MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 32): Google, Australia, Book Rights Registry

The Financial Times took a long look at the Google Book Settlement agreement. Here is a sample (FT):

That makes an effort by Google, to burrow deep into the leading US research libraries to make digital copies of all the works it can lay its hands on, seem both ambitious and quixotic. The project, begun nearly five years ago, has also started scanning out-of-copyright works from libraries in other countries. A digital archive of all extant books – even ones in which few people are these days likely to show much interest – is carrying the internet company’s mission to “organise the world’s information” to the extreme. .... The first concerns the exclusive right that Google would have to distribute digital books whose copyright holders cannot be traced. These so-called “orphan works” may make up a large portion of all out-of-print tomes: Paul Courant, head of the University of Michigan library, estimates that they amount to 1m-2.5m of his collection of 8m volumes. Congress has failed in its own efforts to free up these works so they can be sold without the risk of claims later from the copyright owners. It is a peculiarity of class action law in the US, though, that private legal action can achieve a result that has eluded Congress: since Google and the new books registry would be free to sell works whose owners did not actively opt out of the court-approved settlement, they would assume a right not available to anyone else.

New data released by the IDPF shows accelerating increases in e-Book sales from the top US trade publishers (release). Many people suggest that authors can't do personal appearances so a changed model that depends on 'concerts' and merchandise will never work for authors; however, this article in the NYT shows that authors can do stand-up. (NYT):

Since they began in 1997, storytelling nights hosted by the Moth, a nonprofit, have helped aspiring writers try out new material in a nurturing environment. But lately, storytelling has exploded into a thriving genre all its own, a new avenue to prominence for writers and, increasingly, for actors and comedians. In a sense, storytelling has become the new stand-up — a way to be noticed by the literary agents, actors and directors who increasingly populate the audiences.

Andrew Wilkins discusses what he terms "Australia's most hated book" which is the report by the Productivity commission on Australia's publishing industry (Pub Perspectives)

The Australian book trade has been here before, you see. Rather like the indefatigable mole in that popular arcade game, Whac-a-Mole, the argument that books in Australia are too expensive and hard to get and that abolishing territorial copyright will make them cheaper and more available just keeps on popping up. It was the personal hobbyhorse of former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman Allan Fels and it was supposed to be addressed by reforms to the Copyright Act way back in 1991.

Those reforms put in place what most still regard as an eminently sensible compromise. Booksellers wanted to get the books from overseas that their customers wanted; publishers wanted to protect the licences under which they published and distributed overseas books in Australia. In a version of the old “use it or lose” principle, the Parallel Importation Restrictions made a publisher release an overseas book within 30 days of its first publication elsewhere or risk losing its territorial rights.

Book Business magazine interviews Michael Healy on the Book Rights Registry and managing very large data (BB):

One of the most important parts of this settlement document … is that it allows rights holders to exercise a very significant degree of control over what parts of their books are displayed, how they want the books priced, and so on. And, of course, rightsholders are entitled to remove their books entirely from the settlement if they wish.

So you can imagine [that] you start with a very large set of metadata about the books that Google has digitized; you then layer on top of that a complex data set about the rights holder; and then you layer on top of that again the ability for each rights holder to express their preferences about their books within the settlement framework. … I think, probably, my background as someone who managed very complex metadata sets for Nielsen was part of the profile that interested those who were looking for someone to head up this registry.



BISG Webcast on the Future of ISBN

Mark Bide of Editeur is hosting a BISG Webcast on the future of ISBN (BISG):

The book industry has had the ISBN for nearly 40 years; there has been little cause for excitement. Now, suddenly the whole subject of "identifiers" has become a hot topic, particularly when it comes to digital books and other online resources. This BISG Webcast will explore why the book industry has standard identifiers, and consider the future of the ISBN (International Standard Book Number), as well as the role of newer identification standards like ISTC (International Standard Text Code) and ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier). What do you need to know to make informed decisions about how -- and whether -- to use them? Register today to find out.

Register here: It is even FREE!

How timely.

Online Learning is Better?

Jonathan Kaplan in the Chronicle of Higher Ed notes a recent study that indicates that online education can be more effective than traditional forms of learning. In fact, the study based on 12 years of educational studies, shows that "online learning has clear advantages over face-to-face instruction."

He then goes on to wonder about the apparent lack of discussion and commentary about this report and suggests that would have been different if the report confirmed educators preconceived notions and bias' about how learning happens (Chron):

But imagine for a moment that the report came to the opposite conclusion. I’m sure that if the U.S. Department of Education had published a report showing that students in online learning environments performed worse, there would have been a major outcry in higher education with calls to shut down distance-learning programs and close virtual campuses.

I believe the reason that the recent study elicited so little commentary is due to the fact that it flies in the face of the biases held by some across the higher education landscape. Yet this study confirms what those of us working in distance education have witnessed for years: Good teaching helps students achieve, and good teaching comes in many forms.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 31): Education, Oxfam, e-Readers, Journals

Some of these were on the twitter (@personanondata) this week.

The NYTimes looks at digital content in schools and recognise it is going to come faster to college level than school. (NYT):

Whenever it comes, the online onslaught — and the competition from open-source materials — poses a real threat to traditional textbook publishers.
Most of the digital texts submitted for review in California came from a nonprofit group, CK-12 Foundation, that develops free “flexbooks” that can be customized to meet state standards, and added to by teachers. Its physics flexbook, a Web-based, open-content compilation, was introduced in Virginia in March.
“The good part of our flexbooks is that they can be anything you want,” said Neeru Khosla, a founder of the group. “You can use them online, you can download them onto a disk, you can print them, you can customize them, you can embed video. When people get over the mind-set issue, they’ll see that there’s no reason to pay $100 a pop for a textbook, when you can have the content you want free.”

Publishing sales into the California educational market are way off given the state's budgeting issues (LAT):

California school districts spent at least $633 million on new books in 2007, according to the Assn. of American Publishers. More recent numbers are not available, but a representative of one publishing house who asked not to be named because of proprietary concerns said sales in the state -- the nation's biggest textbook market -- are off by 50% or more.

"We're all seeing a precipitous drop," said John Sipe Jr., vice president of K-12 sales in California for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Fewer than 200 California districts have bought reading/literature texts this year, compared with publishers' typical expectation of 600 to 700, he said.

"This is a staggering difference for our industry," Sipe said.

Long running controversy over high street bookshops run by Oxfam which receive their stock for free. The business also has antiquarian experts on staff who identify the gems that are unknowingly donated to the shops (Telegraph)

It has been estimated that 15 years ago, there were about 3,000 second-hand and antiquarian bookshops in Britain. By 2004, there were only about 1,500 left. Everyone in the trade knows someone who has had to close. In contrast, Oxfam opened its first bookshop in St Giles, Oxford, in 1987. Today, it has 130 outlets in Britain, which make an average of 21 per cent more than the regular Oxfam charity shops.
Working in a second-hand bookshop, it is hard not to be at least a little envious. Last year, Oxfam made £19 million from selling books. Its website boasts that it is the largest retailer of second-hand books in Europe, selling around 11 million books a year. As a charity, it gets an 80 per cent reduction in business rates. It has a slick PR team, it doesn't have to pay for stock and it attracts thousands of volunteers – some of them even celebrities. It can even afford to open shops in prime retail locations: it is common to see bookshops snuggled next to major high street brands, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, or in Marylebone in London. The rest of us usually have to make do with less glittering locations.

Video interview with Larry Kirshbaum and Jane Friedman (GalleyCat):

Publishing giants Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum shared a long, candid web video interview with Samantha Ettus--taking a blunt look at the future of publishing.
On the web show, Obsessed with Samantha Ettus, both publishing executives were frank about their leadership. "The truth is I always thought bigger was better. That was one of my mantras. Now what's happened is publishers have a bottom line to protect," explained Friedman, the former CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. "And to protect that, they have to publish more and more books just to get that top-line revenue. That is so unhealthy."

Mediapost notes an NPD study on e-Readers:

The study found that 40% of those surveyed were only "somewhat interested" or "not interested at all" in buying an e-reader. How come? Of those who don't want one, 70% said it was because they prefer the feel of an actual book.
Among the 37% who were either "very" or "somewhat" interested in obtaining an e-reader, one of the main factors was the ability to buy and store multiple books, magazines, and newspapers. More than half of consumers were interested in features already offered in current devices like the Kindle's wireless capability and the Sony's Reader's touchscreen.
"Today's e-reader offerings are delivering capabilities that are in demand by consumers," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD, in a statement. "However, some features that could enhance the appeal of more popular content, such as color, remain on the drawing board."

An archived version of a PW hosted discussion on the Google Book Settlement is available (PW):

In a webinar first, the leaders involved with the crafting of the Google Library Project Settlement will share with the publishing industry the benefits of the agreement for publishers and authors. If approved by the Court in October, the agreement will create one of the most far-reaching intellectual, cultural, and commercial platforms for access to digital books for the reading public, while granting publishers unprecedented opportunities and protections. Presented in collaboration with Google, The Association of American Publishers, and Publishers Weekly, the web session is a must-attend event for publishers everywhere.

Ghostwritten scholarly 'research' papers may be a larger issue than first thought. Afterall, its not something you would promote (NYT):

The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.
The articles did not disclose Wyeth’s role in initiating and paying for the work.
Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.The documents on ghostwriting were uncovered by lawyers suing Wyeth and were made public after a request in court from PLoS Medicine, a medical journal from the Public Library of Science, and The New York Times.

CrossRef Sees Increase in DOI's For Books

CrossRef.org the membership organization supporting academic publishing content recently reported that DOI's assigned to books has continued to increase year over year:

As of July 2009, more than 1.8 million CrossRef Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) have been assigned for books. Each CrossRef DOI represents a citable book title, chapter, or reference entry that can be used to link references from scholarly content. Book deposits range from monographs with a single CrossRef DOI to massive reference works with tens of thousands of individual entries.

To encourage publishers to ramp up reference linking for scholarly books, and to explain how CrossRef DOIs for books work, CrossRef has published two documents. The first, Best Practices for Books, was created by CrossRef’s Book Working Group. The second is a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document explaining the relationship between CrossRef DOIs and other DOI applications, such as the ISBN-A.

“We are very encouraged at the growth of books being used in CrossRef reference linking,” said Michael Forster, Chair of CrossRef’s Book Working Group, and Vice President and Associate Publishing Director, Physical Sciences, Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. “We solicited feedback from the entire CrossRef membership before finalizing these guidelines. Our goal is to encourage reference linking among books, proceedings, and journal content, and to enhance the discoverability of professional, reference, technical, and scholarly books.”

The best practices document, available at http://www.crossref.org/06members/best_practices_for_books.html, includes suggestions for improving reference matching results. It identifies minimum and recommended book metadata for deposits and queries in the CrossRef system. Ways to handle editions and other types of versions, so important in book publishing, are also addressed.

Catcher in the Rye Sequel has Friends

Four of the countries largest news organizations have filed an Amicus Brief in support of publication of the "Catcher in the Rye sequel". The NYTco, AP, Gannett and Tribune filed the brief earlier this week and it follows one also filed by the ARL, ACRL, Organization for Transformative works and The Write Fund. American Law Daily (Law.com) has all the details:

"Amici publish copyrighted material every day, and depend on the copyright law to protect their writings," the brief states. "Indeed, their need for copyright protection is today more intense than ever as digital technologies make it ever easier for third parties to seize and repurpose the fruits of their costly newsgathering efforts."

All that notwithstanding, the lawyers argued that they "fiercely believe that the availability of a preliminary injunction under the copyright law cannot trump the prerogatives of the First Amendment, and that a book banning of at least arguably transformative work cannot be countenanced."

In their brief, the news organizations argued that Rosenthal's fair use claim has merit.

"While the district court determined that the fair use defense was not decisive, it certainly is the case that the literal reincarnation of Holden as a senior and his interaction with Mr. Salinger, who is trying to kill him, forms tranformative commentary on the book which--as opposed to sheer piracy--brings it into the realm of fair use."

No publication date has been set yet but stay tuned.

Kenyan Birther

Well, I thought it was funny....



Build your own: http://kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com/

The ISBN Is Dead

There are few greater supporters of the ISBN standard than I (and most of us are named "Michael" so we are easily identified); however, I am increasingly concerned about the future health of the ISBN. In its current form the ISBN is not yet dead but therein lies the problem: 'in its current form.' In order to gain entry to the supply chain, most small and medium-sized publishers will continue to buy their ISBNs from agencies around the world as they have since the 1970's. (In contrast, most large publishers have reservoirs of ISBNs sufficient to last almost forever and only occasionally buy new prefixes to establish new imprints).

Five years ago, I participated in the once-a-decade ISO ISBN revision process that resulted in the current ISBN standard. (Michael Healy ran this two year process on behalf of ISO). That revision included the expansion from 10 to 13 digits, but this was tame compared to the contentious issue of separate ISBNs for every eBook format. I support this position (although I did not have a vote in the revision) and agreed with others who viewed assigning separate ISBNs as consistent with the way ISBNs had historically been assigned to other title formats. Despite the passage of time, this issue continues to generate significant comment and has become (to me) one of several indications that the ISBN in its current form may not be sufficient to support the migration to a digital world.

A second problem the ISBN faces is driven by some down-stream suppliers who don't see the ISBN as relevant. The most prominent (egregious - pick your label) of these has been Amazon - and this is not just because no Kindle title carries an ISBN. Amazon has long been disdainful of the ISBN and, almost from the opening of the bookstore, they assigned "ASINs" to books. In his defining Web 2.0 article, Tim O'Reilly used the example of Amazon's ASIN as an indicator of Amazon's application of the principles of Web 2.0. At the time (while I was at Bowker in 2005), I took a more sanguine view in an email:

Amazon’s ASIN creation was built out of expediency. If they received a title from a publisher that (for whatever reason) had no ISBN, they assigned a number just so they could get it in their system. (Don’t laugh, we get frantic calls from publishers who are at their printer and don’t have a number). At first they were designating these as “ISBN”s which we had them change. There was never an intention to take ISBN and make something better and different. So while I would agree on your point about extending the bibliographic content, in the case of ASINs Amazon were not looking to create additional value or take the identifier to some other more valuable place: they needed 10 digits to identify a SKU. Now they have polluted the supply chain with these numbers. No other vendor has seen a requirement to create their own SKUs; there has never been a need, because the ISBN has been the most effective product identifier ever established.

Hence, at Amazon, the lack of ISBNs on Kindle titles isn't really new; although it was a fairly rare occurrence (albeit from a very large player). Others now new to the supply chain (including suppliers of print-on-demand titles) have decided not to use ISBNs. Some of these suppliers are using the Google Book settlement titles as their 'inventory' and thus, by definition, this issue becomes a significant challenge to the ubiquity of the ISBN.

A third issue concerns the rapid influx of new titles as a result of digitization programs. At this point, it's unknown whether any of these titles will be subsequently broken down into parts, (although this seems inevitable,) but that further compounds the issue of how ISBNs - or other identifiers - will identify this content.

Some may argue that, as the supply chain compacts the connection between producer and supplier becomes tighter and a specific item identifier isn't required. Maybe that's true; however, I believe it's far too early in the transition to digital content to make this judgment. Unfortunately, if we shrug our collective shoulders to these issues, this non-action will set a precedent from which we as a publishing industry will be unable to recover.

The ISBN standard united the industry from author royalty statement to store shelf and, while I emphasize the ISBN is far from dead, there are sufficient warning signs to suggest that the ISBN may be unable to thrive in the 21st century as it has over the past 40 yrs. As a community, we need to recognize that the ISBN may not be meeting its intended market need and that the future may make this deficiency even more stark. From an international perspective, ISO could help by reconvening a partial (or full) revision of the standard; it seems incompatible with the speed at which all industry changes that we can continue to live with a 10 year revision cycle. In my view, ISBN could benefit from an accelerated revision cycle while the result of non-action could be increasing irrelevance.

Into this mix I would also add that ISBN can no longer stand generally independent of other identifiers, such as a work ID or party ID. For example, while assigning ISBNs to pre-1970 titles may make an ISBN agency's revenues bulge, it may not be the most effective proposal for the supply chain. A more appropriate approach may be a combination of work ID, party ID and ISBN and, for this, we require a cohesive methodology and possibly a 'merging' of these standards in a more formal way.



This commentary naturally leads into a discussion of the construction of bibliographic databases, which I hope to present in the future.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 30): Amazon, Reed Elsevier, India, Bloomsbury

Nicholson Baker in The New Yorker takes a look at Amazon and the Kindle taking to account how Amazon ranks as an electronics manufacturer (TNY):

Amazon, with its listmania lists and its sometimes inspired recommendations and its innumerable fascinating reviews, is very good at selling things. It isn’t so good, to date anyway, at making things. But, fortunately, if you want to read electronic books there’s another way to go. Here’s what you do. Buy an iPod Touch (it costs seventy dollars less than the Kindle 2, even after the Kindle’s price was recently cut), or buy an iPhone, and load the free “Kindle for iPod” application onto it. Then, when you wake up at 3 A.M. and you need big, sad, well-placed words to tumble slowly into the basin of your mind, and you don’t want to wake up the person who’s in bed with you, you can reach under the pillow and find Apple’s smooth machine and click it on. It’s completely silent. Hold it a few inches from your face, with the words enlarged and the screen’s brightness slider bar slid to its lowest setting, and read for ten or fifteen minutes. Each time you need to turn the page, just move your thumb over it, as if you were getting ready to deal a card; when you do, the page will slide out of the way, and a new one will appear. After a while, your thoughts will drift off to the unused siding where the old tall weeds are, and the string of curving words will toot a mournful toot and pull ahead. You will roll to a stop. A moment later, you’ll wake and discover that you’re still holding the machine but it has turned itself off. Slide it back under the pillow. Sleep.

Checking in on what's going on in Indian publishing (The Economic Times):

To most people, India is at the cusp of the publishing story and the action waiting to play out will be worth the wait. That belief is not without reason. The country has a large literate population and the reading habit is often inculcated early in life. Besides, the opportunity to write and translate books across languages is an opportunity that any marketer will give his right hand for. The key is to deliver a quality product at any time. “I’d like to believe that there will always be an audience and a market for truly original works of literature regardless of commercial fluctuations,” says a rather emphatic Altaf Tyrewala, author of the critically acclaimed No God in Sight. India has never had a paucity of quality writers and that is the best piece (of news) for the industry. Now how these creative artists come together with publishers will form the next round of the story.

Publishers Weekly announce the sale of themselves (PW):

Reed Business Information is putting Publishers Weekly and its affiliated publications, Library Journal and School Library Journal, up for sale. The sale of the group is part of RBI’s strategy to divest most of its trade magazines in the U.S. Last year, Reed Elsevier, parent company of RBI, tried to sell all of RBI but dropped the sale when it couldn’t get the price it wanted in a depressed market for media properties. In a related announcement, Tad Smith, CEO of RBI US, has resigned. John Poulin has been named acting CEO and he will head the sales process.

Also Reed Elsevier announced a rights issue to stem the debt. May raise $1Billion against $4bill debt. (The Bookseller) Having seen the one of the authors on The Daily Show I was intrigued about this book. Subsequently I see there is some controversy between the authors of this book and one on the same subject published a number of years ago. (NYT) Also Stewart interview.

On June 27 Ms. Bynum got a copy of the new book. The next day, in an e-mail message to academic friends and colleagues at universities across the country, she wrote: “I am appalled at the manner in which these authors have written what is touted as a scholarly work. I am also deeply hurt by the manner in which they have appropriated, then denigrated, my work.”

In a three-part review posted on the Renegade South blog, renegadesouth.wordpress.com, Ms. Bynum lit into the Doubleday book. She particularly objected to what she saw as the new book’s tendency to romanticize Mr. Knight and his love life, its insistence on the idea that Jones County actually seceded and its attempt to place Mr. Knight at the Battle of Vicksburg — touches that do not hurt the story’s cinematic potential.

Bloomsbury (UK) get some ink in the Evening Standard for their Bloomsbury Library Online which is 'powered' by Exact Editions (ES):

Bloomsbury currently offers several children's shelves, along with a "book club" shelf of titles designed to be read and discussed by groups.

"The service means you never have to worry about overdue books again," said Daryl Rayner of Exact Editions, the company behind the service.

"You can be on a beach in Greece, and simply log in using your library card to download new books. We have also set the system up on several terminals inside the library."

Although only Bloomsbury has signed up so far, Miss Rayner said her firm was in discussions with all of the major UK publishers. It has also signed up several other libraries across the UK.

Exact is planning to add online access to Wisden, the cricketing bible, to the service in the near future, along with access to the works of Shakespeare and other historical authors.

Bloomsbury executive director Richard Charkin said: "While never forgetting the importance of books themselves, libraries are being pressured to adapt to the demands of the 21st century."

Graphic of Amazon's acquisitions over the years. (Link)

Bob Stein on the Future of Reading

In advance of the Melbourne Writers festival later this month where he is scheduled to speak, Bob Stein offers a perspective on the future of authorship and reading in The Age:

Traditionally, authors have made a commitment to engage with a subject matter on behalf of future readers, with whom they would have no particular contact. In the new paradigm, I think, an author's commitment will be to engage with readers in the context of a subject matter.

Essentially, authors are about to learn what musicians have grasped during the past 10 years - that they get paid to show up. For musicians, this means live performances account for an increasingly significant percentage of their income in contrast to ever-shrinking royalties from sales. With books, as we redefine content to include the conversation that grows up around the text, the author will increasingly be expected to be part of that ongoing conversation and, of course, expect to be paid for that effort.

For their part, readers will see the experience of reading expand to include a range of behaviours, all situated firmly within a social context. To illustrate, here's a mother in London describing her 10-year-old boy's reading behaviour: "He'll be reading a (printed) book. He'll put the book down and go to the book's website. Then he'll check what other readers are writing in the forums, and maybe leave a message himself, then return to the book. He'll put the book down again and Google a query that's occurred to him."

Google Book Settlement Video and Discussion

Harvard's Beckman Center for Internet and Society hosted a presentation and discussion about the proposed Google Book Settlement which included Alex Macgillivray and Dan Clancy from Google (both are introduced at the start of this video):

The video is over an hour long but in listening to it I took the following notes. If something is not clear, best watch the video. (Also, don't take my notes as gospel watch the video).

Google's Alexander Macgillivray on the Google Book Search Settlement

AM: Google Book Search: Why did we do it? “To make books easier to find”
First lesson learned about book search: full text search is really powerful and harnessing this is really powerful.

Three places to go to build a full text database:
1. Born digital books
2. Books less new but owned by publishers: can find them
3. Not currently held by publishers or rights unclear and public domain books. Where rights were unknown recognized these are still useful and wanted to include them as full text searchable and also enable someone looking for them to know where to go to get them

AM Referred this as following as “Books 1.0”

Deals with libraries to scan books and index them.

10+ million books scanned
1.5mm in public domain
1.5mm in the Partner Program from 25K partner program and 40 libraries across number of countries

Continued to scan ‘at pace’ and didn’t stop in the face of the lawsuits came in 2005:
2 US Lawsuits:
Broad Class action: Authors Guild
Narrower: Publishers
1 French
1 German – subsequently withdrawn when looked like they would loose

Conversation in settlement: Only time happened to me at Google where the other side was thinking bigger than we were. Started thinking about doing things with the class that would provide enormous benefit. “actually increasing access to the information” saw an opportunity that “once you found the book you could actually read it”. Wasn’t a lot of disagreement around the room. Also, how do we preserve the place of the library in this environment?

Opens up access in various ways:

1. Consumer Access:
Ability get free full text search results, find it for sale or in library. Also if it is out of print (essentially all out of print books) you can get 20% of the content to sample and determine if this is the book you are looking for. Which books are useful to you and expands options to access: amazon, alibris, etc. Buy online access to the book: Lasts forever and no ‘1984 Amazon’ problem and sits forever sits on your bookshelf. Priced by the publisher or rightsholder. If none exists the price is set by an algorithm. (Simulates a market which prices the book at a price it would be if there was a market).

DC On pricing for Books: An algorithm has been built to determine the best/appropriate price for books where price not set by a rightsholder. Initial distribution is as follows but real experience will change these prices.

80% of prices are $15 or less
50% of prices are $5.99 or less

“Really think the prices will go down”

2. Institutional Access: Subscription based and pricing governed by the agreement which states pricing should offer a “fair return and broad access”

Comment: to users of an institutional license this may be akin to ‘free like water’ for all the users (or those who have access) to the institutional license.

Another comment on the institutional license:
For the entirety of the subscription not book can be removed from the collection. No 1984 problem. Once have subscribed to a set of books these can’t be removed for the entirety of the subscription. Next year there could be a different set of books which changes the composition of the license.

3. Public access model: Can go to a public library will have access to the entire ‘subscription for free’. All out of print books available at any library that wants it. Google would like it so that you “never have to worry that the amount of money you have will determine access – either in Academic or Public setting. So don’t have the money to go to Harvard but would be able to gain access to this material and the content of all the other libraries.

One terminal in every library (hope over time to be able to provide more access points for public libraries)

Obviously in addition all public domain titles will be available via the internet

AM Also notes the ability of the agreement to expand access to those with disability – especially those with print disabilities (the blind).

Professors can now select from a much wider universe/set of books: moving from a relatively small set of titles to a much more inclusive set


Orphan Works: - Notes blog posts.

Google has been fighting for Orphan works legislation for years that would allow for mass digitization projects (including but not exclusive to books)

Still think this effort is important for a number of reasons:
Settlement includes Orphans and non-Orphans
No clear cut definition as to what an Orphan is
Constant problem in Washington and disagreement: ever competing definitions within groups even within cohesive groups

“Works where the rightsholder is very very hard to find.”

May be copyright holder out there but the connection between (me) and the holder is hard or can’t be made

Clancy: Books have some advantage over other intellectual works because authors name, publishers name (other info), is printed in the book. Many of these books have publication information.

Not just books: images, physical objects, other things but even harder to find copyright holder.

More scholarly books from libraries: Professors at the university at the time of publication.

“Can find them – little hard but could if you tried. These are not really Orphans”
For many casual uses finding them for class use (or for permissions) is not too difficult. Noted the Author’s Guild research asking their authors whether finding copyright holders for permissions: ‘Success 90% of the time. (PND Note: I think % is higher than actual but not by much). These books aren’t really Orphans is just a little hard to find the rightsholder.

Challenges: Books less of an issue but still an issue for some percentage of the titles:
1. Lots of books that aren’t Orphans but still a bit of a pain to go ahead and find who the rightsholder.
2. Because of statutory risks in copyright titles may be ‘practically dead in the marketplace’ because the economic value is small versus the costs of getting hold of the rightsholder and getting the title authorized. Has to do with rightsholder indemnifying the seeker of the rights against a future claim. Money rightsholder receives in this transaction is much smaller than his/her economic risk of error if they don’t in fact retain the rights to the work.

AM: Addressing the twin problems of Orphan works
1. making it easier to find rightsholder
2. makes these things (cultural items) themselves accessible

AM: Make really clear (w/r/t Orphan works legislation) inserted clause that Orphan works legislation will trump the settlement.

DC: Important point that all information is freely and publicly available as to the disposition of the copyright:
Who claims what book is public information
Can also ask “Tell me which books have not been claimed”

AM “Fact that this information is public is really an important part of the agreement” J – compares this openness with other rights distribution agencies which are closed. Keep as private which content is part of their collection.

“BRR is unable to be obscure about rightsholder information”

Question of ‘fair use doctrine’: isn’t this the end of fair use?

AM Currently have more fair use cases than anyone else.
Continue to be subject to lawsuits with respect to photos and foreign works. Google is never on the plaintive side in Fair use cases. Always on the defendant side. “Understand it may be convenient to say we are abandoning fair use but its bull shit”

DC: Going in to the agreement we felt we would win the lawsuit: “felt pretty good”. In the agreement it was important that we did not erode fair use. We don’t believe the agreement erodes fair use and continue to conduct ourselves (scanning images, unregistered works, opted out works). All still believe in fair use. “if we felt the agreement was undermining our belief in fair use we would be adjusting our actions with respect to some of the things we are doing” (images etc.)

AM: Just to be clear: “Google built its whole business on fair use and we are not backing down from this at all” We are not backing down from this at all.

Question about where the money goes (specifically what happens to uncollected funds): “Not clear why anyone would have a claim on the collected but unclaimed money”.

AM: Two streams:
For consumer purchases the money is held for 5yrs. If unclaimed the BRR can use the (5th year) money to operate the BRR, if money left over then can use the remaining money to ‘top up’ the payments to rightsholders from the 63% to 70%, if there is any money remaining after that it is disbursed to charities.

for institutional: after 5yrs registry operating costs, any remaining left over is divided across the rightsholders in the institutional license

Heard people say the money shouldn’t be divided this way because BRR etc have no right however; there is no consistency on where the money should go. Different groups have different ideas as to where/how the dollars are divided. The way the settlement distributes it is similar to other rights organizations; however, the settlement also says that if there is Orphan works legislation this will trump the settlement. “You can easily get a resolution to the extent you can get all the other constituents to agree” on where the money could go.

Question about the research corpus: Largest collection of ‘parellel corpa’ with respect to translation. Who’s got access to it?

DC: Right now in the current world Google has access to the entire database. Because of the current copyright we can’t open it up to everyone to come in and do what they want. Secondly, each library only has access to their collection. Each partner has a subset. Google has the whole thing.

Creation of a research corpus for non-consumptive research allowing for computational research on the entire corpus. Word usage, Machine translation, OCR, New search technologies over large texts like books

Participating and fully cooperating libraries get to create up to 2 of these research corpus’. Google is putting up $5mm to set up these research corpus’

Up to the libraries to use these research projects: has to be non-consumptive research. Libraries have the responsibility but can sponsor anyone they want. They have responsibility to secure the corpus. Can sponsor any university or person they want.

31 partners and most are expected to come on: could be another 50 or 100. Any of the libraries can sponsor others.

Michigan is the only one doing anything: Something with Hathi Trust
Looking to build one corpus on public domain stuff and working with them on this. Google want them to get going because once get it going ‘they will discover things’ which will make the research opportunities more tangible.

AM Absent the settlement this doesn’t happen. Once settlement approved we get to provide all the content

Question about Competition: Specifically most favored nation clause. A suggestion this removes any incentive for a competitor to enter this market because they can never ‘beat’ Google:

AM Stated the clause without the limitations:
Only for first 10 yrs. Deal is long and the first mover is taking on a lot of up front risk. First mover deal for the length of copyright of the last book in the database by definition is a long time. Scanning and the $125mm in the settlement addition points.

Second limitation: Only to the extent that a deal with a third party impacts a significant number of unclaimed (other than registered rights holders) works (slightly bigger than Orphans) will the clause be relevant.

AM: This clause is regarded by anti-trust as a ‘good thing’: Very easy for a second entrant with the blue print (via BRR) of a deal already done. Wanted to ensure that for the first 10 yrs that Google could complete with any entrant be they Amazon, MS, or other. Anti-trust views this as a good thing because it encourages the type of innovation we have with this settlement.

Boston University Discuss Open Access

In the University's alumni magazine this quarter, Boston University discuss their recently launched open access research repository under a title "Research Wants to be Free":

While most published scholarly work is copyrighted and distributed by subscription-based journals, an open-access system allows an article or data to be shared as widely and easily as possible with both the public and potential collaborators who might build on one another’s work. The movement began a few years ago among university librarians unsettled by ever-rising subscription costs and emboldened by the promise of the Internet. It quickly spread to university faculty and has since spawned a bur­geoning library of open-access journals and institutional repositories. In Feb­ruary, Boston University moved to the forefront of the movement when the faculty unanimously voted to establish the nation’s first university-wide open-access archive.

The archive will be a free, search­able Web catalogue of BU scholarship ranging from neuroscience research to folk dance videos. Faculty who opt to use the archive can submit a journal article, a dissertation, or any other piece of scholarship, and material that is submitted will be made available to anyone for noncommercial use.

Pearson Reports Interim Results: Better than Anticipated

Pearson reported their interim financial results this morning. From the press release:

* Strong profit growth: Adjusted operating profit up 25%* and adjusted EPS up 41% in headline terms.
* Good competitive performances: FT Group and Penguin performing well in challenging markets and trading in line with expectations; Education trading ahead and gaining share.
* Healthy outlook: Strong positions in growth markets combined with accelerating digital and services businesses underpin confidence for 2009 and beyond.
* Dividend growth sustained: Interim dividend raised 3.4% to 12.2p.
* Trading ahead of expectations: Stronger business performance offsets negative currency impact, providing an effective upgrade of 3p to adjusted EPS guidance for 2009. So, full-year adjusted EPS still expected to be at or above the 2008 level of 57.7p per share.

Marjorie Scardino, chief executive, said: "The transformation we've been pursuing for a decade - from 'publishing' company to content, technology and services company - is paying off. Over the past six years, Pearson has delivered substantial growth; this year is about proving our resilience and competitive edge. So far, we've passed the test. Market conditions are tough and may stay that way; but we are confident that we will perform well this year and next."

Some other points from the release:

Education appears to be outpacing the company's expectations with underlying performance in the period better than expected and a traditionally better second half of the year yet to come. (To some degree this performance could be expected given the 'promises' made to investors with respect to the integration of their recent acquisitions and the performance gains from cost efficiencies and selling).

Penguin who's performance the company described as 'in-line with expectations' lost significant margin during the period versus last year. The company expects the second half to be stronger but have also put in place some 'organizational changes'. From the release some other information about Penguin's Digital Innovation:

• Significant expansion of eBook publishing and sales. In the US and UK, Penguin has almost 10,000 eBooks available to date and expects to have almost 14,000 by year end including eSpecials and Enriched eBook Classics.
• In the US, Penguin launched an online network with three channels featuring nine series of book-related programming for adults, young adults and children. Titled "From the Publishers Office", the site aims to build on Penguin's 2.0 initiatives to engage new audiences and to enhance the dialogue between authors and readers.
• In the UK, Penguin and Puffin launch We Make Stories, a unique set of digital tools for children to create, print and share a variety of innovative story forms including pop-up books, customised audio books, comics and interactive treasure maps. The site is designed to encourage literacy, creativity and storytelling skills and is Penguin's first move into providing services. We launched iPhone applications for the Top 10 DK Eyewitness travel guides retailing at £4.99.
• Penguin China is the first major international publisher to sell English books directly under its own brand on Taobao the leading direct-to-consumer online auction site in China.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 29): Education, DVDs, Ebook Sales, OCLC, CourseSmart, Target.

Some of these will have been noted on the twitter during the past week. Raising Alabama - From the economist two weeks ago on efforts to provide online access to students in Alabama which is starting to provide much broader access to education across the state and happily improving opportunity (Economist):

There were sceptics. The pilot programme cost $10m, not pocket change in a poor state. Teachers worried about how they would connect to their virtual students. But ACCESS quickly became a hit. In 2006 students took more than 4,000 courses at 24 schools. In 2008, with ACCESS now in more schools, the number exceeded 22,000. Administrators are finding new ways to liven up the experience. Last year a dozen schools went on a “virtual field trip” to Antarctica, with scientists beamed in by satellite, and a school in Birmingham has been liaising with a counterpart in Wales.

Also a week earlier the Economist discussed DVD sales which among a few topics was notable for the recent debate regarding when publishers release eBooks relative to the release dates for their pBook relatives (Economist):

Studios would prefer people to get their films in almost any way other than renting them from a kiosk. It is much more profitable to stream a film digitally or sell it through a cable operator as a video-on-demand (VOD). Recognising this, Warner Bros now releases many films simultaneously on DVD and VOD. The big studios have overcome their initial reluctance to sell digital copies of films through Apple’s iTunes store. Although it is a long way off, there is much talk of creating a premium VOD “window”, charging perhaps $40 for a film soon after it appears in cinemas. “We need to give people as many options as possible without confusing them,” says Kevin Tsujihara, head of home entertainment at Warner Bros.

Meanwhile strenuous efforts are under way to stimulate disc sales. Disney is selling some films in three formats in a single box—DVD, Blu-ray and digital file. Studios are adding puzzles, interviews and other special features to discs intended for sale, but not to discs intended for rental. Mike Dunn, head of home entertainment at Fox, sums up the strategy: “If you buy a Blu-ray disc you get a BMW. If you rent one you get a Chevrolet.”

Corgi in the UK gets it totally wrong 'leveraging' Dan Brown's name to promote a somewhat new author (MW):

These are not the reviews for a man whose style is so indistinct that he deserves to get his name printed three times smaller than someone who didn’t even write the book. It might not be the type of writing that appeals too much to me, but clearly Kernick has a healthy fanbase waiting to rave about his work.

I think Kernick’s publisher, Corgi, has missed a trick. Rather than piggybacking Kernick’s work on Brown’s brand, it should have tried to develop the author’s own distinctive style and reputation more carefully. I appreciate it’s trying to shift copies in a difficult climate but there is more than enough room for another star brand on the bookshelves. So come on, Corgi; there is never a deadline for innovative marketing.

OCLC announces the launch of 'Content Gateway' that makes it easier for libraries to upload the content from their special collections (OCLC):

"Libraries, museums and archives should do whatever they can to get their materials available online and expose their collections to users—wherever they are—on the Web,” said Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research. "The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is an easy and effective way to do this."

The Gateway has been piloted in 12 institutions. Since May, the pilot participants used the Gateway self-service tools to upload thousands of records from their CONTENTdm collections into WorldCat. Because they have used the Gateway to set up profiles for their collections, the pilot users' metadata will be regularly uploaded to WorldCat as they add to their digital collections over time.

Notes on a female action hero from the Guardian. Ripley still reigns (and she still looks good):

And then? Ripley beat them all. And so she should, being the best female action hero ever despite it being 30 years since Alien was released. Sigourney Weaver got a standing ovation for simply walking on stage - and from that point until the end of the panel, the air was crackling with bright little flashbulb hiccups and the little electric cla-chuk of 4,000 digital cameras taking 400,000 pictures of a stage that felt as if it was 40 miles away.

Weaver was passionate in her belief that female action stars - and powerful female roles in general – should be action stars and roles first, and female depending on whoever was best for the role.

"Science fiction is an investigation into what it is to be human," she said at one point. "A lot of the roles I have played, they're not trying to create a female action figure - they're trying to create a fully-functioning human being; a character comes first."

In the UK The Bookseller reports on differing approaches to revenue splits on eBook sales:

Industry sources said that a figure of 25% was becoming standard, though some admitted that it could be "variable". One agent said: "Random House is the only publisher not offering 25% as its best standard rate but not all agents are getting 25% from all publishers." Penguin m.d. Helen Fraser said: "Our standard e-book royalty is 25% of net receipts. My sense is that the industry is probably settling between 20% and 25%. Some publishers are offering the same to everybody and some are having a gradated scale."

CourseSmart has added a bunch of new publishers to its content base (PR):

Each of CourseSmart's new publishers will supplement its digital library of eTextbooks in the following specialty areas:

• Elsevier Science and Technology: Life and Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Engineering, Computer Science, Media Technology, Finance, Business and Hospitality
• F.A. Davis: Nursing and Health Professions
• Jones & Bartlett: Biology; Health, Fitness and Wellness; Criminology, Nursing and Computer Science
• SAGE: Education, Psychology, Statistics, Sociology and Criminology
• Sinauer Associates: Biology, Psychology and Neuroscience
• Taylor & Francis: Humanities & Social Sciences, Life Science, Business, Psychology, Mental Health and Computer Science
• Wolters Kluwer Health (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins): Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions

The NYTimes ran an article on Target's Bookselling ops which reminded me of a similar article last year on book buying at Costco. From the Times article:

Compared with a large chain bookstore like Barnes & Noble, which averages about 200,000 titles per location, Target carries only about 2,500 titles in each of its 1,700 stores. Offerings include diet books, children’s picture books, young-adult novels and series romances. Paperbacks far outnumber hardcovers, and over the last decade Target has focused on the larger trade format as opposed to the smaller mass-market paperbacks. (The other big-box retailers rely mostly on the biggest commercial books of the moment, though Costco does on occasion offer its own special picks of little-known authors.)

Virtually every book at Target is shelved face out. Books in the book club and Breakout program are set apart on so-called endcaps — narrower shelves that stand at the front or end of aisles — with specially designed signs.

Google and Privacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some concerns regarding Google's privacy stance especially with respect to the Book Settlement agreement. EFF suggests that Google's ability to track everything a consumer looks at and reads combined with all the other services that Google provider could lead to Google collating a 'digital dossier' on every user. Perhaps hyperbolic but nevertheless they have listed a number of specific remedies (Link):

• Protect your reading records from government and third party fishing expeditions by responding only to properly-issued warrants and court orders, and by letting you know if someone has demanded access to information Google has collected about you.
• Make sure that you can still browse and read anonymously by not forcing you to register or give personal information and by deleting any logging information for all services after a maximum of 30 days.
• Separate data related to Google Book Search from any other information the company collects about you, unless you give it express permission.
• Give you the ability to edit and delete any information collected about you, transfer books from one account to another without tracking, and hide your "bookshelves" or other reading lists from others with access to your computer.
• Keep Google Book Search information private from third parties like credit card processors, book publishers, and advertisers.

EFF also suggest concerned readers email Google's CEO Eric Schmidt directly to voice their concerns.

Google has also reacted to privacy concerns - whether directly to EFF or coincidental is unclear - with the following blog post from Dan Clancy on their public policy blog:

Recently, we've heard questions about our agreement and what it will mean for user privacy. Privacy is important to us, and we know it's important to our users, too. We have a strong privacy policy in place now for Google Books and for all Google products. But our settlement agreement hasn't yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement haven't been built or even designed yet. That means it's very difficult (if not impossible) to draft a detailed privacy policy. While we know that our eventual product will build in privacy protections -- like always giving users clear information about privacy, and choices about what if any data they share when they use our services -- we don't yet know exactly how this all will work. We do know that whatever we ultimately build will protect readers' privacy rights, upholding the standards set long ago by booksellers and by the libraries whose collections are being opened to the public through this settlement.

On the Google Books blog they are slightly more expansive with a series of question and answers regarding the Books program and their privacy policies (Link):

Important principles from our Google Privacy Policy would apply to this service, as with every Google service. For example, we will never sell personal information about our users. In fact, we will never share individual users' information at all unless the user tells us to, or in some very unusual circumstances like life-threatening emergencies. The Book Rights Registry created under the settlement won't have access to users' personal information, either.

Users will also have choices about the kinds of information that Google receives when they use the service. Most of the new ways of reading books online that the settlement makes possible will not require any kind of registration or account with Google. For example, people who use institutional subscriptions, such as students at subscribing schools, will not have to register with Google to read the millions of books available through the subscription. They only need to confirm their identity to the school’s system – not ours. And of course, regular users of Google Books do not need to set up an account to get the benefits of the settlement. They will be able to see much larger portions of books – often 20% of the book, instead of the current three short snippets – without having an account or giving personal information to Google.

As fellow traveler Adam Hodgkin suggests, "if Google becomes the predominant reading platform for digital editions these will be crucial issues". Reading a book is a personal intellectual exercise and disconnected, in fact and in the mind of the reader, from all externalities; because of this perception, translating the reading experience to an online environment probably does not immediately conjure up concerns over privacy in the minds of the average reader. In other words, most people because all their prior reading experience has been "private' do not immediately understand that it may now be 'public'. Reading may have to carry a public warning. Maybe I'm in agreement with EFF's hyperbole.

Guide to Finding an Orphan

(via P. Brantley) The Society of American Archivists have produced a best practice guide for researching rightsholders titled Orphan Works: Statement of Best Practices. Here is a sample from the LibraryLaw Blog:

Then, the heart of the beast - what constitutes a diligent effort? I love the way the document clarifies that you first need to try to identify the creator, but that you also need to try to identify the rights holder, which is often different, especially for older works that may have dead authors.

How far do you go in identifying and locating creators and rights holders? This is the $30,000 question, and the guide really helps you here. It's as if you have the collective wisdom of the archivist community at your beck and call. True, this isn't legal guidance based on statutes/court cases, but we don't have those yet. This will likely influence those arenas, should the time ever come.

Bill Folman, The Scandal Plan

Pretty good book video via @chapmanchapman and @harperstudio

Elsevier's Journal of The Future

Journal publisher Elsevier has announced a beta project to re-think the journal article. In collaboration with their journal Cell, the company's innovation team has set up two beta sites that solicit feedback on how technology can improve the experience of both the journal contributor and the consumer.

Elsevier is the world's largest publisher of scientific and medical content and its results from what they describe as the 'journal of the future' will be watched closely by subscribers and competitors.

The concept attempts to make impressive use of current technology to aid the navigation of the journal article content, to provide more graphical and multimedia content and enable better and more effective linking to related content.

In summary, there are some of the features the publisher notes on the Cell beta site:

• A hierarchical presentation of text and figures so that readers can elect to drill down through the layers of content based on their level of expertise and interest. This organizational structure is a significant departure from the linear-based organization of a traditional print-based article in incorporating the core text and supplemental material within a single unified structure.
• A graphical abstract allows readers to quickly gain an understanding of the main take-home message of the paper. The graphical abstract is intended to encourage browsing, promote interdisciplinary scholarship and help readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.
• Research highlights provide a bulleted list of the key results of the article.
• Author-Affiliation highlighting makes it easy to see an author’s affiliations and all authors from the same affiliation.
• A figure that contains clickable areas so that it can be used as a navigation mechanism to directly access specific sub-sections of the results and figures.
• Integrated audio and video let authors present the context of their article via an interview or video presentation and allow animations to be displayed more effectively.
• The Experimental Procedures section contains alternate views allowing readers to see a summary or the full details necessary to replicate the experiment.
• A new approach to displaying figures allows the reader to identify quickly which figures they are interested in and then drill down through related supplemental figures. All supplemental figures are displayed individually and directly linked to the main figure to which they are related.
• Real-time reference analyses provide a rich environment to explore the content of the article via the list of citations.

Here is the link to the beta version of the journal itself. (Cell Beta).

Moon Memory

I always remembered the moon walk occurring during the daytime, and it wasn't until recently that Mrs. PND happened to recall 'staying up' to watch a couple of guys walk on the moon. My memory was captured in brilliant white sunshine and air conditioning because in their early twenties in mid 1968, my parents had packed up the family and moved to Thailand where my father took his first management role at Intercontinental. Out of England, Thailand was a magical place but also often fetid, smelly and unbearably hot; however, living at one of Bangkok's few luxury hotels - one also that had created a sort of garden oasis out of the surrounding slums - eased the transition considerably. I had the run of the place since both my brothers were much too young to get out by themselves and while I didn't get up to too much mischief I did have my moments.

My mode of transportation was my peddle car US Army issue Jimmy's Jeep (all green) in which I tooled around the open air corridors of the hotel. This was especially fun during the rainy season when the corridors became particularly conducive to skidding. As three blond haired kids, we were a somewhat unusual commodity to the Thai especially the women and whenever my youngest brother went out they always wanted to touch his blond hair. From my perspective this attention was often unwanted and one particular room service waiter teased me mercilessly, and I had just had enough when on one occasion he snuck up behind me and took my hat. When he refused in the face of my demand to give it back, I took a run at him in my Jeep and rammed him. Catastrophically, he was also carrying a lunch tray which went flying in a cascade of crockery, food and glass. I remember him looking at me half laughing while I was immediately mortified that my father would find out. Needless to say he never bothered me again and I got my hat back. No one ever mentioned it. I always wonder what he told HQ when he had to return with a tray full of debris to replace the order.

There were no televisions in the hotel rooms at that time mainly because there was only one state television station in Thailand which broadcast in Thai. On the morning of July 21st, 1969 (evening of July 2oth on the east coast), my mother took me to the hotel lobby vowing to me this is something you will always remember. I suspect if we were still living in England that I would not have seen the moon walk live because of the time difference. As I recall, there were only a few people gathered around the TV which was sitting unceremoniously low to the floor on a chair. In contrast to the crowds gathered in public places in the US, I was left to recognize the importance of what I was witnessing without the collective endorsement of the crowd, but I am sure our little group clapped and sighed with relief just like everyone else. We also didn't have the benefit of Walter Cronkite's commentary and in the last several days having watched some of the CBS broadcast, he did indeed sum up the penultimate moment brilliantly when he takes off his glasses and just says 'Wow'.

In the forty years since the landing, I am indifferent to the manned space program and I don't see the value of spending billions just to prove we can do something that has no recurring benefit. The Apollo program was important but everything we do in space can be replicated down here and down here we have more than enough problems to contend with.

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 28): Napstered, Amazon, Chegg.com, ALA,

WaPo reports on the romance writers of American conference (Link):

There is no prototypical romance writer. Here at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, some 2,000 women of all races and ages wear everything from chunky Goth boots to strappy stilettos. (There are also men. Maybe five of them.) But if you squint and look for a general appearance trend, this is it: They look like your mom. They look kind, comforting, domestic, as if they are wearing perfume made from Fleischmann's yeast.

The real pros are fluent in every genre. Paranormal romance -- ghosts, vampires -- is big, though the market might be reaching saturation. Jane Austen-era stuff always does well, though one industry expert confidently says, "I think Victorian is the next Regency," which makes everyone in earshot go "Ooh." The array of titles at a massive book signing reveals the wide gamut of what turns people on: "Lord of Bondage," "My Sexy Greek Summer," "Alien Overnight," "Diving in Deep." That last one is a gay, swimming-themed romance written by one straight woman for other straight women.

Slate magazine suggests publishing risks being 'Napstered' (Link):

While publishers, authors, and agents are well within their rights to attempt to maximize profits by forcing e-book prices up, their efforts may backfire. Put off by higher prices, readers who have grown accustomed to $9.99 Kindle editions may choose to flout copyright law and turn to the lush "pirate" markets for books on the Internet. It's a simple matter of querying a search engine to find thousands of e-books—best-sellers included—that can be imported without charge into a Kindle, a Sony Reader, personal computer, or smart phone.

What has kept illegal e-books from taking off? First, all the electronic reading gadgets on the market are subpar, if you ask me, making the reading of books, newspapers, magazines, and even cereal boxes painful. The resolution is poor. The fonts are crap. The navigation is chunky.

Ironically Amazon.com removes purchased copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindle - and they don't even replace the 'illegitimate' copies with new ones (Link):

People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.” Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of “1984” appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said. Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.

FT Editor says most news organizations will be charging for content within a year and he also speaks about the balance between News Bloggers and journalists (Link):

"I do not wish to sound precious. British journalism has always put a premium on the scoop and it has long blurred the distinction between news and comment," said Barber.

"The rise of bloggers may simply signal the last gasp of the age of deference, not just in politics but also in general social mores in Britain, America and elsewhere. Nor does it follow that the worldwide web has dumbed down journalism.

"On the contrary: it has created opportunities to "smarten up". News organisations with specialist skills and knowledge have the opportunity to thrive. The mediocre middle is much more at risk."

Profile of textbook rental company Chegg.com (Link)

There is plenty of secret sauce to Chegg’s business, including logistics and software to determine the pricing and sourcing of books, as well as how many times a given book can be rented. The savings can vary from book to book. A macroeconomics textbook that retails for $122 was available on Chegg for $65 for one semester; an organic chemistry title retailing for $123 was offered for $33. (Round-trip shipping can add $4 to a book.)

Those kinds of savings are turning students into fans, Mr. Safka said. “Word of mouth,” he said, “has put wind in the company’s sails.”

A set of presentations on digital standards from the ALA conderence (Link):

The market for e-books has expanded rapidly in the past year and the release of new readers, along with the ever increasing amount of new content, makes it likely this growth will continue. On July 10, 2009, BISG and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) co-hosted their third annual standards forum, providing a big-picture look at the development and impact of common e-book standards, and a discussion of the pain points that persist

Coverage of the ALA meeting in Chicago from Library Journal:

Library Journal and School Library Journal's up-to-the-minute coverage of the American Library Association's (ALA) annual conference, to be held in Chicago July 9–July 15, 2009. Breaking news, views, developments, and live reports from the show floor. Check back often for updates via bookmark or RSS.

In Spain their 'big three' have joined together to create a digital content distributor (Link):

Planeta, Random House Mondadori, and Santillana, which together make up some 70% of the market, are joining forces to set up a digital distribution company for ebooks. This initiative will go hand in hand with a major marketing effort starting with a splashy launch of e-books and e-readers this holiday season through at least one major retailer. They have set a goal of having every frontlist title able to be published simultaneously in both print and ebook form by mid 2011.