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Off The Cuff: What are the important issues facing publishing?

At a soiree the other day someone (not in the industry) asked me the above question, so with martini in hand I threw off the following:

Firstly, the transformation from print to digital (obvious) but in that transformation the impact on every aspect of how a business is run: From author relationships to product delivery.  It is this latter piece that most executives & managers don't immediately understand.  Looking back retrospectively on some of the transformations I have gone through I am often amazed that we (as a management team) didn’t see some of the problems we faced but thankfully we became very attuned, very quickly to the different signals that present themselves in a digital publishing environment versus the print world.  As people suggest, it is like running two companies at once but I’ve found it is more than that because in the new world you have no frame of reference and you must form that very quickly.

Second, the 'unit' of sale is beginning to change.  For example, we see this in increased permissions revenues where users are proactively looking for (just) an article or chapter or business case.  This trend will manifest itself most immediately in the education market where content is becoming disaggregated and faculty (and administrators) execute more control over content choice.  At the opposite end of the value chain in content creation, the 'unit' may not be a book (as in the old world) but it could be a set of services providing deeper engagement with the content or a set of public appearances and direct connections with the author.  In truth, it’s likely to be both types and many other similar variations and changes to the ‘unit’.   Closely related to this paradigm change is the issue(s) of discoverability which often manifests itself in the depth and relevance of metadata.  Increasingly metadata will define success for content owners (even more important that it is now) because the best, most complete and comprehensive metadata will drive revenues.  As content becomes more flexible (XML workflow) in composition and delivery the metadata that describes this content will determine success of failure if the content can’t be discovered by the user when they need it.

Third customers are becoming more amorphous; publishers will still work with a buyer who buys a category for an entire chain but they are increasingly working directly with 'the wo/man on the street' who not only wants a direct relationship with the author and/or the content but also wants the content on multiple devices, in different contexts and possibly with different applications built in depending on what their objectives are.

Fourth, there is also the challenge of content pricing and in particular journal pricing.  This is a real issue but oddly less so for Big Dutch Publisher (BDP) because a very large publisher will have the resources to provide value-add to replace/offset the revenue that may be lost as more content is provided via free resources.   What may worry BDP is whether a community or marketplace could evolve around some of these free access points (PubMed for example) that, via collective effort, are somehow able to support/provide a similar level of value-added service that BDP does but also make those additions as free as the content.  That might be hard to image but not impossible.

 Not bad for off the cuff and all in all, a very exciting time to be in publishing.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 49) Library World Overview, OCLC

A catch-up on what's going on in library land that I didn't intend to be an OCLC catalog of achievement yet that's what seems to have happened.  Most everyone else (vendors, content suppliers, etc.) seem to have been quiet over the past 6mths.  Especially interesting however is the LJ overview of the market which is their annual review from March.  If you haven't kept up to date on what's going on specifically with vendors in the library world give this a read.


Highlights:

• NEXT SPACE: OCLC WorldShare: Sharing at Webscale (LINK)
• More Libraries Join Worldshare Platform (LINK)
• OCLC Improves Worldshare Metadata Program (LINK)
• WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (LINK)
• From March 2012 a Library Journal review of the library automation business (LJ):

Other News:

• GoodReads and OCLC to work together (LINK)
• OCLC Continues to Add Publisher Content (LINK)

Presentations and Research:

• A joint OHIOLINK/OCLC project to determine how library resources can be used more effectively (LINK)
• Libraries in 2020 – Pew Report (LINK)
• Richard Walis Presentation on Linked Data to OCLC Members Committee Meeting (LINK)
• The OCLC Global Council meeting was webcast live.
• From Charleston Conference: The Digital Public Library of America (LINK)

Highlights:

NEXT SPACE: OCLC WorldShare: Sharing at Webscale (LINK)

Libraries are built on a foundation of sharing. They are the places where communities bring together important, unique and valuable resources for the benefit of all. OCLC WorldShare extends those values to allow all members to benefit from the shared data, services and applications contributed by each individual institution.

OCLC WorldShare is more than a new set of services and applications. It is the philosophy and strategy that will guide the cooperative in its efforts to help member libraries operate, innovate, connect, collaborate and succeed at Webscale. WorldCat data provides the foundation for WorldShare services. And WorldCat discovery and delivery applications help connect information seekers to library resources.
While the philosophy is broad, it also includes two very real, very specific sets of resources that can help libraries make the move to Webscale today: the OCLC WorldShare Platform and OCLC WorldShare Management Services.

More Libraries Join Worldshare Platform  (LINK)

OCLC WorldShare Management Services enable libraries to share infrastructure costs and resources, as well as collaborate in ways that free them from the restrictions of local hardware and software. Libraries using WorldShare Management Services find that they are able to reduce the time needed for traditional tasks and free staff time for higher-priority services.

"We selected WorldShare Management Services because we really wanted to get away from managing servers and back-office infrastructure and focus more of our time on working with student- and faculty-specific projects," said Stanley J. Wilder, University Librarian, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of the newest members of the WorldShare Management Services community. "Plus, we wanted the ability to manage all of our various library services under one platform—using true multi-tenancy architecture that also would allow UNCC to benefit from cloud-based collaboration among our library peers."

UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s urban research university. It is the fourth largest campus among the 17 institutions of The University of North Carolina system and the largest institution of higher education in the Charlotte region.
Among the new subscribers to OCLC WorldShare Management Services:
•    College of the Siskiyous (Weed, California)
•    De Anza College (Cupertino, California)
•    Glendale Community College (Glendale, California)
•    Indiana Institute of Technology (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
•    Iona College (New Rochelle, New York)
•    Lake Tahoe Community College (South Lake Tahoe, California)
•    Mt. San Antonio College (Walnut, California)
•    Nashotah House (Nashotah, Wisconsin)
•    North Central University (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
•    Northwestern Oklahoma State University (Alva, Oklahoma)
•    Saint Leo University (St. Leo, Florida)
•    San Bernardino Valley College (San Bernardino, California)
•    The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, California)
•    Tyndale University College & Seminary (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
•    The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
•    Westminster College (New Wilmington, Pennsylvania)

OCLC WorldShare Management Services were released for general availability in the United States 16 months ago. Today, a total of 148 libraries have signed agreements to use the new services and 52 sites are already live.

WorldShare Metadata collection management automatically delivers WorldCat MARC records for electronic materials and ensures the metadata and access URLs for these collections are continually updated, providing library users better access to these materials, and library staff more time for other priorities.

OCLC Improves Worldshare Metadata Program (LINK)

OCLC worked with libraries in North America to beta test the new functionality as part of OCLC WorldShare Metadata services. Pilots of the new functionality are planned in different regions around the world.

"The WorldShare Metadata collection management service is a step forward because we can now use the records in the WorldCat database to provide access to our electronic collections in a way that incorporates access changes quickly and easily," said Sarah Haight Sanabria, Electronic Resources Cataloger, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, who participated in the beta test.

Libraries use the collection management functionality to define and configure e-book and other electronic collections in the WorldCat knowledge base. They then automatically receive initial and updated, customized WorldCat MARC records for all e-titles from one source. With the combination of WorldCat knowledge base holdings, WorldCat holdings and WorldCat MARC records, library users gain access to the same set of titles and content in WorldCat Local, WorldCat.org, the local library catalog or other discovery interfaces.

OCLC WorldShare Metadata collection management services are available to all libraries with an OCLC cataloging subscription and work with other components of OCLC WorldShare Management Services as well as other library systems.

WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (LINK)

The release of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan represents the first large migration of OCLC member libraries to the OCLC WorldShare Platform, where they will benefit from expanded integration across a growing number of services. The platform will enable library staff and others to develop applications that will help them connect the service with other services in use within their libraries. They may also use the new service it in conjunction with other components of OCLC WorldShare Management Services.

The phased rollout of the service has begun and will continue through December 2013. Open migration for all WorldCat Resource Sharing users will begin in February 2013 and continue until the end of access to WorldCat Resource Sharing on December 31, 2013.

OCLC has invited a small group of libraries with a low volume of borrowing-only interlibrary loan activity to participate in the initial 90-day managed migration currently in progress. Participation in the next managed migration group, scheduled to begin in October 2012, will be open to interested WorldCat Resource Sharing librarians whose normal interlibrary loan activities can be supported by available functionality in the service before its full release in February.

From March 2012 a Library Journal review of the library automation business (LJ):

In 2011, the library automation economy—the total revenues (including international) of all companies with a significant presence in the United States and Canada—was $750 million. This estimate does not necessarily compare directly to 2010’s $630 million, as this year’s estimate includes a higher proportion of revenues from OCLC, EBSCO, and other sources previously unidentified. (Using the same formula, 2010 industry revenues would be estimated at $715 million.)

As OCLC becomes ever more involved as competition in the library automation industry, we have performed a more detailed analysis of what proportion of its revenues derive from products and services comparable to other companies considered in this report. Of OCLC’s FY11 revenue of $205.6 million, we calculate that $57.7 million falls within that scope.

A broader view of the global library automation industry that aggregates revenues of all companies offering library automation products and services across the globe totals $1.76 billion, including those involved with radio-frequency identification (RFID), automated handling equipment, and self-check, or $1.45 billion excluding them. Library automation revenues limited to the United States total around $450 million.

The overall library economy continues to suffer major cutbacks that may never be fully restored, so library automation vendors are facing enormous challenges to find growth opportunities. Libraries may only be able to justify investments for tools that enable them to operate with fewer resources. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments, for example, result in revenue gains through subscription fees commensurate with delivering a more complete package of services, including hosting; libraries see overall savings as they eliminate local servers and their associated costs. Stronger companies can increase their slice by taking on competitors with weaker products, especially those in international regions.

The ongoing trend of open source integrated library systems (ILSs) cannot be discounted. Open source ILS implementations shift revenues from one set of companies to another, often at lower contract values relative to proprietary software. Scenarios vary, so it’s difficult to determine whether these implementations result in true savings in total ownership costs and to what extent costs shift back to the libraries or their consortial or regional support offices.

The above comes from the management summary and there are more detailed reports as follows:
•    Three-Year Sales Trends by Category
•    2011 Personnel Trends
•    2011 Sales by Category
•    Discovery Trends
•    Company Profiles

OTHER NEWS:

GoodReads and OCLC to work together ((LINK)

The new agreement pledges to improve Goodreads members’ experience of finding fresh, new things to read through libraries. It will also provide libraries with a way to reach this key group of dedicated readers through social media. As a WorldCat.org traffic partner since 2007, Goodreads has sent more than 5 million Web referrals to WorldCat.org.

“We are always looking to give the Goodreads community even more ways to connect with their favorite titles and authors,” explains Patrick Brown, Community Manager for Goodreads. “Linking to libraries through WorldCat and OCLC has always been important to Goodreads, and this agreement helps ensure that our more than 12 million members find their local library and that their local library finds them.”

The expanded partnership includes several components:
•    A joint marketing effort to get libraries to join the Goodreads site and create a library “group” page, which will now be listed at the top of the groups page.
•    Engagement reports from Goodreads that show how many libraries have joined and created group pages and how fast membership is growing for individual libraries on Goodreads.
•    An upcoming webinar held specifically for librarians and library staff members, to learn more about Goodreads and how to optimize the library’s presence.
•    Library-specific promotional materials to encourage patron participation in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 during the month of November.
•    A discussion session planned for ALA Midwinter 2013 to hear library feedback and solicit ideas for additional visibility and collaboration.

OCLC and Amazon (LINK)

OCLC WorldShare platform has an Amazon app that takes information about orders from the OCLC acquisitions web service and combines it with pricing and availability information from Amazon.  You can then see pricing and availability for titles and choose to purchase them from Amazon via a cart created on the fly.   (see p. 12)

Authority Control for Researchers: Orcid is another attempt at author/contributor authority (LINK)

Wouldn’t it be great if we had authority control for every researcher?  Of course, we do spend lots of time on authority work already but efforts are underway “to solve the author name ambiguity problem in scholarly communication.”  The ORCID project (http://about.orcid.org/) aims to resolve this ambiguity by issuing unique identifiers to authors.  The next stages of this project will focus on three areas:
•    “Allowing researchers to claim their profiles in an open environment that transcends geographic and national boundaries, discipline, and institutional constraints
•    Allowing researchers to delegate control of the ongoing management of their profile to their institution
•    Providing an interoperable platform for federated exchange of profile information with systems supplied by publishers, grant managers, research assessment tools, and other organizations in the scholarly community”
What is ORCID?
ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers.  ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors, and national boundaries and in its cooperation with other identifier systems.  ORCID works with the research community to identify opportunities for integrating ORCID identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance, manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications. 

ORCID provides two core functions:  (1) a registry to obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities, and (2) APIs that support system-to-system communication and authentication.  ORCID makes its code available under an open source license, and will post an annual public data file under a CCO waiver for free download. 

The ORCID Registry is available free of charge to individuals, who may obtain an ORCID, manage their record of activities, and search for others in the Registry.  Organizations may become members to link their records to ORCID identifiers, to update ORCID records, to receive updates from ORCID, and to register their employees and students for ORCID identifiers.

OCLC Continues to Add Publisher Content (LINK)

OCLC has signed new agreements with leading publishers around the world and has added important new content and collections to WorldCat Local, the OCLC discovery and delivery service that offers users integrated access to more than 922 million items.

WorldCat Local offers access to books, journals and databases from a variety of publishers and content providers from around the world; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust and Google Books; open access materials, such as the OAIster collection; and the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat.

WorldCat Local is available as a stand-alone discovery and delivery service, and as part of OCLC WorldShare Management Services. Through WorldCat Local, users have access to more than 1,700 databases and collections, and more than 650 million articles.

OCLC recently signed agreements with the following content providers to add important new collections—including some searchable full text—to WorldCat Local, WorldCat.org and OCLC WorldShare Management Services:

June Announcement of earlier publisher additions (Link)

Presentations and Research:

A joint OHIOLINK/OCLC project to determine how library resources can be used more effectively
(LINK) via (Ohio Library Director)

This OCLC report by Julia Gammon (Akron) and Ed O’Neill (OCLC) was conducted to “gain a better understanding of how the resources of OhioLINK libraries are being used and to identify how the limited resources of OhioLINK member libraries can be utilized more effectively.”  The study collected and analyzed circulation data for books (30 million items in the final set used for analysis) in the OhioLINK union catalog using FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) analysis.  It would take me pages to explain what FRBR does, but put most simply, it helps you look at items from a title level (all formats and types of holdings) rather than each type of format of the same content as separate.  Check out page 14 for a better explanation of FRBR.

For those of you looking for new research projects, the full data set for individual institutions is available from the project website at http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/ohiolink/circulation.htm.  Figure 3 in the report shows the spreadsheets for OSU.

Here are a few conclusions that the authors draw
•    “The academic richness and histories of the OhioLINK member institutions are reflected in the uniqueness of their library collections. Unique items are not limited to a few large institutions but are widely distributed across many different types of member institutions. The membership should avoid collection practices that homogenize the state-wide collection through unnecessary duplication.
•    Individual institution members commented with surprise on the low use of their non-English language collections. Further study is needed to discover potential causes and trends of these collections’ usage patterns.
•    The most fascinating result of the study was a test of the “80/20” rule. Librarians have long espoused the belief that 80% of a library’s circulation is driven by approximately 20% of the collection. The analysis of a year’s statewide circulation statistics would indicate that 80% of the circulation is driven by just 6% of the collection.”

Libraries in 2020 – Pew Report (LINK) 
Richard Walis Presentation on Linked Data to OCLC Members Committee Meeting (LINK)
The OCLC Global Council meeting was webcast live. 
From Charleston Conference: The Digital Public Library of America (LINK)

Pew Report: Libraries 2020

This presentation was made in June 2012. The conclusions are very much towards the end of the presentation regarding the role of the librarian and the expected needs of the library user.  The author uses some research data on use of the library, reading accessibility and mobile penetration to extrapolate the changes that may be engendered.

Libraries 2020: Imagining the library of the (not too distant) future from Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project

LOC: International Summit of the Book

A 1 1/2 day summit event at the Library of Congress next week which they hope to turn into "an annual global meeting of minds to discuss and promote the book as a crucial format for conveying societies' scholarship and culture" (LOC).

Here is the schedule (apologies for the formatting).

Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012
Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building

2:00-2:20 p.m. Welcome: Hon. John Larson (CT), U.S. House of Representatives and Hon. Jack Reed (RI), U.S. Senate
Introduction: James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress
Announcement of Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program:
David M. Rubenstein, Managing Director, Carlyle Group
Remarks: Robert Forrester, President & CEO, Newman's Own Foundation

2:20-3:00 p.m. Keynote: Ismail Serageldin, Director, Bibliotheca Alexandrina

3:00-3:45 p.m. Perspectives on the History of the Book: A Conversation with Elizabeth Eisenstein
Elizabeth Eisenstein, historian of early printing
Daniel DeSimone, Rosenwald Curator,
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

3:45-5:00 p.m. National Library Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future of the Book
Moderator: Sarah Thomas, Bodley's Librarian, University of Oxford
Commentator: John Van Oudenaren, Director, World Digital Library
Caroline Brazier, Director of Scholarship and Collections, The British Library
Glòria Pérez-Salmerón, Director, National Library of Spain
Ramón Mujica Pinilla, Director, National Library of Peru
Anton Likhomanov, Director General, National Library of Russia
John Kgwale Tsebe, National Librarian of South Africa

5:00-5:45 p.m. The Law Through the Book
Emily E. Kadens, Professor of Law, University of Texas at Austin

5:45-6:30 p.m. The Enduring Legacy of Thomas Jefferson's Collection
Mark Dimunation, Chief, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

Friday, Dec. 7, 2012

Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building

9:30-10:15 a.m. Welcome: James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress
Reading is Not an Option: A Conversation Between Walter Dean Myers, National Ambassador for
Young People's Literature and John Y. Cole, Director, Center for the Book, Library of Congress

10:15-11:15 a.m. The Role of Cultural Institutions in Fostering the Future of the Book
Moderator and Commentator: Sir Harold Evans, Editor at Large, Reuters; Author, “The American Century”
Jim Leach, Chairman, NEH
Carla D. Hayden, Chief Executive Officer, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
Ira Silverberg, Literature Director, National Endowment for the Arts

11:15-12:00 p.m. Copyright and the Book: A Conversation about Authors, Publishers and the Public Interest
Moderator: Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights & Director, U.S. Copyright Office
Tom Allen, President & CEO, Association of American Publishers
James S. Shapiro, Shakespearean Scholar, Columbia University; Vice President, Authors Guild
Peter Jaszi, Professor of Copyright Law, American University

1:30-3:00 p.m. The Publishing World Yesterday and Today
Moderator: Marie Arana, Author; Literary Critic; Senior Consultant, Library of Congress
Nan Talese, Senior Vice President and Publisher, Doubleday
Geoffrey Kloske, President and Publisher, Riverhead/Penguin Books
Karen Lotz, President and Publisher, Candelwick Press
Niko Pfund, President and Publisher, Oxford University Press

3:00-4:30 p.m. Using Lessons of the Past to Guide the Future
Moderator: Michael Suarez, University of Virginia Professor and Director, Rare Book School
Karen Keninger, Chief, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Thomas Mallon, Novelist, Critic, Director Creative Writing Program, George Washington University
Fenella G. France, Chief, Preservation, Restoration & Test Division, Library of Congress

4:30-5:00 p.m. “Passing the Torch” Ceremony
Hon. John Larson (CT), U.S. House of Representatives
James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress
Robert Forrester, President & CEO, Newman's Own Foundation
Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore
Elaine Ng, CEO, National Library Board Singapore

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 48): History & Future of Books - Video with O'Reilly, Friedman, Auletta on Charlie Rose, Follett CEO, The Friendly Intenet + more

A discussion about the history and future of books with Tim O'Reilly, Jane Friedman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ken Auletta, and David Kastan




Library Journal (Digital Shift) reports on the appointment of Mary Lee Schneider to CEO of $2.1Billion Follett Corporation.

In a signal that Follett Corporation is stepping up its digital efforts, the company’s board of directors has unanimously appointed Mary Lee Schneider to the position of president and chief executive officer. Schneider, who takes the reins on November 26, will be the first CEO in the $2.7 billion, privately-held company’s nearly 140-year history who is not a member of the Follett family and one of a handful of women to head a corporation of Follett’s size.
Schneider was previously president, digital solutions and chief technology officer at RR Donnelly. In that role, she was in charge of growing the Premedia Technologies business, a provider of digital photography, color management, and digital asset management services. She has also served on the Follett board of directors for 11 years.
What does Schneider’s appointment mean for the 65,000 elementary and high schools that rely on Follett for print and digital learning materials, library resources, and school management systems?

Penguin announces their plans to expand eBook lending notible for their selection of B&T rather than Overdrive or 3M (NYTimes):

The Penguin Group plans to announce on Monday that it is expanding its e-book lending program to libraries in Los Angeles and Cleveland and surrounding areas though a new distribution partner. In a pilot program that will begin this year, Penguin has worked with Baker & Taylor, a distributor of print and digital books, to start e-book lending programs in the Los Angeles County library system, which will reach four million people, and the Cuyahoga County system in Ohio.
The terms of lending will be the same as those they have been testing through 3M systems in New York public libraries since September: Penguin will sell any book to the libraries for lending six months after its release date, each book may be lent to only one patron at a time and at the end of a year the library must buy each book again or lose access to it.
Tim McCall, Penguin’s vice president for online sales and marketing, said the company was happy with the 3M pilot, which will continue and expand. “We are learning every month, but I think we have a model that works.”
Through a third partner, OneClickdigital, Penguin will also begin lending digital audiobooks to any library that is interested.

How did the internet get so nice? From NY Magazine:  I Really Like That You Like What I Like

Ten years ago, the web offered the worldview of a disaffected apparatchik and the perils of a Wild West saloon. Brawls broke out frequently; snideness triumphed; perverts, predators, and pettifoggers gathered in dark corners to prey on the lost and naïve. Now, though, the place projects the upbeat vigor of a Zumba session and the fellow-feeling of a neighborhood café. On Facebook, strangers coo at photos of your college roommate’s South American vacation. Op-eds—widely praised—are generously circulated. And warmth flows even where it probably shouldn’t. Today, you find that 27 human beings have “liked” an Instagram photo of your little sister’s breakfast muffin. You learn your best and smartest friend in high school—a girl you swapped big dreams with before falling out of touch—just married some guy with enormous bags under his eyes and the wild, deranged grin of Charlie Sheen. You are vaguely concerned, but the web is not. “Congratulations!!!” someone has written underneath the face of Crazy Rictus Man. “luv you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” enthuses someone else. You count the exclamation points. There are sixteen. You wonder whether there is any Advil close at hand.

On Twitter, where the wonks and witty people are supposed to live, you find yourself lost again on a great plain of goodwill. John Doe, crossing the Twitter threshold, becomes “the brilliant @JohnDoe,” doing “wonderful” things. Videos that crop up are “amazing” or “hilarious”—sometimes both—and “excited” feelings prevail, especially when people are doing things that you cannot. (“Excited to be chatting with the brilliant Marshall Goldsmith at Per Se!!”) Inspiration triumphs. (“Sitting with Angelina Jolie @ #SaveChildren event! So inspiring, people helping humanity.”) Even when it doesn’t, though, people give thanks. (“Thank you needed this!!!” “no thank YOU!”) If you are in a mood to spread the love, which, probably, you are, it’s no problem to pass along your favorite tweets, nicely neutralized. “Retweets aren’t endorsements,” people say, like a newspaper claiming to run George Will’s column just because it happened to be lying around. The more you look, in fact, the harder it seems to find anything on the web that doesn’t read like an endorsement. It’s enough to make a web curmudgeon desperate for a little aloofness or even a few drops of the old bile. When did the Internet get so nice? 

From Twitter:
Much-loved Australian author Bryce Courtenay has died. His publisher has issued a statement: Penguin Australia

BBC - Future - Technology - Will the internet become conscious? BBC Future

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 47): App Developers, Saylor Education, 'Stealing Content', Free Apps + More

Why the App Developer's life is like an author's: lonely, expensive and (generally) anonymous (NYTimes):

For many of the developers not working at traditional companies, moreover, “job” is a misnomer. Streaming Color Studios, a game developer, did a survey of game makers late last year. The 252 respondents, while not a scientifically valid sample and restricted to one segment of the app market, indicated what many people had suspected: the app world is an ecology weighted heavily toward a few winners.
A quarter of the respondents said they had made less than $200 in lifetime revenue from Apple. A quarter had made more than $30,000, and 4 percent had made over $1 million.
A few apps have made it extremely big, including Instagram, the photo-sharing app that was bought by Facebook in April for $1 billion. When app developers dream, they dream of triumphs like that.
Most developers, however, make their money when someone buys or upgrades their app from Apple’s online store, the only place consumers can buy an iPhone or iPad app.
Apple keeps 30 percent of each app sale. While its job creation report trumpets the $6.5 billion the company has paid out in royalties, it does not note that as much as half of that money goes to developers outside the United States. The pie, while growing rapidly, is smaller than it seems.
“My guess is that very few developers make a living off their own apps,” said Jeff Scott, who runs the Apple app review site 148Apps.com and closely tracks developments in the field.

Can Michael Saylor turn education free? (Chronicle):

Academic editors hired by the foundation edit the curated content, which is then posted online. The course then undergoes another round of review by a panel. The result is a curated list of education links that Mr. Saylor and his colleagues say add up to the equivalent of a college major. Since open-source textbooks are difficult to find, the foundation has awarded $20,000 each to four textbook authors willing to relicense their textbooks under Creative Commons.
Despite Mr. Saylor's enthusiasm, the foundation has not gained much momentum yet, said Richard Garrett, vice president of Eduventures, an education consulting company. Though the site offers high-quality academic content, he said, the largely self-paced nature of the courses and the lack of peer engagement could drive students to other online programs instead. "The question is, is it a sufficiently engaging and immersive experience and sufficiently social to command mainstream rather than marginal interest?" he said. "We may be coming to the point now, with the MOOC's commanding so much attention, where we need a bit more glitz and glamour and personality around Saylor to compete."

In New York magazine Boris Kachka disects the Jonah Lehrer (the guy who stole content from himself) but doesn't come up with much of a conclusion (NYMag):

If Lehrer was misusing science, why didn’t more scientists speak up? When I reached out to them, a couple did complain to me, but many responded with shrugs. They didn’t expect anything better. Mark Beeman, who questioned that “needle in the haystack” quote, was fairly typical: Lehrer’s simplifications were “nothing that hasn’t happened to me in many other newspaper stories.”
Even scientists who’ve learned to write for a broad audience can be fatalistic about the endeavor. Kahneman had a surprise best seller in 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow. His writing is dense and subtle, as complicated as pop science gets. But as he once told Dan Ariely, his former acolyte, “There’s no way to write a science book well. If you write it for a general audience and you are successful, your academic colleagues will hate you, and if you write it for academics, nobody would want to read it.”
For a long time, Lehrer avoided the dilemma by assuming it didn’t apply to him, writing not for the scientists (who shrugged off his oversimplifications) or for the editors (who fixed his most obvious errors) but for a large and hungry audience of readers. We only wanted one thing from Jonah Lehrer: a story. He told it so well that we forgave him almost ­everything.

In The Atlantic, are we living in a fools paradise where much of what we value is free? How long will this last?. This is mostly interesting for the comments. (Atlantic)

But what's distinct about many of these innovations is that, unlike the generation of inventions that came out of the 1930s, they're basically free. Phones cost money, data plans are expensive, and Internet connections aren't cheap. But the software products and smart phones apps that some of this generation's smartest young men and women are dedicated their lives to building cost nothing or next to it. Users might considers that observation obvious. And it is. But it's also really, really weird.
The app economy -- a basically free technology revolution that costs nothing to users except our attention -- happened to arrive as millions of people had very little to pay for new products. It was the perfect tech revolution for the perfect moment: Software being the cheapest means of reaching a wide audience; venture capital firms being hungry for hot new services and apps that used software to capture millions of users; and then dangling somewhere in the distant future, the promise of monetization.

From Twitter:

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, aims to build bridges to Kabul with new book The Guardian

Traditional surnames are becoming extinct: farewell to the Footheads and Pauncefoots via  Telegraph

'I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed': retired naval officer's email to children in full Telegraph

Pippa Middleton book number one in Kensington and Chelsea as friends rally round Telegraph

Vacation next week - Have a happy Thanksgiving!