Media Banker's Annual Trend Reports

From Berkery Noyes:
2013 Key Highlights

• The most active financial sponsor was Vista Equity Partners with eighteen transactions in 2013. This included four deals with disclosed values over $500 million.
• Four of the top ten highest value private equity deals in 2013 occurred in the Finance segment. The largest of these was Hellman & Friedman's acquisition of Applied Systems from Bain Capital for $1.8 billion in the Insurance subsector.
• TPG Capital was the most active private equity firm in the Health segment with eight transactions in 2013.

2013 Key Trends

• Total transaction volume in 2013 decreased by twelve percent over 2012, from 512 to 453. However, when compared to 2011, volume in 2013 underwent a four percent increase.
• Total transaction value in 2013 declined by six percent over 2012, from $43.71 billion to $41.13 billion.
• The median revenue multiple increased from 1.8x in 2012 to 2.3x in 2013. The median EBITDA multiple improved from 9.8x in 2012 to 11.5x in 2013.
• In terms of secondary buyouts, or transactions completed between private equity firms, deal volume in 2013 decreased by 27 percent over 2012. This followed a 34 percent increase from 2011 to 2012.

From Whitestone Group:  Who's buying whom report (pdf)

MediaBankers (pdf)

Information Services are part of the media sector and offer business-oriented packages of news, data, insights and software tools that companies use to make decisions that drive their business. This whitepaper examines M&A activity in the Information Services industry from January 2011 through September 2013 and provides insight into the following:

• Which deals were the largest?
• Who are the most active buyers?
• Which segments of information services are the most robust for M&A?
• How does M&A volume break down by geography?
• What are the drivers of M&A in this sector?

From the Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc.(pdf)

2013 saw 14 transactions at $1 billion+ in value, with four of the top five in the Marketing & Interactive Services sector. The largest deal of the year was the $21.9 billion merger of Publicis and Omnicom, expected to close in the first half of next year. The top five also included the acquisitions of email marketer Exact Target by Salesforce.com, sports marketing agency IMG Worldwide by William Morris and Silver Lake, and shopper marketing group Valassis Communications by Harland Clarke, a unit of MacAndrews & Forbes. The only top five deal outside of marketing was the acquisition of Springer Science+Business Media by BC Partners.

The remaining top 30 deals were well diversified across sectors, including Database & Information Services with four deals, the largest being IHS’s $1.4 billion acquisition of R.L. Polk & Co.; Marketing & Interactive Services with another six deals; B2C Online Media & Technology with three deals, led by Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr; Exhibitions & Conferences with three deals, the largest being Onex Corporation’s $950 million acquisition of Nielsen Expositions (a JEGI transaction); Healthcare Information & Technology with three deals, including Roper Industries’ $1.0 billion acquisition of Managed Healthcare Associates; Mobile Media & Technology with three deals, the largest being Baidu’s $1.8 billion acquisition of 91 Wireless Websoft; Education Information & Technology with two more deals; and Consumer Magazines with one deal, the Funke Mediengruppe $1.2 billion acquisition of Axel Springer’s Regional Magazines, Program Guides & Newspapers.

Veronis Suhler Stevenson Forecast (subscription)

BISG Launches Research Study into Subscription Models

From the BISG and we are excited that the Publishing Technology business unit PCG is helping with the research.

Study of subscription models for published content to be the industry's first

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) is pleased to announce a major new research initiative to study subscription models of selling published content.

Given the success of digital subscription services in the film, television, and music industries, publishing industry stakeholders have wondered how and when these services will affect book content distribution. While the range of possible models is vast, it is unclear whether the current needs and trends suggest a ”Netflix” model with a deep and broad catalog or whether more focused verticals will continue to develop. And what are the attitudes of agents, authors, publishers, and librarians toward these new distribution models? What factors will motivate or dissuade them from participating?

To answer these questions, BISG has contracted with Ted Hill of THA Consulting working with Emilie Delquie of Publishers Communications Group (PCG), a division of Publishing Technology, to conduct a research study to identify the various business models employed by US-based digital content subscription services. This research will provide a clear picture of how content producers and others in the publishing value chain are reacting to these new forces in the marketplace.

“There is enough interest in and activity around digital subscription models right now,” said BISG executive director Len Vlahos, “that it became clear to us that research was warranted. We’re delighted to be working with Ted Hill and PCG on this project and look forward to what will be the first really comprehensive look at this landscape.”

A report of the findings will be published in summer 2014, with preliminary findings presented at BISG’s Making Information Pay Conference at IDPF’s Digital Book 2014 at BEA.

Safari Books Online, the on-demand digital learning library for technology, digital media, and business professionals, has joined as the lead Sponsor for BISG's subscription research survey. Other Sponsors to date include Wiley, the American Library Association, and Sally Dedecker Enterprises. For more information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanette Zwart at Jeanette@bisg.org. For more information about the Subscription Research Study, email Nadine Vassallo at Nadine@bisg.org

UK Public Libraries to get Free Access to Academic Journal Content

Announced today (press release) by the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS-UK) is a pilot program that will make thousands of academic and scholarly content available to public library patrons.   The publishers making their content available for free include: ALPSP, Bloomsbury Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Dove Press, Elsevier, Emerald, IoP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Portland Press, SAGE Publications, Science Reviews 2000 Ltd., Springer, Taylor & Francis, Versita, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer Health.

This pilot program which is expect to run for two years follows a technical trial period which was completed earlier this year.  The initiative itself is the result of consultation between libraries, publishers and agencies that was instigated by the Finch report of 2012.  In that report, the parties were encouraged to provide access to peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, free of charge, for ‘walk-in’ users at library premises.  The purpose of this access would be to (according to the report findings) enhance the ‘walk-in’ access already available at university libraries, and would enable anyone to have free access to a wealth of journal articles and conference proceedings at their local public library.

With UK public libraries under increased funding pressure over the past five years, it is assumed that providing patrons with this breadth of content and access will encourage more patrons to visit public libraries.

MediaWeek (Vol 7, No 5): Predictions, Photo Archive at Nat Geo, Medical Simulations + more

Deloitte has released some predictions about the technology media and telecommunications industries for 2014 (Youtube):



A short video story about Bob Bonner who is a photo archivist at National Geographic.

The first time I went downstairs to film Bill for this video, he was busy searching for old photos about South Africa, at the request of a magazine editor. One of the unpublished images he pulled has stuck with me. It was taken during the apartheid era at Christmas time, and it showed dozens of white men standing along a pool’s edge, tossing money into the water where black mine workers were fighting for their Christmas bonuses. It was a simple photograph, but it thrust me into the small, yet appalling moments of racism. There were no broken bones, no starving children, no corrupt cops. But there was degradation. There was merciless humor. There was struggle, strength, pride, hope, pain, entitlement, hate. That photo showed me apartheid. And Bill remembers that image, and those people, and the photographer every single day. He pays homage to their lives by keeping these moments safe in his memory, and sharing them with anyone who wants to learn.

Laerdal Medical and Wolters Kluwer Health Introduce Virtual Simulation Learning Tool for Nursing Students. (Press Release)  I spent some time looking into this opportunity a number of years ago and it is interesting to see they finally got something off the ground.

"There's a huge unmet need for improved clinical education and for interactive activities in the classroom that are focused on patient-centered care," said Susan Driscoll, President and CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional & Education.  "The new vSim for Nursing product provides an interactive learning experience that helps nursing educators promote better and safer patient care, and ensures nursing students are ready to practice.  This is the first simulation solution to provide readily available clinical practice with fully integrated learning resources that are closely tied to the nursing school curriculum."
Accessed online, vSim for Nursing simulates a patient encounter using computer-animated avatars that allow nursing students to access and practice patient care anytime and anywhere.  The "virtual" simulation environment helps build competence by introducing nursing students to realistic scenarios where they are responsible for making a variety of clinical reasoning decisions.  The simulator reacts to each patient-care decision and tracks these actions so that they can be reviewed and measured with personalized feedback after the scenario.  The post-scenario report is then stored for reflection and continued learning.  By allowing repetitive practice, students can build their confidence and competence in a safe environment.

Last week I noted problems in Canada over Access Copyright's licensing terms but this week The University of Montreal cancelled their all-in subscription to Wiley/Blackwell journals (THE):

Montreal previously subscribed to the publisher’s “big deal”, which provided electronic access to its entire journal collection for a fixed fee.
But an announcement on the university’s website, posted on 14 January, says that many years of above-inflation journal price rises, combined with recent cuts imposed by the Quebec government, had forced it to make a stand and decline to go on reducing monograph acquisition to sustain journal access.  Many libraries have threatened in recent years to cancel big deals, but few have followed through.  In 2011, Research Libraries UK refused to renew big deals with both Wiley-Blackwell and Elsevier unless they made significant real-terms price reductions. Before the stand-off was resolved a few months later, RLUK suggested that its members could restrict their subscriptions to the publishers’ journals in the highest demand from academics, accessing the others via inter-library loans.

From the twitter this week:
Interesting news from CCC: Copyright Clearance Center and IPR License Form Wide-Ranging Strategic Partnership DigitalBookWorld
YouTube reveals $1bn music payouts, but some labels still unhappy Guardian

Washington-based tech firm Flat World raises $9.5M in funding to make textbooks cheaper VCPost
 

Candid Archive: Family Images 1930 - 1980

Candid Archive 1930 - 1980 by Edited by Michael P. Cairns | Make Your Own Book

Sample pages from one of my recent Blurb books.  A view on PND you may not have seen. The cover image was taken at Bangkok International airport in 1969 the day we left there for New Zealand.  We were in Bangkok for about a year.  They really dressed us up nice. 

Best Books of the 21st Century (Infographic)?

From USC's Rossier School of Education -
 

Brought to you by USC Rossier’s masters of art in teaching

MediaWeek (Vol 7, No 4): Textbook Prices (Again), Predicting Novel Success, Airport Bookstores, JD Salinger + more

Research indicates that more textbook options haven't changed student behavior appreciably (IHeD)

The survey, which includes about 2,000 students from 150 campuses, indicates that while cheaper alternatives such as rental programs and open-source textbooks have gained traction in recent years, 65 percent of students had still opted against buying a book because it was too costly – and 94 percent of them were concerned that their grade would suffer because of it.
Another 48 percent of students said the cost of textbooks affected how many and which classes they took each semester. At the same time, 82 percent of students said free online access to a textbook (with the option of buying a hard copy) would help them do “significantly better” in a course. The paper therefore argues for widespread use of open textbooks, which are designed in this way and which PIRG estimates save students an average of $100 per course.
“Students should be focused on taking the classes they need, not kept out because they feel they have to choose between their textbooks and rent,” said Senack, the report’s author. “We know that if more campuses and if more states made the commitment ... we would be able to save students millions in dollars per year.”

Similar to the article I posted a few weeks ago about predicting which movies will be successful he's a similar article from Salon looking at whether a novel's success can be predicted.  (Salon)

The truth is that tailoring books to reader preferences has been going on for decades, and the Internet is only making this process more efficient. That doesn’t mean that, in the future, literary novelists like Donna Tartt or James McBride are going to be expected to market-research their books like a Hollywood filmmaker forced to submit his would-be blockbuster to the scrutiny of a test audience. While the editors who work with such writers are not above suggesting a sunnier ending or more intelligible plot points every now and then, for the most part, authors like these are signed on because of the originality of the work they produce. Only Donna Tartt can write a Donna Tartt novel, and it would take a very foolish editor to interfere overmuch with her process.

And here's someone trying to do it with math (InsideScience)

They said it is the first study to correlate between a book's stylistic elements and its popularity and critical acclaim.  In a paper published by the Association of Computational Linguistics, Vikas Ganjigunte Ashok, Song Feng, and Yejin Choi said the writing style of books was correlated with the success of the book.  The researchers used a process called statistical stylometry, a statistical analysis of literary styles in several genres of books and identified characteristic stylistic elements more common in successful tomes than unsuccessful ones.  They began their research with Project Gutenberg, a database of 44,500 books in the public domain. A book was considered successful when it was critically acclaimed and had a high download count. The books chosen for analysis represented all genres of literature, from science fiction to poetry.  Then, they added some books not in the Gutenberg database, including Charles Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities," and Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." They also added Dan Brown's latest novel, "The Lost Symbol," and books that have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and other awards.  They took the first 1,000 sentences of 4,129 books of poetry and 1,117 short stories and then analyzed them for various factors. They looked at parts of speech, use of grammar rules, the use of phrases, and "distribution of sentiment" – a way of measuring the use of words.

Update on how Airport Bookstores are adapting to a changing industry (DesertNews)

Airport bookstores may be on the front lines of the transition to eBooks. Cheaper prices and new methods of reading are causing concerns among booksellers, experts say.  But the future isn’t all bleak, said Sara Hinckley, spokesperson for the Hudson Group, which owns several airport bookstores throughout the country.  “Bookstores across the country, including Hudson, are doing everything they can to give customers a reason to look beyond price as the only deciding purchase factor: a hand-picked selection, personal service, a pleasant shopping environment, convenience, community support and the most aggressive pricing we can afford,” she said.

In the New Republic a 'repost' of an article written in 1973 reconsidering JD Salinger (New Republic):

I have no idea why Salinger has not in recent years graced us with more stories. It is no one's business, really. He has already given us enough, maybe too much: We so far have not shown ourselves able to absorb and use the wisdom he has offered us. Today the man I have quoted, Jim, finds Salinger "as important as any writer" he has read; in a sense he has come full circle—from Salinger to Salinger. A dedicated if somewhat offbeat school teacher, his mind and spirit are not unlike Zooey's: sarcastic at times, tender and vulnerable at other times; now indignant, now resigned and intensely prayerful. A while back one could read Salinger and feel him to be not only an original and gifted writer, a marvelous entertainer, a man free of the slogans and clichés the rest of us fall prey to, or welcome as salvation itself, but also a terribly lonely man. Perhaps he still feels lonely; but he is, I think, not so alone these days. The worst in American life he anticipated and portrayed to us a generation ago. The best side of us—Holden and the Glasses—still survives, and more can be heard reaching for expression in various ways and places, however serious the present-day assaults from various authorities.

From the twitter:
Why Classic Movies Have Terrible Trailers - Adrienne LaFrance - The Atlantic The Atlantic
BBC News - Pearson shares hit after profit warning BBC 
The Decline of the American Book Lover - Jordan Weissmann - The Atlantic The Atlantic

Image: Holua Lookout.

View looking south across the base of Haleakala Crater from above Holua Cabin.  To the right are the famous switch-backs that take hikers from the crater floor to the rim.  To the top left, is the part of the crater that looks like a moonscape.  Looking forward to some hiking this summer.

British Library Goes Comic

A new exhibition at the British Library (Guardian):

The summer show, entitled Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, is being staged by the British Library which holds the complete output of the British comics industry but said it had not in the past done the genre justice.
Roly Keating, the library's chief executive, said: "It is fair to say, if we are being honest, that we haven't devoted to that sector of our collection the scholarly and curatorial effort we have devoted to some of the higher culture parts of our collection. This year we are addressing that with a vengeance."
The exhibition will have sedition and rebellion at its heart, said Dunning. It will also aim to explode a few myths, not least that the publications are all about superheroes and that reading them is the pastime of boys, he added.
"When we first started to talk to people about this comic book show some people said 'it's only for boys'. It's garbage," said Dunning. "People were saying girls don't like blood and psychologically upsetting things and the girls were saying, 'we love it'."

BISG: Making Information Pay

BISG is co-locating their Making Information Pay conference at BEA this year.  Be sure to check it out.

Making Information Pay: Join Us at BEA in partnership with IDPF

We're co-locating this year's Making Information Pay Conference with IDPF Digital Book 2014 at Book Expo America.

Making Information Pay is an annual half-day conference for senior executives in operations, sales, business development, and marketing, providing information and insights about the best practices driving the success of today's industry leaders. Previous keynote speakers have included Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist at bitly and a Forbes "40 under 40 Ones to Watch" and Charles Duhigg, the prize-winning New York Times journalist and author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

Making Information Pay will take place in the afternoon on Thursday, May 29th and is included FREE with your IDPF Digital Book 2014 registration badge. Complete access to the BEA Exhibit Hall is also included FREE with your IDPF badge.

IDPF Digital Book 2014 is the flagship digital conference at BEA and the longest-running digital conference in the industry. We're pleased to partner with them. 

Register through BEA to add on an IDPF Digital Book Conference 2014 pass which includes unlimited access to the 2014 BISG's Making Information Pay conference and the BEA Exhibit Hall. Pricing information is available here.

For questions, email info@bisg.org. For sponsorship opportunities, email Jeanette Zwart at jeanette@bisg.org.

We thank our 2014 MIP sponsors, Media Services Group and Bowker.

Hashtag #MIP14

An Interview with Tim O'Reilly on Open Data

Tim O'Reilly discusses open data with the McKinsey & Company Insight:

A platform for innovation It seems to me that almost every great advance is a platform advance. When we have common standards, so much more happens. And you think about the standardization of railroad gauges, the standardization of communications, protocols. Think about the standardization of roads, how fundamental those are to our society. And that’s actually kind of a bridge for my work on open government, because I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of government as a platform. So much thinking in government is around, “Well, we’re going to build a program to solve this particular problem.” But the most successful government programs to me seem to be platform kinds of programs. And I’m not talking about, “Oh, well, the government funded the Internet originally.” I’m talking about things like GPS. The fact is that this is a military program that, through a crucial policy decision, was opened up for civilian use. If this was still just for fighter pilots, we wouldn’t have that Google self-driving car. We wouldn’t have maps on our smartphones. And that’s why I think this idea of a platform and the idea of a market go hand in hand so well. Because when you build a really powerful, effective platform, you do enable a market. 

MediaWeek (Vol 7, No 3): Canadian Copyright, Peer Review Challenge, Open Access Directive, Visual Storytelling + More

In an inevitable but still significant decision, The University of Toronto has declined to renew a controversial licensing deal with Access Copyright (Varsity):

“This is a significant victory that will save students over $1.5 million annually and is the result of a campaign led by students and faculty,” said Agnes So, vice-president, university affairs of the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU). “I am glad that the University of Toronto has listened to our concerns and ended the collection of a fee that many students saw as a cash grab.”
In a press release, the university stated that it was unable to reach an agreement with Access Copyright at a price that was fair for the services the company provided. It cited changes in copyright regulation — including the alterations to the Copyright Act made in 2012, the Supreme Court’s expansive approach to fair dealing, changing technology, and increased availability of open access material — as reasons for why the price of the license was no longer fair. Other universities have decided to end their license with Access Copyright, including the University of British Columbia (UBC), Queen’s University, and York University. Access Copyright sued York in April 2013; the case is being closely watched across the education sector, as it is widely seen as the first real test of two competing interpretations of recent changes to the law.

Peeling back the peer review process: It just wasn't true.  (Guardian)

Suddenly a plethora of positive psychology books began to appear, written by eminent psychologists. There was Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csizkszentmihalyi, who with Seligman is seen as the co-founder of the modern positive psychology movement; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment by Seligman himself. And of course Fredrickson's Positivity, approved by both Seligman and Csizkszentmihalyi. Each of them appeared to quote and promote one another, creating a virtuous circle of recommendation.
And these books were not only marketed like a previous generation of self-help manuals, they often shared the same style of cod-sagacious prose. "Positivity opens your mind naturally, like the water lily that opens with sunlight," writes Fredrickson in Positivity.
Then there was the lucrative lecture circuit. Both Seligman and Fredrickson are hired speakers. One website lists Seligman's booking fee at between $30,000 and $50,000 an engagement. In this new science of happiness, it seemed that all the leading proponents were happy.
But then Nick Brown started to ask questions.

Appropriations bill codifies Obama Administration Open Access directive (SPARC)

Progress toward making taxpayer-funded scientific research freely accessible in a digital environment was reached today with Congressional passage of the FY 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill.  The bill requires federal agencies under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of the Omnibus bill with research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to articles reporting on federally funded research no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
“This is an important step toward making federally funded scientific research available for everyone to use online at no cost,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).  “We are indebted to the members of Congress who champion open access issues and worked tirelessly to ensure that this language was included in the Omnibus.  Without the strong leadership of the White House, Senator Harkin, Senator Cornyn, and others, this would not have been possible.”
The additional agencies covered would ensure that more than $31 billion of the total $60 billion annual U.S. investment in taxpayer-funded research is now openly accessible.
SPARC strongly supports the language in the Omnibus bill, which affirms the strong precedent set by the landmark NIH Public Access Policy, and more recently by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Directive on Public Access.  At the same time, SPARC is pressing for additional provisions to strengthen the language – many of which are contained in the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act – including requiring that articles are:

• Available no later than six months after publication;
• Available through a central repository similar to the National Institutes for Health’s (NIH) highly successful PubMed Central, a 2008 model that opened the gateway to the Human Genome Project and more recently the Brain Mapping Initiative.  These landmark programs demonstrate quite clearly how opening up access to taxpayer funded research can accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, lead to both innovative new treatments and technologies, and generate new jobs in key sectors of the economy; and
• Provided in formats and under terms that ensure researchers have the ability to freely apply cutting-edge analysis tools and technologies to the full collection of digital articles resulting from public funding.

Scientific America: Open Access 2013

The Golden Age of Visual Story Telling (Psychology Today):

Considering most people today are too busy to read long articles anymore, do you think infographics could be a more efficient way for them to acquire information?
Infographics take advantage of our visual intelligence. So when they are done well they allow us to make sense of a large amount of information quickly. They can have real advantages over text. But writing is powerful in different ways. They are two different ways of conveying information and telling stories. One is not better than the other.

From Twitter
BBC News - Fridge sends spam emails as attack hits smart gadgets BBC
Catholic Church-owned German bookseller Weltbild files for insolvency Reuters 
Academic publishing: No peeking… Economist