Frankfurt Next Week

The annual Frankfurt Bookfair starts next Wednesday and it is preceded by the annual International Supply Chain Specialists meeting where I have been asked to speak. My topic is Publishing in the Digital Age for which I have been allotted 20 minutes.

I will be posting the presentation here subsequent to or immediately after the event on Tuesday.

Also, please tell me if you are attending either the Supply Chain meeting or the Fair and would like to meet.

email: michael.cairns @ infomediapartners.com

Greenwood To Close

On the heals of the deal by Harcourt to sell perpetual rights to the Greenwood list, the company will vacate its offices in Westport CT by year end. According to WestportNow, a company source has told them that approximately 150 positions will be lost when the pink slips go out in December.

MediaWeek Report (Vol 1, No 40): UK Publishing Market

The UK publishing market is bracing for potential credit issues with the wholesaler Bertrams. Bertrams were acquired by Woolworths which appears to be in financial difficulties. Publishers are working with Bertrams to ensure supply to the market but also to protect their receivables and stock. As this article indicates, Bertrams are on very short terms. (Telegraph):

Tim Hely Hutchinson, UK chief executive of Hachette Livre publishing group, confirmed told trade magazine that Bookseller that he was in talks with Bertrams about new credit terms. "Following the sudden removal of credit insurance cover from the Woolworths group wholesalers, we have proposed new credit arrangements that will allow us to continue trading together," he said. Bertrams, which is run by Woolworths' entertainment division EUK, is understood to have been in negotiations with publishers for several weeks over demands for quicker payments to compensate for the lack of insurance cover. Woolworths strongly denied reports that major suppliers have temporarily halted trading through Bertrams, while negotiations over credit terms continued. Trade was continuing "as normal" insisted the spokesman.

From Lambeth (and its not often you say that), apparently the desire to pull the sheep over the eyes of taxpayers is alive and florishing (This is London)

Lambeth Council has been accused of inventing “ghost libraries” to con government inspectors and protect its position as London’s most improved local authority in a scandal dubbed “librarygate”. The accusation is based on the mysterious opening of three book-lending, cultural information hubs, the week before a vital inspection into the quality of the council’s cultural services. The centres - one which lent out no books at all - issued only 25 library books before being closed after six weeks but were still used to bolster figures about library opening times in the audit commission inspection, according to an email sent from a cultural services officer and seen by the Streatham Guardian.

Another bone-headed missive from Forbes' Sramana Mitra on Amazon.com. Hardly an objective view of services available to the spectrum of authors and publishers. I didn't bother commenting on the first article she wrote and I am not sure I know why I bother with this one, only, it's FORBES! She signs off with the obligatory blinded me with science (numbers).

What does this mean for the book publishing business going forward? Are we about to see a degree of vertical integration, at least in certain nonfiction genres that have large Web presences? How big a role will Amazon play as it morphs its various on-demand offerings to recruit authors who are also entrepreneurs and Web-savvy marketers? And what about Kindle? While there are no publicly announced numbers about how many Kindle e-book readers have been sold, I know that many early-adopter techies have already standardized on Kindle.

The Techcrunch blog estimates the number of Kindles sold so far to be 240,000. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney is among the most bullish, calling Kindle Amazon's iPod. In an August report, Mahaney estimated that Amazon will sell 378,000 units this year and that Kindle will be a $1.1 billion business that accounts for 4% of Amazon's revenue in 2009. Pacific Crest's Steven Weinstein believes Amazon can sell more than $2.5 billion in e-books for the Kindle by 2012.

USS Intrepid Goes and Comes Along the Hudson

This morning the Museum ship USS Intrepid returned from its refurbishment in Bayonne. It is all newly painted and the rust you could see on the waterline on the way south is now all gone. Back at the dock they have also made a lot of improvements. This is apparently one of the most popular tourist attraction in NYC.

ABC-Clio Acquires Greenwood Publishing Rights

In a deal announced this morning, Houghton Harcourt Mifflin has agreed to grant ABC-Clio a perpetual license to use the imprints and publish the titles of Greenwood Publishing Group, including Greenwood Press, Praeger Publishers, Praeger Security International and Libraries Unlimited. The announcement goes on to say HHM will transfer certain intellectual property, contracts and assets to ABC-CLIO and that the agreement is effective immediately. Terms have not been announced.

From the announcement:

"By combining Greenwood Publishing’s impressive and extensive list of titles with our experience in publishing widely respected databases, reference books and eBooks, ABC-CLIO is expanding its role as a leader in the publishing industry,” said Ron Boehm, CEO, ABC-CLIO. “We believe that we will launch the next generation of high-quality reference, professional development and other resources for education and libraries.”

This looks like a good deal for ABC-CLIO. They gain a strong list of reference titles, a reputable publisher with a history of stable consistent operations and a reliable brand particularly in the library and educational community. Greenwood was part of Reed Elsevier for many years and was incorporated into the Harcourt business unit after Harcourt was purchased by Reed. That business was sold and Greenwood ended up at HHM.

Perhaps this is how deals will be done in the short term to compensate for the lack of credit.

Voyager Learning Company First Half 2008 Update

No SEC filing for the first half which is becoming something of a broken record for Voyager. The company held a conference call for investors which did motivate some analysts to participate in contrast to some prior calls.

Read it in full here.

Following are some selected quotes and those about the potential sale and valuation of the business are interesting.

Brad Almond

With that said, when we last provided an update via our July 22 press release, we anticipated that we would file our 2006 10-K by July, 31, 2008. We have obviously slipped from that target. We are in the final stages of preparation for the release of the 2006 10-K and expect to have it filed before the end of this month. We expect to file our 2007 10-K approximately four to six weeks after the filing of the 2006 10-K. We have been preparing the 2007 results and audit work in parallel with 2006 efforts and such work has been progressing very well to date.

*********************************************************************************

Doug Asiello – Invesco

Hoping you would help me through what the implied free cash flow for your – for the firm will be, so let me just show – let me walk through my math and you can tell me where I am off. So that $19 million your current cash, $45 million from the tax refund, $25 million in operating cash flow, gives you about $89 million, less the uses of cash $5 million from the settlement, $4 million from the wrap-up of the legacy corporate, $3 million from the shut down of the headquarters. So if you expect to have $70 million at year-end, by my math you are generating about $20 million in free cash flow. Is that wrong?

Brad Almond

You are essentially right. We’ve – the math you’ve done, you add up all the pieces and our range would be – these are actually out at the highs and lows, all those ranges that I gave, you probably see something more in the $73 million to $83 million—

Doug Asiello – Invesco

Yes.

Brad Almond

But however to account for any unknowns out there and therefore I gave a range of $70 million to $80 million.

Doug Asiello – Invesco

Alright. Okay, so let me ask a followup then. My enterprise value for your firm is roughly $100 million and you are generating $20 million in free cash flow. That’s five times free cash flow. And then I guess if you layer in SG&A cost and corporate overhead, I have a hard time believing there is not some strategic buyer out there that hasn’t thought that this is – this would be very easy to wrap – to roll up into their existing franchise and sales force at – and then kind of wipe out a good chunk of SG&A and corporate overhead at a extremely inexpensive valuation. What’s wrong with my analysis?

Chark Blog is Back

Richard Charkin's blog is back but in print form. Pan Macmillan has announced that they are selling a POD version of some of his posts from is highly popular blog. No word on when/if he is going to get back to blogging. Here is a summary from The Bookseller:

Chark in print: Pan Macmillan has released a p.o.d. version of former chief executive Richard Charkin's blog. According, to the publisher it translates into a pleasingly weighty tome, a wide-ranging collection of observations, views and reminscences about the state of publishing (and sometimes cricket) during a particularly interesting time in the industry's history. Orders can be placed here, and will take three working days to be despatched.

Borders Group Issues Warrants to Pershing Square Consistent with Previously Announced Agreement

From their Press Release this morning. No more details as yet regarding what this will mean for the management of the company. The implications of this must have been anticipated given the lack of success in reorganizing their assets but it remains to be seen whether Pershing Square will seek more influence than they already have. This result does place them squarely in the drivers seat regarding Borders future.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Consistent with a previously announced agreement, Borders Group, Inc.(NYSE: BGP) today issued warrants to Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P. to purchase an additional 5.15 million shares of the company's common stock exercisable at$7.00 per share, subject to anti-dilution adjustments. The warrants are exercisable until October 9, 2014. The agreement, dated April 9, 2008, is detailed in Borders Group's 8-K filing dated April 11, 2008.

Gale Launches Content Syndication

Gale has long been an aggregator of news and information content but have recently announced a new program that allows users to visit and register on a web site, chose their content from over 500 subject areas, create a collection of content that is specific to their needs and requirements and then submit this to Gale for quote.
This is an interesting idea and they have had it in beta for several months. (I haven't tried it). What Gale appears to have done is push the content selection process closer to the consumer and away from the internal or sales staff that would have been intensely involved with customers in building content packages. This idea is very similar in concept to the airline reservation sites: Give the customer appropriate and powerful tools and they will do the work for you and possibly be far more satisfied.

The site is named acquirecontent.com and according to Information Today offers more than 10,000 titles (LINK).

Promoting Clean Data Health

BISG has announced the publication of a new best practices document: Product Metadata Best Practices for Data Recipients. This publication was prepared over several months by the BISAC Metadata Committee, led by Richard Stark of Barnes & Noble, and was contributed to by a large and diverse group of BISG members including publishers, booksellers, wholesalers and bibliographic agencies. The document is freely available from the BISG website (www.bisg.org).

Aimed at improving the accuracy, comprehensiveness and timeliness of data throughout the book supply chain, the publication establishes 14 points of best practice for recipients of product information, including standards for acknowledging receipt of data, best practices for making changes and notifying customers, guidelines for displaying the data, and a basis for helpful and timely communication between data recipients and suppliers. It also includes a glossary of common terms and definitions.

Michael Healy, Executive Director of BISG, noted,

“The prominent role played by BISG and BISAC in promoting high-quality product information in our industry has been established over many years in our work on the ONIX standard, best practice guidelines and more recently data certification. This new document, however, represents a change of focus. For the first time we are highlighting the vital role played by those who receive product information—booksellers, wholesalers and bibliographic agencies—in the overall effort to raise standards. Good product information is a collaboration and this new document sets out clearly what data recipients can do to help our industry sell more books through the provision of good data.”

Firebombed

Is Random House saying I told you so? The home and office of the publisher that took on the publication of Jewel of Medina was firebombed by three men who 'pre-planned' the attack and then waited around to be arrested. Martin Rynja, who runs the House Gibson Square from his home is now under police protection. According to Police, (Guardian)

[In the early hours of Saturday] officers from the counter-terrorism command arrested three men under the Terrorism Act 2000 in a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation.

"The men, aged 40, 22 and 30, were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Two of the men were stopped by armed officers and arrested in the street outside a property in Lonsdale Square, and the third following an armed vehicle stop near Angel tube.

Thankfully only a small fire was generated but this is nothing to the excitement certain Muslim clerics will generate with their faithful. According to the Telegraph a leading UK cleric has warned of further attacks:

But the radical cleric Anjem Choudhary, who lives in Ilford, east London, said he was "not surprised at all" by the attack and warned of possible further reprisals over the book "It is clearly stipulated in Muslim law that any kind of attack on his honour carries the death penalty," he said. "People should be aware of the consequences they might face when producing material like this. They should know the depth of feeling it might provoke."

In the Times Kenan Malik drew the obvious connection to The Satanic Verses:

Today all it takes for a publisher to run for cover is a letter from an outraged academic. In March, Random House sent galley proofs of The Jewel of Medina to various academics, hoping for endorsements. One of them, Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas, condemned the book as “offensive”. Random House immediately dropped it. No other big American publishing house would touch it. Martin Rynja, a fierce advocate of free speech, eventually picked it up in Britain.

What the differing responses to the two novels reveal is how Rushdie's critics lost the battle but won the war. They never prevented the publication of his novel. But the argument at the heart of the anti-Rushdie case - that it is morally unacceptable to cause offence to other cultures - is now widely accepted. In the 20 years between the publication of The Satanic Verses and the withdrawal of The Jewel of Medina, the fatwa has in effect become internalised.

I've just finished God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and this attack reminded me of this excerpt related to the infamous Dutch comics:

Euphemistic noises were made about the need to show 'respect,' but I know quite a number of editors concerned and can only say for a certainty that the chief motive for 'restraint' was simple fear. In other words, a handful of religious bullies and bigmouths could, so to speak, outvote the tradition of free expression in its Western heartland...To the ignoble motive of fear one must add the morally lazy practice of relativism: no group of nonreligious people threatening violence would have been granted such an easy victory, or had their excuses - not that they offered any of their own- made for them.

The author Sherry Jones points a finger at Random House and comments "I was disgusted by the inflammatory language Random House used to describe the potential Muslim reaction.”
(Note: This comment was misquoted by the newspaper - see the comments. It wasn't directed at Random House at all).

Isn't it time for right thinking publishers and publisher associations to stand up and voice their collective disgust and willingness to champion the right to publish without intimidation?

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 39)

News on the Reed Elsevier sale of the magazine group. The set-up for the deal may be unravelling. FT:

The RBI sale, one of the few live auctions in the media sector, is being watched closely as a bellwether for companies' ability to dispose of assets and private equity's ability to get deals done in tighter credit markets.

Bidders will now have to look further than the lending consortium and secure a relationship with a bank not involved in the staple to plug the shortfall. Reed, led by chief executive Sir Crispin Davis, declined to comment.

Earlier in the week G+J (Bertelsmann) declined to participate (Reuters):

The Hamburg-based publisher, owned by media group Bertelsmann [BERT.UL], withdrew its non-binding bid due to declining advertising revenue at the unit, manager magazine online said citing sources close to the negotiations.

Bloomsbury announced they have agreed to purchase Oxford International Publishers a publisher of books and journals for the academic student market in the fields of fashion, design and culture studies. RTT.

Commenting on the acquisition, Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury, stated, "The acquisition of Berg is an important element in our strategy to increase our presence in academic publishing and take advantage of a market that is already benefiting from electronic delivery and print-on-demand. The acquisition of the very fine company that is Berg follows Bloomsbury's announcement on September 5th of the launch of Bloomsbury Academic, headed by Frances Pinter, which will publish academic books in the fields of the humanities and social sciences."

Reflections on the state of University bookstore sales of academic titles from the University of Washington (SPi):

"I can't prove it, but I suspect that some amount of the drop people are reporting is because those sales are going to Amazon," said Pat Soden, director of the UW Press.

Textbooks make up a small part of the UW Press's publishing contracts. Although the press saw a 7 percent increase in overall sales over the last fiscal year, sales at college stores dropped about $30,000 between 2007 and 2008.

At Washington State University's Press, a small publishing house that puts out just a handful of books a year, the slumping sales trend hasn't really hit home. The university's press primarily produces books that serve as supplemental classroom reading; their latest releases are a 192-page book about nuclear wastelands and a 331-page volume on the history of northern Oregon.

LA Times discovers the reprint market:

Whether the increasing number of reprints is because of reader dissatisfaction with contemporary literature or the flowering of an archivist, curatorial instinct, they are certainly part of the decentralization of literary culture. Miller says that, with space shrinking for print reviews and the Web as an overwhelming presence, people are trusting their instincts to figure out what to read. The threat this poses to the literary establishment is that whenever one of these new-old titles connects with a reader, whenever a reader wonders how Rose Macaulay's "The Towers of Trebizond" or Hamilton's "Hangover Square" could ever have been forgotten, it raises distrust in the establishment that proclaims certain books important. Especially if the reader has slogged through the pages of some highly praised snoozer.

New model newsroom Forbes:

He isn't alone. From Politico to Breaking Views to the Huffington Post to thousands upon thousands of blogs, droves of journalists have fled traditional newsrooms in the past decade looking for a way to make a living from the exploding world of digital media. So far, precious few have replicated the quality or impact--or profits--of the name-brand companies they left behind.

But Balboni thinks he can, using the lure of ownership. His site is hiring the five regional editors--for the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East--and some 72 correspondents located around the world. None of them will be full-time employees. Instead, each is being lured by sizable equity stakes (not stock options) and a five-year guarantee of monthly fees of about $1,000. Correspondents will report to regional editors, who will report to the 15-person GNE.

Dire prediction for Ad based media companies for 2009 (Guardian):

The worsening state of the global economy will make 2009 a "horror show" for advertising-dependent newspaper and television companies, with some analysts predicting that businesses may have to wait until 2011 to see positive ad growth.

Paul Newman

So many great movies. Mrs PND and I saw him on stage in 2002. I consider ourselves lucky.

NYTimes Obit.

Book Army From Harpercollins

Looks like Harpercollins UK are set to announce a book social networking site similar to Goodreads.com and librarything.com. Named BookArmy, users will be able to build a library of books using ISBNs, tag them and interact socially (online) with other book lovers. Importantly, the site is not restricting the participation to books published by Harpercollins.

In a post I wrote about branding several weeks ago, I wondered who the first major publisher would be to incorporate a books in print database on to their site and it looks like HC UK will be the one. (In comments to that post some did point out Bloomsbury tried this approach years ago).

No doubt there will be some questioning why we need another book oriented social network when we have shelfari, goodreads and librarything. Certainly a valid question, but I doubt the goodreads people wondered if they could complete with librarything when they got started and here they are only a few years later with bigger traffic. There is no reason to believe that HC will not appeal to a new segment - or steal some of the users from the incumbents. I hope they will be able to instill in the BookArmy brand something that is unique and unifying because if the site comes across as HC corporate in disguise it is unlikely to be successful. I think the HC people are smart enough to realize that.

Harpercollins is very actively trying new things online. There US site is vibrant and full of experimentation. Some have argued that they don't go far enough in allowing access to their content but the point is they are not adverse to experimentation. The UK and the US online exercises do seem to be different in approach. It is not that they are uncoordinated but their respective approaches seem different. In the UK BookArmy and Authonomy.com are examples where they have have taken the potential of the web to build community just a bit farther than the US office is doing.

What could be most interesting about this is how successful HC will be in promoting the site across the other NewsCorp sites particularly Myspace. If they are able to gain traction there then we could really begin to see a significant player in book social networking. Perhaps even a transaction site that could become very significant given the concentration of users around the Myspace brand. On the other hand, your typical Myspace user may not be the perfect book reader and therein lies the challenge. Taking the battle directly to the group less interested in reading could be just the thing that builds some renewed interest in published content.*

I hope to have more on this when the site launches next week.


* I am not saying the typical Myspace user doesn't read: We need them to read books in quantity!

E-Books: The End User Experience

Springer has published a white paper on the results of a study they undertook asking librarians and users about their views on ebook adoption and benefits. In two stages, the company spoke to librarians in 2007 and followed that study up with another focused on users in 2008.

The survey uncovered some encouraging results regarding eBook adoption. Most users were aware of eBooks and had accessed them at least once. Respondents also overwhelmingly said that eBooks are useful and that they would like to incorporate eBooks into their information experience more frequently. These positive findings are supported by additional Springer usage research and studies from independent organizations that have found a surprising level of uptake for eBooks given their relative newness.

Other items of interest from the study (and covered in the document in more detail):

• Users mostly access ebooks for research and study while reading reference and textbooks
• E-book usage appears less concentrated than online journal usage
  
• Users find ebooks equally via Google and their library
• Convenience, accessibility, and enhanced functionality are the primary benefits of eBooks
• Current users expect to prefer ebooks to other reading formats over time (next five yrs).
  

The study summarizes the findings as follows:

Users are not reading eBooks cover-to-cover in the traditional sense but instead approach them as a resource for finding answers to research questions. eBooks have the potential to stimulate new forms of book content usage and will require libraries to think differently about how to accommodate the needs of users as their eBook collections grow. Viewing eBooks through the lens of traditional print book usage might cause libraries to miss important opportunities for enhancing the user research experience.

Google Book API

Google Book Search has activated an API that allows third parties to access GBS content directly on their home site. Noted in the initial implementation are several well know booksellers and also library catalogs:

This Google Preview feature is now live on retailer sites around the globe, from Books-A-Million to Blackwell Bookshop and The Book Depository in the UK, A1Books in India, Librería Norma in Colombia, Van Stockum in the Netherlands, and Livraria Cultura in Brazil. Over the coming weeks, this functionality will roll out to even more booksellers, including Borders.com, Buy.com, and Powell's Books.

Beyond these retailer partnerships, we've also worked with a wide array of sites and organizations to bring Book Search functionality to their users:

• Library catalogs. It is now possible to preview books—including a huge number of works in the public domain—right from the online catalogs of the University of California and the University of Texas, as well as through WorldCat.org, a service that lets you search across the collections of more than 10,000 local and institutional libraries worldwide.


• Publisher and author sites. The Arcadia Publishing web site has descriptions of its books about towns from Mountain View to Medford--and now, thanks to the Book Search integration, you can peek directly into these books as well. O'Reilly, Macmillan, Apress, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Stanford University Press have incorporated preview functionality into their sites, as well.


• Social book sites, which allow users to organize and share their reviews, ratings, and favorite books. You can now import your Book Search My Library collection straight into your aNobii account, or preview books within the weRead gadget for social networks. Be sure to also try out the exciting integrations by BookJetty, GoodReads, and BookRabbit.
  

Of course, we know that even more sites will also want to work with the Book Search index in ways we can't even imagine. That's why we've made these tools an open set of APIs, which anyone can use to build applications drawing on the unique search results and preview capabilities provided by Book Search. If you'd like to try out these APIs on your website, check out our brand new developer site.

Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions notes the importance of this announcement for publishing CEO's:

Having, or buying into, allying with, the API's which manage and accesses your content may be the key decision for media companies in the next decade. Either your CEO knows what an API is, and can find out how, in strategic terms, to negotiate Google's, Amazon's, Facebook's and Apple's, or he/she needs to be a media genius who does it by gut instinct (Rupert Murdoch is the only one of those that I can think of and he is the wrong side of 70). The heads of Random House, Conde Nast, Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette and Pearson really ought to have an intuition about the way their business can develop an API to the servers which are hosting all their content. I wonder if any of them do?

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 38):

New York Times reports on text book sales and pricing.

“The person who pays for the book, the parent or the student, doesn’t choose it,” he said. “There is this sort of creep. It’s always O.K. to add $5.”

In protest of what he says are textbooks’ intolerably high prices — and the dumbing down of their content to appeal to the widest possible market — Professor McAfee has put his introductory economics textbook online free. He says he most likely could have earned a $100,000 advance on the book had he gone the traditional publishing route, and it would have had a list price approaching $200.

“This market is not working very well — except for the shareholders in the textbook publishers,” he said. “We have lots of knowledge, but we are not getting it out.”

VentureBeat notes the success of an IPhone book reader from Stanza:

Stanza is currently the number one ebook app for the iPhone, and chief operating officer Neelan Choksi shared some other impressive stats with me. In its first six weeks, Stanza was downloaded 200,000 times — compare that to Amazon’s Kindle, which is seen as building momentum because it sells 40,000 units per month. Okay, that’s a totally unfair comparison, since Stanza is a free app. But if you can get a free ebook reader for your iPhone, why bother paying for the Kindle, or even a more cutting-edge reader like Plastic Logic’s? (Though of course the Amazon’s and Plastic Logic’s readers offer bigger screens, which is better for long-term reading.) People are actually downloading books, too — Choksi says one of Stanza’s content providers reports 20,000 downloads per day.

Rupert Murdoch has a rethink on subs for the WSJ from the Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch yesterday claimed online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones could rise by $300m (£164m) every year for up to three years, hinting that he will raise access charges to the financial news site.

For the moment the Informa deal appears to be dead (Guardian):

In a statement the consortium - comprising Providence Equity Partners, Carlyle and Blackstone Group - said it "has decided to withdraw its proposal" following the Informa board's rejection of its offer two weeks ago. The consortium also cited "a material change of circumstances" as one of the reasons behind its decision.

John Makinson interviewed by The Times on plans to expand into emerging markets like Pakistan:

Mr Makinson, 53, believes that Penguin can generate 10 per cent of its sales from emerging markets, which amounts to £100 million a year. The operation in India grew by 25 per cent last year, boosting turnover by £15 million and should, Mr Makinson says, generate 5 per cent of revenues in five years.

That fuels a belief that Penguin's growth can be boosted, although Mr Makinson points out that the business “has hardly let the side [Pearson] down - profits have grown in double digits in 2005, 2006, 2007 and is expected to again in 2008”.

University of Michigan places an Espresso Machine in one of their libraries (PR):

U-M is the first university library to install the book-printing machine. The Espresso Book Machine, from On Demand Books of New York, produces perfect-bound, high-quality paperback books on demand. A Time Magazine "Best Invention of 2007," the Espresso Book Machine has been called "the ATM of books." It was purchased with donations to U-M libraries.

Why experience matters. NYTimes. Alison Pendergast notes the University of Ohio is offering grants to faculty to produce course content:

However, in addition to this news, a smaller piece of news that didn't grab as much attention was the University System of Ohio offering Grants to its faculty to produce course content in an effort to move away from having Ohio students purchase branded textbooks. From the Program Synopsis:

The University System of Ohio (USO) will invest $250,000 to create affordable digital content for Ohio students and bring the digital learning materials to market in Autumn of 2009. The program goals are to:

Create learning materials that are cost-free for Ohio students; usher in a new era of digitally-delivered learning materials that, properly implemented, can improve student learning, and leverage high quality authorship and pedagogy from Ohio faculty members.

(Aside, I hope the textbooks they produce get a bit better editing than this RFP...)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is to establish an Headquarters in Dublin and hire 450 people. (It's nice in Dublin). Finfacts:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (formerly Riverdeep) is to invest €350m in eLearning research and development with significant support from Enterprise Ireland. HMH is to establish its global eLearning research and development centre in the greater Dublin area, creating 450 "high-value" jobs over the next 5 years.

A&R Installs First Espresso Book Machine in Australian Market

Angus & Robertson Australia's largest book retailer is heading a group that will place up to 50 Espresso Book Machines in their stores over the next two years. A&R says they will initially offer 20,000 mainly Australian hard to find and out of print titles but expect that title list to exceed 100,000 over the next few years.

The EBM has been mentioned here before (particularly in its implementation in Canada) and the machine continues to roll out steadily in the US. This implementation in Australia could be transformative because of how the Australian market works. The three partners in this effort; A&R, Central Book Services and EBM may have the market power to fundamentally change the book market in Australia.

Firstly, because the market is relatively small there the market for titles written by and for the Australian market is quite small (somewhat similar to Canada); therefore, sheer economics prevent a broad based industry. Implementing an on-demand solution could lower the profit threshold considerably resulting in a more vibrant indigenous publishing program. Secondly, the Australian market is seen as an important but secondary market for US and UK publishers. As a result, decisions are not always taken with respect to the Australian market by overseas corporate offices that are in the best interests of the Australian market. For example, decisions related to price or availability. Sometimes a title is made available only via the foreign entity or Amazon.com because the local publishing division can not promise a market for the title. (Some of these issues are far less a problem than they used to be).

Thirdly, particularly in education and professional publishing the unit sales levels of many titles can be counted in the tens or hundreds. These levels are simply not high enough to stock locally. So if orders are placed with a local publisher the delivery dates could be months rather than days because the title has to be sourced from the overseas corporate parent. The sad thing is many customers (university booksellers and libraries) bypass the local publisher and buy from B&T or Amazon. From these vendors, the title can be delivered in days and yes, that's air freighted in with costs added.

Implementing EBM can start to solve some of these inefficiencies in the Australian bookseller and publisher market. In the process, revenue that had been going overseas might return to local suppliers and publishers - those owners of the local publishing rights - and the total market might become more expansive delivering a much wider inventory of products than could be conceivable today (or yesterday).

Those interested in learning more about this initiative should contact Central Book Services especially if you are interested in adding your titles to the inventory. Contact Warren Broom on 03-92107804 or wbroom @ centralbookservices.com

Sydney Morning Herald

Publishers Lunch Launch Bookstore Maps

Announced today is an ambitious and long needed new bookstore locator product from Publishers Lunch. The database product pulls together store location information from 4200 bookstores selling new titles across the US.

If you are not a subscriber to Publishers Lunch (and face it who isn't) this should provide the motivation you need. Here is more information from their press release:

We are now live at PublishersMarketplace with our latest database project, one of our most ambitious and most essential compilations yet. Charting the landscape of physical retailers that support the entire business, we have compiled and vetted data on over 4,200 stores selling new books across the country.

The database presents basic information for each store, while also cataloging hundreds of associated bookstore websites. Most dramatic of all, we have made the information visual as well, displaying it on Google-powered maps.

A variety of search options make it easy to access the data in multiple ways: You can scan by state, 33 major metropolitan areas, zip code, and store type (chain; indie; etc.), or browse a number of specialty stores (children's; mystery; etc.) Stores are color-coded to easily and quickly distinguish among the four largest chains, general indies, college bookstores and specialty stores.

And special features add utility of particular interest for "trade" use: newly opened and recently closed stores are specially tagged, and we recently added the ability for stores to contribute rich information about the kinds of special events and readings they offer and whom to contact about author bookings.

An "add/update/remove a store" link on the main Bookstore Maps page makes it easy for stores to contribute and correct data and submit information for those Events fields so that publishers can learn more about their capabilities. We also need to bolster the lists of specialty stores and are eager to hear from organizations with comprehensive, vetted data.

Right now this resource is viewable only via PublishersMarketplace, though we are working on variety of additional uses, including a free-standing version for general users. Among the special uses we would be delighted to explore with any of you are:

* Using the database as an always up-to-date and comprehensive "store finder" to run on any publisher's web site, to help support the entire ecosystem of physical and online retail

* Generating national Tour Maps for particular authors, to embed on author sites and pages

* Developing a variety of proprietary in-house versions, using our visual interface as a way of storing your own data about accounts, a way to test visual mapping of POS data, and more

(We're already looking at incorporating feeds of data about author appearances, but help/ideas are most welcome.)

Needless to say, this feature is the culmination of a tremendous amount of work by many people. We are particularly grateful for the generous assistance of Barnes & Noble, Borders Group, the American Booksellers Association, the directors of all of the regional booksellers associations, the folks at publishing houses who viewed our demos and offered feedback, and the many freelance researchers who worked with us in compiling and correcting the data. We look forward to your suggestions for improving and employing this new resource, and to community contributions to the data itself.

To check out Bookstore Maps, just go here: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/stores
[we'll add it to the PM menu bar shortly]

To view sample events data, visit these store links and click the "Events" tab:
Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center VT

Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park WA

The Globe Corner Bookstore, Cambridge MA

Stanford University Bookstore, Stanford CA

When Bowker was sold by Reed, we lost American Book Trade Directory and American Library Directory once the dust had settled. Had we kept them I would like to think we could have done something like this with those data base products. Assuming PL carves out this bookstore information as a separate product I don't see how other databases could compete on quality or price. Now, Bowker should do somthing similar with the Publisher's Wholesalers and Distributors database in advance of someone beating them to it.

A Cool New Reading Device

My friends at Rosetta sent me a link to a presentation by a company named Plastic Logic who demonstrate their proto type for a new e-Reader targeted at business users. Looks very cool.

Here is the video (link) and the product is slated for launch early next year.