Repost: Predictions 2010: Cloudy With A Chance of Alarm

As a prelude to thinking about 2011, here were my thoughts for 2010 posted on January 4, 2010.

As we greeted the New Year in 2009, we knew we were in for it economically and, as I suggested in my prediction post this time last year, one of the most obvious assumptions was that things would get worse before they got better. Contrary to expectations, publishing may have come out a winner in spite of the steady litany of bad news on the magazine, newspaper and television fronts that percolated all year. While recognizing the economic challenges in store for us back in 2009, I also suggested a resurrection of sorts could be had as businesses began to accommodate the fundamental changes that were taking place in the industry as they executed their business plans. Sadly, there have been few bright spots in media during 2009, and after having taken the pulse of views on the near-term future in publishing by speaking to a number of senior publishing executives, my belief is we will not see any appreciable improvements during 2010. While some of their collective views can be attributed to ‘hedging,’ external trends support the lack of optimism whether they be reductions in education funding and library budgets or the increasing reliance on “blockbuster” authors or pricing issues.

Many of the macro trends that I have noted in years past remain prevalent and in some cases have accelerated. For example,

• Educational publishers appear to be increasing – rather than decreasing – their investment in electronic media and more importantly, are beginning to think of their electronic products as distinctly different from their print precursors. In particular, educational publishers have started to talk meaningfully about “databases” and “subscriptions.”

• Newspapers – particularly NewsCorp – have been particularly active in attempting to build paid content models which support the separation of ad-based and subscription-based models. Newspapers aside, even trade publishers – notably Disney - are beginning to experiment in interesting ways with paid subscription models.

On the other hand, my expectations for further compacting of the publisher supply chain and increasing collaboration across publishing segments appear to have run aground. Interestingly, an executive I recently spoke to noted that the separation of publishing units that historically sat together – education with trade with information, for example – has negatively impacted publishing companies ability to learn and benefit from the experience and market testing of their sister companies. Possibly a decrease in access to ‘institutional knowledge’ has, in general, contributed to some media companies’ hesitancy to experiment.

Prognostication being the point of this post, there are some newer macro changes I see that will define the publishing and media space more and more over the next three to five years and it will be interesting to see how these develop.

• Firstly, 2009 was the ‘year of the eBook’ as new devices seemed to launch each week. But the eBook, as we understand it today, only has three more years to run. By the end of 2010, we will be focused on the ‘cloud’ as the implications of the Google Editions product become clearer. This accelerated migration away from a physical good – even with an eBook, the title was ‘physically’ downloaded – will challenge our notion of ‘ownership’, rewrite business rules and provide the first true ‘strata’ for communities (or social networks) to develop around content.
  
  The Apple iSlab (iSlate, iTablet, iEtc) will become a key driver in this development as the company becomes the first consumer electronics maker to apply their design expertise to multi-content delivery. (I don’t count SONY because they got it completely wrong).
  
• A closely related (but somewhat tangential) development will be the realization by publishers that the library market could become a threat to their business models as mobile and remote access is aggressively marketed by companies such as Serial Solutions and EBSCO. Currently, these products are not specifically related to trade and academic titles; however, the implications for all published product will become clearer as patrons’ ease of access to ‘free’ content grows and as the resolution services improve.
  
  Remote access to information products by library patrons is obviously not new, but applied to mobile computing it will change many things about the library model. This trend coupled with the ‘cloud’ concept above, will require an industry-wide re-think of the library business model.
  
• There are hints that the silo-ing of content that has been endemic to information and education for many years could become a trend in trade as well. Examples remain sparse, though Harlequin and Tor are routinely cited as exemplars of this trend.
  
  Subject-specific concentrations of content in trade will become a more broadly viable model; but simply concentrating content is not enough. Trade publishers will begin to license or commission ancillary content that adds a transactional element to their offering (not exclusively in a monetary sense). In effect, this additional content will provide a reason for consumers to return periodically to the site for free reference, news or dictionary content. Thus, this content will complement the subject-specific content that publishers generate themselves. As each segment develops, the ancillary content will also become core content to the publisher and may eventually be produced by them (although, initially, the content may be licensed). Over time other services will be built within each subject silo, and this maturity will replicate the product development seen in information publishing over the past ten years as those businesses established subject specific franchises around topics such as business news, tax and legal information.

Aside from these macro trends that will grow in importance over the next few years maintaining the status quo will still be the operative task during 2010. Here are following are some more specific predictions for 2010:

• Certain segments (financial, legal and tax information and education, for example) continue to be challenged and any business that relies on the library market will face a very difficult time. Funding will be worse in the coming year (fiscal 2011) making retention, renewals and price increases problematic. By the end of this year, we could see some consolidation in the information media space.
  
• We will see the return of an old model of collaboration between magazines and traditional publishers as magazines look for ready-made content. Witness the return of the serial and short story to the pages of periodicals as their publishers look for low-cost content for their plodding (but suddenly more aggressive) migration to electronic delivery. In turn, electronic magazines will offer publishers a more effective, targeted and supportive mode of marketing than publishers have seen in years.
  
• 2010 will be a year of warfare: Publishers against retailers, wholesalers against retailers, retailers against retailers, publishers against consumers. It may be nasty, brutish and short, but will any of them truly understand the stakes? (See macro trend number one).
  
• Finally, we will see consolidation of at least two major trade houses. This is likely to precipitate another combination by year end. An outsider company (not a current trade publisher) may make a major move into the trade market.
  
• Last year, I predicted that out-of-work journalists would become ‘content producers’ and we have seen that develop as companies like Demand Media and Associated Content build market share. I see this trend accelerating during 2010. As magazines migrate to platform models, they become 24/7 publishing operations with a significantly increased demand for content far beyond their capabilities. Where they will succeed is in curating content for their specific audiences; however, much of this content will be produced for them, rather than by them in the traditional manner. In effect, magazines will outsource editorial.
  
• And in sports, Manchester United will retain their Premier League title, winning on goal difference over Arsenal; Barcelona will win the Champions League; and England will win the deciding fourth Ashes test in Melbourne in December.

Hoboken Tug Ice Bound

Hoboken Tug Ice Bound

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.

Just off shore this tug belongs to one of the last remaining industrial businesses located on this part of the Hudson. Here barges and other commercial vessels are floated into dry docks and stripped and painted. Numerous developers have their eyes on this property.

This image was taken in 2008 and thusfar we haven't had this much snow but then spring just ended.

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CJR: Media Policy in the Digital Age

Columbia Journalism Review open letter to the FCC about a media policy for the digital age. The letter is long and this a small sample that sets up the discussion (CJR)

The question you confront is not whether the government should allocate public funds to shape media and journalism. It already does. We have inherited a policy regime that is breathtaking in its scope and impact, and that goes well beyond mail subsidies and CPB funds, important though those have been. It exists in part because journalism is a form of commerce that must be taxed and regulated like all other commerce. Also, a great deal of journalism is influenced by government regulation because it is delivered across public or quasi-public property: the airwaves, government-granted cable monopolies, satellite bands, and the like. It would be no wiser to abandon altogether the policies that set rules and allocate funds across this system than it would be to stop regulating oil leases in ocean waters or maintaining public parks.

The problem is that the media policies that govern us in 2010—a patchwork stitched from the ideas of Calvin Coolidge’s Republican Party, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and Ronald Reagan’s deregulatory wave—have been overtaken by technological change.

From the country’s founding, American media and journalism have been continually remade by technological innovation. Political pamphlets made room for industrially printed newspapers, which made room for the telegraph, which made room for radio, which made room for broadcast television, which made room for cable and satellite services, which made room for the World Wide Web, which is making room even as we read this for the Kindle, iPad, and mobile phone applications.

....

That is not a matter of left versus right, or of competition between political parties; it concerns the health of civil society. A campaign to reform and revitalize public media waged to advance such a vision will have many constituents: rural states left out of the urban media cacophony; independent voters and engaged citizens searching for reason and cross-checked facts, as well as in-depth reporting that will hold power to account; diverse community and ethnic groups seeking more inclusive sources of information; educators and public health institutions seeking reliable channels of public-minded reporting about subjects too often neglected; and politicians of all ideological stripes whose careers are unreasonably endangered by undisciplined, self-interested electronic publishers.

Costco Loses Omega Watch Case

Costco purchased a number of Omega watches overseas on the cheap and sold them in their US stores at almost 50% less than the price they were available in the US. Omega sued Costco for copyright infringement and the 9th circuit court agreed with them finding that Costco had purchased the watches manufactured overseas and sold by foreign distributors and had done so without Omega's permission.

In the Supreme Court ruling the court split 4-4 (with Justice Kagan recusing), the court effectively let stand the lower court ruling in favor of Omega. This ruling said the first sale doctrine did not apply to goods produced overseas.

The decision denies the right of an internet retailer to purchase goods overseas covered by US copyright and sell him in the US without the manufacturers permission. So Costco broke the law in this case and going forward manufacturers may be more aggressive in preventing retail price arbitrage. This may well be the case for publishers and content producers who supported Omega in this case. These companies will be able to crack down on retailers that import DVDs, CDs and Books from overseas where retail prices can often be much lower than the US.

On the other hand libraries supported the Costco position because the case, if won by Omega, would limit the first sale doctrine. The first sale doctrine holds that a distributor/manufacturer can not control the distribution of a product after the first sale and this enables libraries and second hand booksellers(etc) to loaning and resell content.

More from paidcontent

paidContent: Why Publishers Are Tracking The Costco v. Omega Supreme Court Case

There's an important case regarding copyright that has reached the Supreme Court. From the WSJ: Watch Out For the Omega Copyright Windup:

Stewart's hard-scrabble scribbler would be pleased to learn that a Supreme Court case scheduled to be argued in the coming term could put the kibosh on library lending, at least of those books published or printed outside the U.S. In a friend-of-the-court brief, the American Library Association and other library groups argue that a recent Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision "threatens the ability of libraries to continue to lend materials in their collections."

The librarians fear they are going to suffer collateral damage from a curious copyright case that has nothing to do with books. It's Costco Wholesale Corporation v. Omega, S.A.—a battle over whether the storied Swiss watch brand can control where and at what price its chronometers are sold in the U.S.

Omega, you see, sells its watches for far less money in some countries than in others, a common enough practice known to economists as "geographical price discrimination." The U.S. market will generally bear more than the market in a Latin American republic, and so Omega offers its goods to distributors in places such as Paraguay for less than it does to American distributors.

American Research Libraries blog notes the amicus filing in the Costco vs Omega watch case (ARL):

And that is why this case is important for libraries. In its amicus brief, LCA notes that “[b]y restricting the application of Section 109(a) to copies manufactured in the United States, the Ninth Circuit’s decision threatens the ability of libraries to continue to lend materials in their collections.” There are millions of volumes in library collections that were manufactured abroad. A more precise estimate than “millions” can probably never be known, though, because there is no reliable way of knowing where books in library collections were actually manufactured. So, if the Supreme Court agreed with the Ninth Circuit, and libraries determined that they could not find an alternative to the traditional first sale doctrine rationale for circulating foreign-manufactured works, they would face an impossible task in determining which of their books could not circulate under the new rule.

Also related a brief filed in the case of Pearson vs Textbook Discounters (JDSupra)

Quarterly Book Retailers Report: Borders, B&N, BAMM, WHSmiths, Indigo, RedGroup

Borders reported a dismal 3rd Quarter as many analysts expected. Some have speculated that the company is now flirting with bankruptcy and possibly liquidation. Prior to the earnings report, there was again speculation about a B&N Borders combination but this will never happen and with this Borders report it is even harder to understand why B&N shareholders (to an extent that they exert independence) would ever believe a combination would be in the interest of B&N.

From their press release:

Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE: BGP) today reported results for its third quarter ended October 30, 2010 and the undertaking of important steps in its brand transformation process. Results include:

• Third quarter sales were $470.9 million, a decrease of 17.6% from the same period a year ago. Comparable store sales declined by 12.6%.
• The Digital and Kids Toys and Games categories outperformed all other categories, with Digital comparable store sales nearly doubling, and Kids Toys and Games comparable store sales increasing 6.6% for the quarter.
• The company incurred a loss from continuing operations in the third quarter of $74.4 million or $1.03 per share. For the same period a year ago, the company had a loss of $37.7 million or $0.63 per share.
• The company reduced debt net of cash by 12.7% compared to the third quarter of last year, and inventory was reduced by $233.7 million.
• Borders.com sales decreased 8.6% over the prior year to $12.5 million; however, fiscal year-to-date through the end of the third quarter, Borders.com sales increased 24.0% over the prior year, to $43.3 million. Notably, the company made significant improvements to its e-commerce platform during the quarter and added a number of services in preparation for the fourth quarter and beyond.
• More than 580,000 customers have signed up for the company's Borders Rewards Plus program, generating more than $11 million in membership revenue since launching Sept. 1, 2010.

"Our third quarter results reflect the business challenges facing Borders and the industry at large," said Mike Edwards, CEO, Borders, Inc. "While we are disappointed with third quarter results, my management team and I continue to vigorously address these challenges and our commitment to winning at retail is stronger than ever.

"We're pleased that our publishers and strategic partners have continued to support our business and brand initiatives. We have a comprehensive, executable plan in place that supports our goal of transforming the iconic Borders brand into a profitable economic model over time. I am happy to say that the elements of the plan we've executed thus far have been successful. Our Borders Rewards Plus program has generated more than $11 million in membership revenue since launching just one hundred days ago. Notably, Borders Rewards Plus members shop more frequently and have a higher than average ticket driven by significantly higher units per transaction.

Barnes & Noble reported their second quarter results (BN):

Total sales for the second quarter were $1.9 billion, including sales of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers (“College”) of $798 million. Excluding College, total sales increased 1% over the prior year period. Comparable sales at Barnes & Noble.com increased 59% driven by increases in core products and sales of digital devices and digital content. Barnes & Noble comparable store sales decreased by 3.3% and College’s comparable store sales decreased by 1.5%.

The expansion of the Toys & Games department at Barnes & Noble stores produced a 42% sales increase for the department during the second quarter. In the third quarter, the company began testing additional concepts, including an expanded children’s offering and digital and electronics accessories, to drive further sales increases in 2011.

For the second quarter, the company reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $46 million. The consolidated second quarter net loss was $12.6 million, or $0.22 per share, in-line with previously issued guidance of earnings of $0.05 per share to a loss of $0.25 per share.

As previously announced, the company continued to invest heavily in digital initiatives including: software and cloud services development costs; expenses relating to NOOKcolor; the addition of hundreds of thousands of titles to its digital catalog including a subscription management platform for digital newspapers and magazines; creating interactive proprietary content for children’s books; developing applications to serve multiple reading and smartphone devices – including iPad®, iPhone®, Android™ and BlackBerry®; and the rollout of NOOK Boutiques in Barnes & Noble retail stores.

The additional investments are expected to continue and peak during the second half of the year, and then increase moderately in the years ahead. Payoff for these expenses is estimated to begin to appear in the third quarter, when NOOKcolor is expected to be one of the world’s most sought after eReaders, and in the third and fourth quarters, when NOOKcolor owners will begin downloading digital content, including books and magazines
....
Barnes & Noble.com’s comparable sales are expected to increase by approximately 75% for both the third quarter and the full year. The company believes these sales increases will be driven primarily by growing sales in core products and the exploding digital content business. By fiscal year end, the company expects that digital content sales will achieve a $400 million full-year run-rate.

Barnes & Noble comparable store sales are expected to increase between 5% and 7% for the third quarter, and to be in a range of flat to 3% for the full year. Increases in sales will be largely driven by sales of NOOK™ devices and accessories, and by increases in children’s products and other non-book merchandise.

During the three-day post-Thanksgiving weekend, the company experienced a strong comparable store sales increase of 17.2% at Barnes & Noble stores and a comparable sales increase of 105.7% online.

College’s comparable store sales are expected to be in a range of flat to a decrease of 2% for the third quarter and the full year. The company expects to achieve EBITDA of approximately $160 to $190 million and $170 million to $205 million, for the third quarter and the full year, respectively. Third quarter earnings per share are expected to be in a range of $0.90 to $1.20. Full-year fiscal 2011 losses per share are expected to be in a range of $0.75 to $1.15.

Booksamillion reported financial results for the third quarter and 39-week period ended October 30, 2010 and net sales for the 13-week period ended October 30, 2010, decreased 5.5% to $104.8 million, from net sales of $110.9 million in the year-earlier period (PR).

Comparable store sales for the 2011 third quarter decreased 5.8% when compared with the 13-week period for the prior year. Net loss for the 2011 third quarter increased to $1.7 million, or $0.11 per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $1.6 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, in the year-earlier period.

For the 39-week period ended October 30, 2010, net sales decreased 2.8% to $341.8 million, from net sales of $351.5 million in the year-earlier period. Comparable store sales decreased 4.2% when compared with the same period in the prior year. For the 39-week period ended October 30, 2010, the Company reported net income of $2.2 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, compared with net income of $1.9 million, or $0.12 per diluted share, for the year-earlier period. Commenting on the results, Clyde B. Anderson, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "Comparable store sales for the third quarter were disappointing as we faced a tough comparison to last year's bestseller lineup and a cost conscious consumer buying fewer hardcover books. We did see continued positive trends in bargain books and gifts. As we look forward to the fourth quarter we are excited about our new toy, gift and electronics departments, our entry into the video game business, our expanded offering of DVDs and the introduction of the NOOK range of e-readers including NOOKcolor."

In mid October WH Smiths (UK) reported their full year ending August 2010 (PR):

Group profit before tax and exceptional items up 9% to £89m (2009: £82m)
• Record profit performance from Travel with operating profit up 10% to £53m1 (2009: £48m)
• High Street operating profit up 4% to £51m1 (2009: £49m)
• Total Group profit before tax2 of £89m (2009: £81m)
• Underlying earnings per share3 up 11% to 45.7p (2009: 41.3p). Earnings per share (including
exceptional items) 4 up 13% to 45.7p (2009: 40.6p)
• Strong balance sheet and cash generation
• Strong free cash flow5 of £82m (2009: £89m)
• Net funds of £56m versus net funds of £45m as at 31 August 2009

In Books, LFL sales were down 3% but gross margin was up year on year. The books market was soft, however performance varied by sub-category, with fiction up year on year, kids flat and non fiction down with the reduction in sales of celebrity biographies being a key driver of market decline over the period. We again saw further good share performance versus the general retail market as we continue to implement our strategy to build our authority as a popular book specialist. The strength of our position was demonstrated by WHSmith receiving the Children’s Bookseller of the Year award and securing the rights to launch the new Richard & Judy Book Club, exclusively to WHSmith. We are also building a strong position in the developing eBooks market. In Travel, we have developed our books offer further by extending book charts and launching exclusive early editions of certain key titles in airports.

In Canada, Indigo the country's only national book retailer reported a 3.8% growth in revenue for its second quarter ending October 2, 2010. (PR)

Revenue for the quarter was $214.8 million, up $7.8 million from last year. On a comparable store basis, Indigo and Chapters superstores posted a 0.7% decline in revenue, while small format stores were down 4.8%.

Commenting on the results, CEO Heather Reisman said, “We are pleased with our top line revenue growth, particularly in our rapidly growing digital business. Consumers have responded very favourably to our Kobo eReader, launched in the middle of our first quarter, and are showing even greater response to the new Wi-Fi model launched this past month.”

Ms. Reisman noted, “Our core retail book business experienced a challenging quarter against a very strong line up of titles in the same period last year. Our gift and toy businesses continued to show significant growth and reinforced our decision to expand these categories meaningfully in a majority of stores moving forward.”
Net loss for the quarter was $1.7 million compared to a net profit of $2.2 million last year. Ms. Reisman noted, “The increased loss was expected as we continue to invest in the growth and development of our digital initiatives and the re-development of our stores to accommodate growth in our gift and toy businesses”.

The Board of Directors today also approved a quarterly dividend of 11 cents per common share to be paid on December 14th, 2010, to all shareholders of record as of November 30th, 2010.

During the quarter, Kobo, the global eReading service of which Indigo owns 59%, announced plans for its application to be preloaded on both the Samsung Galaxy and the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets. They also announced their 3rd Quarter launch of the new Kobo Wireless eReader which adds Wi-Fi connectivity, upgraded hardware with faster performance, longer battery life, a sharper eInk screen and easy access to the Kobo store hosting more than 2.2 million books. Shortly after the close of the quarter, Kobo announced the addition of dozens of newspaper and magazines to the assortment including The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. Kobo will continue to expand its newspaper and magazine offering. Kobo also announced that it will now be selling in 2,500 Walmart locations throughout the United States, expanding on its current availability at Canadian Walmart stores.

Given the continued growth of Kobo's business, Kobo is seeking to raise additional financing by way of a private placement to cover working capital needs. The amount to be raised, the financial terms, and the timing of the financing will be determined by Kobo in consultation with its financial advisors.

Down Under, RedGroup's financial woes were evident in their annual report submitted in August:

Earnings before interest, tax and depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the year was NZ$27,045k. The consolidated entity’s loss after income tax for the year was $42,970k (2009:$14,743k). The result includes a one off, stock impairment charge of $30,317 attributable to the integration of the Borders acquisition. Revenue decreased 10% from prior year as the retail industry generally became more challenging post the global financial crisis. Cost of doing business (excluding interest) decreased 12% realizing the full year benefit of prior year integration initiatives. The business continues to take advantage of the internet and technology opportunity making an equity investment in Kobo Inc. and allowing customers to purchase and download eContent directly from REDgroup retail websites.

It should also be noted that REDGroup's cash position was marginally improved over the year.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 49): Genre Fiction, Aptara Report, Salinger Obit

In the Observer Ed Docx tries to explains quality is in the eyes of the beholder and in the process proves his point (Observer)

It's worth dealing with the difference again, since everyone seems to have forgotten it or become chary of the articulation. Mainly this: that even good genre (not Larsson or Brown) is by definition a constrained form of writing. There are conventions and these limit the material. That's the way writing works and lots of people who don't write novels don't seem to get this: if you need a detective, if you need your hero to shoot the badass CIA chief, if you need faux-feminist shopping jokes, then great; but the correlative of these decisions is a curtailment in other areas. If you are following conventions, then a significant percentage of the thinking and imagining has been taken out of the exercise. Lots of decisions are already made.

So it follows that genre tends to rely on a simpler reader psychology. If you have a body on the first page, then you raise a question: who killed it and how did it get there? And curiosity will power readers a surprisingly long way. As will, say, a treasure hunt (Brown) or injustice (Grisham) or the locked room mystery format (Larsson). None of this is to say that writing good thrillers is easy. It is still incredibly difficult. But it is easier.

These are the reasons, too, why a bad thriller or detective novel or murder mystery will feel so much better than a bad literary novel – why it might even thrive. Even in a bad genre book, you've still got the curiosity and the reassuring knowledge that the writer will eventually deliver against the conventions. Bad literary fiction, on the other hand, is mostly without such fallback positions and is therefore a whole lot worse.

Short item about Indian publisher and retailer (The Hindu)

In 1903, Motilal Banarsidass (MLBD) began as a tiny store of spiritual books, built on a capital of Rs. 27. Over the next century, it developed into one of the world's foremost publishers of scholarly works on Indology, with a formidable catalogue of priceless works — 100 volumes of the Mahapuranas, 50 volumes of the ‘Sacred Books of the East' edited by Max Mueller... Today, the 107-year-old Delhi-based publishing company, still run by the descendants of Motilal Jain, its founder, retains its focus on Indian culture and spiritual heritage, but is evolving to meet the changing needs of the 21st Century. Speaking to Rajendra Prakash Jain, one of the five brothers who currently run MLBD, what emerges is the picture of a company that straddles the old world and the new, combining tradition with modernity.

The Observer is revisiting their Obits from 2010:

The JD Salinger I knew, by Lillian Ross American author JD Salinger died, aged 91, on 27 January 2010. Here, his long-standing friend Lillian Ross, a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1945, tells of the generous author who could keep her laughing for hours

Technology vendor Aptara released a survey of more than 600 publishers across the Trade, Professional, and Education markets reveals the latest impacts of eBooks on the publishing industry (SFGate):

The survey, conducted this summer, reveals that 64% of publishers are now offering titles in eBook format. Though, the majority are still struggling to maximize profits from the fast-growing eBook market as a result of inefficient print production processes that require transformation in order to support scalable, affordable digital output. The second in a year, this survey is one of a series being conducted by Aptara to document the evolution of book publishing in the face of the burgeoning eReader market and consumers' changing reading behaviors.

The most significant findings from this survey include:

• A widespread inability to calculate return on investment (ROI) from eBooks - 62%, and of those able to calculate ROI, only 14% are recognizing a stronger ROI from eBooks than print. These stats confirm that most publishers are not employing scalable digital workflows, but rather retrofitting print production process and forgoing significant cost savings.
• The main eBook production challenge facing publishers is still eReader/content compatibility issues. Even with the near universal EPUB eBook format standard, today's fragmented eReader market makes quality eBook production a moving target, with expert, manual manipulation required to retain consistent formatting across device-types.
• Almost a quarter of publishers producing eBooks are employing XML, indicating a positive shift to scalable, digital workflows in support of efficient eBook production across all eReaders.
• Only 7% of publishers are implementing enhancements to their eBooks, suggesting that most publishers are not aware of the EPUB standard's inherent support for content enhancement, including audio and video.

From the twitter (@personanondata) LA Times: Why is Len Riggio Publishers Weekly's man of the year? JacketCopy Google Books launched (Blog) Slow week... In sports, England crushed Australia in the second Ashes test (BBC)

Repost: Sinatra's Stamp

First posted May 18 2008. Frank would have been 95 on Sunday

Frank Sinatra toured Australia in 1974 and they just wouldn’t leave him alone. Dogged by questions about his alleged connections to the mob and his decision not to give a press conference the press were merciless, and when he described them in true Ratpack fashion as “fags, whores and pimps” it was like chum in a shark tank. In Melbourne, outside The Southern Cross Hotel, he and his entourage were mobbed and one camera man was pushed, fell over and his camera damaged. On top of his comments and this “obvious” aggression by his bodyguard, an apology was demanded. Everyone got on the bandwagon and workers in the heavily unionized country threatened to call their members out if the tour went on without an apology.

Everyone was excited about Sinatra. Across the country, the concerts were sold out and Sinatra was a mega-star in a time when few made the trip “down under.” My father was the manager of The Southern Cross and we lived there for five years. A day or so after the camera-man incident, I had just arrived home from school and was watching Hollywood Squares on TV when my mother shouted out that Frank Sinatra was coming by. I wasn’t sure what to think. Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door, I opened it and in comes Frank, Barbara and a very large man. For some reason, Mom made herself scarce and I hosted Frank in our apartment living room all alone. He said I should continue to watch TV but I shut it off: Truthfully, I was slightly embarrassed about what I was watching. He wished me “happy birthday” (I was soon to turn 12) and asked me what I was up to in school. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Frank--leaning back with his legs crossed--and Barbara—covered in jewelry--sitting on the hotels’ best mid-century furniture. The furniture was upholstered in bitter-orange crushed velvet. I think the décor would have reminded Frank of Vegas in the mid-fifties.

We lived on the first floor of the hotel and Frank was about to escape the hotel through my parents’ bedroom roof terrace and over the roof into a waiting car at the bottom of a fire escape. After about ten minutes, the call came and our casual conversation came to an end. I shook Frank and Barbara’s hands and off they went without a hitch to the airport and his private jet. My father got to ride in the limo with him and on the plane Frank signed an autograph for him. One of my great regrets is that I never asked Frank to sign my book (but I do have my eye on the photo he signed for my father).

The tour was essentially cancelled, but an agreement was reached whereby Frank would do one show at the Sydney Opera House. He did it for charity and the show was broadcast on national TV. Naturally, by this point, I was a big fan and watched the entire show.

Since that encounter, I’ve convinced myself of a personal connection to Frank. Having ended up living in Hoboken-- where he was born--makes the whole thing even more surreal since he is a hero here. This, in spite of the fact Frank didn’t really care for the place and, by most accounts, the last time he visited Hoboken was in 1980 when he joined Ronald Regan on a campaign stop. There was a long gap prior to that but it doesn’t seem to worry many Hoboken old-timers, some of whom were at the unveiling of Sinatra’s postage stamp last week.

Under the Theater London

Under the Theater London

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.

This image from underneath the National Theater in London where skate boarders and graffiti artists have taken over this dead space. The art is really well executed and I am sure is routinely painted over week to week. Spaces like this, which ordinarily would be frightful, dirty and dangerous spaces should be encouraged by the artists and kids that want to use it.

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War in the Amazon

And so it begins: The end of Amazon's dominance as a book retailer. Well, that's the meme anyway but the reality will be starkly different. Not only will Amazon not give up their position to Google eBooks without a fight they still have the initiative; after all, they still manage the customer relationships of millions of dedicated book buyers. This is their core advantage which will be very difficult to surmount for any retailer in competition. The other advantages Amazon possesses come down to sheer strength. When Amazon fights they take on WalMart. When they build out technology they think industry strength cloud based computing.

The Google eBooks store will raise the bar for book retailing and the new thinking that they have obviously brought to the book retail experience will be beneficial. But don't think Amazon can not adopt any of the initiatives that Google has presented. Of the few dangers that may exist for Amazon could be hubris: Dismissing the positive feedback that Google eBooks receives from users and commentators and not incorporating any changes into their retail experience. And let's face it that Amazon bookstore UI is looking tired cluttered and dated.

From a trends perspective, the Google eBookstore will help accellerate the developing comfort level that consumers have with not owning the products they 'purchase'. Clearly, this could be a bi-product of what the eBookstore is aiming to achieve but the concept of 'books in the cloud' is only a short step away from 'books when you need them' which is a tag line similar to zipcar's. I haven't owned a car since I was 17 but I can get a car whenever I want and very soon I will have the same ability for all books and information. Whether Google eBooks is a usurper - of Amazon's thrown, or a savior - of independent bookstores may miss a larger point that in the launch of Google eBooks we just made a big jump in how we interact with books and content. It just might take a little time to see the implications in plain sight.

Springer launches SpringerBriefs & Tips for eBooks

Springer has announced the launch of a new product line named SpringerBriefs. These short form books running 50 to 125 pages will feature cutting-edge research and practical applications and will be available as eBooks and in print. The company explains that the new product line will cover a wide range of content from professional to academic across a variety of subject areas including business and economics, computer science, human and behavioral sciences, life sciences, mathematics and physical sciences. More from their press release:

Typical topics might include a report on state-of-the-art techniques, a snapshot of a hot or emerging topic, an in-depth case study or a presentation of core concepts for students.

Expert advisory boards and collaborations with academic societies will contribute to generating high-quality content. Streamlined publishing processes and accelerated schedules will take authors’ ideas to market more swiftly than with previous methods. The first titles are scheduled to release in November and December 2010.

All SpringerBriefs titles will be included in the Springer eBook packages that are delivered to libraries and institutions via SpringerLink. They will also be available for sale, through Springer's retail partners, in print or as eBooks for around US$40−50. SpringerBriefs will also be available in print at lower prices through MyCopy, Springer’s print-on-demand program for registered patrons of libraries that subscribe to the Springer eBook Collections.

“As scientific communication evolves, Springer’s portfolio of products must evolve as well. With SpringerBriefs we have created a forum to rapidly publish smaller ‘chunks’ of content yet still maintain the high-quality standards that our authors and customers expect,” said Paul Manning, Executive Vice President Computer Science at Springer.

In a somewhat related story George Scotti, channel marketing director for Springer Science+Business Media was interviewed by BookBusiness Magazine recently and offered these four tips for boosting e-book sales to libraries:

1. Set your content free.

Publish e-books without digital rights management (DRM), and allow concurrent users to access content. “In a database environment, allowing multiple users to access the content provides a better [user] experience … [and] helps to drive usage. Without DRM, users can also share content freely on multiple devices,” says Scotti.

2. Go mobile. To assist in streamlining e-book production across multiple devices, use a universal format like PDF or .epub. “Also, investing in robust XML allows for easy conversion to alternate formats, if necessary,” Scotti adds.

3. Offer a “critical mass” to reduce cost per unit and increase usage/value proposition. “Libraries often are looking to develop a ‘mass’ of titles in a certain subject area. … So offering a ‘critical mass’ of, [for example], biology titles is very attractive to [them]. This lowers cost per unit, and … ensures that the collection will be used. Large collections are indexed by search engines like Google, and listed in the library catalog. When a library gets a lot of usage on content from a single publisher, then there is perceived value and lower cost per use,” he says.

4. You buy it, you own it. Provide institutions perpetual access and ownership of the content they buy. This will make repeat business more attractive and lower total lifetime costs. “If you pay for the content in year one and have access and usage over time, every year the cost per use of that content goes down,” says Scotti.

Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 48): World Book Night, Obit Purushottama Lal, M/A: Reed & WoltersKluwer, Cengage Declines

World Book Night in the UK: One million books to be given away (Telegraph):

The idea was dreamed up by Canongate MD Jamie Byng, who has a knack for discovering talent (the young unknowns Barack Obama and Philip Pullman have long been part of his stable), and whose entire life appears to be an attempt to prove that nothing is as infectious as enthusiasm. World Book Night is a wildly ambitious extension of that theory.

Here’s how it works: Between now and January 4, members of the public are being asked to choose one book they love from a list of 25 pre-selected titles (see the full list below). They – you! – fill in a form saying, in 100 words, why they would like to give this book to others. The recommendation must be personal, and passionate. Each of 20,000 “givers” will then be sent 48 copies of that book to hand out on the night of March 5 at the venue they have chosen, resulting in what promises to be a national, simultaneous frenzy of book-loving.

Monsoon Systems has signed a contract with REDGroup Australia:

"This strategic alliance with Monsoon Commerce Solutions enables Borders.com.au to integrate with the leading marketplace and offer our Australian customers a massive selection of products. In doing this, we become Australia's largest online bookstore, and possibly even Australia's largest online store. Providing the broadest range of media and entertainment products is at the core of our strategy, together with offering unbeatable value to our customers, which this marketplace offer enables us to do. This is key to helping us grow in this competitive and rapidly growing market," said James Webber, managing director of REDgroup Online Pty Ltd. "This offer allows our customers to re-sell their used books on our web site, as well as purchase used and rare books not readily available elsewhere."

Continued Webber, "This is an important addition to the Borders.com.au web site and strengthens its position as one of this region's strongest e-tailers. With an unparalleled range of books and eBooks available, a price guarantee that ensures we are more than competitive with Amazon.com, and the recent extension of our offer into CDs, DVDs, and general gifts, Borders.com.au is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the massive growth in online spending by Australian consumers."

"Monsoon Commerce Solutions is committed to helping sellers and retailers grow their businesses online. Adding marketplace functionality with REDgroup's Australian and New Zealand retail operations dramatically extends their selection and increases customer loyalty. Broadening our reach in this way is another step forward in our commitment to helping sellers grow their business," stated Brian Elliott, CEO of Monsoon Commerce Solutions.

Obit of Purushottama Lal, poet and publisher of Calcutta in the Economist:

Professor Lal’s business was publishing Indian writers in English. Of the great old works he made masterly translations; new writers he encouraged. When he began, ten years after independence, the practice was controversial. Although English was one of India’s official languages, writers in it were often mocked as colonial remnants, “caged chaffinches and polyglot parrots”. He passionately disagreed. His love of English had begun in boyhood and was crowned with his long tenure at St Xavier’s College in Calcutta, to which his landowning family had come from the Punjab. Mention an English poet—Donne, Swinburne, Keats—and “Profsky”, as all his friends called him, would launch into reciting. Give him a word, and he would burrow joyously into its etymology. He was determined to keep the best English writing alive and well in India. And that meant making space for new creative writers, too. Each of the 3,500 titles he published contained, at the back, his “credo”. English book publishing in India, he complained, was governed by a “nexus” of “high-profile PR-conscious book publishers, semi-literate booksellers, moribund public and state libraries, poorly informed and nepotistic underlings in charge of book review pages…and biased bulk purchases of near worthless books by bureaucratic institutions”. He, on the other hand, survived “without plush foundations”, publishing then-unknown authors purely for the love of it. Letters were always answered promptly, in the beautiful hand and with the Sheaffer pen. Manuscripts were accepted, as often as not, just to try their luck in the “loving clutches” of the free market. He made no money at it, and the authors might not either, because they were required to buy 100 copies of their work in advance. Some grumbled, but Writers Workshop was a beacon, not a charity.

Reed Elsevier continues to carve off pieces of its business. This time the Congressional Information Service and University Publications (PR):

Among the acquired product lines' best known works is the Congressional Collection, a one-of-a-kind resource that enables simple access to the full text of the breadth of governmental output -- congressional publications, bills, laws and other research materials – and award-winning Statistical Insight, which captures data produced by U.S. Federal agencies, States, private organizations, and major intergovernmental organizations. The microfilm vault of government documents encompasses text of congressional hearings dating from 1789, providing rich content for ProQuest’s continuously expanding digital archives.

“As LexisNexis continues to transform its portfolio of products and services, we are very pleased to place this business unit with ProQuest as it is an excellent fit for them and their customers,” said Mike Simmons, senior vice president of Specialty Businesses at LexisNexis. “We look forward to working with ProQuest – including licensing back certain legislative content sets from ProQuest for our legal professional customers.”

On the other hand, LexisNexis acquired State Net to add to their collection of government database products and applications (Marketwatch):

LexisNexis, a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions, today announced that it has acquired State Net(R) -- the premier provider of legislative and regulatory content and tools in the United States. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. "Through the acquisition of State Net, LexisNexis has secured critical content and tools needed by legal and business professionals to rapidly monitor and analyze the policy decisions being made by Federal and State governments and regulatory agencies across the US on a daily basis," said Bob Romeo, senior vice president of Research and Litigation Solutions at LexisNexis. "Access to this critical information means our customers are at an advantage when assisting their clients in finding, analyzing and planning for those decisions." State Net collects, normalizes and editorially enhances all bills introduced in the 50 U.S. state legislatures, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Congress, as well as all agency regulations from every state. The service also provides timely delivery of data, legislative intelligence and in-depth content and tools reporting on the actions of government institutions.

SkyRiver (competitor to OCLC) was granted the right to deliver subject headings for adoption and approval to the Library of Congress (LJ)

Wolters Kluwer Health has entered into an agreement to acquire Pharmacy OneSource (CMIO)

Pharmacy OneSource is a healthcare software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider that helps hospitals manage patient safety, compliance and efficiency. Pharmacy OneSource, of Bellevue, Wash., currently works with more than 1,200 hospitals globally, and assists with medication tracking, pediatric dosing, drug interaction checking, managing formularies, documenting and monitoring clinical interventions, and avoiding medication errors and adverse drug reactions via the web or handheld computer, as well as managing checklists to facilitate accurate and consistent compliance reporting.

Cengage Learning reported their first quarter a few weeks ago which saw a $52mm (7%) decline versus 2009. Here is their management summary for the three months ended September 30 (Cengage):

• Revenues decreased by $52.0, or 7.5%, to $641.8 for the three months ended September 30, 2010, including a $3.0 favorable impact from acquisitions and a $0.6 unfavorable impact from foreign currency translation. The revenue decline was driven by gross sales decreases in the higher education and career channels due to changes in customer ordering patterns that accelerated certain orders into the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 from the first quarter of fiscal 2011, as well as our Research business within our Domestic segment, partially offset by higher sales in our International segment.
• Operating income from continuing operations decreased by $33.3, or 13.1%, for the three months ended September 30, 2010, due to lower revenues and restructuring charges, partially offset by lower variable costs, amortization of pre-publication costs and employee and consulting services cost.
• Adjusted EBITDA decreased by $37.2, or 10.4%, for the three months ended September 30, 2010, due to lower revenues partially offset by lower direct product and other variable costs, as well as lower employee and consulting services cost.

From the twitter this week (@personanondata): Why the Library of Congress Is Blocking Wikileaks « Library of Congress Blog JoongAng Daily: U.S. publisher @MarcusLeaver views Korea as trendsetter in e-book growth Google Editions: Faster Forward - Google readies Google Editions e-book store WAPO Onnesha Roychoudhuri: Books After Amazon Boston Review

Hot Rod and Cab

Hot Rod and Cab

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.


Taken in the early 1990's on lower Broadway. I like the two strong colors in this image. Someone even paid me $200 for a print of this once.

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Making Information Pay: Higher Ed Special Program

The Book Industry Study Group is extending their successful Making Information Pay Seminar Series to the Higher Education market. They are hosting an event on February 9, 2011 in New York City. From their press release:

Book companies focusing on the higher education marketplace can learn the ways in which new media is impacting how and where college students are acquiring course materials when the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) hosts a new half-day live conference, titled What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing, February 9, 2011 at the Yale Club of New York City.

In the tradition of BISG's highly-successful Making Information Pay conference series, What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing will present a tightly-focused agenda featuring perspectives from senior executives at industry-leading companies. Rather than providing a broad industry perspective, however, this program is being specifically tailored to the needs of higher education executives in acquisitions, development, media, marketing and sales who need to understand the changing needs of the college students using their materials.

"Today's college student is learning through an expanding array of media channels ranging from traditional textbooks to online learning platforms to websites, social media and mobile applications," said Angela Bole, Deputy Executive Director of BISG. "BISG is happy to be able to expand the successful half-day Making Information Pay conference series into a new annual program focusing solely on the higher education marketplace. This new program will take the industry a long way toward understanding how to compete for adoptions in today's world of open source and online educational products."

In addition to expert speakers, What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing will feature exclusive preliminary findings from BISG's newest research survey, Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education. Powered by Bowker's PubTrack Consumer, this major new survey is providing in-depth analysis into how students currently enrolled in 2-year, 4-year and for-profit institutions perceive and use different types of educational materials in their course of study. The survey is sponsored by Champion Sponsor, Xplana, with additional sponsorship from Baker & Taylor, Budgetext, CourseSmart, Follett Higher Educational Group, Kno and Pearson.

"An event like this, designed particularly for higher education professionals, is critical given the challenges and opportunities facing this market from both a content development and a distribution standpoint," said Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Publishing Services for Bowker. "The timeliness of this event, and the relevance of the data presented, will help academic publishers walk away with tangible insights into these areas."

What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing is organized by the Book Industry Study Group with Anchor Sponsorship from Bowker's PubTrack Consumer. Program and speaker management is being provide

d by Ted Hill of THA Consulting. For more information, or to register, click on the Logo:

Additional event sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact Angela Bole at angela@bisg.org or 646-336-7141 for details.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 47): Digital Collections, Moleskin, Amazon & Tax, Author Interviews, National Digital Library

This edition slightly shorter than normal given the Thanksgiving weekend. Check out these job opportunities if you didn't see them last week (PND). From the LA Times a short article on digital libraries (LAT):

Equipped with imaging equipment far more powerful — and often less expensive — than a decade ago, libraries of all sizes are transforming their physical collections into virtual ones. The ultimate goal is to digitize troves of books and documents long hidden in basements and to share them with the world in electronic form. "Name an institution, and if they have books they're looking to digitize them," said Nick Warnock, president of Los Angeles-based Atiz Innovation Inc., which sells a variety of scanning rigs that allow library technicians to scan as many as 800 pages a minute. The final result is a digitally bound book made from images of the original. Warnock said his business has doubled this year as more libraries and other organizations become aware of the value of scanning older documents. The company says it has sold more than 2,000 of its scanning stations to libraries and government agencies around the world, including Stanford, UCLA and the Getty Center. The lowest-cost Atiz rig, called the BookDrive Mini, sells for around $6,000 without the pair of cameras. Canon models that go with it range from $500 to $7,000 each for high-end models.

And what is note book producer Moleskin up to you ask? (PrintMag):

Despite Moleskine’s understandable support of print, the company has been trying to reach into the digital world. In 2009, it introduced MSK, a program that formats web pages for printout so they can be tucked inside notebooks. It’s not the most elegant system, but it’s a first step toward envisioning a digitally minded Moleskine. The next step is the iPhone app that was initially scheduled to be released last summer. It is now on hold, but the company says it will be a digital correspondent to the paper notebook. A draft press release suggested it would “take geopositioned written or visual notes and share them on social networks.” The layout could be changed to match users’ favorite Moleskines, and notes could be put in MSK formatting and printed out. Users would launch the app by plucking a digital version of the elastic band.

Amazon's Lack of Tax Issue (Salon):

Sales tax is a touchy subject for Amazon. Local retailers have long protested that online stores' tax-free status gives them an unfair price advantage. Amazon, wary of provoking state or federal authorities, has played down this advantage. It doesn't tout tax savings anywhere on its site or in other marketing efforts. In a brilliant report on Amazon's tax strategy, Michael Mazerov of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that company representatives have long argued that Amazon's tax advantage is not a big deal. "People shop online for convenience, for huge selection and great prices, and not because of any sales tax issue," a spokesman said in 1999. And an executive once told a group of state tax administrators that "we don't consider tax as a competitive advantage." (The company didn't respond to my inquiries about its tax policies.) But Mazerov argues that Amazon's actions suggest that taxes have always been a primary consideration. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, moved from New York to Seattle to start the company. "We could have started Amazon.com anywhere," he told Fast Company in 1996. "We chose Seattle because it met a rigorous set of criteria." Among other things, Seattle had lots of talented tech people, it was a nice enough place to attract many more smart people, and it was close to a big book warehouse. This was true of the San Francisco area, too, which Bezos had also considered for Amazon's headquarters. But Bezos saw one major problem with San Francisco—it's in a big state with high taxes, meaning lots of customers would be subject to sales tax if they bought stuff from Amazon. "I even investigated whether we could set up Amazon.com on an Indian reservation near San Francisco," Bezos told Fast Company. "This way we could have access to talent without all the tax consequences. Unfortunately, the government thought of that first."

David Rothman on Creating a National Digital Library System (Atlantic). The article is long but here is a sample (and the comments are useful also):

A library plan and related initiatives should include the actual collections, not just for traditional education and research but also for job training; tight integration with schools, libraries, and other institutions; encouragement of the spread of the right hardware and connections; and the cost-justification described in the stimulus proposal. Multimedia is essential, and Kindle-style tablets will almost surely include color and video in the future, blurring distinctions between them and iPads. But the digital library system mustn't neglect books and other texts. Old-fashioned literacy, in fact, rather than e-book standards, should be the foremost argument for a national digital library system--as a way to expand the number and variety of books for average Americans, especially students. Without basic skills, young people will not be fit for many demanding blue-collar jobs, much less for Ph.D.-level work, and economic growth will suffer (PDF). Even recreational reading of fiction, not just nonfiction, can help develop the comprehension needed for the job-related kind. But by the end of high school, most young people in the United States no longer read for fun. E-books and other technology could expand their reading choices and make books more enticing, through such wrinkles as Kindle-style dictionaries and encyclopedia links to help students better understand the words in front of them. The need is there. Decades ago when I worked the poverty beat at a factory-town newspaper in Lorain, Ohio, on Lake Erie, west of Cleveland, I did not see even pulp-fiction titles in the apartments of typical welfare mothers. Most middle-class homes also tended not to teem with books--probably true in New York or Boston as well. And this antediluvian era was years before distractions such as super-cheap video games, $67 color televisions from WalMart, cellphones, social networks, and, of course, other sites on the World Wide Web. The 2010 Kids and Family Reading Report sponsored by Scholastic says more than half of the surveyed children read for pleasure between six and eight years of age, but that the statistic drops to a quarter for those between 15 and 17. For 15-17-year-old boys, the fraction of recreational readers is a mere fifth--maybe one reason why so many men are falling behind women in earning power.

A great collection of audio interviews with authors on the BBC website:

Great writers have always fascinated their readers. We want to know how they create the characters we love or hate, the evocative settings, and the plots that have us reading late into the night, desperate to know what happens next. Throughout its history, the BBC has aimed to help audiences delve into the imagination of writers. This collection of interviews with some of the 20th Century's most read authors reveals something of those imaginations and the personalities which lie behind some of the greatest modern novels.

From the twitter (@personanondata): Norwegian publishers offer reward to solve William Nygaard case: Guardian Book Industry Study Group Webcast - Digital Books: A New Chapter for Reader Privacy. Nov 30th, 1pm BISG New media and the future of books-Interview with Chi Young-suk (Elsevier, IPA) JoongAng Daily

Thanksgiving 1968

Thanksgiving 1968

A weekly image from my archive. Click on the image to make it larger.
The lobby display at the Siam Intercontinental in 1968. This would count as my first Thanksgiving - although I think that's the middle brother not me. The family had recently arrived in Bangkok where we stayed for about a year before we moved to New Zealand. PND senior was resident manager at the hotel and we lived above the store. I like the pineapples and bananas as part of the display - very authentic.

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Job Opportunities

I rarely do this and maybe I should do it a little more. I am often asked to recommend someone or I'm presented with a position that isn't for me and I will forward a name(s) to those asking. I do my best to help out (and I hope that's reciprocated for me personally - and I think it is).

Here are a few positions I have heard of recently:

Senior Director of Research: This position is in the legal market working for a company that provides insight and value added research. The position will be highly visible within the organization and among the responsibilities are the following:

• Spearhead, direct, and oversee all company research projects from research design to implementation, analysis and product development:
  
  • including research and surveys for both editorial and commercial projects and broader research efforts, including those related to integrated services and systems that support law firms and vendors.
• Publish and disseminate research findings, and offer lessons learned on business of law topics to the field by interacting with others external to to gather input into research design and focus.

This position required prior experience managing a research staff and contributing to research projects.

A major publisher is looking for a Corporate level director of digital strategy: This position is for someone very familiar with digital publishing, business strategy and corporate development. Ideally, the person will be 10/15yrs into their career with top tier strategy consulting experience as well as domain (publishing) experience. Located in NYC.

Director of Metadata Services for a large data company. This is a confidential search but if you have management experience, bibliographic database experience, budgeting and staff reporting experience in a complex business organization then this may be of interest.

The position of Linux Systems Administrator will be responsible for implementing and maintaining reliable, scalable and secure Red Hat and Debian based server environments for several product lines and services. The position will require an excellent understanding of common application topologies (including the LAMP stack and Weblogic based 3-tier applications), performance management and capacity planning of a dynamic and complex environment. The ideal candidate will be a proven technical leader with solid operating system administration skills and the ability to maintain a positive attitude while working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.

(I have only a casual understanding of what any of that means). There's some light programming as well.

If you are qualified and interested in any of these positions let me know and I will forward your details to the right person. All these positions are with different companies and are being handled by different people.

michael.cairns at infomediapartners.com

Take A Holiday Reading Survey for A Cause

From Publishing Trends:

Welcome to our Holiday Books: Giving and Getting survey, which we hope you'll fill out (and ask your friends to fill out as well). For each person who completes the survey, Publishing Trends will donate $1 to Room to Read (http://www.roomtoread.org).

Take the survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JZ7PCVY

It focuses on the books you'll be giving (and hoping to get) this holiday season, as well as where you go for gifts (your company’s warehouse? Amazon?) and other book-giving etiquette issues, holiday parties, and more. It’s fun to take—we promise—and the results will be included in the December issue of Publishing Trends.

The survey closes on Tuesday, November 30.

Happy holidays,

Laura Hazard Owen

Editor, Publishing Trends

Speculation over Reed Elsevier (Again): Missing the Bigger Point

Several UK Sunday newspapers report new speculation about the future of Reed Elsevier and specifically whether the company could be ripe for a private equity buy-out. Shares were volatile on Friday in what could be more a reflection of market boredom than anything else. Since Erik Engstrom took over the CEO role a year ago, analysts have speculated that the company would either shed assets or be taken private given the company's languishing share price and inconsistent performance across the group. Last week the company confirmed their full year guidance which calls for "modest" erosion of margins given a strained revenue outlook (Bloomberg):

“As previously stated, a modest reduction year-on-year in adjusted operating margin is expected due to a weak revenue environment and increased investment in legal markets,” the London-based company said in a Business Wire statement today. “Any sustained recovery is expected to be gradual and remains dependent on economic conditions.”

Subscription sales in many professional markets are still constrained by “low customer activity levels and budgets,” while advertising and other cyclical markets continued to stabilize, according to the statement.

“In the second half we have continued to sharpen our focus in key markets, through new product development, increased sales and marketing activities, and portfolio realignment,” Chief Executive Officer Erik Engstrom said in the statement.

Weakened renewal subscriptions are likely to constrain revenue for sometime given annual subscription cycles in addition to weakness in the professional markets such as their legal market. The company has sold off some smaller business and products - last week they sold a German business unit to Wolters Kluwer for example but in total these seem minor compared with what analysts and potential private equity investors may be contemplating.

The Telegraph tries to put some more meat on the bones of a somewhat old story by suggesting that the management team at Reed Exhibitions is working with private equity groups Cinven and Apax to prepare a bid for the Exhibitions business unit. Private equity as said to respect the management of the group: Whether Engstrom respects them on Monday morning may be another story.

These titillating financial stories gloss over some difficult issues for Reed Elsevier. In particular, the company is likely to see significant competition from Bloomberg as that company aggressively targets the legal and regulatory market place. Unfortunately for Reed, they may be strategically limited by not having a strong financial and business news unit which is the core of Bloomberg and which Thomson West - their other competitor - possesses in Thomson Financial & Reuters. (A deal between Reed and Reuters would have been strategically more important than the deal the company ultimately made to acquire Choicepoint). Whereas information companies built their businesses over the past 15yrs on organization around silos - financial, news, medical, legal, etc. - the rapid improvement in search, taxonomies and user interface are enabling information companies to 'reintegrate' their siloed content. This is where Reed maybe disadvantaged vis a vis Bloomberg and Thomson and whether that can be solved by taking the company private is a crap shoot. But then, that's what private equity is good at.

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Michael Cairns

See also Crains (Reg Required). C/P headline into Google.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 47): Tolstoy's Family, Hornby's Kids, King James Bible, Brighton Rock.

Leo Tolstoy's impressive family tree (Independent):

But it’s not just his work that has spread across the globe – it’s also his descendents. Leo and his wife Sofia had, during their long and tempestuous marriage, 13 children (five of whom died young). During the revolution, members of this large family fled Russia. In the hundred years since his death, the Tolstoy diaspora – now numbering over 300 – has fanned out, with family clusters in France, Italy and Sweden, and descendants to be found as far afield as Uruguay, Brazil and the United States. The importance of family to Tolstoy was enormous, according to Orwin. “For him, the family was the lynchpin that brought together nature and civilization, happiness and duty.” Tolstoy’s work itself often features pretty hefty family dynasties: War and Peace includes characters based on Tolstoy’s own relations (Princess Mary and Nicholas Rostov, for example, were modelled on his parents). Orwin adds that “he could never have written Anna Karenina without his family experience. When Tolstoy describes Anna’s clandestine visit to her son Seryozha, he is drawing on his personal observations of the love between mother and child at Yasnaya Polyana.” Rosamund Bartlett, author of new biography Tolstoy: A Russian Life, adds: “In his earlier life, family meant everything to Tolstoy - although he withdrew from family life in his later years. He was forever seeking in his fiction to recreate the lost paradise of his early childhood, which is one reason why his family estate Yasnaya Polyana was so important.”

Tolstoy in Worldcat Inside Nick Hornby's Ministry of Stories (Observer)

Author Nick Hornby and art entrepreneurs Ben Payne and Lucy Macnab open the first Ministry of Stories centre in east London. Based on Dave Eggars' San Francisco project 826 Valencia, the volunteer-run Hoxton Street Monster Supplies aims to inspire children in creative writing. It has already found favour with David Cameron and his 'big society' agenda.

Robert McCrum in the Observer takes a look at the King James bible as it turns 400 (Observer):

As well as selling an estimated 1bn copies since 1611, the KJB went straight into our literary bloodstream like a lifesaving drug. Whenever we put words into someone's mouth, or see the writing on the wall, or go from strength to strength, or eat, drink and be merry, or fight the good fight, or bemoan the signs of the times, or find a fly in the ointment, or use words such as "long-suffering", "scapegoat" and "peacemaker" we are unconsciously quoting the KJB. More astounding, compared to Shakespeare's prodigal 31,000-word vocabulary, the KJB works its magic with a lexicon of just 12,000 words.More than this enthralling matrix of linguistic influence, there's the miracle of the translation itself, a triumph of creative collaboration (54 scholars in six committees), outright plagiarism and good old English pragmatism. The Authorized Version's mission statement was a masterpiece of lowered expectations. Its aim, it declared, was not "to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, that hath been our endeavour".

Movie trailer for the remake of Graham Green's Brighton Rock (Guardian) Lonely Planet has identified their list of the world's greatest bookstores (LP):

Bookshops are a traveller’s best friend: they provide convenient shelter and diversion in bad weather, they’re a reliable source of maps, notebooks, and travel guides, they often host readings and other cultural events, and if you raced through your lone paperback on the first leg of your trip, the bookshop is the place to go for literary replenishment. Taken from Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2011, here are our picks for the best spots to browse, buy, hang out, find sanctuary among the shelves, rave about your favourite writers and meet book-loving characters.

From the twitter (@personanondata) Elvis Costello's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Ever: http://tinyurl.com/2taw3s iPad 'newspaper' created by Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch Guardian UWash Report - How Students Use of Information in the Digital Age PND Can't Pick a College Major? Create One - WSJ Wolters Kluwer buys Lexis Nexis Germany from Reed Reuters

And in sports a great article charting the launch of the (un)Manchester United team FC United of Manchester (Observer). Things are looking good for Man Utd at the moment (BBC) though we should have won at least four more games.

Repost: Book Buyers in all the Strange Places

Originally posted on February 25, 2007:

A few weeks ago Mrs PND and I were watching The Daily Show-- and I thought this show and The Colbert Report, which follows it, are really serious about books. And not your run-of-the- mill titles, but some with real meat. Recent authors on the shows have included Ralph Nader, John Danforth, Jimmy Carter and Ishmael Beah. It is curious that the last title seems to have generated some media attention on a number of fronts. Firstly, it was the second title that Starbucks has selected to 'showcase' in its stores (following Mitch Albom's recent book). Recent sales figures indicate that sales through Starbucks are smoking the traditional sales channels of B&N and Borders. Fellow traveller Eoin Purcell noted the reports from Galleycat and wondered several things about the market for these books sold via Starbucks and whether publishers are doing something wrong. In my mind, Starbucks moving so many units has more to do with the power of the Starbucks brand but it could also reflect a deficiency in publishers' marketing philosophy, as I noted in my comments on his blog:

In my mind there is a distinct correlation between a Starbucks selection and an Oprah selection and it doesn’t surprise me that Beah’s book and the Albom title are doing well at Starbucks. The reason I think there is a correlation is that the Starbucks and Oprah brands are so strong we well may trust them to recommend anything (probably some limits!). Certainly there are some other factors at play - no other titles, spur of the moment purchasing, what have you - but I think we believe that the title is available at Starbucks because they have taken the time - like Oprah and Richard and Judy - to select the very best title that they believe their customers will like and value. Five or six years ago, no one would have predicted that Oprah would be able to move so many books and it took the industry by surprise. The point for publishers is that there are ‘influencers’ that captivate the media (and thereby consumers) that publishers need to identify, nurture and exploit. I think it will be the canny publisher that actually starts to build a list specifically of interest to an ‘influencer’ so that this person (or brand) can support and promote the titles as Starbucks or Oprah does. For example, what if Macmillan launched a Starbucks imprint to sell titles (out of every outlet) that were selected and ‘vetted’ by the Starbucks team. The books would be available everywhere else but, at Starbucks, the consumer would associate their warm fuzzy feeling about the brand to the product extension--the books.

I do think that success in non-traditional outlets seems to catch publishers off-guard. A few months ago, the NYT wrote about books sold at weird, non-bookstore outlets such as butcher shops and clothes stores. Many in the industry derided the article because, as 'insiders', we thought the NYT was being disingenuous about something publishers already know. But do they?

Today's article in the Times discusses the book program on Comedy Central and it strongly suggests that the success of the program is an accident - at least to the publishers. Perhaps this is the manner in which the article is written; however, it appears that weighty titles are ending up on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because the traditional outlets utilized by publishers don't work as well as they used to. Thus by default. What is unsaid is that publishers don't really understand their market. The relationship between The Daily Show audience and a publisher's target consumer should be easy to determine. Yet, despite the fact that The Daily Show has been on for 10 years, we are supposed to be surprised at the bump Beah's book received after appearing on the show two weeks ago.

Publishers say that particularly for the last six months, “The Daily Show” and its spin off, “The Colbert Report,” which has on similarly wonky authors, like the former White House official David Kuo, have become the most reliable venues for promoting weighty books whose authors would otherwise end up on “The Early Show” on CBS looking like they showed up at the wrong party.

Perhaps twenty years ago, Rolling Stone magazine ran an ad campaign that showed a hippie tricked-out VW van with weird colors and stickers with a recent Merc or BMW next to it. The ad was headed "Perception and Reality "and was meant to show that the readers of RS were not the hippies of old, but rich yuppies. To some extent, there may be some of this going on here when the publishers say,

Part of the surprise, publishers said, is that the Comedy Central audience is more serious than its reputation allows. The public may still think of the “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” audience as a group of sardonic slackers, Gen-Y college students who prefer YouTube to print. But publishers say it’s a much more diverse demographic — and, more important, a book-buying audience.

There are more book buyers out there and perhaps if publishers spent more time understanding how 'influencers' manage our information flows they wouldn't be taken by surprise. As we know, 'influencers' can be butchers as much as they can be news readers.

The Times isn't necessarily a completely viable messenger and I believe their perceptions are off-kilter to some degree, as they reflect on the subject matter and refer to it as 'fake-news'. Objectively, The Daily Show is not 'fake-news'; it is ironic, funny and sometimes brutally honest news, but it is news nonetheless. I expect they wouldn't suggest that the NBC news is 'real news' just because it is dull and humourless.

It all comes down to knowing your audience. That is the Starbucks way and should be what publishers need to do more of.