Court Reverses Steinbeck Copyright Ruling

The son of famed author John Steinbeck who won control over some of his father's works has had the decision reversed by the US Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit Court). In mid 2006, a judge in California ruled that the rights to Steinbeck's novels should revert to the family. LATimes. (A review from a legal perspective). From the AP:

The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will leave the rights in the hands of Penguin Group Inc. and the heirs of John Steinbeck's widow, Elaine. Author John Steinbeck died in 1968; his wife in 2003. The appeals court said a lower court judge misapplied copyright law in awarding the rights in 2006 to the son, Thomas Steinbeck, and granddaughter Blake Smyle. Both already receive a portion of the proceeds of sales. The case was returned to the lower court with instructions to leave the rights with various individuals and organizations, including the publisher Penguin and Elaine Steinbeck's heirs. The heirs include her sister, four children and grandchildren.

No word on any further action that may be contemplated by either side.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 32):

The Guardian reports that British magazine publishers are facing pressure from retailer ASDA for more quid-pro-quo on shelf space in their stores. Some close readers will recall some aggressive actions by Amazon and also the stance taken by A&R in Australia regarding book titles with small volumes. Perhaps an increasing trend in media retail.

The idea of a magazine giving Asda advertising space in return for appearing on its shelves, for example, is wholly implausible. Every supermarket chain would then be bound to require ads too, leading to the logical, if surreal, result that all magazines would carry several pages boosting Tesco, Sainsbury's, Somerfield, Waitrose and so on. Then there's the question of context: one publisher told me that, for many magazines, supermarket advertising would be inappropriate. How would readers of Cage & Aviary Birds or Model Railway Enthusiast take to Asda boasting of its latest cut-price offers on groceries, for instance?

Will a major city newspaper fold this year. Houston, Miami, Chicago, SF? There are sellers but no buyers according to the NYTimes. Ad revenues are off substantially at some of those free daily newspapers but in the UK Metro is starting their first online version. MAD.co Press Gazzette is giving up their print to go online. Guardian Rodale announced impressive results in face of an industry slow down.

Revenues for all operations grew by 7.6% compared to the second quarter of 2007. Rodale print advertising revenues were up 8.3% compared to an industry-wide decline of 4.9%. Revenues from all online activities increased by 27.1% over the second quarter of 2007, and uniques and page views for Rodale?s sites were up by 74% and 94%, respectively, compared to the same period last year. Revenues from international operations through June are up 14% compared to the first half of 2007.

AlleyInsider.com: Gawker notes their performance versus traditional media. Note that the chart looks like Batman. WSJ reports on the trend in Children's fiction towards more gore in an effort to appeal to more boys:

Scholastic and other publishers are heeding the research of such academics as Jeffrey Wilhelm, an education professor at Boise State University. Prof. Wilhelm tracked boys' reading habits for five years ending in 2005 and found that schools failed to meet their "motivational needs." Teachers assigned novels about relationships, such as marriage, that appealed to girls but bored boys. His survey of academic research found boys more likely to read nonfiction, especially about sports and other activities they enjoy, as well as funny, edgy fiction. Boys' literary depth is an abiding concern in educational circles. Boys have persistently lagged behind girls in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an influential federal test for gauging achievement. The gap widens by the time they reach 12th grade. Many experts attribute the lag to the time spent with the printed page. In a survey of bookstores this year by Simba Information, a publishing-industry market-research firm, only 2% said boys made up most of their children's book customers. As adults, females also outscore males on literacy exams, and continue to read more. In an age when the Internet is pulling many away from books, boys in particular spend more time than girls do on computers and videogaming.

Long article in Sunday's NYTimes magazine about Hanif Kureishi who wrote My Beautiful Laundrette.

This is, after all, the man who co-edited “The Faber Book of Pop” and whose films and novels — including “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “The Buddha of Suburbia” — are filled with raucous sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. But this is also the man who had the presence of mind to poke around in English mosques in the late ’80s and early ’90s, sensing that something might be stirring there, as indeed it was. Kureishi’s novel “The Black Album,” set in 1989 and named after a Prince album, explored the growing discontent, disenfranchisement and radicalism of some young British Muslims.

NYTimes notes the Waking up to Content is King at Time Warner. Profile of new Zondervan CEO Maureen Girkins. Grand Rapids Press.

Everything's Live in Prime Time

I grew up in Hawaii. Lucky me. When John Lennon died we got to experience it twice. Why, because of ‘satellite delay’. Hawaii is so far west that most ‘live’ television was taped. When most of the nation heard Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football announce that John was dead we didn’t hear him say that for more than three hours, and by then we had been listening to the monster block to end all monster blocks. Almost 30 yrs later, you could be forgiven for thinking ‘satellite delay’ had disappeared along with wooden tennis rackets, members only and Journey. Not so.

When NBC and USA broadcast Wimbledon this year they showed the majority of the matches live; that is, except for the first men’s semifinal which Federer won. Unaware viewers found out the result of the first match during the second match which was shown live. There was some hue and cry about this at the time but tennis fans are generally a polite group. Remember the world cup in Japan/Korea? Well, luckily I was in Australia but in the US fans were left scratching their heads when live games were delayed.

In 1980 there wasn’t any alternative to watching events live if the broadcaster didn’t want us to. We had no choice. Clearly that is not the case now yet NBC continues to believe they know best what the viewer is interested in. NBC believes viewers want to see ‘live’ action in prime time. Forget the fact that this morning the NYTimes had images from the opening ceremonies, we won’t see the pictures live until later tonight. Which is just about when day two action starts.

Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, said. "We have three main constituency groups: our affiliates, our advertisers and our audience. To our affiliates and our advertisers, our responsibility is to (generate) the biggest audience that we can. And to our audience, our extensive research shows, that means putting it on when they say they want it, which is when they're available to watch it - and that's in prime time." Guardian

This type of ostrich like behavior is what’s so wrong with established media. While everything has changed the media companies try to pretend by force of will they can impose the old paradigm (on the ‘audience’). We’re all smarter than that and despite the 2,000+ hrs NBC are set to broadcast many viewers are going to be disappointed. NBC is not giving us the choices we have become accustomed to in the internet world. How far out of touch are they? An amusing anecdote regarding the LA Times which publicly patted itself on the back for a huge boost in on line traffic. Only the problem was their traffic was dwarfed by upstart Gawker media. SiliconAlleyinsider

Paradoxically, NBC maybe its own worse enemy; they recently launched Hulu.com which is a fantastic site and exactly what choice, selection and access is all about. Every Olympic event should be on Hulu the minute it finishes. I bet the traffic would be immense. On top of that I would guarantee viewers would settle in during prime time and watch again.

There are work arounds. Several web sites have jumped on this issue already. So if you are willing to stay up all night to watch curling check out alleyinsider.com for all the details.

Too Late for The Sony Reader

John Gapper in the FT believes Sony has irretrievably lost the beach-head that the first to market Sony Reader established. Is it now too late to gain back some share? Since he compares Sony's Walkman with the iPod the likely answer is yes.

The danger for Sony is that it is already too late. Amazon has grabbed the market-leading position from Sony and established a stronger brand, which is what happened with the iPod and the Walkman. Sony never managed to recover, despite trying repeatedly to match Apple. The Reader is arguably less important to Sony than any of its core entertainment businesses. Even if the Reader stages a comeback, it will not become one of Sony’s “trillion-yen” businesses like its PlayStation and Bravia franchises. But books should not be written off. Annual US sales of fiction and popular non-fiction books match those of recorded music, so there is enough revenue to be worth fighting for. Sony obviously thought it was worth staking a claim to e-books when it launched the Reader.

Why The Embargo Doesn't Work

LA Times on book review embargos and the particular case of Ron Suskinds The Way of the World. They see something fishy:

As Ulin said Tuesday, publishers' "embargoes are contrivances designed not to protect the contents of the book but to create a media feeding frenzy when a book comes out. Often, the entire purpose is to protect some kind of exclusive arrangement with a particular news outlet. That's not about news; it's about publicity, and it implicates the news media as part of the publicity juggernaut, reducing us watchdogs to lap dogs."The willingness of major publishing houses to take on projects like Suskind's is an act of public service as well as commerce. Projects such as Suskind's don't need to be marketed with the sort of calculation routinely reserved for celebrity tell-alls. In fact, the aura created by an orchestrated publicity campaign can even undermine the authority of the sort of journalism Ron Suskind practices.

Free Books

One of the funny things about writing this blog is that I have started to get some free books. This is strange since I don't review books. I read a lot, but I generally only read the stuff I like. I don't have time to read things people send me. I also find this interesting because as President of Bowker - the publisher of books in print remember - I may have received three books in seven years. Two of those were sent by Jane Friedman. So, as a blogger operating in no official capacity I get some books, but as head of house I don't. Curious.

In the past twelve months I have received four books; not a lot thankfully. I haven't read any of them. Two management books (one from Wiley so I may end up reading it), one on being more green and one from a trade publisher. The green title had me slightly concerned since the title was so precise: "78 ways to change the planet" or something. Surely if they concentrated a little more they might have reached 100. No doubt my experience with review copies speaks both to the desperation of smaller publishers to get their titles seen and to the general indiscriminate nature of the process: Send them out in the hope that someone will review them.

I am not sure how much other heads of house share their books with one another. Do they call each other up and ask for a particular book I wonder. Would they be embarassed? If I were publishing something more compact that an 8 volume directory I would have routinely sent my titles to other publishers. I would be proud of them and I would want my peers to enjoy them as I did. (I did consider sending the CD version to publishers but discarded the idea just as quick. I didn't want to visit their office and find it under a wine glass).

About 18mths ago, I realized that my unread pile extended to 60+ books, but the back log is winding down now and so sometime in the next six months I might actually be reading books that have some currency. (At the moment I am reading a biography of Sir Christopher Wren that was published in 2001). Perhaps then I might comment a little.

Paris Hilton On Oil Dependency

Remember that tasteless ad the McCain campaign ran denigrating Obama as a "celebrity?" Well, I think the celebrity just got the better of them:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Here is the link for those on email or if you are using MS Explorer. Firefox seems to work fine.

I am curious why they can't afford towels at the Hilton mansion. Nice suit.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming later.

Harpercollins Closes Year Flat

Harpercollins saw a 18% increase in fourth quarter revenues that helped the company finish the year with operating income flat with 2007. Revenues for the quarter were $350mm versus $295 in the prior period. Full year revenues were $1,388 versus $1,347 in the prior period.

Here is the relevant section from the NewCorp press release:

HarperCollins reported fourth quarter operating income of $28 million and full year operating income of $160 million, an improvement of $7 million and $1 million as compared to the prior year periods, respectively. Current quarter results were led by strong sales of Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey, Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall and an updated edition of YOU:The Owner's Manual by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet Oz. During the fourth quarter, HarperCollins had 62 books on The New York Times bestseller list, including Read All About It! by Laura and Jenna Bush which reached number one. For the full year, HarperCollins had 165 books on The New York Times bestseller list, including 14 titles reaching the number one spot.

Thus the company had a margin improvement of 1pp in the final quarter but a slight decline over all. Well reported has been the change in senior management at Harpercollins with Brian Murray replacing Jane Friedman. Murray, in turn, has made changes in the executive suite notably the replacement of Glenn D'Agnes who was the long term COO.

Details on Harpercollins are always sparse in the NewsCorp disclosures and the company is rarely mentioned in the earnings conference calls.

When You See a Fork in the Road...

Lorcan Dempsey (OCLC) on the future of libraries,

We can see two important directions, one towards concentration and one towards diffusion.

First concentration, which we see at at least three levels. At the institutional level, there is a strong push to overcoming fragmentation by moving towards new institutional discovery layers (Primo, Encore, Worldcat Local). At the group level we see the emergence of more state or national systems which pull together resources in user-facing services. These are attractive because they present more resources to the user. And at the global level, we see library resources being represented - through linking or syndication strategies - in search engines, Flickr, Google Scholar, Worldcat and other network level resources.

The second is atomization of content and services so that they can be better integrated into diffuse networking device and applications environments. Here think of RSS/AtomPub, mobile interfaces, APIs, alerting services, portlets and widgetization, persistent links to library services and content, etc. Issues here are technical and licensing. Users increasingly value convenience and relevance, and packaging materials in ways that make most sense for them is not always straightforward.

How far off are we from the new library that has no physical holdings, no ILS system, no repositories, no nothing except the building, a patron database, some furniture and some terminals?

Author as Brand

Following on from my post on branding last week, Jeff Jarvis interviews Paul Coelho and finds the perfect example of an author embracing his power as a brand. He's making more money in the process as well.

He is a pirate. Coelho discovered the power of free when a fan posted a Russian translation of one of his novels online and book sales there climbed from 3,000 to 100,000 to 1m in three years. "This happened in English, in Norwegian, in Japanese and Serbian," he said. "Now when the book is released in hard copy, the sales are spectacular." So Coelho started linking to pirated versions of his books from his own website. But when he bragged about this at the Burda Digital Lifestyle Design conference in Munich last January, he got in trouble with his US publisher, HarperCollins, whose then head, Jane Friedman, called him.

Trust in Book Lovers Not Reviewers

The termination of several book review sections across the country in recent weeks has reignited the same discussions that took place last year regarding the future of reading and books generally. The arguments remain sentimental suggesting a Utopian book-centric world where every reader weighs the careful words of the reviewer before making a particular purchase. Yesterday, Lissa Warren in HuffPo lamented the demise of the book review section of the LA Times and calls out those who believe (like I do) that blog reviewers are filling the void left by 'official' reviewers:

But I'll tell you what does make my jaw drop: the seemingly widely-held notion that these book sections are being adequately replaced by blogs. To be sure, there are some excellent book blogs out there: Mark Sarvas's The Elegant Variation. The National Book Critics Circle's Critical Mass. MediaBistro's Galley Cat. Jessa Crispin's Bookslut. The Boston Globe's Off the Shelf. And, of course, the New York Times' Paper Cuts. They're all bookmarked on my computer. I read them often for news on new titles (and older ones I missed) and Q&As with authors. Many of them are also good for stories on publishing trends, which as a book publicist and editor I appreciate a great deal. But, for the most part, these blogs don't actually review books.

In my view there is a macro point that makes her argument largely irrelevant; that is, we are beginning to see the development of trust networks. As consumers of information we are starting to build our own networks of people and entities we rely on to support everything from our political philosophy to our choice in vacation spot. Reading falls squarely into that paradigm and it no longer matters whether a book review is produced to the standard of the LA Times or The NYTimes book section (and many blog reviews do), what matters is the impact the review has on a purchase decision. Those interested in reading are finding bloggers that they 'trust' (even of the blogspot variety, a comment which baffles me), and these reviews do indeed 'adequately' fill the void created by the demise of some of the larger newspaper reviews sections. Interesting, some of the arguments presented by Warren as to why these blogs are not of a standard are precisely the items that lend reality, personality and connection to the readers of these reviews.

I'd also advise that book reviewing bloggers jettison the use of personal pronouns (yes, I've used a slew of them here; you can nail me in the comments). And for goodness sake, I wish they'd stop telling me what their father and their girlfriend -- or their father's girlfriend -- thought of the book. Also, I don't need to know how they came to possess the book -- how they borrowed it from the library, or bought it at B&N, or snagged a galley at The Strand, or got the publisher to send them a copy even though they average four hits a day. The banal back-story is of little interest.

It is my own personal view that the back story is of little interest; however, that might only be because I haven't found a (blog) reviewer that I identify with. The point is, many consumers reading these blog reviews do find the back story interesting and the great thing is they can move on to someone else if it becomes too tedious. Warren also speaks of 'self-indulgence' and surely nothing could be more self-indulgent than reading a Salman Rushdie review of a Martin Amis title in the NYTimes book review section. (If you would).

Trust networks will define how many people (maybe all of us) communicate - that's what myspace, facebook, linkedin, etc. are starting to show us. The blog network is a fundamental part of that and the continued development of trust networks has implications for all consumer interaction including recommending and buying books. The word 'recommend' is better than review. The word 'review' in conventional terms and as used by Warren is used pejoratively when referring to blog reviews. This is wrong, because a book review doesn't have to conform to a standard; this is a convention that has been constructed by old school journalists. What is relevant is what the opinion/review/recommendation means to the consumer. Someone yelling over the back fence to their neighbor that they really liked The Corrections is a 'review'. And that's synonymous with replying to the Facebook 'what are you doing' by typing "I'm reading The Corrections and I really hate it".

Lastly, who was reading the reviews in all these newspaper reviews sections anyway? Most people in the US who read (and that's not many) only read one book a year. That book is likely to be something like the Da Vinci Code, a diet book, Dr Phil or an Ophra pick so what's the return? It is (was) a mystery. Not so on the web. These evolving trust networks concentrated around people who love books, talk about books and opine about books provide publishers with a window on the community they never had. Stop with the whining and recognise that as a publisher you have a tremendous opportunity to understand your consumer in ways you never could before. Rather than lamenting the demise of the newspaper, publishers should be rejoicing in front of the window to a vibrant community of book lovers and opinion makers.

To answer Lissa Warren's question: Blogs may not save Books but they may be all we have so pay attention.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 31):

The Telegraph reports on another media deal in the works concerning Wilmington a publisher of Press Gazette and legal and charity databases. ReadWriteWeb note the publication of study suggesting females rather than males rule the web:

Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49.3 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks - including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 - women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men.

Informa announced late last week that they had received an indication of interest from a new group. The Guardian finds out it's Dubai. But Blackstone is seen as a favorite by The Times. The Times Online reports on the self-publishing market for authors with a provocative lead-in. One Kindle, Two Kindle, Three Kindle... TechCrunch tries to get to the bottom of the sales numbers. Torstar reports better quarterly results for Harlequin:

Book Publishing revenue was $118.9 million in the second quarter, up $2.9 million from $116.0 million in the same period last year. Underlying revenues were up $6.3 million in the quarter with strong growth in the North America Retail division partially offset by a decrease of $3.4 million from the unfavourable impact of foreign exchange rates. Operating profit was $18.5 million in the second quarter of 2008, up $6.0 million from $12.5 million in 2007. Corporate costs were $4.2 million in the second quarter of 2008, down $0.6 million from the second quarter of 2007.

Guards say they locked him up in a cupboard. Not true, says Rushdie and threatens to sue. He may have a chance. Guardian (no relation) Some spectacular declines in magazine readership in the UK. BrandRepublic

Maxim will be the hardest hit of the men's monthlies, but Bauer Media-owned titles Arena and FHM, with news-stand circulation expected to be down 20% and 17% respectively, IPC-owned Loaded (expected to be down around 20%) and NatMags-owned Esquire (expected to be down 19%) are all understood to have suffered in the latest ABCs, released on 14 August.

Things continue as expected at Voyager Learning. Still no filings, revenues are in decline and cash is tight. SEC

The Company anticipates it will file its 2006 10-K by July 31, 2008. It further expects that the 2007 10-K will be filed four to eight weeks after the filing of the 2006 10-K. The Company provided preliminary and unaudited 2007 financial results for the Voyager Learning Company operating business by means of a conference call on April 15, 2008. As the Company has continued its efforts to file 2006 and 2007 financials, certain estimates made April 15, 2008 have been updated resulting in a change to the projected 2007 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). EBITDA is now expected to be in the range of $28 - $29 million versus the previously reported $30 million.