Pub Fight with BookNet Canada

One of the more entertaining and interesting presentations at the Supply Chain Interests Meeting in Frankfurt this year was one by Michael Tamblyn of BookNet Canada. He spoke about several things but the one subject that was most interesting to me was a development project that his team devised that can help junior staff members learn how to make accurate sales and demand forecasts. The 'game' PubFight was initally tested with a small group of publishers but was so successful that it has been expanded to include students in publishing programs as well as some booksellers.

While the principles are core to under standing how planning works effectively the tool was constructed so that individuals or teams can 'play' each other and the team that maximizes sales while minimizing costs wins over a period of time. In the first version of this program the BookNet Canada group used real sales data for real titles over several months. In the version for publishing education programs, the tool can be loaded with historic data to compact the - say four months, of selling time into a week of elapsed time.

I hounded Michael until he finally answered my five questions on Pubfight.

1. You spoke at Frankfurt about two different initiatives but it was the PubFight which caught my interest. Can you explain the program?

BookNet Canada is an agency tasked with supply chain and technology innovation, so our primary focus is service delivery -- point-of-sales tracking, process improvement, EDI, standards and the like. During a series of meetings with heads of some of our larger publishing houses two years ago, I started to hear a recurring theme that went something like this: "Our tendency in publishing is to hire passionate, well-read arts graduates who can communicate well about books. But we need people who can combine their love of books with an understanding of the numbers behind those books, people who can forecast sales, assess opportunity or analyze sell-through and stock position in real time. How do we build those skills for the people we already have? How do we make sure that people joining the industry have those skills when they arrive?" That request -- to get people familiar with the numbers behind the industry -- was the genesis of PubFight. We whipped up a quick in-house version, tried it with staff and a few guest-stars from the publishing community last fall, and turned it loose this year.

PubFight is basically fantasy publishing. It's fun, competitive and only accidentally educational. At the beginning of the (real) selling season, leagues form up, usually co-workers or students in a publishing program, sometimes competitors and real-life rivals, about 8-12 per league. It all starts with the auction, "Fakefurt". Each person gets a fake budget to acquire the real titles that are going to hit the shelves that fall. Everyone has to fill a list of fiction, nonfiction and juvenile/YA titles. Once the list is built, each player has to forecast initial print runs and pay for them. Then, as the books hit the street, you accrue the (real) sales on your titles as long as you have enough (fake) stock to cover it. You can reprint if you need to, with real-life lead times and unit costs. The most profitable house at the end of the season wins.

On one hand, completely frivolous. But on the other, it is encouraging people to do some analysis, take risks, and make mistakes without putting their jobs or the firm's money at stake. Along the way, they build an understanding about how books sell that could take years if they were just learning by experience. Both publishers and some publishing educational programs are using PubFight.

2. How do they use it? What about retailers?

Every publisher is different. For some, it's pure team building. For one large house, they excluded their own titles from the auction in order to deepen their understanding of what the competition was doing. For some of our small press players, it's a chance to look at how the more commercial, mass market end of the industry behaves. In all cases, whether they intend it or not, it's helping them become more familiar with forecasting, sell-through analysis, competitive title analysis and the other techniques that publishers need throughout their organizations.

At the colleges and universities, it's often the students' first look at how books actually sell, which can be a real eye-opener. It takes them right from theory to practice: How much is a book worth? How can you tell? To what degree is the past a predictor of the future? And it puts them in some remarkably true-to-life scenarios, like when the book that you bought for nothing becomes a runaway bestseller that you can't keep on the shelves. With schools, we can also run lightning rounds, where we run a complete past season in a couple of weeks, with a new week of data dropping every couple of days. Much easier to fit into an existing curriculum.

We see retailers as the next stop for PubFight. One of the biggest challenges faced by store and chain managers is identifying new talent. Which of the people working on the floor has the aptitude to become a buyer? Who can look beyond their own interests to predict what book-buyers are going to be interested in? It's reasonably easy if you're a small independent, but much harder if you are spread out across multiple stores or in a chain. This might help junior booksellers start to get a sense of how the industry works at a larger scale, and pick up some tips about the demand for different kinds of books along the way. It would also help senior managers get a sense of who has a knack for picking winners.

3. How do you see this program expanding? Is there are more practical implementation of PubFight – can the tool be used in actual forecasting?

It's more about encouraging the practice of forecasting than becoming a tool for forecasting. At the same time, we're interested to see if the positions taken by publishers and retailers at auction and on print-runs can act as a lightweight, EasyBake prediction market for future sales. In a frivolous and non-serious way, of course.

4. Are you considering licensing this tool outside Canada? It would be great if you had a Flash version of your Frankfurt presentation to explain it in full to publishers and retailers. Is this under consideration?

It's a possibility, if we can find a licensing model that makes sense. It does require a direct connection to a continually updated source of point-of-sales information, which limits the pool of licensees somewhat. In the meantime, this might just be one of those things that makes it worth a trip north, right along with colourful money, free healthcare and baroque parliamentary politics. When we get some time, we'll try to get the Frankfurt presentation online and let you know when it's available.

5. Do you have any development plans for PubFight?

This is a sideline thing for us, an experiment that has escaped the lab. To the extent that we put more resources against it, the focus will probably be on things that help it scale on its own -- easier set up, self-administration -- and resources that help the educational/professional development focus: demos, sample analysis and training tools for students and junior staff. But the user community is quite vocal, so they are sure to have a few ideas of their own.

Michael - Many thanks. He can be reached at mtamblyn @ booknetcanada.ca

Author-centric website FiledByAuthor Launches

Mike Shatzkin and Peter Clifton (ex-Ingram) have annouced the private beta launch of a new author-centric web site named FiledByAuthor.com. I am proud to say I had a tiny role in its development. Check it out - especially if you are an author. Here is the press release:

FiledBy, Inc. Launches Online Directory of Published U.S. and Canadian Authors called filedbyauthor

Friday, December 12, 2008

Nashville, Tennessee. FiledBy, Inc. today announced the Private Beta launch of filedbyauthor, the most comprehensive online directory of published authors on the Internet. The company hopes the site will become a top 10 destination for readers and for authors.

FiledBy, Inc., was founded by publishing veteran Peter Clifton, former president of various Ingram Book Group companies, together with publishing visionary Mike Shatzkin, C.E.O. of the Idea Logical Company. The company's first project, filedbyauthor, is a massive author-centric web portal initially consisting of more than 1.2 million U.S. and Canadian author profiles.

"We are launching a Private Beta for published authors only, regardless of publishing category or level of success, to sign up, find their profile page and update or correct the information. With millions of books and more than 1.2 million pre-constructed profile pages, the site will ultimately be an invaluable resource for authors, writers, readers, researchers, and students.

"Filedbyauthor is the most comprehensive online directory of authors and their books," says President & C.E.O. Peter Clifton. The company hopes to quickly expand to all authors with works in the English language -- estimated to be over five million writers.

Filedbyauthor contains basic listings of information about all U.S. & Canadian authors in the directory. Authors may visit the site, claim their profiles, correct them, and enrich them in a variety of ways at no charge.

We hope you will tell your audience about this opportunity for exposure. Filedbyauthor plans to open the site to the public sometime early in 2009.

Contact Information:

STEVE O'KEEFE

for FiledBy, Inc.

http://author.filedby.com

(504) 342-4806

We're Hiring an Editor In Chief

Please contact Kristen (not me) if you are interested in this position. Please forward this to anyone you think could be interested. You can also find this job on linked in.

Editor in Chief – Week’s Best
Contact: krisrecruit @ gmail.com

Product Concept

Founded by Louis Borders (founder of Borders Books & Music and Webvan) and Michael Cairns (former President of R.R. Bowker), “Week’s Best” is a professionally produced, multimedia publication delivering relevant, high quality, topic specific content to subscribers on a customized schedule. Covering as many as 1,000 individual topic titles, each title will be produced by a recognized “Expert Producer”. A typical Expert Producer might be a respected website blogger or magazine publisher that has a deep understanding of the topic. On a daily basis, the Expert Producer will select the best content from a corpus of article and multimedia material published by well known branded sources.

Each Week’s Best title will be recognized for its direct, relevant and accessible content. The free email subscription to a Week’s Best title will provide considerable time savings, and it will also provide access to content from broader content sources that might otherwise be missed.

Week’s Best, which will launch with 10-20 topic titles, plans to grow rapidly over the next three years and targets between 500 – 1,000 titles in English. (Other languages will follow).

The Week’s Best Editor-in-Chief will report to the Week’s Best CEO.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a team of creative, editorial professionals for this new media publishing division.
• Annual planning and budgeting responsibility and experience managing monthly departmental expenses.
• Define and implement an aggressive publication schedule.
• Support CEO in recruitment of “Expert Producers” supporting publication schedule.
• Implement editorial guidelines and standards for internal and external staff, including application guidelines for taxonomy rules and their correct observance within the Week’s Best context.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressively responsible roles in traditional and internet publishing.
• Online publishing and/or digital publishing experience in a management role or senior operating level is required.
• Experienced in delivery and execution of complex content products with a top tier branded content company(ies).
• Highly skilled thought leader who has built an exemplary reputation and garnered the respect of peers.
• Passion for and identification with digital media publishing.
• Decisive, excellent business judgment, energetic, and charismatic.
• Strong strategic planning skills and the ability to develop with the co-founders a bold vision for Week’s Best.
• Understanding of the capabilities and trends in digital media technology.
• Bachelor’s degree required: Journalism, Communications or Writing/English degrees a plus.

Fishing Where There's Fish

The news that Nintendo will add book content to their DS product platform may have publishing executives humming the refrain from the King and I - Getting to Know You - as they jet off to Tokyo. I wonder if this isn't an ominous event for content owners: Content producers may run the risk that their content won't be valued adequately by the target users. While the content will be paid for, it is very cheap. The content on offer isn't new (frontlist) but the aggressive pricing will establish a price expectation in the minds of the consumer. It reminds me of the inclusion of 'free' encyclopedia content on early personal computers which destroyed the market for paid versions. Remember, the content at the heart of Encarta didn't approach that of WorldBook or Brittanica but it didn't matter to the users.

The deal with the company that bought us DonkeyKong and SuperMario will deliver the Harpercollins 100 classic book collection. The package of titles includes titles from Shakespeare to Jane Austin and will be sold for £20. (As an experiment, I can't help wondering how successful/indicative this is going to be since the titles are available universally for free download and the target market will know that).

The Nintendo platform has more in common with the iPhone than it does with the dedicated e-Book readers from Sony or Amazon. No one is likely to buy a Nintendo DS for the book content alone but the addition of book content supports Nintendo's strategy for broadening the possible audience for their products. My complaint is that the typical Nintendo user will attribute value to the console and the purchased games but not to the other stuff - even if there is a patry entry fee.

My argument doesn't preclude delivering content via the Nintendo platform (or similar) and I think in the right circumstances it should be encouraged as another distribution option. In truth, while I second guess the tactical implementation I don't disagree with the strategy. Assuming there is a 'phase 2' of the Harpercollins experiment I hope value is communicated effectively in the offfer.

Firebrand Ink A Deal With NetGalley

Firebrand Technologies and Rosetta Solutions, Inc. today announced the creation of a joint venture, NetGalley LLC. The agreement passes development and operational responsibility of NetGalley, an innovative online connection point for book publishers and professional readers, into the hands of Firebrand, but retains the core NetGalley team responsible for launching the service. NetGalley helps publishers promote new books and authors through the professional channels that recommend and purchase new titles.

“We have felt for a long time that NetGalley and Firebrand are natural partners,” said Fran Toolan, Chief Igniter of Firebrand Technologies. “We are committed to making this service successful, to helping publishers better manage the costs associated with printed galleys, and to making it easier and less expensive for publishers to disseminate information about new titles.” Firebrand Technologies is a leading software and service provider to the publishing industry. Over the course of the next year, Firebrand has plans to completely integrate the NetGalley service into its offerings.

“Firebrand is a natural partner for this venture,” said Michael Forney, President of Rosetta Solutions. “Their publishing expertise and experience will contribute positively to NetGalley’s vision, adoption and long-term success.”

Since its launch at BookExpo 2008, NetGalley has made considerable inroads. Publishers Weekly and ForeWord Magazine announced that they plan to use NetGalley to manage the influx of titles for review, and major publishers are actively experimenting with the service. Professional readers from all segments—reviewers, journalists, media, booksellers, bloggers, librarians and professors—are enthusiastic about the service’s ability to deliver digital, pre-publication content. (There is no charge for professional readers to use the service.)

NetGalley delivers digital galleys and promotional materials to professional readers and helps promote new and upcoming titles. Using NetGalley, publishers can build communities, invite contacts to view galleys and promotional materials, and track who has viewed their titles.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 48):

The sale of Reed Business Information is rumored to be close to resolution with Bain Capital as the buyer. Apparently according to sources they are the only remaining potential buyer. Reuters quotes the Independent On Sunday as suggesting the price is $1Billion with Bain evidently taking advantage of their 50% off coupon. There is a long 'expose' of information publisher's Moodys, Standard and Poors and Fitch's in Sunday's NYTimes. This issue was raised earlier this year, and McGrawHill for one saw a big dip in its share price on suggestions that S&P had been lax in their coverage and ratings of debt offerings. The article points to the cozy relationship between the debt sellers and the debt rating companies. A reminder of the general casualness of the various interlocking financial relationships between banks and investment banking. Holly Brubach had an entertaining profile of Ludwig Bemelmans (Madeline) in the NYTimes TMagazine.

Fortunately for readers, he wrote some 40 books, of which 15 are for children and several are novels. The rest fall into a genre now known as autobiographical essays, a classification misleading in these times of me-generation diarists and bloggers documenting the afternoon’s shopping spree. As a first-person narrator, Bemelmans is completely devoid of the ego that prompts so many authors to occupy center stage. In fact, he barely appears onstage at all, a witness whose testimony is so transparent that he might easily vanish from our awareness were his presence not implicit in the things he sees and the way he recounts them. A career bon vivant, Bemelmans lingers at the table and refills the reader’s wineglass. In my experience, he falls in the same category as A. J. Liebling and P. G. Wodehouse: once you’ve read one of his books, you want to read them all.

Many of his stories revolve around hotels and while I have some funny stories about living in a hotel they could never be as interesting as Bemelmans' material. An RFID experiment in Japan with an interesting statistic (Link)

Unsold books returning from bookstores is an unwanted reality of the publishing business, especially since many of the returned volumes are destined to become waste product. Shogakukan estimates that if just 25 percent of the books returned to publishers in Japan are designated waste, the financial loss would be the equivalent of $1.5 billion U.S. dollars.

The is a new report on the state of UK book retailing (Guardian Blog) and its main finding is that UK retailers have been giving customers too good of a deal. Deep discounting is killing the business they seem to say, which to many of us in the business this finding would seem obvious,

The report, commissioned by The Booksellers Association, found that UK booksellers have been making less money, seeing less market growth, and sacrificing more in discounts than booksellers in countries such as the US, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

In bald terms it means that selling a £20 title - in the shape of Guinness World Records - for £10 has been bad business. This may seem obvious: "I wonder if the BA would look at what bears do in woods," was one of the comments that greeted the release of the report.

Having hooked the book buyer on the heroin (50% off and 3/2 deals galore) however with they break the habit?

Visual Journal: Writers Rooms

The BBC profiles Eamonn McCabe who has a project illustrating the working environments of novelists, biographers and poets.

Here.


As an aside, I wish the social tools on BBC where a little more advanced.

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.