Beah and Publisher Sticking to it

As noted on Saturday, The Australian newspaper is asking some very pointed questions about material facts in the A Long Way Gone memoir/autobiography written by Ishmael Beah. Reports today in Publishers Lunch and Publisher's Weekly have not shed anymore light on the issue. Beah has written to the editor of The Australian (but it hasn't been printed) and the author, publisher and agent all stand by the story.

This article takes the questions minutely forward from the earlier two articles noted in the post below and also contains a quote from the creative writing professor who helped Beah write the book:

Creative writing professor Dan Chaon, who helped Beah produce the book, told The
Australian: "If it turns out there are factual errors, I wouldn't necessarily be all that concerned about it."

In his book, Beah says his home town, the mine where his father worked and his mother's town were all attacked in January 1993. He and a group of friends were then waiting in Mattru Jong for news when a Catholic priest was ordered by the rebels to deliver a message telling people in the town to co-operate with the rebels. Many people fled immediately; two weeks later, the rebels attacked from a surprise inland route, leaving only one unanticipated escape route on a footpath through a nearby swamp.

That is exactly what happened in 1995, according to the adult witnesses, internal records at the mine and numerous published sources.

More than likely there is more to come of this and there is more news expected today from the publisher.

Post: A Thousand Little Pieces?

Pearson Full Year Above Expectations

Pearson announced this morning in their routine trading update that the company continues to perform well and that they expect to produce record profits for the full year (2007). The elaborate that the company has seen both sales growth and margin improvement leading to strong case generation and improvements in capital employeed.

Management has noted that education is having continues to perform well competitively and that they will have their best year ever in this segment. Their other groups, FT Group, FT Publishing and Penguin also performed well due to growth in advertising, subscriptions and publishing program.

As a result of this operating performance they expect to report at or above the top end of market expectations even taking into account the weakened US dollar.

Scardino:

"This is another excellent performance across all our businesses and on all our financial measures. We have produced another record year and our third consecutive year of underlying earnings growth in the mid-teens or higher. Over this period we have changed the shape of Pearson, invested in our future growth and made the company more efficient and more resilient. Those moves make us confident that we will sustain our financial and competitive progress in 2008."

Press Release
Reuters

Quebecor Fails - Update

The banks have stepped in after the Quebecor was placed in receivership early Monday. The Globe and Mail says it best:

A rescue financing backed by parent Quebecor, run by Mr. Peladeau, and restructuring fund Tricap Partners was just too cute by a half for banks that had, until August, been willing lenders. Quebecor World carries $2.5-billion of debt. Mr. Peladeau misread the sea change in sentiment among lenders that has come with the credit crunch.

It is likely that the company will be sold up in the short term as soon as the existing lenders can get as much as they think possible for the debt they own. Existing shareholds - primarily Mr Pelaseau's holding company may get nothing.

Update:
A Canadian judge has agreed to allow the company to seek protection and the company is likely to receive the same protection this morning in New York.

An update and more background from The Toronto Star.

Blurb.com Sees Huge Self-Publishing Growth

I am a big fan of Blurb.com's publishing solution. I have used it a number of times to produce high quality photo books and I currently have three more elaborate projects I am working on. Not only is the software easy to use, it provides a powerful set of tools that enable a wide variety of layouts and customization. I recently recommended Blurb to someone who have completed a safari in Africa and I have been trying to get Mrs PND to include the product in her Interior Design business. Other products exist in this segment including mypublisher.com and picabo.com but I have found Blurb to be the easiest to use.

Blurb.com has released impressive figures on the number of titles they published during 2007. Approximately 80,000 titles were produced by this publisher during the past year which dwarfs the numbers of new titles published each year by traditional publishing houses.

“Blurb is redefining how success is measured in publishing,” said Eileen Gittins, Blurb’s founder and CEO. “For some, success is creating a book that helps raise money for a foundation, for others it might be selling 25 copies of one’s own book, and for still others it might be a marketing piece like an event book or portfolio. Unlike traditional publishers whose economics drive a focus on the best-seller, Blurb is expanding the book market to include books for millions of very small, niche markets.”

The market for these titles extends from people like me who produce one or two printed titles to others who may print several hundred to support a business or seminar program. The flexibility and variety enable all kinds of applications and it is entirely possible that the market is yet only partially satisfied. Driven by the continued growth in digital camera sales and the adoption of images into a much broader array of applications - from facebook to phones to blogs is likely that Blurb and other companies like it will continue to see rapid increases in usage. More people are taking more photos and using the photos in more places.

My family has boxes of slides from 40 yrs of travels; I am looking forward at some point to scan these and reinvigorate this family history. Over Christmas I went in search of this collection and found them somewhat discarded in a box in the attic. Not only are products like Blurb for current collections but with a little application they can be applied to older collections of images as well. Working with Blurb becomes a new type of hobby and since you can also add text as well is an increasing number of sophisticated self-publishers out there.

Other posts
Blurb and Self-Publishing
Blurb USAToday

Ten Things About Cormac McCarthy

The London Times has a profile of Cormac McCarthy which lists ten things you may (probably) don't know about 'America's greatest living writer'.

Link

Is A Long Way Gone Just A Thousand Little Pieces?

An investigation into some of the key facts underlying Ishmael Beah's autobiography A Long Way Gone suggests that his experiences in war torn Sierra Leone may not have happened the way they are described in the book. Among the assertions that The Weekend Australia raises are that Beah was two years older when he went to war than he states in the book (15 versus 13) and instead of being in the army for 2 years it may have been only 2-3mths. There are other factual details that on investigation by The Weekend Australian tend to undercut critical and important facets of Beah's story.

Thus far, there has been no response from Farrar, Straus and Giroux the US publisher and I hope there is some reasonable explanation for the identified problems in this book. Beah has gone on to become a United Nations advocate for children affected by war as well as a frequent spokes person in support of his book. This is important work and it would be horrible if this work were impacted. The Australian is an important news organization in Australia so they will not have taken this story lightly.

The disparities in Beah's account came about through some very elemental research by someone who had just read the book and then found themselves working in Sierra Leone. It doesn't appear that it took too much effort to find these errors. It remains to be seen if this escalates into a Frey type melt down or the record is corrected in some minor inconsequential way.

More from The Australian: Here

Monday Update: Here

Quebecor Update

A report in the Canadian Financial Post suggests Quebecor's stock may be delisted if the company isn't able to comply with listing requirements that have been specified in a 'terse' letter to the company. Truthfully, this could be the least of their problems since the article believes that existing investors in Quebecor are unlikely to accept the recently announced rescue plan. The existing debtors may be unwilling to allow the company to collapse and will seek to negotiate a better deal for themselves - at least given the circumstances.

Failing the Test

Pauline Vu of Stateline.org takes a look at the impact and variation in federally mandated testing programs (Article). This is an interesting report for anyone involved in education and specifically testing as she documents how different are the approaches to testing undertaken by different states. Perhaps no news to education publishers, but she notes that the testing market has grown from $400mm to over $1.1bill in the years since the passage of no child left behind (2001). It follows then that the largest publishers have invested heavily in this segment and that the business is dominated by the top five education publishers. From her article:

Much of the work is done by five giants: CTB/McGraw-Hill, Educational Testing Service, Harcourt Assessment, Pearson Educational Measurement and Riverside Publishing. Together, the companies own about 90 percent of the state-testing business, which has become a $1.1 billion industry since passage of the federal No child Left Behind Act in 2001. The law, which took effect in January 2002, requires states to give annual reading and math tests to third- through eighth-graders, and to test students in those subjects once again in high school

The absence of both Federal guidelines and consistency from state to state has also created significant disparity in testing approaches and effectiveness. This coupled with a tendency to manipulate the test outcomes - thereby making the educators look more effective - has some worried that the objectives in the testing program are compromised.

“States are not putting any more resources into the testing infrastructure, and as a result, we are getting testing on the cheap, and that is working against No Child Left Behind’s efforts to produce high-quality assessments that promote higher standards,” said Thomas Toch, the co-director of Education Sector, a nonpartisan think tank. “If we’re going to make tests the driver of quality in public education, then we need to invest to ensure that we get tests that are up to that task.”

There is little doubt that the testing business will continue to grow. In the absence of 'no child left behind' teachers and administrators have now 'drunk the cool aid' and understand that they can use testing to their own advantage. Ironically, without uniform objectives, practices and policies it is the students who will be left disadvantaged. There is much more in the article.

One Man's Trash...

I admit it, I have been known to pick up a discarded book from the sidewalk on occasion. The Times this morning tells us how books have become the new 'recyclables' for some of the city's homeless and down and outs. No suggestion that these budding entrepreneurs are reading the books they collect from rubbish and recycling, but they do trot down to The Strand and cash them in. Sometimes they get lucky, and relationships count in this game: One resourceful chap received $600 for a set of leather bound books.

Courier Struggles

Courier corporation was the latest printer to forecast lower results. In a statement yesterday, the company said its first quarter profit declined on slow textbook orders and low Creative Homeowner book sales. The company lowered its fiscal year 2008 outlook and as a result the stock price was hammered (but then so were a lot of them). The company reported first quarter net income of $1.4mm versus $4.0mm in the same period last year.

From the press release:

"We were hit by simultaneous challenges on both sides of our business this quarter," said Courier Chairman and Chief Executive Officer James F. Conway III. "In book manufacturing, despite all indications pointing to another full year of strong sales in education, textbook reprint orders were unexpectedly slow this fall, sharply reducing the segment's capacity utilization and profitability even as we continued to gain share. Normally, publishers order textbook reprints during the fall to spread manufacturing workloads throughout the year, but this year a variety of industry factors significantly reduced that order flow. In publishing, Creative Homeowner sales continued to be held back by reduced consumer traffic at home improvement centers, its most important sales channel.

The stock is trading at $26.01 which is a 52week low.

George Wins Lottery

I once went to a George Michael concert. It really wasn't my fault. The seats were free and Mrs PND really wanted to go. It was horrible. In fact, it was so bad I can still recall it vividly even though this was 1990.

Despite me, George went on to build a huge solo career and release popular albums during the 1990s. He hasn't done much recently unless you count arrests for recreational drug use, driving while intoxicated and performance of lewd acts in public. Some might say he was better at those than singing. Certainly more consistent. George was in the last episode of Extra's where he basically owned up to all of those 'errors of judgement' in a very hilarious way. Well done George.

Yesterday his autobiography became another in a long list of expensively purchased celebrity blather. I am sure everyone is all a twitter about whether George is going to name names and that can really be the only reason why any publisher would consider this a potential commercial success. According to Harpercollins, George is one of the most popular pop figures in the world and has an 'extraordinary story' to tell. They forgot to add the bit about 'humble upbringings' and his 'life of adversity'. HC has paid 'millions' and the deal is 'one of the biggest ever concluded in British publishing'

Will the book soar into the stratosphere or plummet like a stone. One thing is certain, I did my part back in 1990 and the book is not getting into the PND household. What more could he have to say that we don't already know?

Press Association

Jobs Kicks the Kindle

In the bits blog on the NYTimes Steve Jobs gets it right for the Kindle but for all the wrong reasons:

Mr. Jobs can be like that when he assesses the competition.

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Unfortunately, that's hard to take seriously and I would have expected better. I would always have given Apple and Jobs more credit in understanding market dynamics and trends. On the surface his comment is partly accurate, but there is no cause and effect here.

Does this mean we aren't about to see books on the iPhone in quantity? Of course, it could be misinformation.

From another perspective, it has been the media industry and the publishing community specifically that has kept this company (Apple) relevant for the past 15years (at least) via their loyal devotion to the Mac platform. To all those dedicated authors, marketing and design professionals in the publishing industry locked into the Apple mystique this comment should come as a kick in the processor.