Healy New BISG Executive Director

Congratulations to BISG in the hire of Michael Healy to the Executive Director position. Having worked with Michael on ISBN matters - he succeeded me as Chair of the International ISBN committee - this is an exceptional choice. Michael succeeds Jeff Abraham who rebuilt BISG into relevance and is now with Random House.

International Number: India, China & Turkey

India is the profile nation this year at Frankfurt and as the industry gears up for representation there have been a number of articles on the subject of Indian publishing. This article in the Indian Business Standard suggests that while there has been some change since the last time India was the guest of honor at Frankfurt many of the same issues remain. The local market is still problematic - although it must be stronger than 20 years ago. The middle class in India is significant and has rapidly growing wealth. External markets however are underleveraged and the article calls for more translated titles to open up Indian publishing to the west.

India is also publishing a broader array of products in addition to trade fiction etc. This article surveys some of the new illustrated titles on the way. Introduced with a Seinfeld reference. Gotta love their sense of humor.

Cambridge University Press purchased Foundation Press and formally entered the Indian publishing market.

Here is a little more background on children’s publishing in the South. Interesting to see Scholastic is a player.

Here is an article in the Guardian reporting on preparations for Frankfurt.


In China, Jane Friedman is quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying Harpercollins wants to expand into China. It is the Beijing Bookfair this week.



Lastly, in Turkey, there seems to be an issue on censorship. Not satisfied with simply banning a book that they don't agree with, publishers there are changing some well know Western books. For example, "In Dumas' Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan while on his way to see Aramis is stopped by an old woman who explains: “You can't see him right now. He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness.” At least the government seems to be acting reasonably.

Zoom Cloud

There is some new script on the right of my page that I just added. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not - although I think the technology is really great. I am having second thoughts about Blogger mainly because of the limitation on classification. I will likely change to something more robust. I really didn't know where I was going to go with blogging and thinking about better navigation to content was the least of my concerns when I started. Anyway, this ZoomCloud is a neat half way house for visitors to quickly find some of the content I have produced over the past several months. Let me know what you think.

While I am at it, on the right there is also a link to my web calendar where you can see all kinds of media events and conferences. A feature I had added to it allows you to download a vfile into Outlook - no retyping. If I am missing any conferences there is a submit form. I am happy to add. (Although under no circumstances will I add the Arsenal FC annual shareholders meeting).

News: Amazon's Digital Platform. Book Pricing. Harlequin. Cody's Bookstore.

There is an interesting article in The Economist this week about what Amazon is up to and how they face a very real threat of being disintermediated relative to digital music, video and book content. Some of this story has been discussed before because in their last financial report they recorded significantly less net income because of materially higher spending in technology. Analysts have speculated that the company is readying itself for the provision of non-physical content and they are building some type of platform (my term) for delivery of this. The unsaid aspect of The Economist article seems to imply that since no one at Amazon is talking about this that some announcement is imminent.

I thought this article about comments made by Sumner Redstone was relevant to book publishers and their approach to pricing. Publishers are too rigid in the manner in which prices are set and managed. As digital publishing becomes more prevalent and deeper knowledge and understanding of how markets work - via The Long Tail type analysis - these trends should almost force a rethink about how books are priced. It would seem to me, that a rigid approach to pricing results in lost revenue. As we all know, airlines are masters at the yield curve and this is not to say publishers should be that sophisticated but if they adopt more flexible approaches to pricing it could result in all kinds of impact on remainders, returns, the second hand market and so on. For example, could a publisher 'recover' a portion of the used book market by offering new copies at market rate prices (plus a small premium for new)? This would be long after initial release of the title. Would buyers by willing to pay a little more than the used price for a new book especially if they knew that in doing so the author would receive a share of the purchase price whereas with the used copy they do not? This idea is not a new idea nor is it a panacea but I think it suggests some market testing.

Harlequin.
I hate to harp on this, but this company with one of the strongest brands in publishing and with a huge market opportunity staring them in the face still seems weak kneed and hesitant.
My other blog on this.

Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley a famed independent for many years closed recently. Here is a perspective on what went wrong. It reflects more than a bookstore issue.

Lastly, watchers of the Booker List will note three Australian authors made the long list. As far as I can gather - no comment from The Australian newspaper regarding their 'gotcha story' about Patrick White and the in ability of great Australian writers to get published.

Album Liner Notes Books

As a teenager, I like many buyers of record albums, used to pour over the album cover devouring the artwork and learning all the lyrics for the songs - assuming they were printed on the cover. Sadly, with the advent first of the CD and now with music downloads the art of the Album cover has diminished. I have over 1,000 CDs which are all loaded into CD carousels. I have saved the liner notes that came with all the CDs but these all sit in a drawer. There is really no useful way to access these which is a shame because the content in the liner notes add a lot to the experience of the music. I have long thought that there is a different model for the written content that typically went along with music. As music is increasingly vended online would music retailers such as HMV and Virgin be interested in published products that supported the music? Selling this book could do two things - raise the average price paid per unit and possibly bring consumers to retail stores. Each album collection, when released would also be accompanied by a book that provided much more published content than just the liner notes. The book could include interviews with each band member of aspects of the recording process, interpretations of the lyrics, photos of the recording sessions and detailed session notes. Mr. Pete Townsend has been blogging about many things but also the recording process for new Who album; it would be great to include this material - and perhaps something from Roger in a complimentary published product. Lastly, back to my existing CD collection, I would purchase a book of all the liner notes from all the Neil Young albums together with (perhaps) interviews with Neil, critical essays/reviews and session notes. This to me would be a much more practical way of interacting with the music I enjoy listening to. How about it publishing folk?

Snakes on a Plane

Sorry - I couldn't resist....Youtube The Daily Show on Friday.

ShakespeaRe-Told:

BBC America - which is a premium channel over here - is broadcasting adaptations of four of Shakespeare's plays. So far, we have watched Much Ado About Nothing which was excellent. Macbeth and Midsummer Night's Dream are in the Tivo and The Taming of the Shrew is on next week. Apparently, The BBC produced a similar 'updating' for The Caterburry Tales last year and these four shows are a result of that shows success. I don't recall Canterbury Tales being broadcast here but I may have missed it. The BBC 'hand selected' several screenwriters and actors to 'radically revise and update' the Bard's plays. If the first one is anything to go by then these shouldn't be missed; they have really bought these plays to light for potential new audience.

(A search for a clip turned up this funny clip of The Beatles doing Midsummer; why or when I have no idea but I have never seen it before).