On the back of their self-regulation of the famous swimsuit issue, Sports Illustrated announced that they would no longer report on women's professional volley ball. In comments, the company stated that the decision to restrict circulation of the swimsuit issue to libraries had led to some internal 'soul searching' and, as a result, the company had decided that they would no longer picture the scantily clad and excessively athetic atheletes of the PVA in the magazine. No word yet from the library community.
In other news, the ISBN community reported that they are considering adding a suffix to the recently adopted 13 digit ISBN syntax that will enable ISBNs to include additional characters and/or numbers for parts of products. The proposal would add a decimal point followed by whatever series of numbers and symbols the publisher required. The agency commented that the additional characters would not be confusing - unless the publisher chose to use a rune - and that they would be basically ignored by electronic bar-code readers. The decimal point would be calculated as a zero.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Borders (Lack of) Strategic Plan
The WSJ took a look at Borders today but not in any great analytical sense (subscription required). There is much to think about from the perspective of shareholders but this perspective seems to be missing from the discussion thus far. Perhaps some of the analysts that follow the company are preparing their position reports. The Journal did allude to the possibility that Borders could be a PE target: I would wonder about that although they believe this seems to be buoying the stock. In my opinion given the newish management, I think any Banker would want to see some improvement before they jumped in. Over the past six months there have been precious few positive actions out of the company but only a few people seem to be concerned about the long timetable to improvement.
My post from earlier this week.
Here were some other blog posts:
The Publishing Contrarian
Booksquare
My post from earlier this week.
Here were some other blog posts:
The Publishing Contrarian
Booksquare
The Road - Cormac McCarthy. An Oprah Pick
Oprah announced an unusual choice for her Book Selection today. Cormac McCarthy's The Road which I read in November is a frightening book and I recommend it. Here is my take.
If you saw the movies 21 days or Omega Man or Plant of the Apes you will know that in the post apocalyptic world we will be separated into two classes. Those that remain human and those that have become something terribly mutated. So it goes with The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
The book is immediately powerful because the reader sees this post-Armageddon future as entirely likely and the ravages forced on society as absolutely plausible. There are two characters in the book - father and son - and so depraved are the antagonists that the father concentrates on retaining one remaining bullet for his gun so he can shoot his son should they be captured. He cannot let the son become victim to a certain end that is revealed episodically until a climatic moment near the middle of the book. As they stumble along the road in a daily struggle for food the possible future is horrifyingly recounted when they nearly interrupt a cannibals smorgasbord replete with cauldron in the yard.
The book depicts a greyed out world where nothing apparently grows, all structures have been stripped by some locust of human desperation and death is found everywhere even in the tarmac of the the road they are travelling. It is not entirely clear where they are travelling or what has lead them to make this journey - there are several explanations which adds to the mystery. The book is riveting and is a stylized conversation between father and son which flows fast and sure. The Road, which I read in two days will live in my mind for a long time, but as horrific as this story is, I am sure the real thing will be worse and that is saying something.
If you saw the movies 21 days or Omega Man or Plant of the Apes you will know that in the post apocalyptic world we will be separated into two classes. Those that remain human and those that have become something terribly mutated. So it goes with The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
The book is immediately powerful because the reader sees this post-Armageddon future as entirely likely and the ravages forced on society as absolutely plausible. There are two characters in the book - father and son - and so depraved are the antagonists that the father concentrates on retaining one remaining bullet for his gun so he can shoot his son should they be captured. He cannot let the son become victim to a certain end that is revealed episodically until a climatic moment near the middle of the book. As they stumble along the road in a daily struggle for food the possible future is horrifyingly recounted when they nearly interrupt a cannibals smorgasbord replete with cauldron in the yard.
The book depicts a greyed out world where nothing apparently grows, all structures have been stripped by some locust of human desperation and death is found everywhere even in the tarmac of the the road they are travelling. It is not entirely clear where they are travelling or what has lead them to make this journey - there are several explanations which adds to the mystery. The book is riveting and is a stylized conversation between father and son which flows fast and sure. The Road, which I read in two days will live in my mind for a long time, but as horrific as this story is, I am sure the real thing will be worse and that is saying something.
Metadata, identifiers and a challenge ahead ….
Another rehash from March 28, 2007 this time a post written by Michael Healy who at the time was the Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group. Michael has since moved on to Copyright Clearance Center but all of these issues he spoke about in 2007 remain relevant.
I am (unsurprisingly) in complete agreement with Michael’s comment in his thought-provoking piece on metadata that publishing businesses “must continue to focus on product information”. No one would seriously argue with his assertion that the quality of metadata has risen in recent years.
Several factors have influenced the improvements we have seen. International standards, notably ONIX, have been helpful to this process and many publishers, booksellers and data aggregators have adopted it to organize and communicate information in a standardized way. Practical guidance has also been made available. The Book Industry Study Group has prepared Product Metadata Best Practices, a set of voluntary guidelines that aims to help publishers improve the quality of their product information throughout the supply chain and speed the delivery of that information to the vendors’ trading partners. Innovative services from companies like Quality Solutions and Netread have also played their part.
I think also the general level of awareness in the book industry of the role product information plays in selling books has risen substantially. This has been helped by leaders like David Young at Hachette, Joe Gonnella at Barnes & Noble, and many others evangelizing on the subject for many years.
Under normal circumstances when improvements like those we have seen are made there is a danger of complacency setting in, but I see encouraging signs that this is being avoided. In many of the larger publishing houses, where investment in quality metadata has already been significant, I find abundant evidence of a commitment to raise standards even further. Many examples of high-quality data can be found outside these large houses, but I think it remains true that many smaller companies, working with fewer resources, have a lot to do raise their game. Organizations like BISG must face the challenge of how to reach these companies with clear, straightforward advice and with tools to help them deliver good metadata. We will be announcing some initiatives in this area shortly.
More work is certainly needed in the standards area and much of this is underway. A new release of ONIX is expected later this year which, among other things, will improve its handling of digital publications. An entirely new standard now under development, the International Standard Party Identifier (ISPI), will in time establish a unique identifier for authors, composers, performers and others in the creative supply chain. We are all aware of how unreliable personal names are as a means of identifying individuals, especially when we consider how many people share the same name and how many authors use pseudonyms. The adoption of a standard ID for personal and corporate names will be a big step in eliminating ambiguity when searching and in facilitating transactions such as the remittance of royalties.
RFID also appears to offer interesting opportunities. As the price of tags continues to fall we are beginning to see some large-scale adoptions in libraries, notwithstanding well-documented concerns about privacy issues. In bookselling, at least so far, the response has been more cautious. The adoption of RFID by the leading Dutch bookshop chain, BGN, has certainly stimulated interest among American booksellers but at the moment most of them appear to be waiting for more compelling cost benefits to emerge.
As we look further ahead into a future in which more fragmented content is sold, distributed and traded digitally, whether it’s cookery recipes or individual chapters from textbooks, one key question is how the industry will cope with the metadata challenge. If publishers are finding it demanding today to provide comprehensive, accurate and timely product information to support a universe of more than 3.0 million US titles and 200,000 new books a year, what happens in a market where available product is set to grow exponentially?
Michael can be reached directly at CCC.
Links: Metadata: What does it all mean
I am (unsurprisingly) in complete agreement with Michael’s comment in his thought-provoking piece on metadata that publishing businesses “must continue to focus on product information”. No one would seriously argue with his assertion that the quality of metadata has risen in recent years.
Several factors have influenced the improvements we have seen. International standards, notably ONIX, have been helpful to this process and many publishers, booksellers and data aggregators have adopted it to organize and communicate information in a standardized way. Practical guidance has also been made available. The Book Industry Study Group has prepared Product Metadata Best Practices, a set of voluntary guidelines that aims to help publishers improve the quality of their product information throughout the supply chain and speed the delivery of that information to the vendors’ trading partners. Innovative services from companies like Quality Solutions and Netread have also played their part.
I think also the general level of awareness in the book industry of the role product information plays in selling books has risen substantially. This has been helped by leaders like David Young at Hachette, Joe Gonnella at Barnes & Noble, and many others evangelizing on the subject for many years.
Under normal circumstances when improvements like those we have seen are made there is a danger of complacency setting in, but I see encouraging signs that this is being avoided. In many of the larger publishing houses, where investment in quality metadata has already been significant, I find abundant evidence of a commitment to raise standards even further. Many examples of high-quality data can be found outside these large houses, but I think it remains true that many smaller companies, working with fewer resources, have a lot to do raise their game. Organizations like BISG must face the challenge of how to reach these companies with clear, straightforward advice and with tools to help them deliver good metadata. We will be announcing some initiatives in this area shortly.
More work is certainly needed in the standards area and much of this is underway. A new release of ONIX is expected later this year which, among other things, will improve its handling of digital publications. An entirely new standard now under development, the International Standard Party Identifier (ISPI), will in time establish a unique identifier for authors, composers, performers and others in the creative supply chain. We are all aware of how unreliable personal names are as a means of identifying individuals, especially when we consider how many people share the same name and how many authors use pseudonyms. The adoption of a standard ID for personal and corporate names will be a big step in eliminating ambiguity when searching and in facilitating transactions such as the remittance of royalties.
RFID also appears to offer interesting opportunities. As the price of tags continues to fall we are beginning to see some large-scale adoptions in libraries, notwithstanding well-documented concerns about privacy issues. In bookselling, at least so far, the response has been more cautious. The adoption of RFID by the leading Dutch bookshop chain, BGN, has certainly stimulated interest among American booksellers but at the moment most of them appear to be waiting for more compelling cost benefits to emerge.
As we look further ahead into a future in which more fragmented content is sold, distributed and traded digitally, whether it’s cookery recipes or individual chapters from textbooks, one key question is how the industry will cope with the metadata challenge. If publishers are finding it demanding today to provide comprehensive, accurate and timely product information to support a universe of more than 3.0 million US titles and 200,000 new books a year, what happens in a market where available product is set to grow exponentially?
Michael can be reached directly at CCC.
Links: Metadata: What does it all mean
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Thomson Learning Sale Update
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) is naming the names of those who are bidding for Thomson Learning. No real surprises and it would appear that the only operator that may emerge as a potential party to an acquisition is Bertelsmann. The only reason for that would be the announcement last week of Bertelsmann's establishment of a private equity fund. Perhaps if that announcement had not been made this list would be exclusively PE. Those named in the article are Bain, Thomas Lee, Blackstone, Warburg and Apax. Pretty much the top of the pile.
According to the article the dd meetings are underway and a deal is expected in the next two months. It seems likely that the Reed/Harcourt divestiture timetable may be set back into the third quarter due to this activity. Now that the WK education deal is done activity and attention will move to Thomson so look for more articles.
Globe & Mail
According to the article the dd meetings are underway and a deal is expected in the next two months. It seems likely that the Reed/Harcourt divestiture timetable may be set back into the third quarter due to this activity. Now that the WK education deal is done activity and attention will move to Thomson so look for more articles.
Globe & Mail
Monday, March 26, 2007
Wolters Kluwer Education Sale Confirmed
WK confirmed the sale of its education unit to Private Equity fund Bridgeport Capital for $1.0billion. As mentioned last week this represents a good price and WK, Reed and Thomson Learning should all be happy with the valuation.
Reuters
Reuters
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Englishman in New York
One of the great things about living in New York (technically, I live 1.5miles to the west) is that you can find just about anything and if you work it right you can live in a neighborhood or interact completely with people from your own land. In my case, there are numerous opportunities to bond with fellow English (or Greater England) in bars and stores in lower Manhattan. On Saturday afternoon, I visited my favorite corner shop for a few pork pies, sausage rolls and some bangers. As a quite considerably displaced English person (via Thailand, New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii), I can still remember the first time I walked into Myers of Keswick. (This is not a good picture). I almost expected Ronnie Corbett to to be standing behind the counter. (Thankfully the shop assistants are considerably better looking). At Myers, you can find everything from Flake and Crunchie bars to Ribena to Branston Pickle all of which are favorites of mine. A side effect of the limitation on traveling with liquids has been a significant reduction of my direct importation so I am lucky to have Myers.
At the store, I also found out for the first time that a number of local West Village stores are attempting to designate the area bordered by W14th, Greenwich Avenue and W10th as “Little Britain”. The campaign was undertaken by Tea and Sympathy (a tea shop) and is also supported by Virgin who bring loads of us back and forwards from the UK. There does seem to be some support for the idea. If you navigate to the ‘map’ segment on the web site you will find all the local ‘little Britain’ attractions. Highlights are Myers, A Salt and Battery and The Spotted Pig.
Following my shopping visit to Myers, I wandered around the west village neighborhood and at one point joined a crowd outside a full pub named The Red Bull where the group were watching South Africa attempt to match the incredible 40 over total of Australia (377 and they won). Standing outside in a group of about 20 were people from England, South Africa and New Zealand all joined by their interest in Cricket. At the same time on a TV screen further inside the bar England were dismally performing something closely resembling football. I love New York.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Krakoff Dies
From PaidContent.org: Bob Krakoff died suddenly last night at the age of 72. Krakoff, had recently taken over the VNU business media properties in the wake of the Nielsen privatisation. In his sucessful media career, Krakoff ran many of the Reed Business magazines and reference companies and rose to vice-chairman at RE.
Paidcontent.org.
Paidcontent.org.
Harlequin: An Augmented Man Is Good to Find
If you happen to be in Toronto this weekend and you are male you may want to try out for the open 'casting call' to be a cover model. Apparently, they are having difficulty finding the right sort of bloke and are going to look beyond the typical modeling agency fodder and take walk-ins. The modelling agency hurdle had always been my biggest obstacle but sadly I am not able to make it to Canada this weekend. Regardless, the rather sizable 'alternate lifestyle' community of Toronto should have some fun with this one. From The National Post:
"Ms. Reynolds also said Harlequin, which typically relies on a male protagonist of chiselled physique for its titles such as Slow Hand Luke and Jack & Jilted, is often looking for more muscular models that her agency typically wouldn't carry. "It's difficult because we only have a limited pool of guys who might be able to--even if they're slightly augmented -- look right. It's easier for us to provide the James Bond guy or the New York, sophisticated-businessman guy."
"Peter Duck, a professor in Ryerson University's School of Fashion, said he was not surprised to learn Harlequin is facing a shortage of manly models, given trends in the fashion industry. "The agencies, I'm sure they're getting this look that's been popular for the last few years, which is very skinny, tall and young."
I swear that was the first cover I came across.
Pearson Teams With Google
Educational publisher Pearson has linked up with Google Video to offer students quick video programs of educational programs.
Also, it being Friday and there being excitment over Wolters Kluwer, the Pearson plc stock is up (again) this morning on speculation of a break-up.
Lecture and Test Prep videos for seven additional Martin-Gay titles from Pearson Prentice Hall will be available for download by summer 2007, covering basic college mathematics, introductory algebra, and, intermediate algebra. Students can purchase sections of the Lecture Videos for $0.99 each; a chapter of the Test Prep videos for $1.99; and a full chapter of the Lecture Videos for $3.99.The quick video content is designed to support in class and text material and a 'great way to get extra support'. Parents may anti-up for the videos but I wonder whether the kids will. How soon will the videos be available for free on YouTube? You do have to recognize that Pearson comes up with these interesting ideas to extend content into different distribution channels and to go where the customers are.
Also, it being Friday and there being excitment over Wolters Kluwer, the Pearson plc stock is up (again) this morning on speculation of a break-up.
Wolters Kluwer in Divestiture Talks
According to (Dutch) BNR newsradio Wolters Kluwer has entered into exclusive talks with investment fund Bridgepoint for the sale of its Education unit. This would seem to confirm that the front runner Pearson is not in the running to acquire this business. Speculators commented that the price PE were willing to pay was simply too much for Pearson. Bridgepoint have invested in media in the past but nothing this large; there other investments span industries.
The IHT is also reporting that the unit will be sold for as much as €775million. First out of the gate with a sale agreement, this sales price sets a high mark that may lead to high sales values for Thomson Learning and Harcourt.
Reuters
The IHT is also reporting that the unit will be sold for as much as €775million. First out of the gate with a sale agreement, this sales price sets a high mark that may lead to high sales values for Thomson Learning and Harcourt.
Reuters
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Bertelsmann Speculation (Deuce)
No sooner was the press conference over that announced the launch of an equity fund than speculation resumed over an purchase of Thomson Learning by Bertelsmann. No news from the company naturally. Reuters. Stay tuned.
Fund
Speculation
Fund
Speculation
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