Dayton Literary Prize

Giving authors an opportunity to join the ranks of luminaries like Studs Terkel and Elie Wiesel and acclaimed new talents like Edwidge Danticat and Brad Kessler, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize today launched its call for submissions for 2009’s best fiction and nonfiction works that promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States. It was founded in 2006 as an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize, which commemorates the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ending the war in Bosnia.

Winners receive a $10,000 honorarium and will be honored at a gala ceremony in Dayton on Sunday, November 8^th, 2009.

As part of the kick-off for this year’s call for submissions, organizers also announced the launch of a Nominating Academy to ensure that the widest possible cross-section of books is considered for this year’s prize. Members of the Nominating Academy include a diverse mix of leaders from the literary, publishing, and progressive worlds including: authors Alan Cheuse (NPR’s “Voice of Books”), Amy Hempel, Brad Kessler (2007 fiction winner for Birds in Fall), and Mark Kurlansky (2007 nonfiction winner for Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea); Lea Thau, executive director of The Moth; WETA’s books blogger Bethanne Patrick, and Susannah Lupert, executive director of New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore Café. The list of books nominated by the academy will presented to publishers in late February so that titles can be officially submitted for consideration

Borders Cuts

Borders has eliminated a number of senior positions at their corporate head quarters including the role of CTO held by Susan Harmon. Harmon held the position since 2007 having left book seller Books A Million to move to Ann Arbor from Birmingham AL. (I once went to Birmingham on a fools errand once).

From Forbes:

Bookseller Borders Group Inc. said Tuesday it is cutting six vice president and 10 director jobs to consolidate its management and help trim expenses in a tough economy.

Borders has eliminated the role of executive vice president of U.S. stores, which was held by Ken Armstrong, and cut the post of senior vice president and chief information officer held by Susan Harwood. Both Armstrong and Harwood joined Borders Group in 2007.

The position of senior vice president, e-business, which was held by Kevin Ertell, has also been eliminated.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 4): Houghton Harcourt, Ebsco, Google

This is my 1001st post - wow. Riverdeep, the owner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the subject of a profile by The Boston Globe this morning. The newspaper reports what many have supposed - not least the Irish Press which has been dogging Riverdeep almost since the day they consummated the Houghton sale. In the article, they strongly suggest that the company is now worth far less than the amount of debt owned to their lenders. Any sale of all or parts of the company would be unlikely to cover these obligations and while there are rumors that Hachette maybe discussing acquiring the trade division, I wonder if this could occur if the value is so low and the resulting deal would be a humiliation not just for Riverdeep but also the banks holding the debt. Assuming a sale below book value, that would trigger a revaluation of the whole balance sheet and this in turn would trigger any number of covenants. Missing from the Globe article is that in selling Harcourt to Riverdeep, Reed Elsevier retained a $300mm interest in the business. (Link) What of the value of that and how is it handled on the RE balance sheet.

Moody's last month reported that Houghton, with a debt load estimated at more than 10 times gross earnings, is "a likely default" unless its loans are renegotiated. S&P last month placed parent EMPG on its list of weakest links - companies in greatest danger of debt default. "The debt level is our biggest concern," said S&P analyst Hal Diamond, "given the state of the economy and state budget constraints. While they can reduce costs, they can only go so far."

The Globe's request for an interview with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt chief executive Anthony Lucki or other senior executives was declined. Houghton issued a statement disputing Moody's 10-times-earnings figure, and insisted the company is gaining market share and has ample cash to cover its loans. Spokesman Josef Blumenfeld also said that since Houghton's reported decision last fall to suspend acquisition of new titles, it is signing new books again. He declined to comment on rumors that French-based Hachette Book Group, owner of Little, Brown & Co., might be a suitor.

EBSCO have added a Federated search capability to their suite of offerings and is designed to integrate with their EbscoHost2.0 product they released last year. (LJ)

With Integrated Search, the company aims to capitalize on users’ familiarity with the features and design of EBSCOhost 2.0, which debuted in July 2008, and carve out a role for its interface as a comprehensive destination for user searches. Integrated Search is slated to go live in early summer 2009.

Integrated Search will use connectors to remote content sources similar to those employed by other federated search products, like MetaLib (Ex Libris), Research Pro (Innovative Interfaces), and 360 Search (Serials Solutions). The hook: EBSCOhost will not charge customers for connectors to any EBSCO databases to which they subscribe. For connectors to non-EBSCO sources, the basic cost will be $200 per database annually. There will also be a $1000 annual base fee per site and per configuration. Customers already subscribed to a number of EBSCOhost products could see this translate into significant savings.

Librarything has added a Twitter ap. which looks interesting. (Blog):

We've added integration with Twitter, the popular SMS/microblogging site. Basically, it's an easy way to add a book to your LibraryThing while standing in a bookstore, library or friend's house.

A good summary of the Google Book agreement was presented at a session at ALA (ALA):

ALA’s Committee on Legislation and Office for Information Technology Policy hosted a panel session Saturday at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver. The session was called “Google Book Settlement: What’s In It For Libraries,” and aimed to educate librarians on the initial terms of the settlement, hear from leading a few leading library and legal experts, and offer time for audience members to pose questions to the panel participants.

Library Journal reports on the finances of the American Library Association.

As with private investors and endowed institutions, the American Library Association (ALA) suffered significant endowment losses in the past fiscal year, 24.1%, but, thanks to budget adjustments and some new sources of revenue, net operating income in Fiscal Year 2008 actually exceeded expenses more than in FY 2007, ALA officials said yesterday at the Midwinter Meeting in Denver.

Fiscal Year 2008, which ended last August 31, left ALA with net assets of $34.4 million, compared to $33.3 million at the end of 2007. Three months later, net assets declined to $24.1 million, primarily due to endowment losses. ALA has adjusted by reducing expenses, but continued losses in the endowment—which is not relied on for operating income--could cut into scholarships and awards. And the longer term remains a question mark.

Store Closings (Updated)

I have a tickler that sends me news items on various topics and one of these is news related to Borders. In the past two months or so, the citations listing store closings has become a torrent of store retrenching. Having announced earlier in 2007 that they would step up their store closings, the company appears to have accelerated this effort. Most of these closing are the Walden Books stores which has been a problematic store concept for some time and which the economy has only made worse.

In places like Lexington, MA and Great Falls, MT, Walden/Borders are leaving locations where their stores represent the only identifiable book store brand. Some people are upset and have started letter writing campaigns but the news of specific closings arrives so fast the community can't possibly organize fast enough. Truth is, no amount of community concern is going to trump simple economics. Sadly, other than in a few isolated cases, staff have not been offered work in other stores. Not only are there no other stores to move the staff to, but the Walden epidemic is often collected in news stories about other store brands shutting down in the same neighborhood or mall.

My incomplete list of closings noted just during January includes the following:

(Where is all this inventory going?)

Waldenstores:

Tippecanoe Mall, Lafayette Indiana
Logonsport Mall, Indiana
Stroud Mall, Penn
Volusia Mall, Daytona Beach, FL
Wyoming Valley Mall, Wilkes Barre, PA
Kenwood Town Center, Cinn, OH
Inland Center Mall, San Bernadino, CA
Sandberg Mall, Gailsburg, IL
Gainsville, FL
Contana Mall, B/Rouge, LA
Regency Mall, Racine, WI
Lexington, MA
Birlington Mall, Vermont
Greendale Mall, Worcester, MA
Sq One Mall, Saugus, MA
DeSota Sq Mall, Sarasota, FL
Prince of Orange Mall, SC
Bradenton, FL
Pompono Beach, FL
Tampa, FL
Orlando, FL
South Plains Mall, Lubbock, TX
Miller Hill Mall, Deluth MN
Clarion Mall, Clarion PA
Town Mall, Elizabethtown, KY
Marshall Town Center, IA
Holiday Village Mall, Great Falls, MT
Southridge Mall, Des Moines IA.

Borders Express:
Springfield, IL
Lahaina Mall, HI
Whalers Village, HI

Brentanos
Tower Place Mall, Cinn, OH

Borders:
Mill Avenue, Tempe AZ
Kemper Road, Springdale,OH
Compuware Bld (Downtown) Detroit, MI
Vero Beach Fashion Outlets, FL

Bonnie Schmick the Borders spokes person that each local reporter speaks to must be pretty depressed having to field all these calls.

(There are some misspellings in that list - apologies).

Update:

The NYTimes notes the decline of shopping Malls in a weekend article: NYTimes

I also posted my own view a few months ago in Death of the Big Box

Republicans: The President Is Very Good

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SIIA Conference: Marjorie Scardino

Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson spoke at this weeks Software Information Industry Association meeting and here are my notes from that presentation.

Skills and capabilities that new generations are going to need to be successful in the 21st Century include: the ability to be imaginative, capable of or exhibit group working skills and the ability to solve increasingly complex business and social problems.

As educators we also need to think about hard skills: Math and Science.

Embedded in the development of hard skills is the development of the ability to connect disparate information and to be able to evaluate the veracity of information and information sources. It is not a unique skill to be able to do a simple ‘barely defined’ Google search. Anyone can do this; however, students are not being taught the skills necessary to dig deeper, form arguments and determine back-up or be able to present their research.

On new technology. She cites/refers to a digital youth study: How the young interact with new technology. (Horizon Report).

There are five new technologies (and she adds a sixth).

1. Mobile devices: language,
2. Smart objects: sensors
3. Ubiquitous computing semantic enabled software:
4. Geo tagging: to all media.
5. Storage and access: cloud computing.
6. Electro foretic (sp) pages.

In her opinion, (and this follows how Pearson is expanding) companies have to take a long term view: change the way teachers teach, the way readers interact with news, information and content. Additionally, the long term view or approach to investment has to be consistent. She says, sustained investment is difficult in a public company.

The key to success is to involve your customers. Release your software early and enable a culture that allows ‘do-overs’ assuming they are corrected or improved rapidly. Other comments:

1. Need to try everything: New companies have inclusive cultures that generate new ideas from all levels. This is important and the culture needs to be adopted by old line companies as no company can get it right if idea generation is concentrated at the top of an organization.
2. Content and technology are inextricable bound together.
3. Need to use technology that enables use of more of our intellect, allows us to reflect as well as analyze.

Discussing revenue models, Scardino spoke about a ‘the Ralph Lauren’ model of charging a lot for something and assuming people will pay for it. She seemed to be saying that if something were priced high then people would assume it had value and was worth the price. She then brought up an anecdote about her time as a newbie attorney in Savannah. When she moved there, she was one of many (but few women) attorneys charging $200/hr. She decided to charge $300 on the basis that people would come to her thinking she must be worth the extra (premium).

More recently she indicated that they have been able to raise the price of the FT and consumers have come with them on the price hike. She also noted The Economist’s revenues are 50% subscription versus advertising. A central component of their content strategy is to overlay the content with tools and analytics that extend the value of the underlying content. She says they as a company long ago realized that content was becoming a commodity in news and other segments like education. “There is only a few ways to describe photosynthesis” or describe history. Technology however can be a differentiator if used in an appropriate manner so the company attempts to understand how the reader interacts with the content. This approach is used in news, where there is more attention paid to analysis than news reporting, and also in education.

NYTimes Reviews API - NOT

The New York Times announced they are releasing an API for their best seller lists spanning years and years.

The Times Best Sellers API gives you quick access to current and past best-seller lists in 11 different categories, such as Hardcover Nonfiction and Paperback Mass-Market Fiction. The initial launch offers every weekly list since June 2008, and in the coming months, we plan to add data going back to the 1930s (thanks to the hard work of our Books staff). The API also offers details about specific best sellers, including historical rank information and links to New York Times reviews and excerpts. And these aren’t just canned responses; they’re searchable and sortable, with even more robust options coming in the next release.

I wonder about this.

I was initially quite interested in this bit of information but on reflection it seems they have missed a huge opportunity. WHAT ABOUT THE REVIEWS? Maybe I am missing something but with all the reviews sections closing all over the country the NYTimes has an opportunity to enable access to their reviews database via api staring them in the face. Surely, even if the book was a best seller for 23 weeks back in 1982 or 2002 is useful but the title is likely to have that stated on the cover anyhow (few publishers challenge such obvious marketing opportunities). Even if I know that wouldn't the review be far more useful? On top of that there are many books that weren't on the charts that were nevertheless reviewed well by the times so what of them? I give up...

Australia Again

Earlier this week I mentioned the discussion going on in Australia regarding the review of local copyright rules on imported books. The Guardian reports on Peter Carey's comments that he and other authors like Thomas Keneally wouldn't have found publishers without there being some sort of protection.

Take copyright away, he said, and they no longer have a commercial leg to stand on. "And then? Then the global companies will decide that their Australian offices will be much more profitable as distributors of product than publishers of books. If this sounds creepily colonial, it is because it is."

Carey, Grenville and other writers all said that without the support of Australian publishers at the start of their careers, they would never have become the internationally renowned authors they are today. "My experience shows how uninterested overseas publishers are in our work. The more "literary" it is (about ideas; more than simple entertainment), the less interested they are," said Grenville, who won the Orange prize in 2001 for her novel The Idea of Perfection. "Writers in the future might struggle to find the success that I have, because they may not have a local publisher to put the time and care into developing their career," agreed children's author Sonya Hartnett, who last year won the 5m Swedish kronor Astrid Lindgren memorial award.

Also, pay sharp attention to the photo and you will realize Peter was in NYC recently. In fact he lives here.

Gabriel Garcia Márquez Offers €5 Ebook

The Guardian reports that "the Spanish-speaking world's most famous literary agent, Carmen Balcells" has struck a deal with Spanish ebook downloading site Leer-e that will enable her client authors to sell their ebooks directly to consumers and also set their own prices.

As these do not hold the Spanish-language electronic rights to most of her authors' books, Balcells is in effect publishing them directly through leer-e. "I cannot tell you exactly what rights the authors get, but I can say that it is much more than they get from their books printed on paper,'' said Ignacio Latasa, co-founder of leer-e.

He said about 120 works by the authors on Balcells' books would eventually be available to download from leer-e. A dozen are already on the site.

It is not so much the pricing that is revolutionary since €5 approximates $9.99 but that Balcells has done an end run around publishers. There have been some suggestions that literary agents could become more active in 'selling' their stable of authors (or a long established literary property) directly to an ebook distributor rather than working with a publisher. Some literary estates may have been purchased recently with the intention of leveraging new formats without the need to 'bother' with a publisher. The vast bulk of these literary collections are finished works and therefore a publisher could be limited in the amount of value-add they can offer.

Congressional Quarterly For Sale

The Times Publishing company, owner of Congressional Quarterly has placed the company on the block (Press Release) and says it wants to concentrate on its newspaper operations in Florida. As a wholly owned affiliate of the Times Publishing Co., (which publishes the St. Petersburg Times of Florida), CQ is a private, for profit organization however, TPC is owned by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit school for journalists in St. Petersburg named in honor of CQ's founder, Nelson Poynter.

From the company's website:

Congressional Quarterly Inc. has been the nation's leader in political journalism since 1945. Over that time, the company has built a peerless reputation for objective, non-partisan and authoritative reporting on Congress and politics. Today, CQ stands on the leading edge of information companies publishing in both online and print platforms.

CQ has the largest press corps covering Capitol Hill. More than 150 reporters, editors and researchers keep subscribers informed on weekly, daily and real-time news cycles. In addition, CQ is the leader in legislative tracking. It offers a robust suite of fully integrated online services that includes bill coverage, schedules, CRS reports, government documents, member information, transcripts and more.

CQ is primarily a subscription-based publisher whose clients include members of Congress; leaders in the executive branch, business, nonprofit organizations and government affairs shops; and top academic institutions and media outlets.

CQ also publishes a free political site, CQ Politics, which serves up a unique, compelling perspective on politics and campaigns.

Last year, CQ's publishing operations (CQ Press) were sold to Sage.

Lonely Hearts and The London Review of Books

The juxtaposition of these two items was too much to ignore. I had just found out McCartney will be on Colbert on Wednesday night (so watch if Steven gets to duet) when I saw this headline on the Guardian: Lonely Hearts Club Band. The two items having nothing to do with each other but they fall together nicely.

The Guardian takes a poetic look at the personal ads in the London Review of Books and some of these ads are indeed hilarious. It does look like something of a sport to out humor the other guy/girl. Something like evolutionary humor...

Here is an excerpt:

The internet generation of daters hasn't abandoned personal ads. Rather, lonely heart sections have raised their game. Advertisers have evolved the formulaic WTLM/GSOH standard of old into clever haikus of longing and desire. No longer the realm of (whisper it) losers, there is a sophistication to the modern day personal ad that is both fascinating and, for those who are compelled to respond, frequently thrilling.

If clumsy, unfeeling lust is your bag, write to the ad above. Otherwise write to me, mid-forties M with boy next door looks, man from U.N.C.L.E. charm, and Fresh Prince of Bel Air casual insouciance. Wikky wikky wick yo. Box no. 2851.

You're a brunette, 6', long legs, 25-30, intelligent, articulate and drop dead gorgeous. I, on the other hand, have the looks of Herve Villechaize and an odour of wheat. No returns and no refunds at box no. 3321.

There are many more like those...

The Australian Problem

The Australian publishing and bookselling community can't seem to decide whether it wants or doesn't want protectionism. Peter Donoughue takes issue with the Australian Booksellers Association's decision to back track on their long standing support of abolition of the 30/90 rule.

Now the ABA comes along and AGREES with them! It says, yes, you're right, our members are so stupid that they would at every opportunity act against their commercial interests and, as a by-product, destroy local literary culture! No matter how reasonable the price of the local edition, no matter how fair the trading terms from the local publisher, no matter how good the distribution and customer care, no matter how beneficial to sales the publisher's marketing and publicity efforts, no matter the excellent personal service from the sales reps, no matter the impossibility of getting anywhere near the same deal from overseas wholesalers like Baker and Taylor.... we're gonna buy around, just because we can!

I'd call that stabbing yourself in the front!

Earlier in the month, the Sydney Morning Herald tried to explain the situation:

Why is this relevant to us in Australia? The Productivity Commission is undertaking an inquiry into how books are sold in Australia. We have a separate copyright territory. If a book is written, designed, edited and published by Australians - as is about $900 million worth of books sold in Australia annually - an overseas publisher cannot sell an edition of it here. If it is produced overseas, Australian publishers must publish it here within 30 days of its foreign release, or it can be "parallel-imported" to Australia. If it is out of stock, the publisher has 90 days to replenish it. This "use it or lose it" principle is commonly called the 30/90 rule.

Opponents of this say it gives us higher prices. Last month Bob Carr wrote in The Australian that price was "the only question before the Productivity Commission" and importation should be freed so more households could have "brimming bookshelves".

Cheaper books, higher literacy. The argument seems attractive. But it rests on a shaky assumption and a lack of consideration of the consequence.

I think I know where the frustration lies. The next title in Steig Larrson's trilogy is has been available in the UK since early January but won't be out here until summer. I can however order it from Waterstones.com. WTF?