Another Embargo Undone?

The Bookseller is reporting that A&C Black is very concerned that the embargo keeping the latest Wisden Cricket Almanac off the shelves until April 6th was broken. According to Nielsen Bookscan, 816 copies of the book have been sold before the embargoed date. That's a lot of copies but could this be a case of mistaken identity or bad data? Why didn't anyone notice until the numbers were reported? We shall see.

Shared Book to provide annotation publishing tool to ourenergypolicy.org

Shared Book announces a new partnership today with web company ourenergypolicy.org that empowers OEP users with the ability to add and include comments to source documents without changing the original document. Implementation of this tool allows the user to determine which comments and mark-up is most useful to them and include or attach that material to the document. The user can then decide when to publish the material rather than having to wait for the publisher's publication date.

From the press release:

SharedBook’s annotation platform allows approved experts on OurEnergyPolicy.org to contextually add initial and responsive comments to an energy document through online footnoting, while not allowing the original content to be changed, creating a digital platform for a discussion of energy policy. The platform also has a compilation and print capability, allowing books to be created from the content with any combination of the annotations, which appear in the book as footnotes.

“Integrating our revolutionary annotation technology with OurEnergyPolicy.org is an excellent showcase for the capabilities of the patented platform,” said Caroline Vanderlip, Chief Executive Officer of SharedBook. “By allowing authorized experts to contribute thoughtful comments on the specific energy policies and positions being discussed, our annotation platform allows discussion on the site to evolve in a thoughtful, controlled way. It also gives users the option of creating books, PDFs or other printed output with a specified combination of the annotations, for use in government hearings, outreach efforts, and elsewhere.”

More on SharedBook

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 13): OCLC, Amazon, Dawson, Curation, Bookfairs

Things are really bad in newspaper land when you can't get a copy at your local library any more. On top of this they will be charging for internet access. (BBC)

"Savings of around £10,000 will be made by ending the provision of national newspapers in a handful of libraries," a spokesman said. "National newspaper websites already publish full editorial content." The council also plans to charge people £1.30 to use computers with internet access after the first 30 minutes.

Newsagent distributor Dawson has suffered another deflection (Telegraph):

Dawson Holdings, which distributes magazine and newspaper titles to newsagents, retailers and airlines, said in a trading update today that it expected Telegraph Media Group to "terminate" its deal in the autumn.

Last month Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, and Comag, the joint venture between Condé Naste and the National Magazine Company, announced they would not be renewing contracts with Dawson when they expire in 2010. The two deals accounted for £139m in revenue for Dawson last year.

Dawson also has a library supply business in the UK.

WorldCat (OCLC) has partnered with book/reading social networking site WeRead (Info2Day)

It is the latest organization to join the list of more than 25 OCLC World partners. With one of the largest and most popular social book discovery applications on Facebook, MySpace, bebo, Hi5, and Orkut, weRead is a natural fit to partner with OCLC to enhance the social networking and user-discovery aspects of WorldCat.

Cindy Cunningham, director of partner programs for OCLC says, "The mission of weRead-the social discovery of books-extends and further enhances the WorldCat.org goal to connect users with their local libraries. With weRead being a Lulu company and the corresponding support for self-publishing, OCLC can offer its users access to an entirely new reading experience."

Can Curation save the media industry? (SiliconAlley)

So, what are both Maheu and Schrier in agreement about? Curation. It's a word that gained a lot of traction in the past 12 months as the overarching trends of ubiquitous distribution and mass content creation have emerged as the two headed dragon that may slay media as we know it.

The old model was "one to many" (NBC -> viewers). The new model is "one to a few" (YOU -> your friends and followers). That means there is an overwhelming explosion of content being created (Twitter feeds, blog posts, Flickr photos, Facebook updates) and most of it is interesting to a very small number of people. But, mixed in with this cacophony of consumer content, there is contextually relevant material that needs to be discovered, sorted, and made "brand safe" for advertisers. Curation is the new role of media professionals.

Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and -- most importantly - giving folks who don't want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It's what we always expected from our media, and now they've got the tools to do it better.

Flat World Knowledge gets $8mm for open source textbook venture. (Reuters)

Flat World offers students online books for free and the option of paying for a printed copy, which typically costs less than a comparable textbook from a college store. The textbook "Principles of Microeconomics," for example, costs $30 for a black-and-white copy and $60 for one in color.

"The idea here is the cost of textbooks has gone up dramatically over the last 10 years," says Hooks Johnston, general partner at venture firm Valhalla Partners, the largest investor in the startup. Other VC investors include Greenhill SAVP and High Peaks Venture Partners.

Amazon changes their payment terms to small publishers in the UK (Times)

The online retailer is asking for an extra 2% off the list price of books from suppliers that use its Amazon Advantage system in order for them to be paid by May 15 for sales made in April.

Those that remain on standard terms, which already involve giving Amazon a 40% discount, will not have invoices from sales made in April settled until the end of June.

The new terms, which Advantage customers were informed of last week and take effect from Wednesday, have stirred industry anger.

“How dare they try this on when we are feeling the pinch more than ever?” said one small publisher. “It’s nothing more than an attempt to rip off the small fry.”

Publishers estimate that up to 20% of books sold by Amazon go through its Advantage system.

BookFairs seem to be holding their own: "No child has too many books" (AP)

Book fairs have been around for decades, although the field now is largely controlled by Scholastic. The publisher says its business has grown from around 8,000 annual fairs in the early 1980s, with sales of around $5.5 million, to around 120,000 fairs expected this year.

The field is enticing enough that Barnes & Noble, Inc., has steadily increased its own fairs by double digits over the past few years, to over 10,000 in 2008, according to the superstore chain's vice president of speciality marketing, Kim Brown.

"As the school budgets are tightened up, the parents - the PTA - are looking for different ways to fund-raise," Brown says. "Luckily, people save their discretionary income for their children."

Educators and parents welcome the money, with 25 per cent or more of the take going back to the schools, but, as with the Scholastic book clubs, they worry about what's being sold. Scholastic fairs, like the clubs, often feature books that are tied to TV shows such as "Hannah Montana" or non-book products such as pencils, markers, toy banks and electronic games.

Encarta Dies

Earlier this week Microsoft announced that they were closing the Encarta encyclopedia operation. There is a write up on this news on the NYTimes Bits blog but I thought more interesting that that post was comment by Tom Corddry who worked on the Encarta team from the beginning. His self described 'grave side toast' is as follows:

I ran the team that created Encarta, so I’m standing up to say a few awkward words at its graveside memorial service. Encarta, may it rest in peace, deserves to be remembered more for its quality than you suggest. Your sources repeat several notions that were never true of Encarta-first, that the content from Funk and Wagnall’s was “low quality” compared to Britannica, and second that the value added by Microsoft was primarily “graphics and sound.” The text from Funk and Wagnall’s was far superior to Britannica’s as a starting point for a digital encyclopedia, because it was much more nearly “structured data,” meaning that the architecture of the text was very consistent from one article to the next. This allowed us to add a lot of “contextual” value–to compute the relatedness of every article to every other article, and build what was at the time a uniquely useful set of links and navigational tools across the entire content. Britannica, by contrast, was a bloated mishmash, a consequence of its long tradition of having articles written by many different celebrity authors. (I ghost-wrote one myself, in fact). By the standards of the print encyclopedia world, Microsoft invested heavily in expanding and updating the content of Encarta right from the beginning. We consciously invested in the contextual value just described, in expanding the core content, in creating the world’s first truly global encyclopedia, and in an efficient update cycle. We had enough “multimedia” in the original product to keep the reviewers happy, but focused on the overall usefulness of the whole product much more than on the relative handful of video clips, etc. I’d argue that within its first five years, Encarta became the best encyclopedia in history: it had tremendously consistent quality and usefulness across a very broad range of topics, and added a great deal of value by the relationships it illuminated between topics. All of that has been rendered a bit quaint now, but in it’s day it was an accomplishment worthy of a graveside toast. Encarta had more than “the potential” to unsettle the print encyclopedia business–it pretty much destroyed it. Print encyclopedias were dead, thanks to Encarta, before Wikipedia existed. We expected from the beginning that Encarta would eventually be superceded by online information-seeking. As brilliant as Wikipedia is, I don’t think that Wikipedia by itself killed Encarta. I think the Web as a whole made Encarta obsolete. I hope treasured old copies of Encarta will live on for a while in remote corners of the world, where people have scattered access to computers but little or no connection to the Web–school libraries in Africa, for example. In those places, even out-of-date copies of African Encarta, the only Encyclopedia of Africa ever published, will live on, and Joe Biden will forever be newly-elected. I’ll drink to that.

—Tom Corddry

In answer to several comments in reaction to this statement he has some further comments as well.

Another Cairns on the Offensive

Apparently some other obnoxious basta'd named Michael Cairns is sticking it to the English cricket board. (Guardian)

Lancashire have launched a fresh and withering attack on Giles Clarke's leadership of the England and Wales Cricket Board, and have also criticised their fellow counties for allowing him to survive the Stanford affair.

Michael Cairns, a heavy-hitting businessman who succeeded Jack Simmons as the chairman at Old Trafford last year, claims in his annual report to members that "there is a serious lack of governance, transparency and accountability within the leadership and administration of the board".

"The Stanford debacle was a disgrace but regrettably only one example of mismanagement that the ECB have been guilty of over the past year," Cairns continues. "If such a performance was evident in any of the organisations that I have been associated with throughout my business career, the management would take it upon themselves to do the right thing and resign, or face the alternative.

Under Clark, the ECB struck an almost pornographic deal with "Sir" Alan Stanford who of course is apparently a crook. Basic due diligence (as with Madoff) would have made that clear at the outset.

CCC Holds Online Google Settlement Seminar

The Authors Guild, AAP, Google Settlement: What Authors & Publishers Need to Know as May 5th Approaches

Free online informational seminar:

Tuesday, April 14, 2009, at 12:00 p.m. ET / 16:00 GMT - Register Now

On June 11, 2009, a federal court will hold a fairness hearing to review the proposed settlement of lawsuits brought by U.S. authors and publishers against Google for its unauthorized scanning and use of in-copyright books as part of the Google Library Project.

Rightsholders affected by the class-action settlement have until May 5, 2009 to decide whether to participate or opt-out and their decision may have business implications.

Copyright Clearance Center is hosting a free, 1-hour informational online seminar to help publishers, authors and literary agents understand their options as May 5th approaches. The session features nationally renowned publishing copyright expert and attorney, Lois Wasoff. Wasoff is the past Chair of the Copyright Committee of the Association of American Publishers and the former Vice President and Corporate Counsel of Houghton Mifflin Company.

Who should attend? Any author or publisher of a book published on or before January 5, 2009. If that description pertains to you, you may be a member of the Settlement Class under the proposed Settlement Agreement between authors, publishers and Google. Members of the Settlement Class must decide to opt-out or participate by May 5, 2009.

If you would like to learn more about the settlement you can visit a website dedicated to the topic and if you have any questions about this informational seminar, please email education@copyright.com or call +1 978 646 2436.

Register Now - Space is limited

HMH CEO Tony Lucki to Retire

The WSJ is reporting that Tony Lucki will retire on April 15th. In an email to staff he noted he had been involved with Harcourt or Houghton Mifflin for 30yrs and continued,

"Recent steps we have taken put the company in an even stronger position to deliver value to our customers and to build on our market leadership. We are on sound operational and financial footing and have great potential to grow our trusted brands and businesses," he said

The company has appointed 39yr old Barry O'Callahan as CEO who is the current CEO of corporate owner Education Media & Publishing Group. EMPG has approximately $7billion in debt resulting from the acquisition of both Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin. Reports earlier this year indicated that the company was attempting to sell their trade business but there was debate whether the company could achieve fair value (in their view) given the current economic environment.

Meta Data Related Job at HBO

As a gift for all you people out there that like meta data stuff here is what looks like it could be a cool job (if you like meta data and standards and let's face it who doesn't):

The Director, Digital Library & Media Management is responsible for development, administration and evolution of standards and procedures for the management of rich media assets (video, audio, and digital photos) with associated metadata in collaboration with HBO business units. This person will provide direction to a permanent HBO committee comprised of operating groups from all areas of HBO in order to define, implement and evolve metadata standards and related workflow requirements specific to HBO’s business needs. He/she will create direction regarding archival, content management, encoding, cataloguing, transcoding and post production standards

LinkedIn. and Randy Neuringer is the recruiter. I've never met her.

Libraries Are Struggling to Cope

Not a day goes by that I see multiple reports about closings, reduced hours or staff layoffs in public libraries. No telling what is happening with budgets for buying new materials which are probably also being severely cut. In good times, the public library is often an anonymous cornerstone of the community and most people only have a casual relationship with their local public library. Most don't have library cards. But our current economic crisis is doubly challenging for public libraries: They are victims of it on the one hand and have to manage their own challenging budgeting issues but they are also become a primary source of help and aid for a burgeoning class of people facing economic hardship.

The librarians job is becoming part social worker, policeman, home care worker and counselor and all in a context of declining resources and a growing sense of desperation that perhaps effective help for many of these patrons is beyond their capabilities. It is a big ask of these library workers and it is also unfair. As today's article in the Times points out, a typical librarian is faced with patrons that can't read or write needing resume assistance and patrons staring blankly at computer screens with no idea what the internet is. The implications of what these librarians face on a daily basis tells us a lot about the abilities of a wide class of people to succeed in an economy that is increasingly beyond their skill level.

Personanondata in Book Deal

A three book deal.

Word on the street has it that the blog Personanondata has signed a three book deal with Harpercollins which is described as a “pretty awesome” deal by company CEO Brian Murray. With details sparse, the person at PND is expected to rehash much of what he has repeatedly written in at least one of the volumes with a study of the etymology of the brand personanondata slated for a later book. “The subject of the second volume is controversial and sometimes subject to embarrassment,” said the author. “Many people are embarrassed to ask about the genesis of the brand Personanondata and simply smile knowingly as though they are in on the joke. Of course this is impossible as no one really knows anything”.

The last volume – which could be completed first – may become the blue print for all introverted children who, when finding themselves intensely interested in reading end up as adults swimming with the big sharks of publishing if only to get their hands on free books. This deal will be remarked upon by all in the industry as a true rule and model breaker that could also revolutionize the supply chain. In contrast to expected industry practice Personanondata will pay Harpercollins an advance of several hundred thousand dollars, “This is a pretty awesome deal”, said Murray. “At this point we just need the cash.” One of the books is scheduled for release in November 2011.

Library of Congress goes Social Networking

From an Library of Congress press release:

The Library of Congress will begin sharing content from its vast video and audio collections on the YouTube and Apple iTunes web services as part of a continuing initiative to make its incomparable treasures more widely accessible to a broad audience. The new Library of Congress channels on each of the popular services will launch within the next few weeks.

New channels on the video and podcasting services will be devoted to Library content, including 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio, book talks with contemporary authors, early industrial films from Westinghouse factories, first-person audio accounts of life in slavery, and inside looks into the Library's fascinating holdings, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of Lincoln's pockets on the night of his assassination.

"The Library of Congress launched the first U.S. agency-wide blog two years ago and continued its pioneering social-media role with initiatives such as the immensely successful Flickr pilot project," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "We have long seen the value of such interaction with the public to help achieve our missions, and these agreements remove many of the impediments to making our unparalleled content more useful to many more people."

The General Services Administration today also announced agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv that will allow other federal agencies to participate in new media while meeting legal requirements and the unique needs of government. GSA plans to negotiate agreements with other providers, and the Library will explore these new media services when they are appropriate to its mission and as resources permit.

NYTimes goes Global

I bet every one who reads this blog reads the NYTimes and so you will have seen the banner across the top of the page that suggested you view their global edition. I think it's great they are experimenting but I was both bemused and affronted. Firstly, I thought they already had a global view. To me the NYTimes isn't the provincial Daily News or Newsday: it's The Times. It has a global perspective so why would I be inclined to narrow my view; why isn't the international/global perspective inculcated into all the news and in-depth items in the newspaper? I thought it was, and it probably is (where appropriate) but of all the 'segmentation' they could do with the newspaper this one strikes me as a little off.

They stumble on execution. I hit the 'switch to global' version and the first thing I did was look at the opinion section. As I expected, they seem to have done is make more prominent those editorials pertaining to the global marketplace. They do have 'foreign' contributors but surely in this section these need to be more prominent. More egregiously, I can't seem to find bio information about who these people are. I know who Ban Ki-Moon is but without consulting wikipedia I don't know who Evgeny Morozov is. Even the comic is American. Wouldn't opinion be where the Times could set its self apart? Since that's what they appear to want to do.

Ticket to Surf

We all know about the USAir landing in the Hudson and we also know the pilot "Sully" signed a book deal (and good on him). Perhaps little known is where the news about his book deal is likely to show up - and remember this is a plane that took off and landed three minutes later in a river.

Cheapflights.

Black Plastic Glasses

I think that's a great name and in this case it is the name of Evan Schnittman's newly birthed blog. In his first post he tackles pricing and revenue from ebooks.

"And therein lies the dilemma ... how does the publishing industry fund the creation, editing, design, production, marketing, e-warehousing, and sales of ebooks, if the income isn’t there? How do ebooks cover the huge advances needed to buy books if we cannot generate the cash, especially at their extremely low, discounted prices, cover the advances that an entire industry has come to require? The answer is that ebooks, alone, cannot.

"What this means is that unless a very different model evolves, ebooks can never become the dominant version of content sold by book publishers. It means that ebooks will always be priced to sell, but sold as an afterthought, not as the primary version of a work. It means that the need for blended e plus p models will evolve, in order to take advantage of all the great qualities of ebooks, while providing the financial support and structure that print offers. It means that consumer ebooks, as a stand-alone version of an intellectual property, must fail."

And it is nice of him to place a link to PND.

Google Orphans: What Revenue Opportunities?

Mike Shatzkin (and I) look at some potentially untapped IP in the GBS orphan class: Link

"Let’s say there are 5 million orphan works and 1/2 of 1% of them are worthy of a press run of 5,000 or more. With a few bigger winners in there, let’s say that’s an average of 6,000 press run across the 25,000 estimated titles. That’s 150 million units. Average retail of $15, average discount of 50%, conservative royalty of 5% of retail calculates to $1.125 billion in revenue to publishers and $112.5 million in royalties.

"Cairns says that maybe these numbers are too high by a factor of ten. If he’s right, we’re still talking about $112.5 million in revenues to publishers and $11.25 million in royalties to authors. I have to believe those numbers are still larger than licensing revenues will be, although Cairns and I have not explored that more complicated question seriously yet. And the truth of the press run potential probably lies north of Cairns’s number (although perhaps south of mine.)

"Why was that element left out of the settlement? Did the negotiating parties even contemplate it? And exactly how useful is the “orphan” relief if this huge portion of the potential revenue (and public value) is omitted? Were the parties so fixated on electronic exploitation that they just didn’t notice this? "

Best of PND

With over 1000 blog posts since I started back in mid 2006 some of the more interesting material is now buried, so I have decided to retrieve a wide selection of material which I consider a level above the average. I have manipulated Blogger a little by creating a new blog and I have linked from the new site back to PND for the full content.

As always, feel free to email any of these blog posts to colleagues since I am always looking for more subscribers.

The Best of PND is located here.

Also don't forget I am on Twitter @personanondata.

I have also created a web site for Information Media Partners which gives some information about my consulting practice.

Springer On the Block

The Guardian is reporting that private equity owners Cinven and Candover are seeking 'strategic advice' from Goldman and UBS with respect to a possible sale of Springer Science. Springer Science and Business Media is the love child of a combination of Springer and Kluwer back in 2003. At the time, it is believed the private equity owners were attempting to roll up several properties (including Informa) in advance of a listing.

Where they are now will be difficult to ascertain. Today, their business could be fairly stable but most executives I speak to who have significant revenues in the academic, library and media segments believe that this coming year and 2010 will represent real tests just to keep revenues from falling off a cliff. Any publisher with 'second tier' products is going to face a torrid time keeping their subscription base. It is the subscription model that has helped many of these publishers weather the storm thusfar; however, this will not last as library and academic funds are slashed.

Candover and Cinven will face a difficult task and if they want £2bn as the Guardian suggests then this will be a big ask. Everyone is familiar with the protracted Reed Business auction that was ultimately abandoned and while this is a different market the example is indicative of the risk-averse nature of the M&A market for media properties.

From the Guardian article:

Rival private equity groups are regarded as the most likely buyers, although the head of one competing venture capital firm said he thought it was unlikely Springer would attract much interest, given the poor short-term prospects for the global economy.

Media companies have also seen their valuations fall in the wake of a global advertising downturn. However, unlike other media groups, many of which are heavily reliant on advertising, Springer has a relatively secure source of revenue. It publishes more than 6,500 new book titles every year and owns 60 publishing houses in about 20 countries in Europe, Asia and North America.

The company employs more than 5,000 people and its British operation, based in Surrey, oversees the publication of 20 journals.

Springer has been (from the outside) fairly innovative with respect to eBook and new publishing models. They were one of the poster children for the Google Book program and professed to have seen impressive sales results from many older titles that they had given up on years before. Perhaps, the eventual buyer will be taking as much a flyer on Springer as they will be on the potential for the wider market to turn around in the short to medium term. Good luck with that.

Archer Trophy Wall

Apparently, Jeffrey Archer is looking for every edition of his 'break-out' book Kane and Able. No reason is given for the requests although I believe he is building a giant trophy wall of bookshelves of every edition of every title he has published. Periodically, he will scan the titles in awe and perhaps turn some of the titles so they are face out. In a mosaic of sorts.

Independent

FiledBy Announces Launch of filedbyauthor website

I have noted the early development of FiledBy before and here is an announcement of the launch of their site:

FiledBy, Inc. today announced the Beta launch of filedbyauthor. The site is the first large-scale author-centric promotional platform to provide every author that has been published in the U.S. or Canada a free, hosted, ecommerce enabled web page ready to be claimed and enhanced. With more than 1.8 million pre-assembled author web pages and over 7 million book titles, filedbyauthor is the most complete site for finding and engaging with authors and their work.

“All authors, regardless of publishing category are encouraged to visit the site, claim their page, make corrections, and enrich them in a variety of ways," says Founder, President & C.E.O. Peter Clifton.

Any published author or co-author can easily and immediately update their author page which is linked to individual work pages. In addition to the free level, FiledBy announced two new membership levels designed to make additional web marketing tools available at low cost. These additional levels include blog tools, additional linking and media postings, event listings, online press kits and banner customization.

And, any reader can join the filedbyauthor community and start connecting with authors. Readers can fill in their own pages, collect favorite authors and books, write reviews, rate works and authors, and comment through wall postings.

“We hope to level the web marketing playing field for all authors, eliminate some of the challenges authors face when designing their online presence, and help every author become more easily discoverable through a highly optimized site,” added Clifton.

FiledBy, Inc. is a digital marketing services company providing membership sites, web tools and community building solutions to authors and their fans. The Company, based in Nashville, TN, was co-founded by Peter Clifton, a former Ingram executive and Mike Shatzkin, a publishing industry strategist.

Google Book Agreement

Mike Shatzkin has been thinking about what the Google Book agreement with AAP and AG could mean for revenues: Where will the money come from? (He's roped me in as well):

The part that interests me most is the potential revenue beyond the settlement. Where is the revenue for this going to come from? Who will buy what from the material Google has digitized and what will the revenue opportunities really be for those who “opt in”? And what will Google really have to sell?

I went to Michael Cairns, former CEO of Bowker with this question and he and I are starting to think it through.

All the focus on revenues in the conversations I’ve heard, including a very stimulating seminar at Columbia ten days ago, has been about digital revenue. And that’s what Cairns and I were thinking about too. What, besides the pre-1923 PD stuff do they have in the databases they can license to libraries? So how much can they charge? We saw Google’s pricing idea for ebooks. What will copyright owners do about pricing? And will copyright owners give Google books under this program, or under the Google Partnership Program? These are complicated questions.

Distracting, even.

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