which have not been computed in the industry numbers. Moreover, self –reporting (a component of the AAP’s reports) was also spotty and/or inconsistent as the business grew in complexity. Add the increasing prevalence of used book sales in major retail channels and defining the real level of sales for today’s publishing industry is very difficult indeed. And, of course, some companies refuse to report at all.

On a discussion list I belong to a minor scuffle erupted recently over defining the ‘real’ level of publisher revenues for the industry. (See my recent Frankfurt Supply Chain presentation). Qualifications abound regarding segmentation, used book sales, front list/back list, consumer versus wholesaler - you name it. It is very difficult to pinpoint the real number. To address this issue, BISG will evaluate and define a new methodology for tracking publishing industry sales numbers for Book Industry TRENDS and the first results will be published in June. This is a laudable project that should be completed, and I think everyone in the industry will be looking forward to hearing about and analyzing these reports when they are published. (AAP continues to publish their own set of data for the industry).

Attempting to calculate today’s performance metrics will be simple compared to our collective future which is likely to be far more complex and confusing if we don’t get in front of the issue. We will also need to cooperate if - as we all like to do – we wish to generalize about the size of our market, measures of success and whether one type of content could be considered the “best of” anything. Recently, there have been some harbingers of how complex the future may be. For example, Overdrive released a slew of data indicating how rapidly eBook downloads are growing and Fictionwise say they have 'served 2 trillion words'. Stats like these are quickly becoming markers in our conscious view of publishing success. How soon will it be that we casually mention that so and so had 100,000s of downloads rather than (or in addition to) retail sales? But those references to downloads, pageviews, comments, searches, hits, subscribers (and on and on) will not mean enough unless we, as an industry, have some mechanism of comparison or some degree of standardization in how we reference these data points.

The publishing industry is a relatively small media segment but the boundaries increasingly blur. To give some indication of how complex the measurements may become you only have to hear about some of the numbers thrown out at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Sony announced that the Playstation network has 17 million registered users and added 2.1 million accounts in December. Games on the network have sold in the millions and users number in the 100,000s for each game. ABC.com also stated that they delivered, via their episode player 500 million episodes and 1 billion ad views. (Paidcontent) Hulu.com, the site for NBC and Newscorp content, receives 3.8 million visits per day (24 million uniques in October) and users are streaming over 63 million videos per month. These numbers gloss over the fundamental change in how media counts itself and, as the change in publishing accelerates, it will no longer be enough to count books sold via a cash register.

We will need a wholesale revision of our thinking and our perspective if we are to retain any semblance of cohesive, representative reporting as we move into the 21st century.

CCC On the Future of Copyright

From Publishing perspectives this week an interview with Copyright Clearance Center's CEO Tracey Armstrong (Link):

At the heart of Armstrong’s stance is the fundamental belief that, despite the transition from analog to digital culture, the foundation of copyright hasn’t changed. It has only created a greater and more urgent need for expeditious means of licensing the material -– or clearing copyright.

“I agree with the statement that everyone is now a publisher,” she says, “and what that means is a tremendous proliferation of material that is copyrighted and can be licensed.” She describes this as the “atomization” of content –- books being offered as individual chapters and paragraphs, computer software being parsed into individual lines of code –- a phenomenon that is causing exponential growth in the number of “granular” elements that are available to be licensed.

Of course, she adds, “the market is not infinitely elastic” -– and notes that there is plenty of information that will be offered for free, or will have to be.

Topically, The Economist takes us on a historical tour of copyright law and also makes an argument for radical change (Economist):

The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work’s dissemination, impact and influence. It can be difficult to locate copyright holders to obtain the rights to reuse old material. As a result, much content ends up in legal limbo (and in the case of old movies and sound recordings, is left to deteriorate—copying them in order to preserve them may constitute an act of infringement). The penalties even for inadvertent infringement are so punishing that creators routinely have to self-censor their work. Nor does the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of protection. Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for protection.
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A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable. If there is a case for longer terms, they should be on a renewal basis, so that content is not locked up automatically.

The (Physical) Book Forever After

Mention you bought an actual CD these days and the response might equally be "where?" or "have you heard of iTunes?" Yet, after more than ten years of both legitimate and illegitimate access to down loadable music, the humble CD together, with its environmentally challenged jewel case continues to represent over 75% of music sold. As The Economist reports, consumers in Britain purchased 113mm physical albums last year versus 16mm digital ones. Music publishers, rather than ignoring the format to concentrate on digital, have been broadening the price points and formats using the CD as the core offering to include additional content, collector's editions and even t-shirts. No one would argue that downloaded music hasn't had a material impact but, given the resiliency of the CD format, one might also argue that a form of stasis has evolved: CDs won't disappear - at least nowhere near as rapidly - as seemed inevitable only a short while ago.

Forecasting the demise of the paper book is to some as straightforward as it was to those who forecasted the demise of the CD. Yet reality will be more complicated. While music publishers were slow to react and took more than their fair share of missteps, change and adapt they did and, as a result, they've begun to exert a little direct influence on a market that was in free fall. The physical CD isn't 'back', but the format may now be a managed item in a portfolio of options available for music purchasers. As a result, the CD may have a long life yet.

Many believe the physical book will disappear within in the next ten years yet the example of the music CD suggests the future of the book may be more nuanced. The availability of electronic versions of trade content will approach 100% in less than ten years: In my view, five years for all but the smallest publishers is more likely. Despite the availability however, electronic content is likely to represent only one of a number of ways consumers will engage with book content. Whether that percentage is 25% or 50% matters less than how publishers will manage the process. Book publishers can (and are) avoiding many of the mistakes that music publishers made when they were effectively out of control. Book publishers can 'skip ahead' to the point where they proactively manage the further development of print - as music publishers are now doing with the CD - and, in doing so, publishers will buy time as they adapt to the changes in their business brought about by the migration to electronic content. Rather than disappear, the lowly print book may retain a position of wide distribution (not universal) and become the focal point of a facilitated interaction with numerous content acquisition options for consumers. Maybe the book has stronger legs than suggested.