MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 5): Banned Books, AA Travel Guides, Newspapers

The Times reports on the most stolen books from bookstores. Now they know which books to place up front with the condoms and razor blades (never figured that combo out myself).

The “pocketing potential” of a book seems to relate to its resale value. Many of the booksellers who took part in the survey are convinced that a thriving black market for books exists - according to them, illicit sales are made mainly in pubs, where disorientated consumers are happy to buy maps, travel guides and the latest Harry Potter for their children from a network of book thieves selling at bargain prices.

Paranoia or conspiracy? In 2004 a man was jailed after it was revealed that he ran a gang of thieves who stole Lonely Planet travel guides to order. He had sold an estimated 35,000 stolen books a year.

Some think the AA travel guides are consorting with the enemy and have become less objective since a private equity buy-out. Typically, blame the Americans. (Telegraph)

“This is typical of American-style private equity action,” said Paul Maloney, national secretary of the GMB (AA section), the union recognised by the AA until the private equity takeover. “[Their view seems to be] 'We’ve got a company, we’re going to strip it of what we like in order to turn a profit.’”

11th Circuit Court upholds Cuban book ban in Miami Dade elementary schools (AP). Luckily, according to Worldcat.org there are at least 300 other copies available for inter-library loan.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Miami-Dade County School District wouldn't be infringing freedom of speech rights by removing 49 copies of "Vamos a Cuba" and its English-language version, "A Visit to Cuba," from its libraries. The board has argued that the books, for children ages 5 to 8, present an inaccurate view of life in Cuba.

The board voted to remove the book in 2006 after a parent who was a former political prisoner in Cuba complained. A federal judge in Miami later ruled that the board should add books of different perspectives instead of removing offending titles.

Walter Isaacson on saving the nations newspapers. (Time). Almost since 'last Tuesday' there seems to have been a rising tide of stories about how newspapers need to charge for their content. I think that is a good thing. Isaacson sees an iTunes and micropayments type solution.

What Internet payment options are there today? PayPal is the most famous, but it has transaction costs too high for impulse buys of less than a dollar. The denizens of Facebook are embracing systems like Spare Change, which allows them to charge their PayPal accounts or credit cards to get digital currency they can spend in small amounts. Similar services include Bee-Tokens and Tipjoy. Twitter users have Twitpay, which is a micropayment service for the micromessaging set. Gamers have their own digital currencies that can be used for impulse buys during online role-playing games. And real-world commuters are used to gizmos like E-ZPass, which deducts automatically from their prepaid account as they glide through a highway tollbooth.

Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.

Melbourne Fires

In the last few weeks forest fires have spread across the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia. The devastation has been horrific and the death toll has surpassed 100 and represents the worse killing spree in Australian history. Bush fires in Australian can move incredibly fast due to wind but also to the oil in the prevalent eucalyptus trees. These 'gum' trees will literally explode when the temperature reaches a certain point and thus travel from tree top to tree top at a tremendous rate.

Another aspect has been the continual dry weather and high temperatures. When I lived in Melbourne in the mid 1970s we had top days but the temperature rare got above 95. Yesterday the temperature in Melbourne was 117. North of Melbourne the town of Marysville has been wiped off the map with every house and business torched. ABC Television. TheAge Video

We have family and friends down there and my friend Richard noted some of his staff have lost family in the fires. A very sad situation.

News Corp Reports 2Q

Suggesting headcount reductions were on the way, Rupert Murdoch commented that they don't run fat during their presentation of the company's second quarter numbers. Speaking about cost cutting,

We are taking them out everywhere. I mean, I am at Australia at the moment and the local management is in the process of combining all their back offices between the States and (Inaudible). There are many different processes we are doing. That goes right across the company, which is going to save a lot of people and a lot of money. And there are little things, the Wall Street Journal, there are so many numerous small things. We are combining in the back office, the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, which will eventually save about $7 million, certainly $4.5 million in the immediate future. We have also negotiated -- nearly renegotiated nearly all of our delivery contractors across the whole of United States with a saving just starting now of $5 million a year. And it goes on and on. It seems like we are chiseling away at small things, but they do add up to a lot of money.

Due to a non cash impairment write down the company reported a operating income of loss of $7.6billion versus operating income of $1.4billion in the same quarter last year. Without the impairment charge operating income of $818million was 42% lower than the same period last year. Results were off in all divisions except magazines and inserts.

Commenting specifically on publishing,

Turning to the book publishing segment, second quarter operating income contributions were down $44 million compared to last year. This decline reflects the weaker retail book market, the lack of comparable strong releases versus a year ago and a charge of $6 million for the bankruptcy of a customer.

Conf Call Transcript: SeekingAlpha.

From the company's press release:

BOOK PUBLISHING

HarperCollins operating income decreased $44 million versus the same period a year
ago due to lower sales driven by the weakening retail market as well as a difficult
comparison to a year ago that included strong sales of The Daring Book for Girls by
Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden and Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. In addition, segment profits for the quarter were down due to charges related to the bankruptcy of a major UK distributor.

Second quarter results included solid sales of The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb, A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff and Multiple Blessings by Jon and Kate Gosselin and Beth Carson. During the quarter, HarperCollins had 50 books on The New York Times bestseller list, including six books that reached the #1 spot.

(The $6mm charge for the bankruptcy would be related to Bertram in the UK).

First half revenues for the publishing group were $620mm versus $736mm in the prior year and operating income was $26mm versus $103mm.

NY Times article on News Corp/Dow Jones.

Google Book Machine

There has been a lot of competition in getting book content on your mobile or making you mobile with your library of book content. Since the launch of the Kindle and book reader apps on the iPhone the mobile book has been a little bit of a battle ground. In the background has been the not inconsiderable presence of Google which has of course been creating a very large content repository. That aces the reader applications (and always will).

The one interesting aspect of the last few months activity has been that there has been few competitive moves into the mobile space by Google. This despite the fact that Google has invested millions in the development of a new mobile platform named Android. (I have had a draft half written post for months titled 'Does your Android read?'). Today Google announced that they have opened up part of their considerable book database to mobile readers. The company says that they have over 1.5million out of copyright books which will now be available to mobile readers. Perhaps that's not that appealing to anyone looking for the recent Patterson title but Google's ambitions are far more expansive than that. Indeed, Google has cornered the base of the pyramid of content and adding successive layers on top will be only a matter of time.

From their blog post:

One of the great things about an iPhone or Android phone is being able to play Pacman while stuck in line at the post office. Sometimes though, we yearn for something more than just playing games or watching videos.

What if you could also access literature's greatest works, such as Emma and The Jungle Book, right from your phone? Or, some of the more obscure gems such as Mark Twain's hilarious travelogue, Roughing It? Today we are excited to announce the launch of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million mobile public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse while buying your postage.

Given Google's technical expertise, this content, including all the newer stuff, will be arranged and rearranged in all sorts of ways that will benefit readers. That may not be the case with the content on some of the other platforms. And don't forget that Android is an open platform so there is no telling what application developers will come up up. Certainly, the size of the Google library will be a significant differentiator over the others but given the recent agreement with publishers over the copyright issue, the content pool is likely to get much bigger.

Horizon Report on Education

Last week at the SIIA conference, Marjorie Scardino mentioned a recent report from Horizon about technology trends to watch in education. Here is a summary of the technolgies to watch:

• Mobiles. Already considered as another component of the network on many campuses, mobiles continue to evolve rapidly. New interfaces, the ability to run third-party applications, and location-awareness have all come to the mobile device in the past year, making it an ever more versatile tool that can be easily adapted to a host of tasks for learning, productivity, and social networking. For many users, broadband mobile devices like the iPhone have already begun to assume many tasks that were once the exclusive province of portable computers.

• Cloud Computing. The emergence of large-scale “data farms” — large clusters of networked servers — is bringing huge quantities of processing power and storage capacity within easy reach. Inexpensive, simple solutions to offsite storage, multi-user application scaling, hosting, and multi-processor computing are opening the door to wholly different ways of thinking about computers, software, and files.

• Geo-Everything. Geocoded data has many applications, but until very recently, it was time-consuming and difficult for non-specialists to determine the physical coordinates of a place or object, and options for using that data were limited. Now, many common devices can automatically determine and record their own precise location and can save that data along with captured media (like photographs) or can transmit it to web-based applications for a host of uses. The full implications of geo-tagging are still unfolding, but the impact in research has already been profound.

• The Personal Web. Springing from the desire to reorganize online content rather than simply viewing it, the personal web is part of a trend that has been fueled by tools to aggregate the flow of content in customizable ways and expanded by an increasing collection of widgets that manage online content. The term personal web was coined to represent a collection of technologies that are used to configure and manage the ways in which one views and uses the Internet. Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create a customized, personal web-based environment — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning, and other activities.

• Semantic-Aware Applications. New applications are emerging that are bringing the promise of the semantic web into practice without the need to add additional layers of tags, identifiers, or other top-down methods of defining context. Tools that can simply gather the context in which information is couched, and that use that context to extract embedded meaning are providing rich new ways of finding and aggregating content. At the same time, other tools are allowing context to be easily modified, shaped, and redefined as information flows are combined.
  

• Smart Objects. Sometimes described as the “Internet of things,” smart objects describe a set of technologies that is imbuing ordinary objects with the ability to recognize their physical location and respond appropriately, or to connect with other objects or information. A smart object “knows” something about itself — where and how it was made, what it is for, where it should be, or who owns it, for example — and something about its environment. While the underlying technologies that make this possible — RFID, QR codes, smartcards, touch and motion sensors, and the like — are not new, we are now seeing new forms of sensors, identifiers, and applications with a much more generalizable set of functionalities.

Dayton Literary Prize

Giving authors an opportunity to join the ranks of luminaries like Studs Terkel and Elie Wiesel and acclaimed new talents like Edwidge Danticat and Brad Kessler, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize today launched its call for submissions for 2009’s best fiction and nonfiction works that promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States. It was founded in 2006 as an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize, which commemorates the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ending the war in Bosnia.

Winners receive a $10,000 honorarium and will be honored at a gala ceremony in Dayton on Sunday, November 8^th, 2009.

As part of the kick-off for this year’s call for submissions, organizers also announced the launch of a Nominating Academy to ensure that the widest possible cross-section of books is considered for this year’s prize. Members of the Nominating Academy include a diverse mix of leaders from the literary, publishing, and progressive worlds including: authors Alan Cheuse (NPR’s “Voice of Books”), Amy Hempel, Brad Kessler (2007 fiction winner for Birds in Fall), and Mark Kurlansky (2007 nonfiction winner for Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea); Lea Thau, executive director of The Moth; WETA’s books blogger Bethanne Patrick, and Susannah Lupert, executive director of New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore Café. The list of books nominated by the academy will presented to publishers in late February so that titles can be officially submitted for consideration

Borders Cuts

Borders has eliminated a number of senior positions at their corporate head quarters including the role of CTO held by Susan Harmon. Harmon held the position since 2007 having left book seller Books A Million to move to Ann Arbor from Birmingham AL. (I once went to Birmingham on a fools errand once).

From Forbes:

Bookseller Borders Group Inc. said Tuesday it is cutting six vice president and 10 director jobs to consolidate its management and help trim expenses in a tough economy.

Borders has eliminated the role of executive vice president of U.S. stores, which was held by Ken Armstrong, and cut the post of senior vice president and chief information officer held by Susan Harwood. Both Armstrong and Harwood joined Borders Group in 2007.

The position of senior vice president, e-business, which was held by Kevin Ertell, has also been eliminated.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 4): Houghton Harcourt, Ebsco, Google

This is my 1001st post - wow. Riverdeep, the owner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the subject of a profile by The Boston Globe this morning. The newspaper reports what many have supposed - not least the Irish Press which has been dogging Riverdeep almost since the day they consummated the Houghton sale. In the article, they strongly suggest that the company is now worth far less than the amount of debt owned to their lenders. Any sale of all or parts of the company would be unlikely to cover these obligations and while there are rumors that Hachette maybe discussing acquiring the trade division, I wonder if this could occur if the value is so low and the resulting deal would be a humiliation not just for Riverdeep but also the banks holding the debt. Assuming a sale below book value, that would trigger a revaluation of the whole balance sheet and this in turn would trigger any number of covenants. Missing from the Globe article is that in selling Harcourt to Riverdeep, Reed Elsevier retained a $300mm interest in the business. (Link) What of the value of that and how is it handled on the RE balance sheet.

Moody's last month reported that Houghton, with a debt load estimated at more than 10 times gross earnings, is "a likely default" unless its loans are renegotiated. S&P last month placed parent EMPG on its list of weakest links - companies in greatest danger of debt default. "The debt level is our biggest concern," said S&P analyst Hal Diamond, "given the state of the economy and state budget constraints. While they can reduce costs, they can only go so far."

The Globe's request for an interview with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt chief executive Anthony Lucki or other senior executives was declined. Houghton issued a statement disputing Moody's 10-times-earnings figure, and insisted the company is gaining market share and has ample cash to cover its loans. Spokesman Josef Blumenfeld also said that since Houghton's reported decision last fall to suspend acquisition of new titles, it is signing new books again. He declined to comment on rumors that French-based Hachette Book Group, owner of Little, Brown & Co., might be a suitor.

EBSCO have added a Federated search capability to their suite of offerings and is designed to integrate with their EbscoHost2.0 product they released last year. (LJ)

With Integrated Search, the company aims to capitalize on users’ familiarity with the features and design of EBSCOhost 2.0, which debuted in July 2008, and carve out a role for its interface as a comprehensive destination for user searches. Integrated Search is slated to go live in early summer 2009.

Integrated Search will use connectors to remote content sources similar to those employed by other federated search products, like MetaLib (Ex Libris), Research Pro (Innovative Interfaces), and 360 Search (Serials Solutions). The hook: EBSCOhost will not charge customers for connectors to any EBSCO databases to which they subscribe. For connectors to non-EBSCO sources, the basic cost will be $200 per database annually. There will also be a $1000 annual base fee per site and per configuration. Customers already subscribed to a number of EBSCOhost products could see this translate into significant savings.

Librarything has added a Twitter ap. which looks interesting. (Blog):

We've added integration with Twitter, the popular SMS/microblogging site. Basically, it's an easy way to add a book to your LibraryThing while standing in a bookstore, library or friend's house.

A good summary of the Google Book agreement was presented at a session at ALA (ALA):

ALA’s Committee on Legislation and Office for Information Technology Policy hosted a panel session Saturday at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver. The session was called “Google Book Settlement: What’s In It For Libraries,” and aimed to educate librarians on the initial terms of the settlement, hear from leading a few leading library and legal experts, and offer time for audience members to pose questions to the panel participants.

Library Journal reports on the finances of the American Library Association.

As with private investors and endowed institutions, the American Library Association (ALA) suffered significant endowment losses in the past fiscal year, 24.1%, but, thanks to budget adjustments and some new sources of revenue, net operating income in Fiscal Year 2008 actually exceeded expenses more than in FY 2007, ALA officials said yesterday at the Midwinter Meeting in Denver.

Fiscal Year 2008, which ended last August 31, left ALA with net assets of $34.4 million, compared to $33.3 million at the end of 2007. Three months later, net assets declined to $24.1 million, primarily due to endowment losses. ALA has adjusted by reducing expenses, but continued losses in the endowment—which is not relied on for operating income--could cut into scholarships and awards. And the longer term remains a question mark.

Store Closings (Updated)

I have a tickler that sends me news items on various topics and one of these is news related to Borders. In the past two months or so, the citations listing store closings has become a torrent of store retrenching. Having announced earlier in 2007 that they would step up their store closings, the company appears to have accelerated this effort. Most of these closing are the Walden Books stores which has been a problematic store concept for some time and which the economy has only made worse.

In places like Lexington, MA and Great Falls, MT, Walden/Borders are leaving locations where their stores represent the only identifiable book store brand. Some people are upset and have started letter writing campaigns but the news of specific closings arrives so fast the community can't possibly organize fast enough. Truth is, no amount of community concern is going to trump simple economics. Sadly, other than in a few isolated cases, staff have not been offered work in other stores. Not only are there no other stores to move the staff to, but the Walden epidemic is often collected in news stories about other store brands shutting down in the same neighborhood or mall.

My incomplete list of closings noted just during January includes the following:

(Where is all this inventory going?)

Waldenstores:

Tippecanoe Mall, Lafayette Indiana
Logonsport Mall, Indiana
Stroud Mall, Penn
Volusia Mall, Daytona Beach, FL
Wyoming Valley Mall, Wilkes Barre, PA
Kenwood Town Center, Cinn, OH
Inland Center Mall, San Bernadino, CA
Sandberg Mall, Gailsburg, IL
Gainsville, FL
Contana Mall, B/Rouge, LA
Regency Mall, Racine, WI
Lexington, MA
Birlington Mall, Vermont
Greendale Mall, Worcester, MA
Sq One Mall, Saugus, MA
DeSota Sq Mall, Sarasota, FL
Prince of Orange Mall, SC
Bradenton, FL
Pompono Beach, FL
Tampa, FL
Orlando, FL
South Plains Mall, Lubbock, TX
Miller Hill Mall, Deluth MN
Clarion Mall, Clarion PA
Town Mall, Elizabethtown, KY
Marshall Town Center, IA
Holiday Village Mall, Great Falls, MT
Southridge Mall, Des Moines IA.

Borders Express:
Springfield, IL
Lahaina Mall, HI
Whalers Village, HI

Brentanos
Tower Place Mall, Cinn, OH

Borders:
Mill Avenue, Tempe AZ
Kemper Road, Springdale,OH
Compuware Bld (Downtown) Detroit, MI
Vero Beach Fashion Outlets, FL

Bonnie Schmick the Borders spokes person that each local reporter speaks to must be pretty depressed having to field all these calls.

(There are some misspellings in that list - apologies).

Update:

The NYTimes notes the decline of shopping Malls in a weekend article: NYTimes

I also posted my own view a few months ago in Death of the Big Box

Republicans: The President Is Very Good

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - The Audacity of Nope

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Paul McCartney Appearance

Funny Political Videos
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SIIA Conference: Marjorie Scardino

Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson spoke at this weeks Software Information Industry Association meeting and here are my notes from that presentation.

Skills and capabilities that new generations are going to need to be successful in the 21st Century include: the ability to be imaginative, capable of or exhibit group working skills and the ability to solve increasingly complex business and social problems.

As educators we also need to think about hard skills: Math and Science.

Embedded in the development of hard skills is the development of the ability to connect disparate information and to be able to evaluate the veracity of information and information sources. It is not a unique skill to be able to do a simple ‘barely defined’ Google search. Anyone can do this; however, students are not being taught the skills necessary to dig deeper, form arguments and determine back-up or be able to present their research.

On new technology. She cites/refers to a digital youth study: How the young interact with new technology. (Horizon Report).

There are five new technologies (and she adds a sixth).

1. Mobile devices: language,
2. Smart objects: sensors
3. Ubiquitous computing semantic enabled software:
4. Geo tagging: to all media.
5. Storage and access: cloud computing.
6. Electro foretic (sp) pages.

In her opinion, (and this follows how Pearson is expanding) companies have to take a long term view: change the way teachers teach, the way readers interact with news, information and content. Additionally, the long term view or approach to investment has to be consistent. She says, sustained investment is difficult in a public company.

The key to success is to involve your customers. Release your software early and enable a culture that allows ‘do-overs’ assuming they are corrected or improved rapidly. Other comments:

1. Need to try everything: New companies have inclusive cultures that generate new ideas from all levels. This is important and the culture needs to be adopted by old line companies as no company can get it right if idea generation is concentrated at the top of an organization.
2. Content and technology are inextricable bound together.
3. Need to use technology that enables use of more of our intellect, allows us to reflect as well as analyze.

Discussing revenue models, Scardino spoke about a ‘the Ralph Lauren’ model of charging a lot for something and assuming people will pay for it. She seemed to be saying that if something were priced high then people would assume it had value and was worth the price. She then brought up an anecdote about her time as a newbie attorney in Savannah. When she moved there, she was one of many (but few women) attorneys charging $200/hr. She decided to charge $300 on the basis that people would come to her thinking she must be worth the extra (premium).

More recently she indicated that they have been able to raise the price of the FT and consumers have come with them on the price hike. She also noted The Economist’s revenues are 50% subscription versus advertising. A central component of their content strategy is to overlay the content with tools and analytics that extend the value of the underlying content. She says they as a company long ago realized that content was becoming a commodity in news and other segments like education. “There is only a few ways to describe photosynthesis” or describe history. Technology however can be a differentiator if used in an appropriate manner so the company attempts to understand how the reader interacts with the content. This approach is used in news, where there is more attention paid to analysis than news reporting, and also in education.

NYTimes Reviews API - NOT

The New York Times announced they are releasing an API for their best seller lists spanning years and years.

The Times Best Sellers API gives you quick access to current and past best-seller lists in 11 different categories, such as Hardcover Nonfiction and Paperback Mass-Market Fiction. The initial launch offers every weekly list since June 2008, and in the coming months, we plan to add data going back to the 1930s (thanks to the hard work of our Books staff). The API also offers details about specific best sellers, including historical rank information and links to New York Times reviews and excerpts. And these aren’t just canned responses; they’re searchable and sortable, with even more robust options coming in the next release.

I wonder about this.

I was initially quite interested in this bit of information but on reflection it seems they have missed a huge opportunity. WHAT ABOUT THE REVIEWS? Maybe I am missing something but with all the reviews sections closing all over the country the NYTimes has an opportunity to enable access to their reviews database via api staring them in the face. Surely, even if the book was a best seller for 23 weeks back in 1982 or 2002 is useful but the title is likely to have that stated on the cover anyhow (few publishers challenge such obvious marketing opportunities). Even if I know that wouldn't the review be far more useful? On top of that there are many books that weren't on the charts that were nevertheless reviewed well by the times so what of them? I give up...

Australia Again

Earlier this week I mentioned the discussion going on in Australia regarding the review of local copyright rules on imported books. The Guardian reports on Peter Carey's comments that he and other authors like Thomas Keneally wouldn't have found publishers without there being some sort of protection.

Take copyright away, he said, and they no longer have a commercial leg to stand on. "And then? Then the global companies will decide that their Australian offices will be much more profitable as distributors of product than publishers of books. If this sounds creepily colonial, it is because it is."

Carey, Grenville and other writers all said that without the support of Australian publishers at the start of their careers, they would never have become the internationally renowned authors they are today. "My experience shows how uninterested overseas publishers are in our work. The more "literary" it is (about ideas; more than simple entertainment), the less interested they are," said Grenville, who won the Orange prize in 2001 for her novel The Idea of Perfection. "Writers in the future might struggle to find the success that I have, because they may not have a local publisher to put the time and care into developing their career," agreed children's author Sonya Hartnett, who last year won the 5m Swedish kronor Astrid Lindgren memorial award.

Also, pay sharp attention to the photo and you will realize Peter was in NYC recently. In fact he lives here.

Gabriel Garcia Márquez Offers €5 Ebook

The Guardian reports that "the Spanish-speaking world's most famous literary agent, Carmen Balcells" has struck a deal with Spanish ebook downloading site Leer-e that will enable her client authors to sell their ebooks directly to consumers and also set their own prices.

As these do not hold the Spanish-language electronic rights to most of her authors' books, Balcells is in effect publishing them directly through leer-e. "I cannot tell you exactly what rights the authors get, but I can say that it is much more than they get from their books printed on paper,'' said Ignacio Latasa, co-founder of leer-e.

He said about 120 works by the authors on Balcells' books would eventually be available to download from leer-e. A dozen are already on the site.

It is not so much the pricing that is revolutionary since €5 approximates $9.99 but that Balcells has done an end run around publishers. There have been some suggestions that literary agents could become more active in 'selling' their stable of authors (or a long established literary property) directly to an ebook distributor rather than working with a publisher. Some literary estates may have been purchased recently with the intention of leveraging new formats without the need to 'bother' with a publisher. The vast bulk of these literary collections are finished works and therefore a publisher could be limited in the amount of value-add they can offer.

Congressional Quarterly For Sale

The Times Publishing company, owner of Congressional Quarterly has placed the company on the block (Press Release) and says it wants to concentrate on its newspaper operations in Florida. As a wholly owned affiliate of the Times Publishing Co., (which publishes the St. Petersburg Times of Florida), CQ is a private, for profit organization however, TPC is owned by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit school for journalists in St. Petersburg named in honor of CQ's founder, Nelson Poynter.

From the company's website:

Congressional Quarterly Inc. has been the nation's leader in political journalism since 1945. Over that time, the company has built a peerless reputation for objective, non-partisan and authoritative reporting on Congress and politics. Today, CQ stands on the leading edge of information companies publishing in both online and print platforms.

CQ has the largest press corps covering Capitol Hill. More than 150 reporters, editors and researchers keep subscribers informed on weekly, daily and real-time news cycles. In addition, CQ is the leader in legislative tracking. It offers a robust suite of fully integrated online services that includes bill coverage, schedules, CRS reports, government documents, member information, transcripts and more.

CQ is primarily a subscription-based publisher whose clients include members of Congress; leaders in the executive branch, business, nonprofit organizations and government affairs shops; and top academic institutions and media outlets.

CQ also publishes a free political site, CQ Politics, which serves up a unique, compelling perspective on politics and campaigns.

Last year, CQ's publishing operations (CQ Press) were sold to Sage.

Lonely Hearts and The London Review of Books

The juxtaposition of these two items was too much to ignore. I had just found out McCartney will be on Colbert on Wednesday night (so watch if Steven gets to duet) when I saw this headline on the Guardian: Lonely Hearts Club Band. The two items having nothing to do with each other but they fall together nicely.

The Guardian takes a poetic look at the personal ads in the London Review of Books and some of these ads are indeed hilarious. It does look like something of a sport to out humor the other guy/girl. Something like evolutionary humor...

Here is an excerpt:

The internet generation of daters hasn't abandoned personal ads. Rather, lonely heart sections have raised their game. Advertisers have evolved the formulaic WTLM/GSOH standard of old into clever haikus of longing and desire. No longer the realm of (whisper it) losers, there is a sophistication to the modern day personal ad that is both fascinating and, for those who are compelled to respond, frequently thrilling.

If clumsy, unfeeling lust is your bag, write to the ad above. Otherwise write to me, mid-forties M with boy next door looks, man from U.N.C.L.E. charm, and Fresh Prince of Bel Air casual insouciance. Wikky wikky wick yo. Box no. 2851.

You're a brunette, 6', long legs, 25-30, intelligent, articulate and drop dead gorgeous. I, on the other hand, have the looks of Herve Villechaize and an odour of wheat. No returns and no refunds at box no. 3321.

There are many more like those...

The Australian Problem

The Australian publishing and bookselling community can't seem to decide whether it wants or doesn't want protectionism. Peter Donoughue takes issue with the Australian Booksellers Association's decision to back track on their long standing support of abolition of the 30/90 rule.

Now the ABA comes along and AGREES with them! It says, yes, you're right, our members are so stupid that they would at every opportunity act against their commercial interests and, as a by-product, destroy local literary culture! No matter how reasonable the price of the local edition, no matter how fair the trading terms from the local publisher, no matter how good the distribution and customer care, no matter how beneficial to sales the publisher's marketing and publicity efforts, no matter the excellent personal service from the sales reps, no matter the impossibility of getting anywhere near the same deal from overseas wholesalers like Baker and Taylor.... we're gonna buy around, just because we can!

I'd call that stabbing yourself in the front!

Earlier in the month, the Sydney Morning Herald tried to explain the situation:

Why is this relevant to us in Australia? The Productivity Commission is undertaking an inquiry into how books are sold in Australia. We have a separate copyright territory. If a book is written, designed, edited and published by Australians - as is about $900 million worth of books sold in Australia annually - an overseas publisher cannot sell an edition of it here. If it is produced overseas, Australian publishers must publish it here within 30 days of its foreign release, or it can be "parallel-imported" to Australia. If it is out of stock, the publisher has 90 days to replenish it. This "use it or lose it" principle is commonly called the 30/90 rule.

Opponents of this say it gives us higher prices. Last month Bob Carr wrote in The Australian that price was "the only question before the Productivity Commission" and importation should be freed so more households could have "brimming bookshelves".

Cheaper books, higher literacy. The argument seems attractive. But it rests on a shaky assumption and a lack of consideration of the consequence.

I think I know where the frustration lies. The next title in Steig Larrson's trilogy is has been available in the UK since early January but won't be out here until summer. I can however order it from Waterstones.com. WTF?

Creative Commons "Noncommercial Use" Research Study focus groups

Care to join the discussion? Call for participation:

As previously announced, Creative Commons is researching "noncommercial use". Last year we conducted a number of focus groups and fielded a survey designed to collect information about how creators understand the distinction between commercial and noncommercial uses of their content. Now we want to talk to people about their experience as users of content they find online, regardless of whether the content is licensed under a CC license, with or without the NC term, or even licensed at all.

We hope to connect with individuals and organizations from a variety of communities and industries, using a variety of content, in many different media. We seek insight and experience, not any endorsement of Creative Commons, its licenses, or any particular perspective.

We are currently scheduling a limited number of in-person focus groups, to be held in New York City, on Thursday, February 12, and San Francisco, on Tuesday, February 17. In order to get input from persons who live outside these regions, we are also conducting a limited number of online bulletin board type focus groups, which will take place over the course of three days, from Wednesday, February 18 through Friday, February 20. The time commitment for both the in-person and online focus groups is approximately two hours. Please note that all groups, including the online focus groups, will be conducted in English. Unfortunately, we are not able to cover any travel or other expenses you may have in connection with participating.

If you are interested in participating in one of these focus groups, please fill out this questionnaire, which will explain what we plan to do with the data we collect, and will also ask you for some basic background information.

There are a limited number of spaces in each focus group. Please understand that we may not be able to respond individually to everyone who fills out the questionnaire, but if you are selected to participate, we will contact you as soon as possible to confirm your participation.

Thank you for your interest and help with this study.

Dear Virgin Airlines

Apparently, this Virgin passenger was non too impressed by the culinary offerings on his recent trip to India. The letter has been circulating via email but was also published in the Telegraph under the heading 'World's Best Passenger Complaint Letter." It is quite funny.

17th December 2008

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit. Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, Which one is the starter, which one is the desert? You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about. Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashedpotato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird. Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard. Jesus Christ.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point. Once cleared. I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the grueling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff. Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincerely,

My Dear Ken Lewis Letter

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 3): Elsevier, Music, Ebsco, Google

That National Association of Home Builders say that more home owners want libraries in their homes (Sun Sentinel):

We may think folks are reading less, but 63 percent of homeowners surveyed said they have a library or want one in their homes. That's a 9 percent increase from 2002. Even mass-market home builders are including libraries. Many offer old-fashioned touches such as rolling ladders and circular stairs.

(Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more on the subject or the report but we'll take what we can get). Elsevier announced that they are broadening the distribution of 600 professional titles so that they are available on Science Direct. (Press release)

Elsevier, announced today that over 600 Medical, Veterinary Medicine, and Health Professions book titles will be launched in Health Science eBook Collections in April 2009 on ScienceDirect, its online scientific research platform.

Elsevier's health science books are published under the imprints W.B. Saunders, Mosby, Churchill Livingstone, and Hanley & Belfus, publishers with a rich medical and health science publishing heritage dating back to 1688. The inclusion of these books on ScienceDirect will allow more researchers across the world to access these valuable content resources.

To date, Elsevier's medical and health science book titles have only been available through MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com) for clinical practitioners and medical education, Evolve eBooks ( http://evolve.elsevier.com/ebooks) for health professions education, and Veterinary Consult (http://evolve.elsevier.com/vetconsult) for veterinary medicine education. The thousands of authors represented in the Elsevier medical and health science collections on ScienceDirect will now enjoy greater market visibility, increasing the potential for research collaboration and recognition.

Ebsco which has hosted Salem Press content for many years did the honorable thing and purchased the entire company this week. Since they have been paying Salem press a revenue share this one will have been a no-brainer. (I remain convinced this would have been a very nice acquisition for Bowker). (Library Journal)

Salem Press was founded by Frank N. Magill in 1949 as a one-book publishing company, releasing its staple product: Masterplots. It has since developed into an independent library reference book publisher known for such reference series as “Great Lives from History,” “The Decades in America,” and Critical Surveys of Literature.”

The religious moronity is stepping up its attempts to re-define scientific 'theory' in Texas and in the process push the teaching of science back into the 1400's. (NYTimes)

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

To be filed under 'why did it take you so long', Music publishers have begun to realize the value of lyrics and the art-work that goes along with a CD or Album. (Billboard)

But a few years ago many discovered a value that was sitting under their nose: the lyrics right. “And it doesn’t even need the master rights,” Channon added. Since putting lyrics onto mugs, clothing, toys, greeting cards and other merchandise, EMI has had to grow into becoming a manufacturer and distributor, Channon said. But its definetely a volume business as EMI said 3 million units of one lyric-licensed merchandise piece for a department store chain in Australia realized about 30,000 pounds profit.

As the article notes, however there are already hundreds of lyrics sites that the record companies have failed to police and it is going to be difficult for them to get this back under control.

When the words “Mr. Blue Sky” and lyrics are entered into a search, it returns thousands of separate sites offering those lyrics, and publishers “don’t get one red cent,” one panelist said. But Metro Lyrics CEO and co-founder Alan Juristovski said that publishers shouldn’t shut down pirate sites—rather, they should convert them to legitimate sites by trying to get them to license the lyrics, something which he claimed his site does.

"Mr Blue Sky" would that be an ELO fan? I've mentioned lyrics before here. Robert Darton in The New York Review of Books had a very interesting and (almost) poetic discussion of the potential impact of the Google/AAP agreement on the publishing industry. Well worth reading. (NYReview)

After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?

No one knows, because the settlement is so complex that it is difficult to perceive the legal and economic contours in the new lay of the land. But those of us who are responsible for research libraries have a clear view of a common goal: we want to open up our collections and make them available to readers everywhere. How to get there? The only workable tactic may be vigilance: see as far ahead as you can; and while you keep your eye on the road, remember to look in the rearview mirror.