Amazon's Prime Bizarre: More and More Content

The way Amazon is going with the relentless push to add more and more value to the Amazon Prime membership there won't be any more content that isn't included in the membership fee.   Hyperbolic certainly; however, Amazon has just added more than 1,000 books, comics and magazines which Prime members can access for free via phone, tablet or Kindle device.

From Nieman Labs:

There are currently 42 magazine issues listed in the program, called Prime Reading, including familiar names like Sports Illustrated, Vogue, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Consumer Reports. “Every month we choose a selection of top magazine issues for you to borrow as part of your Prime membership,” Amazon said. Users can download up to 10 titles at once.

Originally, I and probably most people joined up when in the process of buying something big the promise of free shipping prompted a 'why not' shrug to their Prime promotion.  Years later and the free shipping pays for the membership but, most importantly (in my case anyway), it has worked glue-like in the manner of airline miles to encourage loyalty.  The added stuff like book and magazine content and audio books announced earlier this year are increasingly making a tie that won’t ever break.

Several recent news stories put the number of Prime subscribers over the 50mm household mark.  It is also estimated that Prime members, who pay $99 per year for the membership, spend roughly double non-members.  (Twice)  The reports and estimates do tend to feed on themselves because Amazon is very cagey about reporting out actual data.  Other recent reports include BusinessInsider and CNN.

MediaWeek Report (Vol 9, No 2): FlipBoard Magazine - Telenovellas, Amazon, The Black Box

Here is a current link to my most recent article picks for the PND magazine:

PND Flipboard Magazine

Articles about,

The 'new' telenovella
Amazon's pricing algorithm in conflict with 'customer first'?
How bad data costs all of us
Ferguson's philosphy
Who's black box do you trust.

+ More

....Well, if it saves money then we sure should teach prisoners.

Article from the Village Voice about efforts to increase and improve the education of prison inmates.  These seem largely due to efforts of enlightened and caring individuals.  (Voice)

The program is one of several created in the 22 years since Congress banned inmates from receiving federal Pell Grants, causing a precipitous drop in the number of prison college programs, from about 350 before the 1994 ban to just 12 by 2005. (The controversy was nodded at on the most recent season of Orange Is the New Black, where the warden's idea to rehabilitate the women under his watch by establishing an education program at his privately run prison is shot down by his corporate bosses.) But while prison education advocates have long mourned the loss of college programs behind bars, legislators have been slower to come around. Last year, the federal Department of Education stepped in to begin expanding prison college programs, after federal policy had for two decades dismissed college courses for inmates as a waste of public funds.

....

Last year, following President Obama's announcement of sentencing reforms and of his intention to grant early release to 6,000 nonviolent drug offenders (as of June, he has released 348), the federal Department of Education announced the launch of a pilot program that will once again allow some inmates to receive Pell Grants, despite the 1994 law. In June, the DOE announced that 67 partnering universities would enroll about 12,000 incarcerated students in over 100 correctional facilities across the country beginning this fall. Seven of the schools, including John Jay, Hostos, and LaGuardia Community College, are in New York.

College Textbook Prices Continue to Rise

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released updated data on the price of education in the US and if you think it costs more and more for an education then you are not alone.  The data covers all levels of education and the cost of ancillary materials such as textbooks.  In fact, according to the data, textbooks have led the growth in costs since 2006 which is the first year of this analysis. 

"From January 2006 to July 2016, the Consumer Price Index for college tuition and fees increased 63 percent, compared with an increase of 21 percent for all items. Over that period, consumer prices for college textbooks increased 88 percent and housing at school (excluding board) increased 51 percent."

Looking back even further to 1977, data from BLS suggests that textbook prices have risen over 1000%.



For interest, The College Board published a report on Trends in College Pricing that looks at "prices prices charged by colleges and universities in 2015-16, how prices have changed over time, and how they vary within and across type of institutions, states, and regions".  That report can be found via this link.

Don't give up on Print.

A recent telephone survey undertaken by Pew Research confirmed book reading is still a strong pastime despite the wide variety of distractions and other content options. The study confirmed that 73% of Americans read at least one book during the year with the mean number of books read at a healthy four titles per year. With respect to eBook consumption, the research confirmed other reports (including Pew research) that indicates more readers are replacing dedicated eReader devices for multi-purpose devices such as iPads and smart phones.


Here is a link to the report summary on the Pew Research site.

Is Google Positioned to become the Dominant Education Platform?

Interesting article from The Clayton Christensen Institute reflecting on the transition underway in Education from Apple and Microsoft to the open technologies provided by Google:

And yes, Google’s suite of office tools lacks the raw functionality of Microsoft Office’s suite, but Google has taken advantage of two key dynamics. First, most users are overserved by Microsoft Office. Most don’t take advantage of at least 98 percent of the functionality in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, for example. Google’s office tools get the basic functionality right, enable new features like collaboration—which is custom made for the Web, and keep getting better with more and more functionality. Second, Google’s apps are free for educators, whereas Microsoft makes you pay. Faced with the decision, it’s become increasingly a no brainer for educators to opt for Google. If trends continue, a whole generation of children may never know what PowerPoint is.

....

What would be great to see is Microsoft move away from just focusing on the content creation marketplace of its traditional Office suite and instead leverage its acquisition of LinkedIn and Lynda.com to do three things: support competency-based learning—through badges, portfolios, and rich profiles for all students; invest in building students’ social capital—a key determinant of life success that education typically ignores—in a deliberate way; and, through both of these efforts, help students discover and cultivate their true passions.

Wiley the publisher acquires Atypon the technology provider

If, like me, you are working in the software for publishers space then this acquisition by Wiley of Atypon is a big deal.   Consolidation in the space - which is dominated by Atypon and Highwire - has been on the cards for a number of years; however, I wouldn't necessarily consider this a consolidation of providers.  Wiley certainly will be making use of the Atypon technical expertise to build out their new Wiley content platform but I would also expect Atypon to continue to be a strong and aggressive competitor in the space.  Atypon and Wiley will also want to ensure they protect (and add to) the current Atypon client roster and are probably likely to build a 'chinese wall' between Atypon and Wiley.  They will do this to make sure the Atypon customers remain despite some degree of competition between Wiley and some of the Atypon customers.

Over the coming months it will be interesting to see how the other vendors in the market react to this news.

Here is the press release:

Wiley Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Atypon

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a global provider of knowledge and knowledge-enabled services that improve outcomes in research, professional practice and education, announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Atypon, a Silicon Valley-based publishing-software company, for $120 million in cash. Atypon (www.atypon.com) is a trusted technology partner that enables scholarly societies and publishers to deliver, host, enhance, market and manage their content on the web. The transaction is expected to close October 1, 2016.
Atypon is privately held and headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, with approximately 260 employees in the U.S. and EMEA. The company provides Literatum, an innovative platform that primarily serves the large scientific, technical, medical and scholarly industry. This sophisticated software gives publishers direct control over how their content is displayed, promoted and monetized on the web. The company generated over $31 million in calendar year 2015 revenue.
Atypon’s valued customers include some of the largest and most prestigious names in the industry. Literatum hosts nearly 9,000 journals, 13 million journal articles and more than 1,800 publication web sites for over 1,500 societies and publishers, accounting for a third of the world’s English-language scholarly journal articles.
Atypon will be managed as a separate business unit while benefiting from the financial stability and continuity of Wiley’s 209-year-old organization. The data and plans from each of Atypon’s clients will remain sequestered and behind firewalls. Clients use Atypon as their core journal-delivery platform or as a way to supplement end-user engagement. Wiley will itself become an Atypon customer.
“Wiley is committed to enabling the success of our customers and partners to advance research, discovery and learning,” said Mark Allin, President and CEO of Wiley. “Atypon offers an outstanding set of publishing solutions that can help industry participants like Wiley drive the discovery of research. We will ensure Atypon’s flexible platform continues to fully support the research community and industry partners so they may better serve their own customers.”
Georgios Papadopoulos, Atypon’s founder and CEO, will continue to lead the business and will report to Mr. Allin. He said: “We have worked hard with our partners to build the industry’s premier publishing platform and support the needs of the research community. Atypon is delivering solid growth and marked its most successful year in 2015, nearly doubling its staff in two years. With Wiley’s commitment we are very excited about the many opportunities to accelerate the expansion of Atypon’s service offerings strengthening the fabric of scholarly communications, expanding access, readership, and utilization, lowering operating costs, enabling organizations to create and expand offerings and products on their own, and building value for all stakeholders.”

PND Flipboard Magazine New Issue: Am.Lawyer Magazine Reset, Apple's Long Term Strategy + More

CJR on American Lawyer Magazine's new strategy
E&P on digital strategies driving the media industry
AdAge on how Nike changed marketing
Fastcompany on Apple's long term strategy
+ More.

View my Flipboard Magazine.


Link: https://flipboard.com/@mpcairns/personanondata---the-magazine-t8knolg6y?utm_campaign=widgets&utm_medium=web&utm_source=magazine_widget
 

Barack Obama's Scholarly Journal Article on The Affordable Healthcare Act.

President Barack Obama (Barack Obama JD) has published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled United States Healthcare Reform - Progress to Date and Next Steps.  Apparently a first for a sitting President.

Here's a summary from JAMA:

The Affordable Care Act has made significant progress toward solving long-standing challenges facing the US health care system related to access, affordability, and quality of care. Since the Affordable Care Act became law, the uninsured rate has declined by 43%, from 16.0% in 2010 to 9.1% in 2015, primarily because of the law’s reforms. Research has documented accompanying improvements in access to care (for example, an estimated reduction in the share of nonelderly adults unable to afford care of 5.5 percentage points), financial security (for example, an estimated reduction in debts sent to collection of $600-$1000 per person gaining Medicaid coverage), and health (for example, an estimated reduction in the share of nonelderly adults reporting fair or poor health of 3.4 percentage points). The law has also begun the process of transforming health care payment systems, with an estimated 30% of traditional Medicare payments now flowing through alternative payment models like bundled payments or accountable care organizations. These and related reforms have contributed to a sustained period of slow growth in per-enrollee health care spending and improvements in health care quality. Despite this progress, major opportunities to improve the health care system remain.

Travelin' man, that's what I was.

Travel has always been a constant in my professional life.  There have been gaps but for the most part I've had to travel for business constantly since I joined my first company after grad school back in 1989.   Growing up we were a Pan Am family because the company my father worked for was owned by Pan Am and, much of the time, we were able to fly first class on airline employee passes.  As a child I developed a distorted idea of how normal people traveled.  But, we had it good for a long time.

In the late 1970s - early 80s all the fun was soaked out of flying.  It became an angry experience.  People didn't dress up to fly any more.  No one wanted to take you to the airport to see the planes.  People get ugly and angry with frequency.   I admit to some of that myself on occasion.

Over the past three years, I traveled internationally far more than I expected.  Our business was challenged (to understate our circumstance) and this situation required me to be in the UK almost constantly.  When friends and colleagues ask me about this experience they have - on my behalf - tried to calculate miles and round trips and hours spent.  To be honest, while the travel was far more than expected it wasn't my place to complain but friends (and Mrs PND) with more objective points of view remain astonished that there wasn't an intervention of sorts to help reduce my travel.  There was no way this could continue at this level.

So I got to thinking what the numbers really looked like and here's what I came up with for my travel over the past 36 months:

• 440,000 miles flown (415,000 on United).
• 185,000 miles flown in 2014
• 100 flights in/out of Heathrow
• 150 flights in/out of Newark
• Other cities: Beijing, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Washington, New Orleans, Chicago. Edinburgh, Boston, New Delhi, Berlin, Manchester,
• Typical travel week included more than 20 hrs in travel time
• Approximately 75 books read
• Complete seasons of Deadwood, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad + assorted others
• 840,000 airlines miles/points earned
• (Only) 2 complimentary upgrades
• Platinum United frequent flyer (and gold for life)
• Approximately 90 round trips (75 out of Newark)
• Approximately 25 mileage upgrades to business class (not enough!)
• 1 cancelled flight
• Approximately 65 multiple day rent-a-cars
• Approximately 300 hotel nights
• Approximately 100 nights with my parents (stress inducer but money saver)
• 0 economy class meals eaten
• 2,800 miles running (to stay in shape and reduce stress!)
• 60+ train trips: Amtrak, UK, Europe
• Conservatively, 2,000 photos
• 1 missed hotel fire alarm

That was my job (and I wouldn't wish it on anyone).   In order to make sense and reduce stress and anxiety a set of routines are almost forced on the frequent traveler.  I knew the configuration of the different planes traveling between the US and UK so I'd look for specific seats to grab.  I'd try to execute a strategy so that I could maximize the chance of the seat next to me being left open.  Having a little more room to sleep on an over night flight becomes the most important goal in the days running up to departure.  But flights on Sunday (out) and Thursday (home) are rarely empty.  Sunday departures were always the worst since I'd begin packing around 3pm and leave for the airport around 4.  But, arriving Monday morning gave me the 'right' to return on home Thursday night.

Since I left PT (now "Ingenta") I've continued to travel but I don't see myself spending this amount of time on aircraft and at airports any time soon.

Next - What's in my bag?

Michael Cairns has served as CEO and President of several technology and content-centric business supporting global media publishers, retailers and service provider.  He can be reached at michael.cairns@outlook.com and is interested in discussing new business opportunities for executive management and/or board and advisory positions

Photo Image: Piccadilly Curcus 1968

Since so many people liked the 1954 version of Piccadilly Circus I thought I'd show one from 1968.  Here you can see that the center statue (Eros) is no longer an island in the middle and that there is a wider pedestrian space around the statue.  The road wasn't entirely blocked (note the railing on the right) until the early 1980s.  I am sure I have one from that period as well.  In 1954 the movie playing was The Bed (largely forgotten) and in this image the movie is "Beach Red" where "only man hunts his own kind".  Never heard of it.

Also, don't forget about my flipboard magazine where there are all kinds of interesting articles on media and publishing.

View my Flipboard Magazine.

Patrick Stewart: What has the European Convention on Human Rights Done for Us?