Travel Edition - Hiking in Clouds In Costa Rica

Our second trip to Costa Rica started with a weather report from the Captain: “I hope you guys are planning on doing some surfing--October is the wettest month of the year.” Actually, we weren’t planning on catching any waves and, about three hours later, we were climbing the hardscrabble road to Santa Elena in Monteverde. As we drove up the mountain road – which rolled, twisted and turned, rising to a point 5,000 feet above sea level-- we marveled at the green pastures and the apparent slow pace of life. Locals looked up in mild interest and smiled as we passed slowly by. We waved affably and tried not to overplay our interest in what they were up to.

Costa Rica is rapidly growing in popularity and, in the year between our last visit and this one, a strip mall with an American-style supermarket – is that “Maxi-Bodega”? – had opened up in Liberia. Liberia is regional capital of Guanacaste and the location of the recently expanded northern Costa Rican airport. We had landed here with the intention of spending a few days hiking in the rain forest followed by five days in the sun. As we de-planed, the likelihood of five days in the sun was dimming but, as we entered the clouds in our approach to Santa Elena, I wasn’t thinking about that at all in anticipation of seeing the rainforest firsthand.

Dusk was closing in as we jolted into Santa Elena and the ground-level clouds made it virtually impossible to see anything. Mrs. PND and I had settled on Hotel Sapo Dorado (she really didn’t have much to do with it) – the name has something to do with frogs – which turned out to be both empty and rustically adorable. Staffers told us that the hotel is usually full between mid-December and April with a mix of European and US guests. Fifteen cabins are spread across a hill above Santa Elena, most with views of the town and the Nicoya Peninsula beyond. Once settled in our cabin (which had an outdoor lanai, two queen-size beds and a basic bathroom), we proceeded to dinner in the hotel restaurant. As we discussed plans for the next day, we were a little worried about the rain but decided we would hike through the Monteverde Cloudforest Preserve.

Costa Rica has an aggressive ecological program and recently designated a large tract of forest in Northern Guanacaste as national park--though they haven’t yet decided what they will actually do with it. It has neither bathroom nor navigable road but, nevertheless, it represents the country’s desire to create yet another feast for eco-tourists. At 8:30 am the next day, we found ourselves hiking through the cloud forest on a route suggested by a park ranger based at the trail head. On the well-maintained trail, we rarely faced any mud or other hazards. I was a bit disappointed about this, since I had bought hiking boots and Mrs. PND only had Nikes--I was looking for a real hike, with real mud. At this altitude, we quickly became short of breath and regularly stopped as we climbed through the greenery. Tall trees covered in epiphytes and wrapped in vines towered above us; others seemed to have succumbed to the stranglehold of the hangers-on and had fallen across the forest floor, taking a chunk of the canopy with it. We later read that winds at this level can be very strong and often result in casualties.

Occasionally, we emerged from the dense forest to stand on the edge of a ridge, where we surveyed the peaks and valleys intersecting the region. Sixty minutes into our hike, we arrived at the Continental Divide, which provided a rest stop as well as an opportunity to look out over the forest toward the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other – or at least we could have, if the clouds had cooperated. The return trip took us over one of the hanging bridges common to Costa Rican parks and reserves, and we resolved to visit another of these reserves the following day. That day’s supposed 3.5 hr. hike took us about 2.5 hrs. and, as we returned to the car, the rain started to hammer down.

The Monteverde Cloudforest Preserve is only 10 mins. from Santa Elena and we were eating a well-deserved lunch by 11:30 that morning. As the rain pounded away, we spent the rest of our day reading in our cabin in the clouds. I plotted our activities for the next day and wondered why we weren’t spending more than two days up there. . .

Updates for the Weekend

Watching the news last night, Mrs PND and I were shocked and incredibly saddened to hear of the death of Ed Bradley. What a shock. Only several weeks ago he presented his last story on 60mins about the BP Refinery explosion in Texas and was admitted to the hospital the same day. Bradley was cool, professional and unpretentious and he joined the serious crew at 60mins in the early 1980s as very much the newbie. He clearly took his job seriously but had a great attitude about life. As described in the Boston Globe, at a Jimmy Buffet concert in Boston in 1984 he jumped up on stage unannounced and grabbed a tambourine and belted out a few songs. Here is CBS.

In other news, you will enjoy the following tale of a cocktail party where Stephen King attempts to sing with a band. The writer is Madame Arcarti and she rightly points out the hypocrisy sometimes exhibited in our reactions to the antics of of our popular culture 'heros'. Why do people think King's singing is great? Why, because he is a popular writer of fiction. Obvious. We seem to be far more patient with these people than we should be.

Thanks to a link on Guy Kawasaki's blog here is a very creative blog entry. I love it and it would be cool to try the comics myself. I should look into it.

Here is an all too frequent example misguided censorship in education from Blasted Members. It has a nice twist at the end.

Apparently, yet another large city newspaper has decided to do away with books reporting and book reviews. Here though is the reasoned discussion why this is somewhat inevitable.

I caught the following review by Bill Grimes in the NYTimes yesterday about the US pilots of the Eighth Airforce which was established in the aftermath of Pearl harbor to execute a long range bombing campaign against Germany. Surviving a tour with your mind and body in tact was a feat in itself, but to then face another tour was unbearable for some. Yet another book to place on the Christmas list.

Finally, Grumpy Old Bookman has a segment about Richard Dawkins writer of The God Delusion and a strange coincidental interview Dawkins had with Ted Haggard an apparent supporter of the gay lifestyle and illegal drug purchaser but now ex-head of his local evangelical church.

Private Equity Still Interested

Publishing is suddenly hot news in the financial markets. For an industry that is periodically characterized as a anachronism it is curious that so many PE firms seem to view publishing with excitement. Last Friday, CNBC had a segment on the activity and while they didn't hit on anything new they focused on the fact that many publishing companies, particularly newspaper companies retain very good margins and throw off a lot of cash. While their markets are seen to be declining, the PE firms can ride a decent wave for a few years and expect to hop off with a respectable return on investment. Several newspaper companies are or may be in play and even the NYT may face a proxy fight that may lead to changes in their ownership structure. It is well known that the Chandler family - prior owners of the LA Times - have pressured the Tribune Company to consider new ideas and options for recapitalizing that business.

In other publishing news, CNBC mentioned Moody's as a potential target given its strong and stable state. I haven't heard this company's name brought up before. Springer had its' bid rejected by Informa but I suspect they will be back with another bid in the short term. It was also revealed last week that Vivendi received an unsolicited bid from KKR - while not directly publishing this does reflect the interest in media generally. The bid while huge was rejected also.

We do however await the outcome of the Thomson and the Harcourt deals; they will represent the biggest publishing deals in a long time and will presage other deals in the early part of 2007 if not sooner. (Article on Pearson).

Ronald Reagan and the Vote

In July 1981 I warily plodded down to my local post office (Kihei, Maui) to register for the draft. As a non-citizen green card holder I was required to do so just like every other kid I knew because of the bill the Reagan Administration had passed earlier that year. Since that day I was never sure that the paper work was ever completed -that the post office hadn't lost it: the whole process seemed completely ad hoc. Nevertheless, no less than 25 years later I was sitting in an immigration hearing answering questions for my citizenship application and there sure enough was the notation regarding my registration for the draft on July 10th, 1981.

So, in the intervening years I could drink legally, work, be arrested (I wasn't) deported, pay my taxes, go to war as a draftee but I couldn't vote for the candidate of my choice. Up until today I have never voted anywhere. Having gone through the byzantine citizen process - which is another story - I am finally enfranchised and just at the right time. In retrospect, I should have done this sooner, but my silly notion that I would be somehow giving up my Englishness if I became a US citizen is wholly selfish and irresponsible and I wish that I had done this sooner.

It is interesting to contrast 1980 with 2006 because the current President believes himself to be the successor to Ronny. Ron Reagan the President's son was on The Colbert Report recently and couldn't control is disdain for this idea and pointedly poked fun at the idea even suggesting that he had learned to ride a horse any by a ranch to emulate The Great Communicator. Ronald Reagan was the right choice for America in 1980 as much as George Bush is the wrong choice today. Regrettably, as Neil Young said "... we had our chance to change our mind... but we went with what we knew..." I think if voters could do the 2004 election over they would think differently. Today the electorate gets to exhibit their dissatisfaction with the state of events over the past six years and will present the democrats with a chance to define themselves while in the leadership in the run up to 2008. Do I think the Democrats will blow it? All evidence today seems to indicate they haven't won this election as much as the Republicans have lost it and that should be very worrisome to the dems.

This election today appears to be the most widely voted mid-term election since 1946 with an expected 48% of voters participating. I am finally happy and proud to be one of them. If anyone doubts the true state of affairs I recommend reading Frank Rich's piece in the NYT from this weekend.

Books In Different colors

There was a front page article in The New Times last week that didn't deserve to be there. Honestly, The Times' coverage of the publishing industry has eroded substantially since Geraldine Fabricant moved to other things and this article is no different than most of the other recent weak stories. The NYT treated the news that books are now available in Home Depot, Anthopologie and other non-bookstores as a shocking surprise. The only real surprise in my mind is their lack of imagination in suggesting that more of this non-traditional placement should occur and that they should have examined why publishers are being led by (supposedly) innovative retailers who place yellow covered titles with yellow pull-overs. I mean really how brainless is that.

This weekend in the same paper Eleanor Randolph composed a rebuttal which included the notion that if books are considered a fashion accessory then perhaps publishers could cover them in some chameleon like material that matches its' surroundings thereby perfectly blending into its environment. I think she strikes the right absurd note.

I recently read a quote from Todd Wager (who founded Broadcast.com with Marc Cuban) who stated that it is "dangerous to assume your customers will be interested in your products in five months". His research confirmed that half of movie goers leaving a cinema said they’d buy the DVD which is an impulse buy opportunity. So, the strong implication is to place the DVD in the movie theatre so the patrons can buy the books, err... the DVDs. Wagner's new company does sell DVDs to patrons in the movie theatre. MJ Rose recently tried to solicit other ideas as to book/store match-ups from this entry. Harlequin Romance with Victoria Secret.... the notion is positively sacrilegious.

Have You Heard of Crowdsourcing?

A post on Lorcan Dempsey's site a few weeks ago caught my attention. He drew attention to a concept defined by Wired Magazine writers Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson called crowdsourcing (Article). They defined the concept (to paraphrase from wikipedia) as activity traditionally completed by selectively hired, trained and managed workforces migrating to low paid or un-paid amateurs. These people use their knowledge and spare time to complete tasks, share ideas and solve problems. The obvious question is why don't you get what you pay for? The answer seems to be that to work well there needs to be a strong and widely held common purpose. The 'crowdsourcing' moniker is evidence that the idea is growing mainstream (and is itself a result of increasing wide-spread access to networks). As some have pointed out the Linux and Firefox development projects have been early examples of this concept.

The wikipedia site also lists some additional examples from mainstream companies such as Proctor and Gamble and Amazon. Recently, The Economist wrote about an Australian mining company that made available their prospecting documents under the guise of a competition. Interested 3rd parties could identify areas where they believed the company could mine for gold. Apparently the participating companies identified over 110 target sites of which 50 were new to the company. The benefit for the mining company was a significant reduction in time and expense to find these new targets and they also got access to new prospecting technology and processes.

Jeff Howe has a blog related to this topic named unsurprisingly crowdsourcing.com. The article in Wired is fascinating as it points to how business models have to change in some of the least likely businesses. Who would have thought that the stock photo business could collapse because we all have digital cameras and loads of images we can now share or license. Suddenly 'good enough' content exists in substantial amounts and the market is becoming over supplied - at least from the perspective of the stock photo agencies. The article points to istockphoto.com as examples of the above and in the same vein scoopt.com exists to enable anyone who witnesses a newsworthy event to upload their photos for distribution and licensing.

Coincident with my reading Lorcan's blog entry about crowdsourcing I also witnessed an incredible example of this idea on the librarything.com site. A few weeks ago, they decided that they wanted to translate their pages so that they could appeal to foreign language speakers. Instead of finding a language speaker in each of the target languages to slog through all the pages and translate them into F, I, G, S etc. they opened up the site to allow iterative translation. To my mind the results were astounding because they had for example 75% of the German translation done inside a day. To date, about a month after they started the project, they have 100% of the site translated into German, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. Here is the hit parade. As they (Tim) point out, adding a league table of translators seemed to incite some competition. There have been a number of blog entries on this topic but here is an early one.

Crowdsourcing is powerful, and yes we can argue it isn't that new, but the enablers are now more prevalent which is better and closer computing power, easier access to networking and rapid adoption of virtual social networks. My characterization of 'good enough' above was purposeful; one of the tenets of crowdsourcing is that the power of the network will outstrip that of a small group of experienced professionals. This is the real danger for publishers and others who have built silos of expensive (to develop and sell) content. As a database publisher I could point out the blemishes in 'good enough' products that I competed against. What happens when I can't do that. Witness the EB versus wikipedia debate earlier this year.

William Styron

William Styron has passed away and his obit in The New York Times is here. Sophie's Choice is the only title I have read which still resonates with me having read it when I was 16. William Styron wasn't afraid of courting controversy - perhaps he didn't set out to do that - but he knew what he knew and he wanted to tell people about it. Sophie's Choice was a powerful novel that in my case drew me in and told me about the holocaust in a way a history book never could.

Penguin Blog

I typed penguin blog into google today and this is what came up first. Predictable really... I don't believe a Penguin can do its own shopping. For the record, I was looking for the book publisher.

While I am on this, while I was in Graduate school some friends of mine wanted to set up an all boys club named after Penguins (The Penguin Club) on the basis that (apparently) Penguins only mate once a year. Happily, I was able to decline my charter membership.

Lorcan Dempsey (who may not like the intro to this link) has some thoughts on the design of the Penguin paperbacks here.

The Big Deal Returns

I was lamenting recently that there hadn't been too many mega publishing deals this year and all of a sudden they are numerous.

In June, I mentioned that CEO Richard Harrington had been quoted in the FT regarding Thomson's willingness to part with their educational division. They rapidly back tracked and in truth the context of his comments were along the lines of "...if someone offers us a good price, we can put the money to good use on the legal and regulatory and financial segments of our business." Clearly, they have had a think about this and last week publicly stated their intention to divest the business unit. I suspect it will go to a financial buyer; this is not a particularly integrated operating unit and I think a buyer could exact some significant expense savings in aggressively consolidating these business units and product lines. Once that is done the group could be resold or sold in parts to other educational publishers.
(Toronto Star, Bloomberg)

Further interest in education from an Irish based educational technology company (The Learning Company and Edusoft-not this one -my error) which is interested in purchasing Houghton Mifflin from the financial buyers who have owned the company for only a few years. Houghton Mifflin is a venerable old line educational publisher which has gone through some hairy times as a public company, Vivendi (and collapse thereof), and then a buyout. Riverdeep will likely bring some long term stability.
(Boston Globe, FinFacts Ireland) Also here is a jealousy inducing analysis of the ownership structure of the merged entity.

Springer Science and Business Media has launched a $5bill bid for Informa which is itself a recent result of a large merger of Taylor and Francis and Informa. Apparently, Informa wanted to buy Springer Science rather than the other way around. Oopps.

Media Ownership laws have recently been changed in Australia and pundits were anticipating a surge in new deals. Irishman Tony O'Reilly who owns a media empire (and was head of Heinz) has offered to buy APN the forth largest newspaper publisher in OZ. The same article also lists some of the other recent media deals in Australia including Murdoch's purchase of 7% of Fairfax the publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald.

And for other pending deals?

Publisher's Lunch reported on the pop that B&N stock received this week when Barron's reported that private equity would find the company an attractive investment. The Riggios (majority owners) announced earlier this year that they were buying back stock and the share price is sharply up this year even without the Barron's article. In my view, it is difficult to see the value to the majority owners of a private equity play.

Reuters has been struggling - I wonder if Thomson would see this as an interesting addition to their portfolio. The company has been in the process of remodeling itself over the past several years and are still working through this. They are not out of the woods yet.

Bloomberg. The NYC mayor has said this week that he is not going to sell the company but it is not clear if he will return to manage it. He has consistently indicated that he wants to concentrate on his charitable and foundation work once his term in office is completed. Again, a potential match for Thomson once they have the war chest.

Reed Elsevier - could they go the way of VNU and be purchased by a PE firm? Undoubtedly, all the bigger players have been looking for new targets and Reed has strong branding and positioning in trade magazines, legal and education.

Returned to Reality

Mrs PND and I spent the last week or so in Costa Rica and had a wonderful time. Between the two of us we read eleven novels and I consider that a success. As it turned out I ended up reading only one of the books I intended to read (leaving The God Delusion, The Road and The Emperors Children behind). One of the books I read was kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst. He is an exceptional writer of suspense and espionage novels set in the 1930s. I have now read three of this novels and have enjoyed them immensely. His evocation of settings and characters is so realistic that having read this novel which ends on the eve of the German invasion of Poland, I caught myself two days later wondering what was happening to the characters as though the story hadn't ended. Furst lives on Long Island but you wouldn't know it since he writes like he lived through this time in Europe.

The book I did plan to take with me was Philip Roth's The Plot Against America which I couldn't put down. The whole idea of interlacing some of his family history in this 'What if' story was remarkable. My experience of Roth only extends to Portnoy's Complaint which I read in High School for a English paper. I kinda wasn't that crazy about the book which colored my view of his more recent releases. The 'what if' concept is what it is, but I had a constant troubling sense all through this book that I could see how this could happen. In someways it suggests that society is always finely balanced but one slight push one way or the other has the capacity to send things into an accelerating tail spin to the detriment of particular segments of society.

Having returned I have vowed to spend more time reading and all the talk about an excess of big titles coming out in the fall had me wondering how many books I currently have that I haven't read. I wish I hadn't done this: I rearranged my book shelves so that I now have one shelf dedicated to unread titles. I have 34. I could probably clear that if I were on vacation for 12 months and short of winning the lottery that is not going to happen. It made me a little depressed. There are some excellent titles in this group and they range from biographies of John Adams, Christopher Wren, John Lennon to the above mentioned titles and Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, John LeCarre and George Pellecanos. It is the non-fiction that I have a hard time with since they are hard to finish unless you can read a reasonable amount at each sitting. Fifteen minutes before lights out doesn't cut it.

Now it is back to an intense period of work for me. I start planning for the next vacation post haste.

Off on Vacation

And looking forward to catching up on some reading.

Here is something from the Colbert Report last week that I found amusing: I love you Fonda!

Monday Update with Links

Small Retailers: On the back of last weeks announcement that Coliseum Books was to close the AP published two reports on independent retailing. There are success stories in independent book retailing but the market is very difficult and the retailer has to be very creative in not relying on the books to produce an income. One of the retailers mentioned in the following articles refers to being 'fractional' in how he approaches his market. Basically, a little bit here a little bit there and it all adds up. Genre Booksellers and Independent Booksellers as reported by the Associated Press.

Personal Libraries: I wrote last week about libraries, but here is a far more lucid reflection by author Alberto Manguel, excerpted from The Library at Night by Knopf.

I spent some misguided time over the past few weeks looking for new links and came across a few new sites. Here is a sample:

Fifth Estate is the child of the authors and editors at Press Books. I came across the site this week and am impressed with their blogs/articles and will visit frequently. There is a link to the right of my blog. Here is a recent post about bookfinder.com.

Book Info.net has all kinds of interesting articles from someone named Tomasina. It was this recent article on the amount of new titles to be released over the next several weeks that drew me in originally. I am not sure I agree with some who think we will be overburdened by choice. For the most part, the books are purchased and are read in the less fertile periods of the year. Buzz, Balls and Hype had a similar post penned by Jason Pinter discussing the same thing. Also, if you scroll down the home page you will see they are running a 'contest' to see what the best tie-in or cross promotion idea is. This came from an earlier post about Mitch Albom's book on sale at Starbucks.

Another publisher web site I have started looking at is Elephant Walk by Overlook Press. (Overlook is the home of Peter Mayer who was at Penguin UK for many years). They are publishing a book purported to be a history of the Funerary Violin. No one is quite sure if this book is a fake or not. Overlook are Mum: here.

More next week.

See you in Church on Sunday

An article in The Register (heretofore unheard of) reports that, blogging is now 'un-christian' at least according to the Reformed Church of God. (Presumably, as simply the 'Church of God' they were mad bloggers). These evengelicals just take the fun out of everything.

Thanks to MobuzzTV. for the link.

Frankfurt and Travel

As I departed for the airport this past Sunday afternoon it was for the first time all year that I have shortened my weekend for business travel. Over the past several years I may have done this as many as 20 times a year. Virtually all of these departures were a prelude to an over night transactlantic trip with the promise of a full days work on Monday. I missed Frankfurt for the first time in eight years last week and this was often a two week trip. In 2003, I did a round the world three week trip with the last three days on the stand in Hall 8.0. Such is my ambition. I won't do that again.

The interesting thing at Frankfurt are the people you meet. It is a great place to meet international customers but you are also likely to bump into the senior level publishing people. It seems to happen more regularly at Frankfurt for some reason. I remember my first show when I met an Egyptian licensor of our content on our stand and he presented me with a highly decorated cigar (ash) tray. I felt horrible. I don't smoke and I didn't have anything for him. In October 2001, traffic was sparse and as I walked around the English hall 8.0 I envisioned a large bullseye on the roof. That year in remembrance the entire fair came to a halt on one of the days for a few minutes of total quiet.

Frankfurt is hectic, hot and smoky but it can be rewarding to showcase your products to a very large audience. I have always looked forward to it and when I am invariably traveling to the airport on Saturday morning I think if only I had more time to look around more.

What I started to say regarding traveling is that I am doing less of it but more of it at the same time. This year no more international travel but lots of tribulations traveling domestically. At the moment I am suffering a three hour delay on the way home. I will make tier level the hard way via segments and not miles. Mrs PND looked coolly at me as I left on Sunday but it really hasn't been so bad this year. We persevere.

Postscript: Seven hour commute home (norm is 4hrs). I did catch Letterman and saw Bob Woodward and listened to what is now becoming his stump speech. News yesterday that they are reprinting State of Denial and there will be 1mm in print. Also, while I was stuck in an airport at least I wasn't at the Quills awards.

Synchronisity Again, The Road, Harlequin, St.Martin's, Publishing News. AbeBooks,

Synchronisity plays a part in my reading again. I recently purchased a copy of Letters from London by Julian Barnes (signed) at The Strand in NYC. Among numerous topics it covers the leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher. Earlier in 2006, I also plowed through Heseltine's biography and it was interesting to recall his version of events during this time. Anyway, given the current state of the Labor party's convulsions over their leadership issues I thought the following quote from Barnes' book was interesting.

Mrs Thatcher had been removed because enough members of her thought that her domineering dogmatism had become electorially counterproductive. On the other hand, Mr. Major has been the candidate of the outgoing leader and the diehard Thatcherites. So he had to keep the 'Business as Usual' sign in the window while redecorating the place and updating the stock: instead of barbed wire and rifles, the family store would in future sell chocolate bars and liniment.

What of Gordon Brown? Personally, I think they should both go and Labor should take the next year to re-establish a relationship with the electorate with new leadership. It is hard to see Brown elected in his own right.

I purchased Cormac MacCarthy's book The Road last week and there was another positive review in the NYT Book review. While it is bleak, I am looking forward to reading it. Bob Woodward was with Tim Russert yesterday. The administration knives have been out, but the damage has been done. Apparently they produced a list of 'inaccuracies' all of which have been proven out. Meaning Woodward was correct. Russert asked him about Kissenger and he stated Kissenger confirmed that the President speaks with him regularly. The massive ego even suggested it was more frequently than Woodward had in the book; information which was provided by Chaney. Apparently, Chaney called Woodward personally, argued with him and told him 'Bullshit' that his comments were not on the record and hung up on him! How adult. I haven't decided to buy his book yet. It reminds me of the All the President's Men which is one of the best books I recall reading as a teenager. Just the combination of incompetence and arrogance is breathtaking.

News last week from Harlequin and as I have said before it must represent some level of incompetence to allow this company to falter so much. It strains credibility that a company with such a loyal base of customers and potentially large electronic distribution opportunities is laying off staff. Someone needs to buy this company.

Time magazine - which in truth I rarely read - has an article this week about publishers of 'streetlit titles' and their promotional activities designed to reach 'non-traditional' markets. The article makes note of St.Martins Press which is publishing K'wan who has over 400,000 units sold of titles such as Gangsta, Road Dawgz and his latest, Hood Rat. I remember reading about K'wan last year and he is quite the entrepreneur having built his publishing empire by literally hand selling his titles on the street, in barber shops and on street vendor tabletops. Other authors are mentioned in the article. It reminds me of Basquat - spray painting subway cars on his way to making millions as an avant guard artist.

Interesting news in the area of publishing trade magazines. Publishing News (UK) and AuthorLink (US) have created an alliance to "broaden the two entities news and features coverage across the globe." I can't say I am familiar with AuthorLink but I will have to check it out. In the US, Publisher's Weekly has been wandering the proverbial desert attempting with limited success to re-define itself as a trade title with appeal to consumers. Hopeless. Facing declining ad revenue and subscribers - not a healthy combination - they are reinserting some of the trade oriented sections (but not calling them sections) and have also hired a new Publisher. They have also decided to offer the title to retailers for free. That is a big risk - it will be very hard to reconsider that decision. Other subscribers, particularly libraries are likely to be unhappy with their exclusion from this offer.

ABEbooks - which has a stake in LibraryThing.com - announced that the number of titles available for sale on their site has now exceeded 100million. I don't believe this means unique titles but impressive nevertheless.

I am surprised that more hasn't been said about the Automated Content Access Protocol which I discussed last week. Here is a blog entry from searchenginewatch.com that explains all there is to know about it thusfar.

Embargoed Books

Those of us who care about bibliographic data - and I do - have been a little amused to read the summary reviews that the NYT has done in the past two weeks about State of Denial (Bob Woodward) and Carly Fiorina's biopic released on Monday. That is...next Monday. The Times has been able to purchase both of these titles in advance of their official release date. Why is this a bibliographic data issue: well, because publishers and retailers have spent considerable time defining pub date, lay down date, street date, and other dates so that no one in the supply chain is disadvantaged. In the past several years the ONIX data format has consumed significant time and effort by publishers, retailers, bibliographic agencies ses (Nielsen, Bowker) and wholesalers and this has been all to the good. Data is now more uniform and consistent and the entire effort has concentrated publishers attention on the value of good data. Nevertheless issues clearly remain in how this data is used and how processes can break down.

There is no good reason why a store should be selling these books before the publisher has told them they can. Marketing and promotional spending, author appearances, buy-in commitments and other activities are all predicated on the official on-sale date. Stores that hold these titles off the floor are disadvantaged if they are available at other stores. The industry has toyed with the idea of an specific release day of the week to focus attention on all books released during a week (Music companies do this on Tuesdays). This tactic would be pointless if retailers ignored the timetable.

The physical nature of book distribution requires that books be shipped well in advance of release date which is where the process tends to break down. Spare a thought for the bookstore which recieves shipments everyday and they can't afford the time and effort to segregate the titles which they have to hold. Most stores will have little storage space in the first place and a limited amount of time to check in boxes of books. The tendency then will be to open everything and get it out on the floor as soon as possible. That doesn't make this right but it is a reality. Limited staff time and knowledge at the recieving point results in the carefully laid plans of the sales and marketing department to fail.

If publishers care about this issue - and they must do otherwise why have embargoes in the first place - they should address this issue with an understanding of the bookseller's situation. And publishers should treat all books equally if they want to be serious about on-sale dates. It would be pointess and confusing to selectively monitor this process only for the 'important' titles.

The God Delusion

The new book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion has caught my eye and it is getting significant play from a number of reputable sources. This weekend The Guardian (Joan Blackwell) reviewed the book. It was also reviewed in last weeks Economist here.

It was The Economist where I first came across the book; the sub-head as follows: "Richard Dawkins has long trumpeted the rationale of science. Now, at 65, he has finally marshalled a lifetime's arguments against believing in God." The reviewer goes on to characterize the book as irreverent - which I think is somewhat the point. Real believers are not going to read this book; however, look for a raft of bible bashers on thier soap boxes denouncing the book nevertheless. If this happens of course it will indeed lead to more attention paid to the book and a higher Amazon sales rank. My best part of the review is the reference in the book to his contention that fervent religious indoctrination given to children amounts to child abuse.

In the Guardian, Blackwell touches on some of his social commentary regarding the encrochment of religion into social policy (in the UK and US) such that "many of us who might want to stay outside theological debate can't afford to when it is influencing social policy." In the US of course this is seen increasingly in many areas and are too numerous to mention. In our publishing world this is seen in text books that must present 'intelligent design' as though it is a scientific option while at the same time describing evolution as a mere 'therory.' Blackwell writes that Dawson reserves his best arguments for why religion has persisted.

He cites his own concept, the meme, the social equivalent of the gene, as the way ideas are spread and handed down. As a Darwinian he is keen to understand what is so beneficial about religion that makes it eligible for survival. He has an interesting theory - exemplified by the moth being attracted to the flame and thus to its death - that an arcane survival mechanism is operating in grossly distorted circumstances

Regretably, our world is increasingly becoming defined by religion and over the next 100 years our biggest conflicts will be oriented around religion. The question is whether secularism will rise as a force strong enough to counter this train wreak - I have my doubts.

Here is the book on Amazon.com. The initial reviews are all positive but in the forum section at the bottom things are starting to hot up. At the moment it is number five on the Amazon.com sellers list.

Blogger Issues

Blogger has consumed 30mins of my time this morning to fix the RSS feed. Lesson: don't compose in Word and paste into Blogger. Feedburner refuses to work since some hidden code is transferred in the process. The RSS feed still isn't working correctly but it is at least working. Inexplicably, it has re-dated a post I did last week on Supply Chain and is ignoring a post I made in the middle of last week. All are displaying correctly on the blogger site however.

Frustration reigns. Apologies.

All for the Apocalypse

In a strange synchronicity, I just finished a novel by first time novelist Alex Berenson named The Faithful Spy about a deep undercover CIA operative who ultimately saves Times Square (that's about 1.5miles from me) from vaporization. It was an enjoyable book. In last weeks' New York magazine (here), Kurt Andersen describes how all 'the apocalyse thing' has become de rigeur. Apparently, 2012 is the year. Savy New Yorkers are buying Nova Scotia real estate mainly for investment purposes but also on the off chance they can escape to it should the worst happen.

I have always wondered about disaster plans; I mean if something terrible happens to New York it isn't going to be convenient. I am not going to be able to get to my stash of currency, or water or wind-up electric radio. I am going to be stuck on the number 7 between Grand Central and Times Square. So what if I have prepared if I can't travel anywhere. And of course, I won't be with any of my immediate family either so how are we to know what to do?

Andersen narrows in on Cormac McCarthy's The Road which in his description of the book it reminded me of Stephen Kings' The Stand. (I read this when I was sixteen and thought my mom would like it - ooops.) On this theme he says "...Millions of people -Christian millenarians, jhadists, psychedelized Burning Men - are straight-out wishful about The End." McCarthy's novel is about "..a transcendentally bleak, apparently post-nuclear-war-ravaged American of the future." Excellent. I am thinking why read the "historic" The Emperors Children about post 9/11 over vacation when I can read about the future.

And if you thought this was good - read my next post.

Publishing Week in Review

It was banned books week this week (Sponsored by ALA). Here is a list of the most challenged books from 2005. No word yet on 2006 but I expect to see perennial favorite Catcher in the Rye on the list again. Pretty much any children's or young adult book that deals with sex education, dangly bits, and snogging is guaranteed at least an honorable mention. Throw in Why do I have two daddies? and you will have cracked it.

Litlove had a recent post about two new mystery writers she has started reading. Both Reginald Hill and Susan Hill produce great stories but as she points out in the case of Reg that the characters have been hijacked by TV script writers. I am not sure I like this trend which also happened with Morse and is now happening with Inspector Linley. The 'ghost' written stories don't seem to have the same substance of those that come from the authors books.

Many years ago I attended a conference given by Stanford University and Guy Kawasaki was the dinner speaker - it was a small affair. He was at Apple in the early days and is now a VC among a number of other things. His blog is very interesting and he had this recent post on 'distribution' which does sound boring but he has an interesting view point. Additionally, he also published a post at the end of last year which if you are a frequent user (and abuser) of Powerpoint you will want to read. Lastly, from a traffic and design stand point you can see how he has taken a particular approach to the way he creates the content for his blog that results in maximum attention. If you are interested in this - and who wouldn't be - here is an article.

Here is a little more on the Google decision made by the Belgium court that I commented on earlier this week. Google clearly did not like the requirement to post the judgment and replied very strongly to the court on this issue. There is another hearing in November where they are likely to rely on industry practice that enables any web site to effectively close itself off to spidering. In this case had this technology been invoked by the plaintiff would have avoided the law suit. But then, where's the fun in that?

Eoin Purcell had a post on comics and beat me to a reference from the New York Times article on same. There have been a few other articles that I have noted over the past several weeks in addition to this one. Firstly, the 9/11 Report is being published in a comic book version. Interesting...I am not sure the point, but perhaps comprehension and reading ability has something to do with it or maybe it is a "...let's see if we could do this.." kind of thing. As the article points out it is a little hard to generate the gravitas of two aircraft slamming into the WTC with a simple ...KABOOM!! Here also is an article from the Houston Chronicle about Comic book Bibles. (I just report the stuff I don't believe it). Comics are of course huge business and a number of large US publishing houses have undertaken publishing programs or distribution deals for comics or Manga.

Finally, I haven't had a link to The Daily Show for a while but Hugo Chavez was such great comedy that it has to be referenced. Oh and Norm Chomsky - assuming he earned out his advance - running all the way to the bank.