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Monday, November 15, 2021
Quarterly Newsletter: Publishing News and Articles of Interest
Monday, November 01, 2021
Media Week (Vol 9, No 10): Supply Chain Issues, Elsevier, Cengage, Wikipedia, AP & Blockchain + More
Elsevier and American Chemical Society remove 200,000 articles from ResearchGate (ChemistryWorld)
The academic social networking site ResearchGate has removed about 200,000 files from among the research papers it publicly shares, prompted by a spate of new copyright complaints from Elsevier and the American Chemical Society (ACS). ResearchGate, which is based in Germany and has more than 20 million users, says the majority of these files were Elsevier articles.
While requests to delete material from ResearchGate are not new, these most recent requests were notable because of the number of articles involved. ‘In the context of a community of over 20 million researchers this is unfortunate, rather than existential, but it has sparked an acute reaction from many of our members who believe in the importance of open science.
Also - Deadline looms as UK Universities reject Elsevier deal (TimesHEd)
Cengage launches "Cengage Infuse" to support faculty with digital instructional materials (PressRelease)
Cengage Infuse is a first-of-its-kind, digital learning solution that leverages LMS functionality for course set up and management. From set up to assignments and quizzes, no one ever needs to leave the LMS, which eliminates confusion for students on where they need to go to locate materials and complete assignments.
Developed with the input of more than 600 faculty and 400 students across 500 institutions, Cengage Infuse was created using a human-centered design approach. The collaborative process began with discussions to understand instructor needs and pain points, especially those who were not using digital tools, and led to the formation of an advisory board and Development Partners program which informed the iterative design, development, and testing of Cengage Infuse.
Wiley has acquired an editorial services company (Wiley)
J&J Editorial provides expert offerings in editorial operations, production, copy editing, system support and consulting, allowing more than 120 clients to publish world-class titles that power the global knowledge ecosystem.
What's going on with the book supply chain? (Vox)
According to industry tracker NPD Bookscan, printed book sales have increased 13.2 percent from 2020 to 2021, and 21 percent from 2019 to 2021.“Usually a good year means going up maybe 3 or 4 percent,” says NPD books analyst Kristen McLean. “The growth that we saw last year and this year is pretty unprecedented.” McLean says it’s clear that the pandemic is what’s driving the growth in book sales, in part because of what kind of books are selling well and which aren’t. As global lockdowns began in March of 2020, sales of traditionally high-performing categories like self-help books and business books plummeted, while sales of educational books for home-bound kids and first aid books for emergency preppers took off
...
Paper, ink, and printing presses are all at a premium right now. There’s not enough of any of them, and what we do have costs a lot.
How do you turn casual, infrequent visitors to your website into subscribers. Take note of the newspaper industry (NiemanLab)
Cater to light readers. Stories and topics that attract your light readers will succeed with your heavy readers, too. But it doesn’t work the other way around. “Almost by definition, light-reading subscribers are more selective in what they read on the website than heavy users,” the INMA report notes. “It seems clear that it’s better to concentrate on boosting the engagement of lighter readers rather than maximizing the engagement of those who are already heavily invested in your product.” Heavy readers and fans bring the highest lifetime value and help fund future growth, the report notes. But the majority of subscribers will be light readers. Every publisher, INMA argues, should be segmenting and studying this audience.
Ever wondered how Wikipedia works and doesn't turn in to a personal promotional vehicle? You can't just write what you want. (WAPO)
In a world of inequality, we are well accustomed to rich, powerful, connected people getting preferential treatment, whether a good table at a restaurant, admission to a selective college for their offspring or a torn-up speeding ticket. Despite its countercultural tendencies, the digital world has wound up in a quite similar place. On large platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, the most important, newsworthy users are given VIP treatment. Their voices are amplified; their misdeeds are excused; they are, up to a point (see: Trump), freed from the automated policing that the rest of us have to endure. The notable exception is Wikipedia. There, VIPs have been shouting “Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?!” for years, only to be told either, not really, or, don’t care, and then instructed, as Eastman was, to take their objections to a Talk page where the community can weigh in.
Is Amazon Changing the Novel? In the new literary landscape, readers are customers, writers are service providers, and books are expected to offer instant gratification. (NewYorker)
Hence McGurl’s focus on the explosion of genre fiction—the bulk of
fiction produced today. Here we find the estuary where books merge with
Amazon’s service ethos, its resolve to be “Earth’s most customer-centric
company.” Genre has, of course, always been an organizing principle in
book marketing. The shiny embossed titles of the books on the spinning
rack at an airport kiosk promise a hit of reliable pleasure to readers
craving a Robert Ludlum thriller or a Nora Roberts love story. But
Amazon brings such targeting to the next level. Romance readers can
classify themselves as fans of “Clean & Wholesome” or “Paranormal”
or “Later in Life.” And Amazon, having tracked your purchases, has the
receipts—and will serve you suggestions accordingly. These micro-genres
deliver on a hyper-specific promise of quality, but also end up
reinforcing the company’s promise of quantity. What else does genre
guarantee but variations on a trusted formula, endlessly iterated to
fill up a Kindle’s bottomless library?
From Australia, a review of different publishing model experiments (ArtsHub)
AP is making its reporting data available on the blockchain via Chainlink (AP)
The availability of AP’s datasets via Chainlink comes as smart contracts — tamper-proof computer programs that trigger outcomes when certain conditions are met — are growing in popularity, especially in industries like decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs.
“Chainlink technology is the ideal way to provide smart contract developers anywhere in the world with direct, on-demand access to AP’s trusted economic, sports, and race call data” said Dwayne Desaulniers, AP director of blockchain and data licensing. “Working with Chainlink allows this information to be compatible with any blockchain. The open-source software is reliable, secure, and widely used across leading blockchain networks.”
More from my Flipboard magazine.
Monday, October 11, 2021
Monday, October 04, 2021
Business Transformation and Technology Improvement - Podcast Episode with Michael Cairns
Something a little new for me: I was asked for an interview on Klopotek Radio a few months ago and the episode has just been released. Here are the release notes which accompanied the broadcast.
I've considered doing a podcast for a few years now and a colleague and I are considering launching something soon.
Release notes:
Business Transformation and Technology Improvement – podcast with Michael Cairns Michael Cairns is the CEO and founder of Information Media Partners, a business strategy consulting firm. With a wide career span in publishing and information products, services, and B2B categories, Michael has held executive roles at several publishing companies including Macmillan, Berlitz, and R.R. Bowker.
He has also held board positions with the Association of American Publishers, the Book Industry Study Group, and the International ISBN Agency where he served as Chairman.
In this [Klopotek Radio] episode, Michael shares his experience as a consultant helping content-centric business owners to transform their businesses and improve their technology. He talks about his passion for figuring out problems and setting out a roadmap to solve them. Michael also gives his thoughts on how publishing models and media businesses are transforming and evolving during the pandemic and post-pandemic era.
Besides that, you will also hear Michael talk about,
- How can content-centric firms better assess their business needs for being fit for digital change?
- How could companies evaluate their current technology to better understand where they compete?
- What organizations can do to achieve a smooth digital transformation.
The release news of the annual publishing technology market survey, published by Information Media Partners, Publishing Technology Market Report – 2021. Himself, a book lover, and a marathon runner, and why he would like to have dinner with Muhammad Ali and have a coffee with Barack Obama.
We hope you’ll enjoy listening to this episode and share it with others you think may be interested.
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
MediaWeek (Vol 14, No 8) Pearson Sues Chegg, B&N goes COVID Book Crazy, UK Copyright, Open Access Policies + More
Pearson plc is suing Chegg for Copyright Infringement over test packs. (CourtListener)
As part of Pearson’s focus on pedagogy, Pearson and its authors devote significant creative effort to develop effective, imaginative, and engaging questions to include in the textbooks it publishes. Pearson’s end-of-chapter questions are strategically designed and carefully calibrated to reinforce key concepts taught in the textbooks, test students’ comprehension of these issues, enhance students’ problem-solving skills, and, ultimately, improve students’ understanding of the subject matter. Pearson’s textbooks can contain hundreds or thousands of end-of-chapter questions. These end-of-chapter questions form core components of the teaching materials contained in Pearson textbooks and are frequently hallmarks of Pearson titles. As such, the availability, quality, and utility of these questions are often important considerations when educators select which textbooks to adopt for their courses.
Barnes & Noble has done well during COVID. News reports suggest double digit growth unseen 'since before Amazon (NYPost)
Industrywide, US sales of books are up 12 percent so far this year through August compared to the same period a year ago — and up 20 percent from 2019 over the same time period, according NPD Group, a market research company. CEO James Daunt says B&N sales have risen 6 percent since 2019.Jon Enoch Photography
“Double-digit growth in books has not happened since Amazon came along,” Barnes & Noble Chief Executive James Daunt told The Post in an interview.
Those kinds of numbers are encouraging for Elliott, a fund known for taking big positions in public companies and agitating for change: In this case, it bought B&N whole as a fixer-upper. A source familiar with the matter says Elliott is about halfway through its plan that would eventually spin the bookseller back onto the public markets — or sell it to another private buyer.
Guardian Opinion on proposed changes to UK copyright law:
It might sound like good news for book lovers too, but only in the short term. While books might become a bit cheaper, the long-term loss for readers has the potential to far overshadow the gain. “The loss of revenue will make publishers more risk-averse and close down access for new work,” Hilary Mantel has warned, with knock-on effects including cramping the innovation that feeds our film and TV industries.
Researchers and publishers respond to new UK open-access policy (Physics World)
IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, broadly welcomes the UKRI’s new open-access policy, which it says “aligns with our mission to expand physics globally”. However, it thinks that the requirement for researchers to deposit the final version of a manuscript in a repository under no embargo will be “harmful to the significant OA progress already made”. “This approach cannot form the basis for an economically viable publishing model for physics journals seeking to maintain the highest standards of peer review and publication.”
That view is echoed by the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM), which says it is “deeply concerned” that the UKRI policy gives equivalent status to the “subscription-tied accepted manuscript and the full OA publication of the version of record”. This, the STM says, could “jeopardize the continued progress of the open-access publishing transition by enabling an entirely unsustainable route”. The STM urges the UKRI board to “carefully consider these issues”.
An App called Libby (New Yorker)
The sudden shift to e-books had enormous practical and financial implications, not only for OverDrive but for public libraries across the country. Libraries can buy print books in bulk from any seller that they choose, and, thanks to a legal principle called the first-sale doctrine, they have the right to lend those books to any number of readers free of charge. But the first-sale doctrine does not apply to digital content. For the most part, publishers do not sell their e-books or audiobooks to libraries—they sell digital distribution rights to third-party venders, such as OverDrive, and people like Steve Potash sell lending rights to libraries. These rights often have an expiration date, and they make library e-books “a lot more expensive, in general, than print books,” Michelle Jeske, who oversees Denver’s public-library system, told me. Digital content gives publishers more power over prices, because it allows them to treat libraries differently than they treat other kinds of buyers. Last year, the Denver Public Library increased its digital checkouts by more than sixty per cent, to 2.3 million, and spent about a third of its collections budget on digital content, up from twenty per cent the year before.
Wuthering fights! Will this priceless book collection be preserved or broken up at auction? (Stephan Fry -Airmail)
Barnes & Noble Education Financial Results (Edgar)The story in brief: over their lifetimes, a pair of childless, mid–19th century North Country millowner brothers named William and Alfred Law assembled, with knowledge and discernment, a private collection of books and manuscripts. This library passed to successive descendants for a century, neither supplemented, catalogued, nor open to visitation by academics or enthusiasts—save on a few occasions which served only to enhance the legend of the collection’s existence. And now the entirety is for sale at Sotheby’s in London.
Very little is known about the Laws, but their taste and judgment give the lie to that snooty stereotype—vented if not invented by Dickens in Hard Times—of the hard-nosed industrialist for whom art and books are nowt but fancy folderols for fops and fools.
- Versus same period last year: Revenues up $40mm and Net Income flat on higher selling and admin costs
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Financial results (Edgar)
- Revenues up 30% for same quarter in 2020
- Significant improvement in Net Income
- Gain on sale of trade business $218mm
Publishing Technology Report 2021 - Insight into software and services companies supporting publishers and content owners.
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Building a Subway (Map): Annual Publishing Technology Report
As semi-frequent readers may know, I have been publishing a market research report reviewing technology companies which support publishing companies. My next report will be published in mid-September and, as I thought about how I would like to display the market environment for this version, I decided to try to depict the companies graphically in a "subway" map.
It turned out to be harder than I anticipated. I like the result which I will present in the next weeks but there were a lot of twists and turns (and what-have-yous). I thought it would be interesting to show how this came together.
Firstly, I listed all the companies I wanted to cover in a spreadsheet and then added color coded the functional 'modules' attributed to each company. Initially, I had many more columns with software capabilities but this became unmanageable so I consolidated into 13 specific capabilities. This is an example of the spreadsheet:
This document became my 'control' document and I eventually identified over 200 companies. As I worked through the process of identifying which capability applied to which company I also concluded that these would define the 'stops' on my eventual subway map.
The difficulty in drawing the map was trying to determine the overlaps and the stops which would apply to multiple companies and to draw the map so it would appear logical. This was much harder than it sounds and I went through many iterations.
As the following images show:
It was this version I sent to Upwork as a first draft.
Eventually, I was satisfied with a drawn draft and I posted a job on Upwork (which I had never used before). I found someone at $45/hour (not the cheapest) who did great work. If anything he was too literal in translating my drawing into Illustrator but correcting this was a matter of iterating through versions.
I estimate I spent 40 hours on this - which I admit was probably a bit much. But that said, I think the final map looks pretty good. I am even thinking mugs and t-shirts (so let me know).
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
McKinsey Research: Getting Real about Hybrid Work
What's on tap for business executives as they contemplate return to work polices. Don't take anything for granted (McKinsey)
Many employers, keen to establish some sense of normalcy quickly, are focused on answering simple logistical questions that give them a sense of control. These questions typically focus on the number of days that employees will be in the office, collaboration tools they will use, and policies on pay levels and norms for meeting behaviors. While the answers to them can help employees who are seeking a measure of pragmatism for what comes next, they are typically accompanied by a message that the “finish line” is in sight and that we will soon enter a period of normalcy that will be the standard for many years to come.
In the enthusiasm about the return from remote working, business leaders run the risk of actually increasing the disconnect between themselves and their people. The idea that we will cross a finish line and suddenly be done with all the hard stuff seems to exist only in the minds of senior leaders.
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