Identifying My Package

As publishers we remain committed to defining for our readers and users the ‘package’. At the Frankfurt supply chain meeting last week as I listened to another “history of the ISBN” and other bedtime stories I was stuck by our insistence as publishers to define for our customers just how they should consume our content. This was manifested in our approach to identifiers for segments of content. I include myself in this criticism as a proponent of ISBN, DOI, ISTC and other alphabet defying groupings over the past 10 years. Three or more years ago, I think we were on the right track but in today’s user defined world the consumer is telling us what parts they want to consume and we will need to come up with easy to use flexible solutions that can identify the content and use.

On the Exact Editions site a user can select, by highlighting, a piece of text they want to use from any number of the journals and magazines hosted by EE. (The tool is named The Clipper). It is a fun and useful tool but in its implementation it doesn’t restrict the user in any way (other than a limitation on the amount of content). If a similar solution were implemented in a research context (within Refworks for example) I would like to see a persistent identifier created on the spot who’s syntax could be partially defined by the user. This is a perfect implementation for a DOI (one of the few perhaps) that enables the user to select a segment of the content they want, makes it persistent, creates a record for the publisher and enables any necessary reporting to take place.

It would seem to me that formatting a programmatic standard syntax to represent paragraphs, chapters, images etc. is a backwards approach simply because we will never fully anticipate how our users will use the content. We also continue to use the printed page as a construct which is fast diminishing in the online context and further undercuts the current standards approach. Attempts to build out a standard by unilaterally assigning executable identifiers to works (books) will be a waste of time and I simply don’t see the benefit of this approach; moreover, I don’t see anyone paying for it. It is not even clear publishers would welcome this approach.

Several implementations of technology that places at the point of need an easy to use script has proven that users want and are willing to purchase or gain approval for the use of content. CCC and O’Reilly are two differing examples of this concept. In the same manner, enabling an easy to use [citation] solution that provides a user with a simple pop-up window tied to the content they are interested in is a far more flexible and appropriate solution to identifying content. Avoid proscriptions: Let the user decide.

Amazon to Loose "One-Click"?

From my Aussie stringer, the Sydney Morning Herald has an article this morning on a New Zealander called Peter Calveley. Peter has been engaged in what is becoming a sport of sorts for dedicated people, crank-heads and other patent crusaders who seek to challenge existing patents for various technical solutions and products. In this case, he has waged a long battle over Amazon.com's famous 1-Click patent, a process that enables online shoppers to buy goods with the single click of a mouse button. From the news report:

In response to Calveley's request to re-examine the intellectual property, the US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) has just handed down a decision
rejecting all but five of Amazon's 26 claims to the patent. The Patent Office agreed with Calveley's claim that processes similar to the 1-Click solution had been documented before the Amazon patent was lodged in 1997. Eight of Amazon's 26 intellectual property claims were dismissed because of a Newsweek magazine article entitled The End of Money?. It was published in 1995 - two years before the 1-Click patent was lodged. The article described a process where someone could click a button to pay for "an annotated bibliography of every article ever written about Sandra Bullock" and download the file.

Naturally, Amazon.com are not giving up so easily and can opt to appeal or take the case to the civil courts. As for now, the decision has been posted on the USPTO website but don't go adding 'one click' to your transaction module just yet.

Booker Short List is Free

The Times Online is reporting that the MAN Booker prize short listed titles will be made available for free download. Apparently the initiative is well advanced but what I really thought interesting was this statement:

The downloads will not impact on sales, it is thought. If readers like a novel tasted on the internet, they may just be inspired to buy the actual book.

Hummm. I must be missing something because while some forward thinking people in the industry subscribe to this theory it is by no means universally held. In fact I laughed when I read it. Surely, if free downloads were a promotional vehicle there would be more (all) of them.

Also, in one sweep the publisher disparaged the sales data in Nielsen's bookscan product by suggesting that the sales units of the Booker winner documented in the Nielsen reports were only 10% of the actual total. (Me thinks they are counting in Cusslers). The writer goes on to say that winning will do wonders for sales of the title - breathlessly, "Enright’s sales may now quadruple, at least". Gosh, is that an extra 12,000 units?

Lulu Name New President

Lulu.com the self-publishing juggernaut announced the appointment of Bryce Boothby Jr. as President and COO of Lulu Enterprises. Boothby, 57, will oversee all finance, engineering, and business at Lulu.com as well as Gnack, the Lulu Enterprises company that provides support and services for open media businesses.

From the press release:

"We are very excited to have an executive of Bryce's caliber joining the company," said Lulu Founder and CEO Bob Young. "Because of our rapid growth we must prepare our company to serve millions of customers. Bryce's experience and remarkable track record of success will ensure Lulu's ability to continue to scale rapidly into the future."

Boothby appears to have no direct publishing experience other than a stint at Quebecor in the 1990's. He does have strong manufacturing, process and technology experience which should give you a sense as to where the publishing industry is headed.

Sommers Named President of Gale

Pat Sommers who until recently was President & CEO of Sirsi/Dynix has been named as the new President of Gale Reference. He replaces Gordon Macomber who announced last week that he was leaving for Wolters Kluwer Education. Sommers will report directly to Cengage CEO Ron Dunn. From the press release:

"Pat Sommers is extremely well qualified to lead Gale. He has anoutstanding record of success in managing information service businesses,and I am confident that he will provide strong leadership to help Gale growand further solidify its position as the world's premier library referenceinformation business," said Mr. Dunn. "I am delighted to welcome Pat toCengage Learning and look forward to working with him to provideoutstanding products and services for Gale's customers."

He starts Monday.

Press Release.

Pick Up and Go Book Vending

Doughty thieves made off we two new book vending machines over the weekend (as reported by the BBC). And to think we believe reading is in the decline. Who said reading isn't popular.

"The machines, worth £10,000 each, were in a trailer attached to a lorry parked at PN Computer Services on High Street, Elsenham near Bishop's Stortford. They were due to be delivered to Stansted Airport, but thieves took the trailer between Friday 14 and Monday 17 September. Essex Police said they have few leads and want information from the public."

I could have told them to avoid Bishop's Stortford; too many angry booksellers. I have always liked the idea of book vending machines and proposed the idea when I worked for Berlitz publishing as a unique way to sell our travel guides and phrase books. Idea died.

Swets Acquires MPS Scholarly Stats

The MPS resource management tool Scholarly Stats was quite innovative but in my opinion never really fit with the MPS core business. As a result I think they struggled to sell it into the library market and gain any significant market share. At a time when librarian's budgets are threatened or limited in some manner, Scholarly Stats is a tool librarian administrators can use for library usage statistics of licensed materials. From their website:

ScholarlyStats has been developed to provide information professionals with a single point of access to their vendor usage statistics. Providing faster access to consolidated data, it can help you to analyse usage of your online content more easily and more effectively. ScholarlyStats delivers consolidated reports to libraries around the globe, providing a clearer view of usage of over 70,000 journals and almost 450 databases from 46 platforms.

MPS was not a subscription agent as Swets and Ebsco are so could operate as a neutral party. With this purchase, the Scholarly Stats tool will be integrated into the Swetswise product portfolio and this will require some of the other platform providers and agents to beef up thier own tools for managing and monitoring licensed content usage.

More on the acquisition: Information Today

On a related note, the EU competition commission has cleared the acquisition of Swets by Glide Buyout Management Holding BV. This deal was previously announced in early September. Forbes

Olivieri Resigns From Wiley Blackwell

The Bookseller (UK) is reporting that Rene Olivieri who was responsible for the integration and merger of the Blackwell business into Wiley has resigned. There is no official report from the company which seems to indicate that the timing is unexpected. (Not least because senior execs in the US will still have been in bed when The Bookseller was reporting this). Having said that, it would seem that senior executive level changes were on the cards as the integration progressed and while this change may be presumptive it may also have been inevitable. Steve Smith was appointed earlier this year as head of all Wiley operations in Europe, Asia and Australia.

LibraryThing Launch Wiki Books In Print

The success of wikipedia, Librarything and other social databases has always intrigued me in terms of the models potential application to the development of a wiki-like bibliographic database. Well, it looks like Librarything has launched something that seeks to build a collective database of book catalog information. They call it Common Knowledge and describe it thus:

Common Knowledge works like a wiki. Any member can add information, and any member can edit or revert edits. All fields are global, not personal. Common Knowledge diverges from a standard wiki insofar as each field works like its own independent wiki page, with a separate edit history. Some examples:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I've been conservative with characters and places. (See Longitude, worked on by Chris for the opposite approach.) But I wish I had her editor! The history page for "important places" in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, showing improvement over time.
David Weinberger. Half-filled. He mentions his agent, but I can't tree his major at Bucknell and the honors section is empty.
Hugo Award Winners. This is going to get very cool.
The global history page. Mesmerizing.

In order to get Common Knowledge off and running, Librarything are "slapping fields up there" but this effort it really intended to give Common Knowledge some initial heft. Since all fields are editable this gives significant content for users to react to and add, correct and expand which is, of course, the intention. Tim at Librarything says that this is the perfect Librarything feature and he is very excited about it. As with other similar wiki like applications, users will be able to use and build off the data (as long as they cite the source) and there is strong encouragement to do so. Tim goes on to say that they will be building API's to promote even greater use.

As a result of this initiative we are going to see a much greater blending of user generated content and structured content from the likes of Ingram, Nielsen and Baker & Taylor. The commercial database companies would be crazy not to incorporate this content into their products but they have to be careful. What Librarything is doing is compounding the notion that biblio data is a commodity. Value still exists in the logical compilation of bibliodata but how long will it be before crowd sourcing encompasses the development of logical frameworks, data standardization and taxonomies. Perhaps this is starting to happen and indeed examples such as software development (Linux) prove that groups can build logical and powerful constructs. A wiki biblio database is probably easy by comparison and I can see the day when a biblio manager will no-longer have 50 data entry staff in New Jersey but will rely on an army of free contributors with far more collective expertise. The trick will be how each of the current commercial providers are able to differentiate themselves.

Wire Loose

Wired notes the 'rumor' regarding Random House's possible inclusion in the Google Book Program. It was mentioned as an aside by Peter Olson in a panel meeting at Frankfurt. I don't believe this article is particularly accurate and commented as such. Especially this quote:

As for Random House's rumored about-face, there's certainly the distinct waft of
desperation to it; a struggling publishing company facing stagnant sales and falling revenue trying to "compromise" with a internet titan.

Wired

The Radiohead Agenda

Dear Sir,

We will not be requiring your services any longer and will not be renewing our contract. We thank you for your 10 years of often frustrating, painful but finally rewarding management expertise but as a band we have decided we need to be masters of our own creativity and financial development.

All the best for your future plans,

Radiohead.


P.S. If you would like a copy of our new release click here. It's free.

P.P.S. Our mates OASIS and Jamiroquai are joining us.

My Foreword Article

Harpercollins Launches Authonomy.com

Harpercollins UK has announced the launch of an author community site that will attempt to mimic the success that MySpace (and others) have had in the development of new music. Interestingly, the parent of both Myspace and Harpercollins is Newscorp and leveraging Myspace across the Newscorp businesses was something observers were expecting when the deal was consummated last year. No matter.

Authonomy will be expanded globally and will seek to develop the type of social networking framework that has been the hallmark of myspace, bebo, facebook and others. That type of success is hard to bottle so it remains to be seen whether Harpercollins can create the same type of social interest around writing and authorship. Users of the site will be encouraged to upload their own writings, comment on others and generally support the efforts of their fellow Authonomists.

As talent is spotted, Harpercollins will consider the works for general publication. No guarantees of course. Thus far, the launch hasn't really generated too much excitement.

Frankfurt Bookfair Blog

The bookfair has a blog and they kindly added me to their blog roll. I wish I had known in advance and I would have been more diligent in publishing material about the fair. No matter there is always next year. I think I have my old colleague Andrew Wilkins to thank for this.

Frankfurt Blog

Frankfurt Supply Chain Meeting: MVB Content Warehouse

I attended the 29th Frankfurt Supply Chain meeting this week and from a jet-lagged audience I report on a few of the presentations. The room was typically full of vendors, publishers, data suppliers, software providers and consultants. There was a disappointing number of questions and follow-on discussion with all the presentations and I am unsure of the reason for this. Perhaps most disappointing was that the promised drinks cart failed to arrive at the end of the day - not as it turns out, the responsibility of the conference organizers.


Roland Schild: The Changing Landscape of the Book World.
Schild is the director of the German publishers and booksellers organization (MVB) has took over management of their book digitization program when he joined MVB from Amazon.de. The digitization program was originally announced at Frankfurt 2005 and is based on the Macmillan Bookstore platform. In presenting their project, Schild noted that they are announcing a name change to Libreka. The launch of the site is going to be somewhat limited with "purely search" only until added features such as purchasing are added sometime in 2008. The focus of the site is on titles "with economic value" that is those titles in German Books In Print. (MVB is the publisher of German books in print). Schild noted they have three objectives in supporting both publishers and booksellers with this initiative:

1. Maximize reach to the publishers target audience with two 'aspects': Firstly in a quantitative manner in driving traffic where the publisher is less concerned with a targeted approach: A Dan Brown novel where they just want mass exposure. Secondly, a targeted approach where the book content may appeal to a narrow audience such as 'rose gardeners'. The product will enable both models
2. Beginning in the first quarter 2008, they will become an 'open sales channel for booksellers and publishers' offering new content and content models for sale.
3. They intend (must) operate in a 'copyright friendly' way and adhere to all copyright requirements.

It remains to be seen whether Schild and his team will be able to build what he described as a 'European Digital Library' especially in competition with the likes of Google and Yahoo and even some specific library programs. Nevertheless, MVB has been seeking the support of 'GYM' (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft), libraries, publishers and others to make them aware of the program and to ensure that their content is included in search results. That seems rather obvious but the biggest challenge will be to establish a relevant content warehouse will all digital content that is a real destination. Assuming digital content is searched via GYM how MVB will draw traffic to their site will be a big challenge. Of note, Springer which is a Google Library client was not mentioned as an MVB participant and if the case represents a significant hole in MVB's digital content repository.

Schild mentioned that they would like to use the ACAP content access protocol which will allow the MVB content to be indexed but will enable traffic to be referred back to the MVB site where various content access parameters are in place according to publisher preference. Their approach is similar to the Microsoft Live Book search approach.

It was interesting to hear about the production issues they faced in this project but there were two strange things: Firstly, Schild announced they were rebranding the product but didn't show us the brand and Secondly, most importantly there were no screen shots or a demo...

Frankfurt Supply Chain Meeting: Random House

Fionnuala Duggan spoke of RH's internet marketing efforts: "Web2.0 and the marketing mix" and 2005 to RH. She has experience in music, newspapers and publishing so offers a broad base of experience in web 2.0 applications. She introduced her discussion by commenting on how there has been a rapid increase in 'a different type of company'. She noted Myspace, facebook, ebay, photobucket and librarything. The central tenet of these social companies is that users are "choosing to interact" with them rather than having something imposed on them.

Fionnuala noted that attention and activity is now widely dispersed across the panoply of media choices. Media is vastly more fragmented than ever before and unless you as a publisher have a strategy to hit potential consumers in the locations where they are surfing then she concludes "you haven't got an internet strategy". You need to fish where the fish are and be present where the consumers are active. The object of internet marketers is to reach out into the internet and bring back the consumers to the RH site where they can interact/engage with them.

Vehicles used include email which if closely and accurately marketed can be an "extraordinarily powerful marketing tool and has been for RH." Most of traffic for RH comes from search and while a competitive market, search is a priority for RH in navigating traffic to RH. Google booksearch is also going to be an enormously important step in the growth of books. Books will now compete with all kinds of published works and the challenge for publishers is to make books relevant within the context of all other types of printed media. So, publishers need to be far more aware of the consumer experience, the content of books, the presentation of books, etc.

She reminded the audience however, that making books available is not the same as selling them and as an example she showed a music retailer named emusic. The company is a 'long tail' retailer of music content and has been able to create a strong viable content retail operation entirely through merchandising. The company has a catalog of over 2mm tracks and has "electrified and made interesting" the long tail of music retailing.

The Random House widget has been very successful for them and is an important aspect of their desire to seed social sites like Myspace and Facebook with Random House content. Other social applications she mentioned were iLike, iBook, Bebo and librarything. As book publishers they should be trying to infiltrate these sites with their content and also be prepared to engage the resulting consumers/users in social interactions.

Lastly, having an internet presence is a lot more than having a web site. It is far more than that and while important to front list, if done correctly their activities will have far more impact on the long tail of Random House titles which provides the excitement.

Frankfurt Supply Chain Meeting: Shatzkin & The Emergence of DADs

Mike Shatzkin of Idealogical company presented his research into Digital Asset Distributors in a speech entitled An Emerging Infrastructure of Digital Asset Distribution. Mike has presented this material on at least three occasions and I discussed it earlier this year here. He also has a copy of a similar speech from earlier this year on his web site here.

The publishing supply chain is changing and is no longer simple. In digital distribution even without ebooks they have more content to supply more trading formats, more trading partners and more customization. A lot of this content is about sales but also a lot about marketing. A little more than a year ago, Shatzkin saw a number of companies developing digital asset distribution (DAD) services who distribute content for digital asset producers (DAP) and pass the content to digital asset retailers (DAR). The role of a DAD is to get content delivered to a wide aray of content users. In his view there are more scale reasons for the development of DADs than there are/were for physical distribution which has been consolidating steadily for 40 years. Shatzkin went on to identify eight companies in the publishing arena he considers to be DADs: Biliovault, Bookbank, MPS Bookstore, Code Mantra, Ingram Digital, LibreDigital, Random House UK and ValueChain International. (These companies are also noted in the speech cited above).

In determining the need for a DAD a publisher should document all their use cases such as, files sent to printers including archiving and version control, files to merchants to support sale including covers, toc's etc., files sent for subrights reasons, files sent to websites and/or syndicators for pr reasons and files sent to online booksearch programs. Finally ebooks are the least important of the use cases as don't currently provide a lot of revenue but do provide promotional benefits. The objective of a publisher is to get a DAD that can support all their use cases and avoid retaining DADs that can only fulfill part of their use cases. New use cases arise all the time so the DAD also needs to be flexible.

In the long run Shatzkin believes that most DAD's will become industry resources for most publishers and publishers (with only a few exceptions) will forgo development of their own DAD capability.

There are a number of steps a publisher should take in beginning their DAD strategy.
Firstly, a publisher needs to develop a spreadsheet inventory of all their files, their locations and their formats. Secondly, the publisher needs to document all their use cases. Thirdly, understanding both the current costs of fulfillment and what is not getting done is also important. These three items are critical for the publisher to have a meaningful discussion with the potential DAD's about services and costs. If the publisher doesn't have the content in a form to distribute, the DAD will almost certainly work with them to transform the content for a fee.

Lastly no DAD is future proof and so you must get to know the provider not just the sales team. Be sure to build strict service level agreements into your contract which also includes an innovation clause enabling you as a customer to ensure the DAD continues to innovate and expand their services in line with your customer needs and requirements.

WH Smiths Beats Estimates

For some reason AOL Europe put this article at the top of their search results for WH Smith this morning. As the article is six months old you might want to look at more recent results here.

*****


Good news for UK book retail this morning in the results for WH Smith's. Annual revenues and profits were higher versus last year on the back of better results in their railway and airport stores. City center stores continue to plague the business and revenues were off 6% versus last year; however, the company indicated that market conditions are masked in this result as they continue to realign their store product mix.

Highlights from the company press release:

Profit before tax and exceptional items up 29% to £66m (2006: £51m). Profits from trading operations are:
• High Street profit up 5% to £44m (2006: £42m)
• Travel profit up 16% to £36m (2006: £31m)
• Total Group profit before tax of £76m (2006: £44m).
• Like-for-like (LFL) sales down 4% reflecting our strategy to rebalance the mix of our High Street business towards our core categories.
• High Street LFL sales down 6%, with total sales down 6%
• Travel LFL sales up 2%, with total sales up 6%
• Gross margin has improved by 230 basis points year on year.
• Cost savings of £10m, with £3m delivered ahead of plan; further incremental cost savings of £11m identified.
• Strong free cash flow of £81m (2006: £68m).
• Underlying earnings per share2 up 26% to 29.3p (2006: 23.3p).
• Basic earnings per share up 82% to 33.1p (2006: 18.2p)3.
• Final dividend proposed of 8.1p, up 31% on the prior year. Total dividend per share of 11.8p
up 27% on prior year4.

Specific to books the company stated:

Books LFL (like for like) sales were up 1% as we continued to focus on rebuilding our authority as a popular book specialist and maximising profitability. Excluding the Harry Potter release in the second half, LFL sales for the year were flat, with gross margin slightly down including Harry Potter and up excluding Harry Potter. We maintained our strong performance versus the general high street, a trend which has continued for over 2 years now. We are particularly pleased to have maintained this performance during the second half of the year in the face of very strong competition on Harry Potter. During the year, we saw strong shares in some of the front list books, both over the key Christmas period on titles like Peter Kay, The Sound of Laughter, and then with further strong shares on key summer titles such as Cook Yourself Thin and the Richard & Judy Summer Read. Improvements to category planning and management have delivered good results, notably through improved ranges, innovative promotions and a focus on specific genres, such as Kids.

The High street revival is part store remix (DVD and CD sales are rapidly declining) and also based on the integration of post office concessions. The company has announced plans to integrate these concessions in 71 of its 544 high street stores and while operationally complex they have said they are on plan to achieve their goals. Currently they have 23 concessions in operation. The company has previously said the object of installing the concessions in the stores is to provide increase foot traffic and in prior interviews Kate Swann (CEO) has said their assumptions of the impact of this strategy is being borne out.

The company is naturally guarded about the coming year and warns that the marker should not expect too much by way of a rapid turn-around in the High Street stores. Regardless, shareholders and the publishing community generally should be relieved at these results which show significant performance improvement.

Reuters

Borders' UK New Investor

There was a profile of Luke Johnson in the Wednesday Evening Standard which I read wedged into seat 26a coming home. Even thought he is only 45, Johnson has a long history of both entrepreneurial activities and private equity investing. He is currently Chairman of Channel 4 which was one of the early commercial UK broadcasters but if there is a theme to his business history it is in retail customer management. He believes that the Borders UK operations have a lot to offer and,

"It's like gold to us." Come on, there's a Borders near me, and while it's great wandering round the basement listening to the CDs, I'm also aware I'm often the only one down there. "In music retailing, life is tough," Johnson says. "HMV and Virgin have shown that. Borders needs reshaping. "When the internet came along, people said it would transform retailing -- it's taken until now for it to really make an impact. It's not just CDs -- travel agents, cameras shops, video rental, they all face a difficult future. But Borders doesn't just sell CDs, its main business is selling books and the good thing about them is that their sales are still growing. Millions of people want to browse in bookshops. Did you know the average dwell time in a Borders is one hour?"

Article

Macomber appointed President & CEO Wolters Kluwer Health

Wolters Kluwer Health, a division of Wolters Kluwer, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry, announced today the appointment of Gordon Macomber as President & CEO of its Professional & Education business unit, with responsibility for the Lippincott Williams & Wilkins product lines.

For the past four years, Macomber had been President of Thomson Gale Reference in Farmington Hills, MI.

"The appointment of Gordon Macomber brings us extensive publishing experience as well as the leadership skills and business proficiency to take our books and journals business into the next era of content-in-context," said Jeff McCaulley, President & CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health. "We could not be more thrilled to have Gordon join our leadership team."

Press Release

Borders Down Under

As reported before, final bids are due by the end of the month for the Borders store operations in NZ and Australia. Bids are expected to be in the A$80-100mm range with Private Equity Partners the owner of Angus & Robertson the presumed front runner. Some serious contenders are already reviewing the books and according to this article from the New Zealand Herald there may be more than one or two candidates. Already mentioned were PEP and Berkelouw Books (a small book company), and now Dymocks the other large bookseller in the marketplace has confirmed it is looking to make a bid. Additionally, Woolworths and Paper Plus, a PaperChase like franchise operation, may also join in. This additional interest must be good news to Border's US who need to get a high price for these operations to mitigate the disappointing sale of the UK operations. Also noted in the article is a suggestion that Borders Australian management may have backed off a management buyout in order to align themselves with one of the purchasers most likely PEP.