Reed Elsevier Selling Harcourt Education

Perhaps on reflection this is no surprise as the results at Education had been lagging for sometime. The motivation to sell is similar to that expressed by Thomson Learning in that online and electronic revenues are growing faster and opportunities there are greater than they are in education. Reed Elsevier has significant online revenue at Elsevier (Journals), Lexis Nexis and in Legal & Regulatory (Martindale).

During his analyst presentation Sir Crispin Davis said that Harcourt increasingly differs from the core RE business units in market growth expectations and revenue model and that the opportunities for electronic and online revenues are "less clear". This also comes in the context of a 20% drop in operating profit for the unit.

For the year RE Group revenues were up 6% with 5% from organic growth and operating profit (despite the 20% drop for Harcourt) was up 9% for the 12mths. Here is the analyst presentation. Here is their summary press release.

Davis went on to say that the divestiture would probably occur in the second half of 2007 and that the proceeds would be divested to shareholders. The unit would be expected to sell for over £1.0billion however, the market for large educational assets is a little glutted right now.

Importantly, Harcourt is focused on k-12 so revenues are focused and RE expects some key adoptions during 2007 - for which they have invested pre-pub expense - and if those are won then the company will be more attractive (obviously). They may have some advantage but we will see. Private equity has to be the prime candidate for acquisition.

Here is a Times article.
Here is a local Oxford Mirror article

Interestingly, I can't help thinking that because Thomson and Elsevier compete aggressively in certain areas that RE do not want to loose out if Thomson take their Education Divesture dollars and go after something big that places them either in greater competition with RE or takes off the market a business that RE could also logically acquire. Their stated strategic goals are similar - grow electronic and recurring revenues and provide integration tools for users of their products. Both see the last part of that strategy as vitial because achieving it can raise switching costs for customers and effectively embed the publishers products into the work flows. Once one of these players gets a leg up the market could become hard to crack for the "looser." Despite suggesting they will return the money to shareholders, RE has no reason to do this and watch as a prime asset goes (cheaply) to one of their primary competitors. It may be fun to watch.

WorldCat Identities: Making Data Work Harder

What is cool about this project that OCLC is announcing today is that the data was already in Worldcat and this is a new and different way to view the data. Worldcat is a bibliographic database of over 65million records and 120mm items. It is huge, and represents the data from some 60,000 local library collections. Making data work harder isn't a formal initiative but it should be a mantra any database manager would live by and in this case the results are quite interesting. It is represents the work of the OCLC office of research and principally Thom Hickey (blog) and it will be interesting to see how this initiative evolves and develops over time.

Especially interesting will be whether/if other database providers such as wikipedea or Amazon would value this representation of Worldcat. No word yet on how this would be effected in a formal way but any user can create a url string that creates a search of Worldcat and perhaps the Identities could be searched in the same manner. Lorcan's site (linked to above) enables you to search on 'canned' searches listed (including Kyle Minogue who seems to be a personal favorite) as well as a browse by subject which from a serendipity standpoint is fun to play with.

Here is a sample screenshot:

Rolling Stones Rock n Roll Circus

It was sweeps week on PBS last week which is patent made for TIVO and I happened to note that they were playing a restored version of the Rolling Stones 1968 TV show Rock and Roll Circus. Apparently most of the film of this show was lost soon after performance because some say the Stones were mediocre and The Who were fantastic. It was never broadcast. Others on the show include John and Yoko, Eric Clapton and Taj Mahal. The Who do indeed play a great set and there is also an adhoc super-group (The Dirty Mac) with Clapton, Lennon, Richards and Mitch Mitchell. Later Yoko joins in with an infamous wailing tour-de-force. (Townshend says in an interview on the DVD that this didn't bother him, but thank god for TIVO that's all I can say).

There is more on the DVD than was broadcast on PBS including a longer set from Taj Mahal. He still comes to NYC regularly and I hope to check out a concert the next time he is here. Watching the show inspired me to start reading According to The Rolling Stones published by Chronicle Books. It has been sitting on the shelf for two years gathering dust. So far it is incredibly interesting to learn how they all came together in Ealing and Edith Grove. Curiously, there is virtually nothing in this book about the Circus. (So, here is wikipedia). Maybe there is something to the notion that they thought they were out-done by The Who. I thought The Stones sounded great but I did notice that there seemed to be no interaction at all between the members of the band. Poor Brian was dead 7 mths later.

Tuesday Take-up

It took Books In Print over 130 years to get to 10million books. Here Librarything.com seems to have done it in two years. Of course, the databases are not directly compatible but it is nevertheless quite a powerful statement for croudsourcing and social networking.

Since it is coming into Academy Award season here is a list of popular books that haven't made it onto the screen. The list includes The Catcher in the Rye, Atlas Shrugged and Mein Kampf (Selznick produces and Hitch directs).

The posts on Hitwise are always interesting and here is a recent one on search terms.

From Public Lending Right in the UK is an annual listing of the most popular titles checked out of UK libraries. The winner is a children's writer Jacqueline Wilson.

Titles by the immensely popular children’s writer were lent almost two million
times between July 2005 and June 2006. Wilson’s nearest rivals are the adult
novelists, James Patterson, Josephine Cox, Danielle Steel and Ian Rankin who
each need to clock up at least another half million loans annually before they
can pose a threat to the "queen of library lending".

The article also notes the strength in lending of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling which is interesting to me given the huge numbers of copies sold through retail, the abundance of second hand copies, continued strength of paper and mass market versions and yet they are still strong through the library. What does that mean?

When Martha Stewart published her first cookbook there were rumors the recipies hadn't been fully tested. I don't know if this was true or malicious however Mrs PND has never cooked a bad meal out of one of the MS books. Along the same lines is a cautionary tale from India. Do not include meat in your recipies.

New Shoes, New Music

Over at The Bookbar Jessica had a post today about shoes which ordinarily wouldn't have caught my attention other that the fact that I just heard about Paulo Nutini who has a song 'New Shoes' and was on the Today show. MRS PND can't seem to get enough of the song and the video. He as on the today show a week ago and she won't erase it from the tivo. The CD is actually pretty good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiXD2eAFxE0

As I understand it, Paulo's mum and dad live over a chip shop. Boy's definitely on his way.

Thomson Learning: Let the Auction Begin

Now that the year end numbers are out of the way, expect to hear more frequent discussion about the sale of the Thomson Learning unit of Thomson. Full year results were summarized by Reuters and the Thomson web site has more detailed information. Once the Learning segment is sold it will be interesting to see where Thomson spends the expected $5.0billion proceeds. It just means more deals to come as the company already has free cash over $1.obillion. They should be able to splurge and we may see them to execute a rights issue if they find something especially expensive (Bloomberg for example).

The Learning segment has been classified under discontinued operations and the overview comments are as follows:

Thomson Learning accounted for the majority of results in Discontinued
operations, with revenues of $672 million in the fourth quarter and $2.4 billion
for the full year of 2006. Thomson Learning’s operating profit was $161
million in the fourth quarter and $383 million for the full year. The
majority of Learning’s results were generated by the higher education, careers
and library reference businesses as well as NETg and Prometric, which were
announced for sale in the fourth quarter of 2006.

In their executive presentation the detailed results for Learning show decent results as compared with industry leader Pearson. Top line gained 5% and Operating Profit of $359MM was 6% better than prior with a very slightly higher operating margin. Pearson which will report at the end of February has consistently grown a 1-2pts better than Thomson over the past five years and their operating margin has steadily improved over the same period. It will be interesting to see the comparison at the end of the month.

It would be a big surprise if Thomson Learning does not go to a private equity buyer; there has been a lot of interest thus far.

Space Oddity

Which was one headline yesterday, but I think the winner for funniest headline was "Dark Side of the Loon" printed by The New York Daily News. The Post had "Lust in Space." More confirmation to me that the space program is both pointless and crazy.

Blogging In Baghdad

From the NYT via the British Library here is an article about and link to a web diary about the National Library and Archive in Baghdad. A flavor,

Written in a flat, unemotional style, the entries relate the bombings,
blockades, shootings, threats, shortages and petty frustrations that make up
everyday life for the cadre of civil servants working at Iraq’s main cultural
and literary storehouse. A complaint that heating fuel prices are 40 times
higher than in the fall is followed by a report on the assassination of one of
the library’s bright young Web designers and the need to ask the government to
keep the electricity on.

Tuesday Trivia

There was a 'Super bowl' this weekend and I have to confess it wasn't until last wednesday that I knew who was playing (meanwhile my team keeps scoring goals some of which are spectacular).

Unless you live in the Arctic with a million penguins (and New York feels that way at the moment) you will have heard of the wikinovel idea launched last week. They are jumping on the wiki band wagon and you have to give them credit for the experiement but it is hard to see how anything coherent is going to come of this. The construct of the novel - some lone guy sitting naked in a room for months writing - doesn't travel far and certainly not to the collaborative mess that a wiki novel could create. That doesn't mean that creative expression that results in some type of novel-like work can't be done collaboratively just not the way we know it as yet. To me, it may end up like some weird combination of Penny Lane and Second Life.

With all my filters set to capture publishing related news and stuff the announcement from Library of Congress regarding a grant they recieved to digitize some text material seems to have slipped through. Thanks to the millionsblog for finding it. Millions also has a list with covers of all the Booker Prize long list books. (I've only read one of them).

In a similar vein, here is an article from BBC News looking at how governments could build libraries that preserve both digital and print versions of content. The article is a case study of the approach Canada has taken to begin preserving digital content.

Instead, the rules focus on online material that is considered to be in "publication" form......As part of the deposit process, publishers can choose between open access, which allows the public to view and download the publication through the internet, or restricted access, which limits public access to selected computer terminals at the LAC's main building in Ottawa. The LAC encourages publishers to select open access whenever possible.

I am not sure if this means anything, but in 1980 a hardback cost $14.00 and Levis 501's about $20. This year the Harry Potter book will be $35 and 501's cost $45. What's the problem? Here is a perspective from SeekingAlpha. (Oh and I still wear the same size).

From mediabistro here is a longer review of the recent NY Public Google fest. Nothing hugely new here:

On went the catchphrases at the one-day event, carefully designed to tell attending publishing industry types that if you're not moving with the digital times, you're just not a 21st Century publisher. And as the day wore on, it seemed as if the audience had been completely lulled into submission by the overly positive mood and the plentiful supply of food.

It was by many accounts quite the love-in. Was is Devo that said Are We Not Ludites?

And then, the moderator cut off questioning and the conference returned to its shiny, happy, artificial equilibrium. But for that single moment, the tension between Google and the publishing world was on display -– as well as the larger sense that there's no holding back the tide of change to an industry still struggling to understand what the digital age is all about. "The publishing industry has become increasingly irrelevant," said author and UnBound speaker Seth Godin in a recent telephone interview. "They need to stop thinking about selling paper, when the last big changes to that model took place over sixty years ago with popularization of the paperback."

Here is a link to Seth's new book. Not too good for him are we?

And here is a longer review of the new Amazon product wiki from O'Reilly.

Amapedia is very tag focused. They can be used for searching, navigating, and comparing. There are two different types of tags fact tags (very similar to Flickr's new machine tags - Radar Post) and category tags )such as Real-Time Strategy Games). The fact tags are name:value pairs such as Number of Factions. Most articles when only have a couple of category tags; they are supposed to answer the question "What is this?".

That's it for a while.

Gather Looking Like Prodigy?

When I was at Berlitz we struck a deal with an internet portal named Prodigy to manage their language section and have it branded with the Berlitz name. It was reasonably successful; not that we made much money, but we exposed the brand to a lot of new people. Prodigy lost out to AOL and is barely heard of but when I saw this news story about Gather.com I immediately thought of the comparison with Prodigy. Gather.com is growing rapidly in popularity and has chosen to focus on the older generation (myspace for pensioners). Funny, that if they hit their demo some of these people will have had Prodigy accounts. They have announced some content deals with Publishers' Weekly, Columbia House and McGraw Hill and I suspect more will be on the way.



The announcement states that Publishers' Weekly will:

In the books category, Publishers Weekly will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the publishing world, while getting feedback from avid readers. "On Gather.com, our experts will not only share what they discover, but learn about what book lovers think and want to know," said David Nudo, publisher of Publishers Weekly, in a statement. "This information is invaluable to us."

And,

Columbia, meanwhile, is developing a site for Gather.com's music channel to promote the label's new releases and artists like Beyonce, Bob Dylan and John
Mayer. The label's recording stars will join in online sessions with users as part of promotional efforts around new records.

Currently the interface to books looks like this:

but I suspect they are going to have to change it to accomodate the new partners and give them brand space.

Perhaps more interesting to me will be the possible impact this alliance will have on Publishers' Weekly which has stuggled somewhat with their internet forays over the years and haven't effectively created a consumer profile for the brand. Their reviews program is the BIG exception to this. Meanwhile the significant B2B segment of their business has been diminishing which has place significant pressure on the company. If they are able to channel consumer interest, information, content, etc and extend their brand with consumers but also importantly creating new value for their B2B (Publishers, Booksellers) then they will really have accomplished something.

It's not Mr.Dewey's Search Engine Anymore

Read/WriteWeb is an excellent blog dedicated to all things web 2.0ish. You could spend a lot of time here catching up with whats new in web development, new companies and new approaches. Here is their description:

Read/WriteWeb is a popular weblog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis. It began publishing on April 20, 2003 and is now one of the most widely read and respected Web 2.0 blogs. Read/WriteWeb is ranked among Technorati’s Top 100 blogs in the world. The site is edited by Richard MacManus, a recognized thought leader in the Internet industry.

I say check it out. And specifically look at this recent article on search engines - that is the other 100. It is facinating to look at some of the examples he links to and I recommend MsDewey (who is significantly more attractive than you might imagine) and LivePlasma. If you get to MsDewey search for book or books several times in a row and see what happens. It is facinating. (Note: I just went back to MsDewey is seemed to get stumped; regardless, a benefit is to remain transfixed on MsDewey).

Feedburner

I am attempting to consolidate RSS feeds of this site to Feedburner.

Here is the new RSS url:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Personanondata

If you are using MS Explorer you may also be able to see two RSS choices clicking on the RSS icon on your nav bar. Please switch over from the .atom feed to Feedburner

Thanks,