The End Predicted

Richard Curtis (E-Reads) has penned an interesting status report on the downward spiral of publishing:

Most of the resentment or suspicion that authors and agents feel toward publishers stems from royalty accounting based on returns. Authors, outraged that creative bookkeeping permits publishers to hold excessive royalties in the name of reserves against returns, consider the system fraudulent. Their viewpoint is easy to understand when you remember that returns are a manipulable form of currency. The temptation to manipulate them intensifies in recessionary or inflationary times when publishers seize upon royalty reserves as the most obvious source of cash to relieve their liquidity problems or earn some extra interest. Publishers cannot with impunity stop paying their printers, their landlords, their paper suppliers, or their employees. But by a stroke of the pen, raising the holdback on royalties from, say, 50 percent to 75 percent, a publisher can liberate enough cash to meet the urgent demands of all those other creditors - at the expense of authors. How, then, could authors, suffering liquidity problems of their own, not feel bitter? Nor is their mood improved to see their remaindered books, on which they receive little or no royalties, selling briskly in used-book stores.

Are there solutions to this dilemma? There are, but they all call for radical changes in the way we think about books, sell them, and account to each other for them. For any plan to succeed, it must: (1) allow publishers to print only as many copies as are necessary to fill orders, (2) put distribution on a nonreturnable basis, (3) enable publishers to make a profit, (4) encourage bookshops and chain stores to make money remaindering books on their own premises, and (5) provide authors with honest, easy-to-understand accounting. That's a tall order. Some gratifying attempts have been essayed, but they all failed because they were not radical enough, nor were they adopted on an industry-wide basis.

There is a great kick at the end.

Bloomsbury Buys Wisden

I think Richard Charkin will be walking around the Bloomsbury offices this morning with a big smile on his face. Wisden is the official almanac for Cricket and Richard being a big cricket fan as well as Chief Executive of Bloomsbury is going to be well chuffed since they now have their hands on it.

From AP:

John Wisden & Co was bought by the billionaire Paul Getty in 1993. Since his death in 2003, the company has been owned by his son, Mark.

Published every year since 1864, the yearbook is known among cricket fans for its mixture of statistics, features and opinion pieces.

Bloomsbury Publishing chief executive Nigel Newton called the acquisition "a landmark event in the history of the company and an important step in our strategy to increase our presence in reference and sport publishing."

Amazon Rents Massive Data Sets

Several months ago, I wrote a piece titled Massive Data Sets about the potential for increased access to very large data sets that historically would have remained ancillary to the reporting of research projects. While very important to the conclusions reported in research typically the data and primary research supporting the conclusions was inaccessible. From my post,

here could develop the next land grab for publishers and perhaps other parties interested in gaining access to the raw data supporting all types of research. As publishers develop platforms supporting their publishing and (n0w) service offers will they see maintaining these data sets as integral to that policy? I believe so, and I suspect in agreements with authors, institutions and associations that own these journals the publishers like Elsevier will also require the 'deposit' of the raw data supporting each article. In return, the offerings on the publisher's 'platform' would enable analysis, synthesis and data storage all of benefit to their authors. But the story may be more comprehensive than simply rounding out their existing titles with more data.

The original was triggered by an article on a Google blog post as well as a NYTimes article.

Yesterday, the NYTimes blog Bits reported that Amazon has begun hosting large data sets as an adjunct to their services offering. From the Times,

Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has started offering access to large collections of data. Business customers and scientists can take the information, which ranges from census databases to three-dimensional chemical structures and the genome, and use it as the basis for computing jobs. By gathering and storing the information, Amazon says that it can save businesses the step of assembling and managing data on their own.

As the blog post goes on to say, there is the potential that the Amazon service can further eliminate (on top of the vast array of services Amazon already offers) significant expenses. Access to the Amazon service begins to push to zero the infrastructure cost and overhead that must be covered in any research project. This could have a material impact on the types and extent of all research dependent on the collection, storage and analysis of vast data sets. The economics have fundamentally changed for researchers enabling them to contemplate all kinds of new projects that otherwise may have been cost prohibitive. On the other hand, their research limitations could be more mundane in that they may no longer need to compete for data processing time or other technical limitations with competing projects.

Smart people are going to see an opportunity to buy or otherwise gather very large sets of data from groups or organizations who may not see the potential value. For example, buying the transaction data from all the EasyPass-like systems (RFID tags that let you pass through tolls) across the US, 'depositing' it with Amazon and then renting access to any urban planner that wants to analyze the info. The customer pays a fee and out of that fee the 'owner' of the data pays Amazon a service fee. A potentially painless way to an early retirement in Costa Rica. As I noted in my original post, this is a growth opportunity for publishers or others.

There's Money to Be Made: Prop 8 The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Strategy Anyone?

Yesterday was a bleak day as we know but in the long list of downsizing, reorganizations and salary cap announcements it seemed every statement was lacking a closing sentence along the lines of, "we continue to invest in new business models and content solutions to address the changing needs of our existing readers and the developing needs of our newer and younger readers." Sadly, the retrenchments are a typical reaction - along the lines of cutting marketing expenses, canceling the Christmas party and eliminating free coffee - to the declining economic situation. The sad thing for all of us, it that the good times will not return in the form we all familiar with. In other words, those jobs are not returning because by the time things improve the publishing business will be smaller and the jobs redundant.

I could go on, and I intended to particularly about the continuing love affair with imprints; that is, until I read the following from BookSquare:

No really, who cares if these groups are retaining editorial independence while combining strengths? Is that really going to change the business dynamic, or is it just focusing on the wrong problem?

Imprints are just boxes on an org chart. To most of the buying public, they mean nothing. To some of your acquisitions editors, they mean nothing. To the bottom line, they mean nothing. You can have a hit book from any possible label, to borrow from another business’s lingo. It ain’t the logo on the spine, it’s that magic combination of book and audience and right time/right place.

I am not disparaging the talents of Gina Centrello, Sonny Mehta, or Jenny Frost (I’ve particularly been a Centrello fan for a long time), but the emphasis on maintaining their individual silos does n’t begin to address the real problems facing publishing today: financial structure, changing readership, and, sorry, old-fashioned notions of of monetary priorities (differentiating between financial structure, where I mean big-ass corporate commitments beyond the nuts-and-bolts of publishing books).

Kassia goes on to make the same point I note in my first paragraph as well as some additional well taken points.

Misery Loves Company or Does It?

On the back of recognizing the success of a daughter over a mother in a law suit, The Guardian reviews the misery genre in UK publishing. Notably, having seen some success the publishers are now mining it for all it's worth with the predictable result; consumer exhaustion. That coupled with the general economic misery everyone is facing and readers may be less inclined to read about someones hardship. Next up happy books?

Here is a sample of the Guardian article:

The truth is that misery - or, as the trade prefers to put it, "inspirational" - memoirs have been on the decline since the beginning of the year, with sales of the top 30 titles this year down nearly 35% on 2007, according to Nielsen BookScan. Last year's bestseller, Don't Tell Mummy, sold over 300,000 copies over the course of the year, while its equivalent this year, Not Without My Sister, is just topping 152,000, according to the Bookseller.
"I think the public quite likes them but even the most miserable person in the world has got too much now," said publisher John Blake, who took the decision to pull out of the market six months ago after judging it to be saturated. "We used to do one a month, but every major publisher is doing two a month [and] we just can't compete. Really anything with a white cover and sad face is anathema to us."
"There was a lot of over-publishing and publishing of stories that weren't as good or well-written, and there have been a lot of problems legally with some of them," agreed Carole Tonkinson, a publisher at misery memoir powerhouse HarperCollins. "We are cutting back a bit."

Holiday in Old Town

Last week Mrs. PND and I visited her family in Old Town, Alexandria. Thanksgiving day was glorious and the tourists were gone from the streets. I spent a very pleasant morning wandering and marveling at the architecture.

Twelve Books for Christmas

Dismal sales expectations for all retail including books got me thinking that all of us in publishing and bookselling should be encouraged to support the business in any way we can. My simple suggestion is an echo of the 12 days of Christmas theme whereby we visit our bookstore(s) of choice and buy twelve new books. Naturally, buying more is also an option.

Here is my selection of twelve titles I have put off buying during the year (mainly because I have been working down my considerable back-log). I bought ten of these books in the last couple of days.

1. Dexter Filkins: The Forever War
   The NYTimes journalist's Iraq war memoir: From Manhattan to Falluja (Review)
   
2. Denis Johnson: Tree of Smoke
   VietNam allegory and pre-quell (Review)
   
3. Piers Brendon: Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997
   The accidental empire given up painfully. (Review)
   
4. P.D. James: The Private Patient
   (For Mrs PND) Isn't Dalglish getting on? (Review)
   
5. John Le Carre: A Most Wanted Man
   A stew of terrorism, spies and duplicity. (Review)
   
6. Jon Meacham: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
   The everyman President from outside the Beltway. (Review)
   
7. Peter Mattiessen: Shadow Country
   Winner of this year's National Book Awards. (Review)
   
8. Denis Lehane: The Given Day
   The Bard of Irish Boston (Review)
   
9. Kate Atkinson: When Will There Be Good News
   (For Mrs PND) Jackson Brodie Solves his third murder case (Review)
   
10. Tim Winton: Breath
    One of Australia's new crop of renowned authors. (Review)
    
11. Stieg Larsson: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
    Financial fraud, murder, family violence. It's the first of a trilogy. (Review)
    
12. Don Winslow: The Dawn Patrol
    Ex-PI and stand-up comedian Winslow crafts another mystery. (Review)
    
13. (Bonus) George Pelecanos: The Turnaround.
    GP is one of my favorite authors. Again another urban parable. (Review)

Although I don't suggest you buy these at Amazon. com I have created a list in my storefront. If nothing else you can read more about the titles and then buy at your local store of choice. Happy reading!

Feel free to add your own list/recommendations in the comments.

Borders Same Store Sales Down 13%

After the close, Borders reported their third quarter results and as predicted they were markedly off the same period last year. Comparable store sales for Borders superstores decreased by 12.8% in the third quarter, and with music excluded, declined by 10.6%. Same-store sales at Waldenbooks decreased by 7.7% for the period. Impairment charges pushed their loss from continuing operations to $172mm ($2.85) versus $40mm ($0.63) last year. Without those GAAP adjustments the profit performance was on par with last year.

From the press release:

"Borders has successfully reduced debt, improved operating cash flow, lowered expenses, improved gross margin-excluding occupancy-and improved inventory productivity during a time of extreme economic challenge," said Borders Group Chief Executive Officer George Jones. "We stated at the beginning of this year that strengthening our balance sheet is our top priority and we are delivering results. We'll remain keenly focused on these critical initiatives, and in addition, will increase our efforts to drive further gross margin improvement. All of the changes we are making will position Borders Group to compete more effectively."

Other items of interest:

• Management is no longer contemplating a sale of the company so what does that mean.....
  
• Cash flow has increase by $110mm however their ending $38mm in cash includes $94mm from the sale of discontinued ops.
• The company's AP is $12omm less than the same period last year which means they are buying less product.
• Trade creditors of $613mm exceeds the market cap of the company by 6x
• Debt, including the prior-year debt of discontinued operations, was reduced from a year ago by 34.2% or $273.1 million at the end of the third quarter to $525.4 million (see above point).
• The company's cost elimination program is expected to produce $10mm more than planned - an annual total of $70mm

More tomorrow after the conference call. After the report, their shares are off 17% but at this point that's only 30cents.

I Stanzan Opportunity

As an update to this story I originally posted in early October, it seems publishers have indeed recognized an opportunity when it hits them between the eyes. Pan Macmillan and BooksOnNBoard have jumped on the Stanza bandwagon and are offering their titles for use on the IPhone application. More publishers to follow. Earlier this month Stanza reported they had surpassed 500,000 downloads of the reader.

Follows is my original post of October 6th.

Several reports over the weekend have noted the incredible 375,000 Stanza downloads for the iPhone. Stanza is a free eBook reader which currently only offers books in the public domain but that hasn't stopped comparisons with the Kindle. Kindle sales have been estimated at anywhere from one to 300,000+, so does the Kindle have competition? The arguments against cite the following; the Kindle costs a lot so buyers are always going to have real interest in buying books than someone who downloads something for free - a so-called application junkie, reading on the Kindle is designed for content (books specifically) and the iPhone is too small for reading, battery life is short on the iPhone why waste it on a book, and lastly 'good' content is readily available from the Amazon.com store and Stanza only has public domain content.

It occurs to me that any publisher arguing this line is missing an opportunity. Stanza has said they are in discussions with publishers about current content which is great news because 375,000 downloads represents a lot of book selling opportunities. Perhaps some will never read an entire book on an iPhone, perhaps some will never use the app., perhaps some will worry about their battery but 375,000 (growing) iPhones have this software and that's where the opportunity lies. We don't need these iPhone users to use this as their primary reading device - they can - but maybe this is a promotion opportunity (how about 200,000 first chapters). Perhaps this is a reader for casual reading - on the subway or waiting at the dentist office. Maybe this is an opportunity to try new forms of content. The Japanese and DailyLit have proven that readers are willing to read on supposedly substandard reading devices so why not the iPhone?

Lastly, we read different types of content in different formats - comics, novels, reference material, gift and large format books, large type, newspapers, magazines, and on and on. Is it not too much of a stretch to think that perhaps electronic reading devices may vary in a similar way? At editorial development meetings on Monday morning I hope publishers are discussing how they could make their content work for the Stanza readers rather than wish they were all Kindle users because this isn't going to be the last time opportunity rears its' inconvenient head.

SharedBook in Deal with LucasBooks

SharedBook announced today the launch of the personalized edition of Star Wars: Millennium Falcon by bestselling author James Luceno. The book, published on October 21 by Del Rey Books (Random House) and LucasBooks, is the latest bestselling novel in the STAR WARS series. Every book purchased can now be personalized with photo and text on the dedication page, creating a one-of-a-kind, personal edition. Through its custom publishing partnership with Random House Inc., SharedBook launched a line of personalized Golden Books in September, and will enter the frontlist fiction market with this high-profile title.

Promotional links and pages provided by Random House, direct consumers to SharedBook's online store, where they can create a custom dedication with text and photo that appears in the front of their STAR WARS book. Books are then purchased and printed in hardcover and shipped free to the recipient. Thus, the force is with the consumer.

Reader's Digest

Profile this morning in the NYTimes noting the significant changes going on at Reader's Digest led by Mary Berner:

Ms. Berner has been a jolt to the system for this stodgiest of media companies since she became chief executive in a private equity takeover 20 months ago. She has replaced executives, sold unprofitable businesses and even set out to change the company’s name, shaking it up any way she can.

Most important, the company is taking risks, starting dozens of new magazines at a time when its peers are contracting.

One of the biggest new ventures, to be announced Monday, is a multimedia partnership with Rick Warren, the renowned minister and author, hoping to tap into the vast audience for his book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

Together, they are creating a Christian membership organization, The Purpose Driven Connection, built on Mr. Warren’s call to faith and charitable work. Paying members will receive a quarterly magazine edited by Mr. Warren, with DVDs and pull-out study guides in each issue, and access to a social networking Web site.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 47):

Dismal week for retailing with B&N reporting slower than anticipated sales and a reduced expectation for their full year. No one (in any sector) expects the Christmas period to exceed even the least negative forecasts. B&N:

Sales for the third quarter were $1.1 billion, a 4.4% decrease compared to the prior year. Barnes & Noble store sales decreased 4.4% to $971 million, with comparable store sales decreasing 7.4% for the quarter. Barnes & Noble.com sales were $109 million for the quarter, a 2.0% comparable sales increase compared to the prior year.

For the thirty-nine weeks ended November 1, 2008, the company had a net loss of $5.2 million as compared to net income of $20.8 million in the prior year. The net loss includes the third quarter charge noted above ($7.0million) as well as a $5.0 million after-tax charge from the first quarter relating to a tax settlement. Excluding these charges, the company achieved net income of $6.8 million year-to-date.

The company explained that they have maintained their gross margins and pointedly noted that they have avoided 'unprofitable top line sales growth with additional coupon promotions and extra discounting' which may not be an argument that Borders will be making next week. SeekingAlpha Transcript Speaking for myself, I was more surprised that Random House still had a pension plan. Well, it's now officially closed. AP

The country's largest trade publisher, Random House Inc., has frozen the pensions of its current employees and eliminated them for future hires, the latest cuts in an industry hit by declining sales and anticipating, at best, a difficult 2009.

"Effective Dec. 31, benefits in the Random House, Inc. Pension Plan will no longer grow — but they will not be reduced," spokesman Stuart Applebaum said in a statement released Thursday in response to a query from The Associated Press.

Applebaum added that, effective Jan. 1, no new employees "will be enrolled in the Random House, Inc. Pension Plan." The company will continue to offer matching funds, up to 6 percent, for 401k plans.

Reuters (via Billboard) reports on books by musicians. (Reuters):

But not everyone who has ever cut a record should count on getting a book deal.

"Things are dire in the publishing business, and they are looking to get the big names that already have established brands and platforms," says literary agent Sarah Lazin. And she adds that even some popular musicians face an added hurdle because of their fan base.

"For a long time, publishers made the mistake of thinking that because a band had sold a lot of records, they would sell a lot of books," she says. "I think they've discovered that it depends on the audience. For the Tori Amos (biography "Piece by Piece," which she co-wrote with Ann Powers), we had a huge response, because her fans are readers and book buyers."

"Piece by Piece" has generated hardcover sales of 32,000 units and paperback sales of 9,000 units since its publication in February 2005, according to BookScan.

Personally, I think more imagination could be applied to this genre far beyond the simple tell all but that's just my opinion. An obit of Fred Newman that appeared in The Telegraph. e-Publishing company Atypon purchase eMeta from Macrovision, Inc. LINK

The acquisition of this operation from Macrovision supplements Atypon’s existing technologies and services and creates a broader proposition focused exclusively on the licensing and online delivery of publisher content. It creates a single entity dedicated to providing innovative content production, marketing, ecommerce and e-rights management tools to the publishing industry. Through the acquisition of the eMeta operation, Atypon has expanded its highly experienced technical team and added a publishing services consulting team to the company’s existing proposition.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Kevin Kelly writes in this weekend's NYTimes magazine about our migration from words to images; specifically those rendered on video screens. This is a long but extraordinary article and well worth reading.

Here is a taste:

Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.

The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one; easier to listen to a song than to compose one; easier to attend a play than to produce one. But movies in particular suffer from this user asymmetry. The intensely collaborative work needed to coddle chemically treated film and paste together its strips into movies meant that it was vastly easier to watch a movie than to make one. A Hollywood blockbuster can take a million person-hours to produce and only two hours to consume. But now, cheap and universal tools of creation (megapixel phone cameras, Photoshop, iMovie) are quickly reducing the effort needed to create moving images. To the utter bafflement of the experts who confidently claimed that viewers would never rise from their reclining passivity, tens of millions of people have in recent years spent uncountable hours making movies of their own design. Having a ready and reachable audience of potential millions helps, as does the choice of multiple modes in which to create. Because of new consumer gadgets, community training, peer encouragement and fiendishly clever software, the ease of making video now approaches the ease of writing.

Pardon Me, says Black

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, Lord (Conrad) Black, currently residing comfortably at a federal correctional facility in central Florida, has applied to the US Justice Department for a pardon. In the waning days of this tortuous presidency, LB is hoping that like many prior Presidents before him, GWB will cast logic and justice aside (Mark Rich anyone) and grant him his due. I'm betting GWB to be so ignorant that this one will pass him right by. Having said that I bet some of this will form the basis for the argument.

As an update, Lord Black tells us prison isn't so bad after all. It's justice that's all wrong. (TimesOnline)

I enjoy some aspects of my status as a victim of the American prosecutocracy.

My appeal continues. Given the putrefaction of the US justice system, it is an unsought but distinct honour to fight this out and already to have won 85% of the case and 99% of the financial case. The initial allegation against me of a “$500m corporate kleptocracy” has shrunk to a false finding against me - that even some of the jurors have already fled from in post-trial comments – of the underdocumented receipt of $2.9m. There is no evidence to support this charge.

Elsevier Journals Under Fire

Chris Lee at Ars Technica has some harsh things to say about Elsevier's bundling policy and the quality of their journals:

If the quality of a journal falls, or is filled with pseudoscientific garbage, subscriptions will be cancelled. In this case, libraries will need to start analyzing usage patterns more carefully. Has anyone downloaded a paper from Chaos, Fractals, and Solitons since it turned into a journal of numerology? If the mathematics department at your local university knew about its content, would they still want it in the university? These are questions that should be subjected to regular review, but the bundling practice makes asking them useless. Universities should have the power to cancel these subscriptions without looking forward to a huge increase in subscription fees.

It would be nice to think that Elsevier will listen to scientist, but I suspect that this will not happen until scientists start getting a little more strident. If you are scientist, publish your work in society journals rather than Elsevier journals. Try to avoid citing work published in Elsevier journals. Elsevier lives by a combination of pricing and impact factor, and scientists have direct control over only one of these—impact factor. Librarian could start looking at Elsevier journal usage patterns; perhaps they can follow Cornell's example, and subscribe to just a few Elsevier journals.

Reed Business

As an update to yesterday's post about RBI's CEO van de Aast, Bloomberg is reporting that bids may come in at around $1bill. which is half the amount expected. What is unknown is whether that figure assumes an ownership stake in the divested business. For example, if Reed retained a 40% ownership in RBI (admittedly a lot) then this would translate to a value of $1.4billion which is still substantially less than the proposed amount almost a year ago but not as bad as the half off sale price. If the $1bill is for 100% then Reed is in a pickle since they may not want to take such a low price but they don't have a CEO. Not forgetting that they have debt to pay back for Choicepoint.

The Famous Move Books

During Obama’s 60mins interview on Sunday he mentioned he was reading a lot about FDR’s first administration and specifically about the first 100 days. He didn’t mention a specific title and subsequent commentators have noted the Goodwin book Team of Rivals as a candidate. When Obama mentioned the subject, I checked Amazon for a likely candidate and I thought the book could be Alter’s The Defining Moment. At that point the Amazon ranking for the hardcover was 8961. On Monday it was in the 300’s and Wednesday (today) it is 195.

The NYTimes article from yesterday summed it up perfectly: Bingo. Goodwin's and other titles are mentioned in the article.

This tracking of title performance is becoming something of a sport. It is amazing there isn’t a storefront for endorsed books since all the marketing is done for you. Anyone in the book promotion business knows how important Jon Stewart is to driving book interest but if all of those endorsements from his show and all the others could be collected in an easy to search on-line store maybe the influence would be even more pronounced and longer lived.

Reed Business CEO to Leave

Reed Elsevier announced yesterday that Gerard van de Aast will be leaving his position as CEO of RBI on December 15th. Kieth Jones will be stepping in to fill the position on a temporary basis. Spectators will understand that this situation further complicates what has been a long frustrating process for Reed in attempting to get rid of this business.

The company has announced that discussions on the sale are at an advanced stage (but that's no guarentee, etc.). Perhaps this move by van de Aast is a precursor. Maybe he is be fronting one of the buyers groups.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 46):

What's going on in the Indian publishing market. 15% growth per year isn't bad. (Link):

When all sectors of industries seem to be getting affected by the ongoing recession in the world markets, the Indian book publishing market is going great guns. The book publishing market in India stands at approximately Rs 7,000 crore and is growing at a rate of over 15 per cent every year.

German media firms face the crunch but the biggest ones are sufficiently diversified. (Link):

Robin Meyer-Lucht, media thinker with the Berlin Institute, sees a silver lining in these economic storms. "The financial crisis is only the catalyst for the restructuring of the industry," he said to a recent media conference. It’s true. But this dark night with rain, snow, sleet and hail will pass slowly.

No need to visit your library if you live in Shelton, CT. they deliver. (Link)

Even if you can't transport yourself to a library, you can now have access to its materials thanks to a new homebound delivery service. Town libraries will soon kick off a pilot program to work out any problems in the system before making the service available throughout Shelton. Shawn Fields, branch director at Huntington Branch Library, said the service was conceived to help the elderly and disabled who might not be able to drive or walk to the libraries themselves.

In Davis's last year you can bet they are going to do there best to have a bang up year despite the economic downturn. Here they confirm their full year outlook. Reed may be insulated because of the vast subscription revenues they now rely on. If only they could get rid of Reed Business Information. Guardian:

The company, which has a range of business-to-business magazines, websites and exhibitions in the science, medical, business and legal sectors, told investors it was well placed to defy the gloomy economic outlook.

Reed Elsevier chief executive Crispin Davis said: "The business is on track for a very successful year and we expect to deliver Reed Elsevier's strongest constant currency earnings growth in over a decade.

"Whilst the economic environment is undoubtedly challenging, our businesses are more resilient than most and we are in a strong financial position."

Reed Elsevier announced a major restructuring programme in February 2008 and the publisher said today this was "progressing well". The company aims to build up to £100m in annual savings by 2011.

Also, Reed are looking to defer the refinance plan for the loan they needed for the ChoicePoint acquisition (Telegraph):

As credit markets come under increasing pressure and with Reed Elsevier's chief executive Sir Crispin Davis set to step down in March, the group is considering pushing back refinancing the $2bn loan until March 2010. By then, new chief executive Ian Smith, the former chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Woodrow, would have had his feet under the table for a year and the hope is that credit markets would have eased.

A clause in the terms of the first $2bn of the loan, which expires in March 2009, allows Reed to extend refinancing for one year. The second half of the loan, which is $2.175bn, is set to mature in 2011.

Guardian inteviews Blurb founder Eileen Gittins (Guardian):

The idea for Blurb came in her time after Verb, when Gittins, a former Kodak executive, returned to her love of photography: she compiled a photographic essay about people in and around Silicon Valley. In 2003, she wanted to produce 40 copies as gifts. The quotes for publishing it were horrendous; not only that, but there was the huge delay in getting the printing scheduled. Which got her thinking. What if you created a company that would handle the printing using a print-on-demand model? You'd generate the book on your computer with some software, upload a file with all the relevant data, and it would be passed to the printing company, which could do a run of one, or 10, or 10,000. Later that year, Apple launched iPhoto, its photo organisation program - which also included a "design a photo book, get it printed by Kodak" element. Validated, Gittins saw a potential business.