Best Travel/Food Show on TV

In case you don't know this already, Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations show on the Travel Channel is the best Travel/Food show going. So forget little Rachael and even gorgeous Giada and check out some real life travel and cooking. A new series has just started.

Chark Blog in Book Form

Exact Editions is reporting that Richard Charkin's blog posts, made when he was Chairman of Macmillan UK may be coming out in print. As Adam says,

The Charkin blog was a very good read while it lasted, it will be interesting to see if it can work in volume form.

Strange Mr. Charkin hasn't reestablished a new blog. He seemed to relish the first version so much.

Later on....

Coincidentally, CNet writer Caroline McCarthy notes the trend (not sure it is one) in blog to books:

This blogs-to-books trend seems to keep chugging along, despite the fact that none of their predecessors have been particularly successful. Gawker Media's Guide to Conquering All Media sold dismally, as schadenfreude-happy blogger Jeff Bercovici gleefully pointed out. Options, the book takeoff of the wildly popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, wasn't exactly a chart-topper, either. And now there are books either just out or on the way for blogs Stuff White People Like, I Can Has Cheezburger, Postcards From Yo Momma, Passive-Aggressive Notes, and a heap of others.

Personnally, I can't begrudge any of these people/sites from taking publisher's money to turn their free stuff into book form. If nothing else, the ability to construct a sentence and acheive meaning coupled with the development of a market should make the blog world a ready proving ground for many a book author. I would have thought the limitless talent of many blog writers will have made the agent and editor's life a little easier.

BTW, I'm still waiting....

Ebsco Launches New Interface

Ebsco has made available their new interface to subscribers for several months and is about to launch it officially sometime in July. This is the first revision in over five years and the company seems to have taken a very focused approach to designing the new interface. First impressions are impressive with the simplified Google like search page which can expand to include 'drop-down' advanced search options. The manner in which they have done this is elegant negating the need to click to a separate page.

The full results page renders further options to narrow a search - Source, Author, Subject, etc - as well as by timeframe. Missing is an indication of the number of results that occur within each of these related search terms which can potentially result in proceeding down a dead end. The timeline limiter is executed using a sliding bar: Some users will like this but an equal number will dislike it. To me it looked like an attempt to incorporate some 'trendy technology' when using date ranges with a number indicating the articles falling within that range would have been more useful. As the user makes decisions on the direction of their search, these are recorded in a query chain that runs across the top of the page. As a result the user can jump back several steps at a time to retrace their search steps. The user can also use the same trail of queries to drop terms out of the string as well as start new queries. Users will find this feature highly useful.

The 'narrow/limit' your search boxes which run each side of the results set can be closed or opened and aids navigation especially when the user has narrowed their search closer to their objective. In short, closing these boxes alters the look of the page and improves usability; however, closing them makes the page less cluttered but does not seem to increase the number of items above the fold.

Ebsco has also included images from their image collection which are presented as part of each search result and can be viewed in pop-up form. Images include photos, diagrams, illustrations, graphs, and tables and Ebsco promises to have 3mm+ available by 2009.

While there are many other features included in the product, the preview tool is worth noting. Hovering over the magnifying glass icon brings up a pop-up preview window that enables the user to determine whether the article is worth accessing. From this window the user can save the article citation to a folder for review later. In practice, this means a user can scan through a list of results, rapidly identify the items of relevancy and save them all in one place for detailed review once their first pass research is complete. This is a nice feature and will prove useful to any researcher. (Export to all standard citation tools is also available).

For those more interested in looking at the other features here are some Ebsco documents. Of interest will be the Visual and Advanced search features which in the case of visual search offers an interesting approach to mapping the results set of any search.

(On a side note, I wish they would drop the 2.0 moniker; this is so 2005).

A Real Celebrity Bio - UPDATE

It is almost hard to believe that Ingrid Betancourt has been set free and even appears healthy. With all the drivel published about the lives of vapid insignificant people, this would be a story worth telling.

Rodrigo Arangua/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, was one of the hostages rescued.


Update:
According to several sources Ingrid Betancourt is wasting no time meeting with publishers (and who can blame her). Discussions may center around her writing a play about her experiences as a captive in the jungle. This weekend she was interviewed by French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche and suggested as much in the following:

Votre vie désormais ce sera vos enfants, la politique, mais aussi
l'écriture?

Je ne vais pas avoir la prétention d'écrire beaucoup mais je veux laisser un témoignage de ce que j'ai vécu à deux niveaux: l'histoire telle quelle, mais il y a des choses qui ne peuvent pas être dites. C'est très difficile à expliquer. A un moment, lorsque j'étais en captivité, je me suis dit: "Il faut que les gens comprennent, mais je ne peux pas l'écrire tel quel. Alors je ferai une pièce de théâtre. Et là, je montrerai des choses que les gens doivent sentir." Il faudra une mise en scène pour que les gens comprennent ces choses qui tiennent plutôt à la condition humaine, à ce que nous sommes au fond de nous. Nous pouvons être des anges mais nous pouvons aussi être des démons pour l'autre. Ceux qui verront ce que j'ai vécu comprendront qu'il faut faire attention à ne jamais tomber dans cet abîme. Chacun de nous. Pas seulement l'autre: chacun de nous dans notre intérieur peut être extraordinairement bon et extraordinairement méchant. On peut être les deux en même temps. Il faut vraiment prendre conscience de ce que nous sommes et prendre garde: nous pouvons tous tomber dans cette horreur d'être des loups pour l'autre.

MediaWeek (Vol 1 No 27):

Some headlines from the week in media June 30 - July 6. Penguin Blog: Nick Hornby bemoans both e-books and the lack of interest in reading. Radar Online: Gawker media keeps lowering their pay scales. Bloomberg: Reports on the rapidly rising cost of newsprint. As if news wasn't bad enough in newspapers. Reuters: Security Analysts following the newspaper industry are abondoning ship as well. Forbes: Axel Springer are on the look out for acquisitions. SF Gate: Is a Kindle to books as an iPod is to tunes? Telegraph: Review of a book about 'the grandest name in [British] publishing' John Murray Open Access News: Latest bruhaha in Journals publishing regarding Open Access Publisher Public Library of Science. Private Equity Hub: Reed offering sweatener for Reed Business Deal TimesOnline: Newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror may cut dividend after dropping its share buy-back program

Neil Young's Living With War Movie

Mrs PND and I saw Neil Young when he was in NYC for a four night stop at the United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights. Of the four or five times I have seen him, this was the best show which saw him play a varied set covering much of his 40 year career. He did not play cuts from the Living With War album which he released in 2006, but those songs formed the backbone of CSNY's 2006 tour which is now the subject of a tour documentary. The movie is scheduled to be released later this summer and in advance TimesOnline caught up with Young at his local diner (really).

The film is a documentary about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s Freedom of Speech tour, staged during the US midterm elections in 2006. But it is a far cry from Michael Moore-style agitprop. Young/Shakey has gone out of his way to present an impeccably balanced picture of America’s reaction to a tour whose repertoire consisted entirely of antiwar songs, from Buffalo Springfield oldies such as For What It’s Worth and CSNY’s era-defining Ohio to selections from Young’s 2006 album, Living with War. To this effect, their trip is narrated by an award-winning television journalist, Mike Cerre, who has covered both Vietnam and Iraq, where he was an “embedded” reporter.

Set List from the December show:

From Hank to Hendrix
Ambulence Blues
Sad Movies
A Man Needs a Maid
Harvest
Try
Journey Through the Past
Mellow My Mind
Love Art Blues
Cowgirl in the Sand
After the Gold Rush

Mr Soul
Everyone Knows this is Nowhere
Dirty Old Man
Spirit Road
Bad Fog of Loneliness
Winterlong
Oh Lonesome Me
The Believer
No Hidden Path

Cinnamon Girl
Cortz the Killer

Jordan Edmiston Deal Report

JEGI just published their first half review of M/A in the media business. As most will realize, deal flow is off considerably at the top end of the market; however, JEGI has seen some resiliancy in the middle market.

From their press release:

M&A activity for the first half of 2008 was increasingly cloudy, but with continued bright spots in several areas, especially in the Online Media & Technology and Marketing & Interactive Services sectors, as well as in sub-$1 billion transactions. High-quality, innovative mid-sized companies continued to trade at a brisk pace, as diversified media and marketing groups, major technology companies, and private equity investors continue to participate in the “retooling” of the media and marketing services industries. In spite of economic pressures, ongoing turmoil in the financial markets, and concerns about consumer confidence, the total number of transactions for media, information, marketing services and related technologies increased slightly to 404, versus 397 in the prior year. Deal value, however, was down dramatically to $23.2 billion from $65.8 billion in the same period in 2007.

They also offer some consolidated highlights thus far on the year:

M&A activity in the first half of 2008 showed less than half the number of transactions for business-to-business magazines, compared to the first half of 2007. Deal value decreased 85% in 2008 from 2007 levels, as there was no transaction in this sector to offset VSS’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Advanstar in the first half of 2007.

* Consumer magazines also slowed significantly in the first half of 2008 in number of deals (down 38%) and value (down 82%), compared to the first half of 2007. In the first half of 2008, there were no transactions over $500 million in value, compared to Source Interlink’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Primedia’s Enthusiast Media group last year.

* The number of deals for the database and information services sector was up 29% in the first half of 2008. However, the first half of 2007 included Thomson’s $18+ billion acquisition of Reuters. Without this transaction, deal value for this sector would have nearly tripled in 2008 over 2007 levels.

* Half as many transactions occurred in the educational and professional publishing sector in the first half of 2008 versus the first half of 2007. 2008 includes JEGI’s sale of CQ Press to SAGE. However, total deal value was down considerably mainly due to the $7.75 billion acquisition of Thomson Learning by Apax Partners and Omers Capital Partners in the first half of 2007.

Stealing Education - Update

CHE has managed to interview the student behind the website Textbook Torrents. Mr Anonymous characterises his activities as 'civil disobedience' and he described his web site as

operating in a “legal gray area.” He said he is an undergraduate at a college outside of the United States, though he would not name the institution or country, and that he operates the Web site from there.

More here.

Following is the original post from earlier this week.


The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on illegal text books scanning which strongly suggests the situation is getting worse and may soon be out of control. Publishers will be forced to revise their textbooks far more frequently in order to keep ahead of the scanners. That of course is a strategy that will only work for a limited time.

From the article:

One Web site, called Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with the original textbook layout and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent.

"In any given two-week period we found from 60,000 files all the way up to 50,000 files," said Edward McCoyd, director of digital policy for the publishing association. Mr. McCoyd, who leads the Online Piracy Working Group, said the group has been performing periodic scans for piracy since 2001, and that it has seen a gradual increase in the number of titles available.

Ewww, There're All Old

I went to a book reading and signing last week. I don't go to these often but this was an author I really like and I took along some older titles for him to sign. The room at the Lincoln Center B&N was full - about 150 people - and I was the one of the youngest people in the room. Now, maybe at 7:30pm other younger people are out on the town or still at work but I think here in a microcosm is the publishers problem. All the readers of books are getting on a bit and there is less and less interest in the product from the younger generation. I don't believe this is news to most of us, what with the steady stream of official reports suggesting that reading books is going the way of the dodo and I wouldn't have thought the above worthy of comment except I saw the following news report from Variety.

According to a study released by Magna Global's Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That's the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago -- and the first time the nets' median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo. Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS -- the oldest-skewing network -- has remained fairly steady. "The median ages of the broadcast networks keep rising, as traditional television is no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set," Sternberg wrote.

I guess the news on CBS proves every cloud has a silver lining. Young people spend money and buy stuff. Why would anyone be trying to reach them via the networks. Are they smoke?

Millennials, Screenagers call them what you will are not bound by tradition or habit or convention. Those characteristics are not necessarily unique to new generations. It is the insertion of the power of personal choice into the mix - the ability to select from a far wider range of activities, options and/or content (with no diminution in quality or access) than was ever the case in years past - which has undercut the appeal of traditional media to the 'youth of today' (...said grandad).

In publishing, as I noted a few weeks ago, I think the traditional method of telling a story in book form is dead. It has no future. Telling stories has a future but the vehicle for that may be more a kin to the holodeck on the Enterprise than print on paper. For example, what if as an introduction to Shakespeare I get to read King Lear with Ian McKellen interactively on stage (and never leave my bedroom). What if I don't know who Ian is and decide Cordelia should be 'played' by Miley Cyrus. What if I decide to set up my own theater program and invite my friends to participate online/in game? All of this is going on now. Some of this content is the same as the stuff we struggled through in book form but not so the milennials. Question is where are the publishers?

Informa Bid Tops $4.3Billion

Informa announced this morning (via Reuters) they are considering a $4.3Bill private equity bid for the company from a consortium led by Providence Equity partners, The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman. The bid is established at 506 pence per share and the Informa share price rose by 12% its largest gain in two years, however the current price (423 pence) is still far below the offer price. The company stressed that discussions are at an early stage and that there can be no certainty of a bid being accepted.

If this bid is successful it will be the largest PE play since the markets froze earlier this year. Analysts have suggested this deal has more likelihood of being completed because the company can be broken into its constituent parts and sold off relatively easily. This mitigates some of the inherent risk in the deal.

Haights Cross Sells Oakstone Unit

At the turn of the year, Haights Cross placed itself up for sale but as the capital market situation went from bad to worse a successful resolution has seemed increasingly out of reach. However, the company announced today that they have sold their Mediacal Information publisher Oakstone to Boston Ventures and they are also withdrawing from sale the two other Haights Cross business units. For their most recent reported full year, revenues for the Oakstone unit were $34mm. Terms of the sale have not been announced.

From their press release:

Haights Cross also announced today that it has suspended its previously announced plans to offer for sale its test-preparation and intervention business, Triumph Learning; and its audiobook publishing business, Recorded Books.

According to Paul J. Crecca, HCC President and Chief Executive Officer, “Earlier this year, we announced plans to offer for sale each of Haights Cross’ operating businesses. However, conditions in the capital markets, particularly in the leveraged finance market, remain challenging. With these factors, and considering the timeframe in which sale transactions could be completed, the HCC Board of Directors has concluded that the company should suspend the sales efforts for Triumph Learning and Recorded Books. We believe Triumph Learning and Recorded Books have leading positions in their respective market segments and represent attractive growth opportunities.”

Publishing Technology Rumor

From the TimesOnline:

Publishing Technology, which sells software and consultancy services to book publishers, managed to lift its hard-pressed shares last week with a contract win. They were flat at 0.7p yesterday despite talk that it was set to reveal a share consolidation and the imminent launch of its “iTunes for books” software, allowing books to be downloaded as easily as music

Some may know PT as Vista.

And from The Independent:

The tiny company, which has a market capitalisation of less than £6m, has hitherto concentrated on providing an online service for academic publishers...the group is preparing for some innovative online expansion. As you read this, the firm is trialling a product that it reckons will be a cross between Apple's iTunes and a YouTube for books. The chief executive, George Lossius, said the technology will allow publishers to sell parts of books, say a recipe, or the whole thing. Moreover, publishers will be able to market particular authors and genres to particular customers. Mr Lossius admitted that some of the bigger publishers are probably already planning to do it themselves, but Publishing Technology might well be left alone to scrap for some of those lucrative smaller deals.

Riverdeep Syndication Update

The Irish Independent is reporting that the banks supporting Riverdeep in its acquisition of Harcourt may be able to syndicate some of the debt they financed in the deal. The company had been saddled with over $7.0bill in debt but have reduced the debt by selling their college division for $600m. Credit Suisse the lead bank has sold down their senior debt and is now working on the secondary loan. The company also reaffirmed it will achieve operating efficiencies amounting to $320mm per year within three years from the combination of the operations of Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt.

From the article:

Credit Suisse is in the process of selling down EMPG's €1.7bn second-lien loan, which ranks behind a traditional senior credit facility in terms of security. "We expect this tranche to be fully syndicated by the end of the summer," said Barry O'Callaghan, executive chairman of EPMG in a letter to shareholders. "This demonstrates that, notwithstanding the current issues with credit markets globally, investors have sufficient confidence in our business model and prospects to purchase our debt."

MediaWeek (Vol 1 No 26):

Some headlines from last week: June 23 - 30, 2008 Guardian: Investors and Wall Street institutions would be forced to rely less on credit ratings under new rules proposed by the SEC. Rating agencies such as Moody's, McGraw-Hill Cos' Standard & Poor's and Fimalac SA's Fitch Ratings could be negatively impacted by the rules. FoxBusiness: Interactive Data Corporation a leading provider of financial market data, analytics and related services agreed to acquire Kler's Financial Data Service S.r.l. (Kler's), a leading provider of reference data to the Italian financial industry, for a purchase price of EUR 19.0 million (or approximately $29.5 million based on current exchange rates) in cash. IDC is majority owned by Pearson plc. Forbes: ImageSpan Inc., which provides enabling infrastructure for digital content licensing, today announced that it has closed a second round financing of $11 million from a group led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI). Guardian: The boom in online news sites does not mean the UK should relax its media ownership laws, according to an influential House of Lords report. The report is a rebuke to media executives such as Rupert Murdoch, who believe the advent of online news should herald the relaxation of ownership laws. Murdoch himself told the committee that the UK's laws were "10 years out of date". MediaDailyNews: Gannett has purchased a minority stake in Cozi, a Web site that allows families to communicate and coordinate schedules. The deal will give Gannett readers access to Cozi via the Internet and mobile devices, including various features like virtual family calendars, shopping lists, blogs and instant messaging. PRWeb: Australian book printer BookPal has launched an audacious bid to challenge Amazon.com's Booksurge and Lulu.com for global market share in the rapidly growing book self publishing market, a market estimated to be valued at U.S. $13-$17 billion per year according to SelfPublishingResources.com. FoxBusiness: Elsevier, the leading publisher of science, technology and medical information announced today that it will implement CrossCheck, the plagiarism detection service offered by CrossRef in collaboration with iParadigms. With plagiarism a growing problem for journal editors, Elsevier has invested in CrossCheck to develop, pilot and implement, a single database of published articles enabling publishers to easily verify the originality of submitted and published work. The Telegraph: Executives from Amazon's MP3 store, which launched in the US last year, are understood to have been in London last week to thrash out details of the launch with British record company bosses. Amazon MP3 will compete directly with iTunes, Apple's online music store, and other digital downloading operations when it goes live. People familiar with Amazon's plans say its site is likely to be unveiled before the final quarter of the year, when a string of high-profile artists, including the Scissor Sisters and Snow Patrol. TimesOnline: The American private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman has emerged as part of the consortium in talks to buy media firm Informa, publisher of Lloyd’s List. The Sunday Times has learnt that Hellman is part of a private-equity trio that includes Carlyle and Providence Equity. TimesOnline: Springer Science & Media, the business-to-business publishing group owned jointly by the private equity groups Candover and Cinven, is still considering a bid for Informa despite the exhibitions group receiving an approach on Tuesday from private equity rivals. Springer, which previously made an offer in 2006, has been looking closely at Informa, the shares of which have fallen on concerns over its high debt levels. TimesOnline: Helen Alexander, the outgoing chief executive at the Economist Group, is ending her tenure on a 23-per-cent rise in profits to £44.3 million. The profits increase for the 12 months to March 31 will allow the privately-held business to continue its policy of paying sizeable dividends. In total, £36.7 million in cash was handed over during the year to the shareholders, which include Pearson and members of the Rothschild, Schroder and Cadbury families.

ISBN's On All Formats: Some Comments

Comments have been added to the original post from last week. Given the traffic reports several thousand visitors are transfixed by ISBN issues. Here are a few opinions from around the web:

Martyn Daniels at Booksellers Association (Brave New World):

Forget the posturing and politics this is about product identification and is a basic foundation to all inter-company ecommerce and communication. It is as much about upstream as it is downstream and is fundamental to trade. An old friend Tom McGuffog, Director of Planning and Logistics Nestle and ex chairman of the UK Article Numbering Association (the UK EAN standards governing body now know as GS1 UK), once said ‘ uncertainty is the mother of bad trading, only by removing uncertainty can we trade efficiency’. So what if there are; 10, 20, 30, different ISBNs against a work? Each will be a unique rendition, may have different rights associated with them; different commercial models, even have different features and apply to different channels. Surely identification and consistency is a must.

Today many believe that we also desperately need a work identifier and the best practices to adopt it and deploy it. Some believe that it exists today in the form of the ISTC but that it has stalled, lacks a champion and roadmap and now needs to be adapted, adopted, marketed and deployed. Is it an identification silver bullet? No, firstly it is an attribute associated with and ISBN (a secondary reference), but it can go a long way to enabling the consistent grouping of ISBNs under a work, which will help everyone manage more ISBNs and will also help consumers select and choose the right rendition, which after all is what its all about.

Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions:

I have a suggestion: where titles go into a format where there are in effect many individual instances of the work then that format should have a separate ISBN attached to it. The ISBN system was introduced so that books would have a standard method of stock control. ISBNs are SKU's. So digital platforms where copies of books are handed/downloaded to readers/purchasers the SKU specific to that channel serves a purpose. For digital platforms which are based on an 'access' system, which would include Google Book Search, and Amazon Search Inside, there is no need for a separate ISBN, because there are no 'units' that need to be tracked. Exact Editions is another such access system and there is no need therefore for publishers to assign separate ISBNs to their titles in the Exact Editions platform. The identifiers that matter for 'access' systems are the urls which comprise the book's web presence.

The post was also noted on TeleRead.org where in the comments Jon Noring had this to say:

The fundamental problem is that ISBN is not designed, nor intended, to be used for different renditions of a book, and each different format of an e-book is a different rendition. As a small e-book publisher myself, I am very sympathetic with the ISBN cost issue, though, and the entity to blame on this is Bowker. If Bowker wants ISBNs to be used per the standard, then it needs to set up a better pricing structure for small lots of ISBN numbers. I’ve not heard any justification for the current pricing structure.

(I think that point is partially noted in the statement from Bowker).

There is more feedback including a comment from the US ISBN agency on the original post here.

John Hiatt On the Music Business

One of my favorite artists, John Hiatt has an interesting perspective on the music industry woes via Reuters:

"People have to be 'record men' again," Hiatt said. "They actually have to learn a living. You get a record out there, it sells 50,000 copies over the course of 18 months. You have to work it, because they don't buy 50,000 the first week. It's great to see people who actually love the music back in business in these smaller concerns. I've never seen people take more vacations than these big record company people." It also helps that Hiatt keeps his overhead low by recording his albums at his 97-acre (39 hectare) Tennessee farm. He spent about 10 days recording the basic tracks for "Same Old Man" a year ago with guitarist Luther Dickinson and drummer Kenneth Blevins. Since Hiatt owns his masters and his publishing, he has complete creative control.

His new album is titled Same Old Man and I'll be seeing him in August.

ISBN's On All Formats

According to ISBN official standards, each format of an e-book should be given its own ISBN. This means if a book is sold in mobi-pocket and Adobe formats each would be given a separate (unique) number by the publisher even if the content is exactly the same. During the revision process for the current standard, this point received intense discussion mostly focused on the burden that applying what could amount to several hundred ISBNs to a single work would have on publishers' processes. We resolved this issue for the standard with judicious use of words such as 'shall' and 'should' but the issue was raised again recently when the ISBN board released a 'policy statement' reaffirming the need for separate ISBN's on each format of an eb0ok.

The reasons for this action is simple. Downstream supply chain business such as wholesalers, distributors and retailers require a unique reference to all products that pass through their operations. If one doesn't exist these businesses tend to apply their own numbers. In actuality, the practice of downstream partners applying their own numbers has been going on since the establishment of ISBN and isn't unique to e-books, but the issue is coalescing now around the obligations of a publisher to 'correctly apply' the ISBN standard to e-books.

At a meeting this week at AAP NYC a number of publishers expressed doubts about the need for this requirement. As a participant in the revision of the standard my view was simple. A publisher should want to manage and control the meta-data associated with all their products and enabling - by omission - the need for someone else to apply their own information never seemed prudent to me. Secondly, the veracity of the ISBN system is brought into question if more than one entity applies separate numbers to the same content. This occurs if B&N and Amazon sell the same e-book in the same format but in the absence of a publisher number they apply their own identifier.

At least one major publisher at the AAP meeting is not following the standard and after several years of distributing e-books and applying one ISBN irrespective of format (.epub for example) they are seeing no issues with confusion or misuse of their meta data. This is a powerful argument and comes from a publisher that is highly protective of their bibliographic information. If reflective of a general consensus the ISBN board should reconsider the wording of there directive. For example, simply changing the wording by inserting the words 'publishers may apply ISBNs to separate formats' would give enough latitude to those publishers that see a need to apply separate ISBNs and those that do not.

There are several qualifications (and others may raise more). Firstly, the issue of downstream partners which need identifiers for their internal process requirements must be governed. For example, in those cases where a publisher expects detailed sell-thru data they may provide ISBN's. If a downstream partner can only use a 13 digit identifier in their systems the publisher may require the partner to use an ISBN provided by the publisher. If the partner can use a non-ISBN (but NOT a dummy ISBN/13 digit id) such as letters and numbers the publisher may see no need to apply ISBN's. Secondly, the danger that rogue ISBNs that are intended to operate only within the operating systems of specific partners (wholesalers, vendors, etc.) escape into the supply chain causing confusion and much remediation is a real one and should be recognised. Currently, there aren't that many e-books and there aren't that many publishers working outside the recommendations of the standard. As e-books explode in distribution, data integrity problems that are virtually non-existent today may become very relevant issues very quickly.

Lastly, in a supply chain world where suppliers and retailers are racing (admittedly not a sprint more a marathon) to apply unique identifiers on individual items via RFID, this discussion runs counter to the logic other more sophisticated industries are following. Quite rightly, with volumes as small as they are, it may not be interesting to know which e-book versions seem to perform better, or get less customer service/help desk calls, or which package of products seem to show up on what platform or which segment of buyers seems to have what behavioral characteristics, or which partner seems to sell what types of products or formats, or which formats tend to be pirated more or less, and on and on and on. As the chain becomes flatter - as it is - publishers are going to want to know this stuff and tying a user to a format may be critical to all aspects of what they do.

Reed Business Sale Delay

The FT reports that Reed is delaying the circulation of information relating to the sale of their Reed Business unit in advance of finalizing a financing package that could be made availale to prospective buyers. The newspaper also establishes expectations that the unit could sell for $2.5Billion. From the article:

Another source close to the situation said that there is ”an irrational fear of a downturn in advertising revenues,” and there is a lot of advertising in the group. The source added, however, that Reed is still an attractive deal with senior leverage unlikely to be more than 3x EBITDA. Those low leverage levels should be enough to encourage bidders against a possible downturn in the economy, specifically advertising revenues, the source added. While Reed Elsevier is hoping to encourage a sale of the whole of RBI by offering a financing package to prospective buyers, it is also offering financing packages for parts of the business, one source said. The source said he thought that Reed would ultimately still sell the business as a whole despite marketing a sale of parts in tandem. This way, mid-sized players would also be in the process to drive up the end price for the asset, the source explained

Generational Chasm

Publishing used to be predictable across generations. Parents read the same books in the same manner as their children and grandchildren. Not so today. Today's publishers for the first time in their history have no confidence that their child's generation will be (or are) interested in their published output. It is not that publishers aren't making an effort; however, I have a disturbing belief that there is an preponderance of focus on forcing existing content into a format and delivery mechanism (e-books and e-readers) that is not ideal only to have that e-book content used by a market - my and my parents generation - that is in long term decline.

In other words, migrating content so that it is available on an e-book may provide a false sense of security for publishers who believe this is enough to 're-launch' their content to the newest generations. No publisher should not have an e-book strategy just like they shouldn't have an Ingram or POD strategy but today's one dimensional content is no longer enough. This is why experiments like the recently announced agreement between Harpercollins and 4thStory are so interesting. From the press release:

4th Story Media and HarperCollins Publishers today announced their partnership in The Amanda Project, the first multi-platform series to be written in part by its audience, girls ages 12-14. 4th Story Media, which owns all rights for the property, will produce the content for The Amanda Project with a creative team including web design agency Happy Cog, young adult authors, artists and graphic designers. HarperCollins Publishers, which is a strategic partner in the venture and an investor, has acquired the rights to publish an eight-book The Amanda Project series worldwide."It feels like the art and craft of publishing great stories for children is on the brink of revolutionary change," said Lisa Holton, founder and CEO, 4th Story Media. "We are exploring new ways of using the web to tell stories, while also leading kids back to the joys of reading. By combining talented authors with creative web designers we are fusing traditional storytelling with the interactive world of social networking, online games, and user-generated content. We are thrilled to introduce 4th Story Media with the launch of The Amanda Project and are delighted to be partnering with the exceptional team at HarperCollins to bring this series to life."

More of this 'web first' publishing will be seen as the normal way to launch a new product or title. Harpercollins is one example but the methodology is appearing across the publishing spectrum. For example, the publisher of Bass Fisherman (no I don't subscribe) creates targeted web sites that combine social networking, a minimum of editorial content and rely on users to power the content build with their own youtube videos and podcasts. Having built an interest group, the publisher is now planning a print product targeted at this group. Doing it the other (traditional) way would have been expensive and speculative; moreover, it wouldn't have engaged the market in the manner that the web-first approach does.

Tomorrows version of the monograph is unknown but it is not the e-book version of today's book. The hype around Bezos' appearance at BookExpo was troubling to me because of the manner in which we hang on his every utterance. Certainly Amazon is important, but we are the content providers and I hope we are all looking forward to the day when a panel of publishers gets up and serially announces game shifting developments in content and content delivery. Will it be next BookExpo?

The Resilient Bookshelf Motiff: Done Better

Read Write Web takes a look at a new 3rd party application of Amazon.com data and services. A company named Zoomii has developed a book browsing UI that mimics the experience of walking through the isles of a local bookstore. (As a side note, with technology implementations like this why would Amazon need to buy Borders)? As RWW notes,

Launched to the public earlier this week, Zoomii is one great bookstore browser. Built on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), interacting with Zoomii is reminiscent of Google Maps. You can zoom in and out of bookshelves or pan around to navigate the service. The site design feels just like you're browsing a bookshelf at any bookstore except the books are facing cover-forward instead of spine-out. To keep up with the feel of a bookstore, books are organized by author and you can also compare book sizes to get a feel for how big or small a book is.

And gosh, my Canadian readers will be happy! (Via Brantley-again). Also Amazon Web Services Blog.

Note: The product is subject to Amazon.com's meta data which is why Simon Winchester's book The Man Who Loved China comes up on the "Mystery" shelf.