Those of us who care about bibliographic data - and I do - have been a little amused to read the summary reviews that the NYT has done in the past two weeks about State of Denial (Bob Woodward) and Carly Fiorina's biopic released on Monday. That is...next Monday. The Times has been able to purchase both of these titles in advance of their official release date. Why is this a bibliographic data issue: well, because publishers and retailers have spent considerable time defining pub date, lay down date, street date, and other dates so that no one in the supply chain is disadvantaged. In the past several years the ONIX data format has consumed significant time and effort by publishers, retailers, bibliographic agencies ses (Nielsen, Bowker) and wholesalers and this has been all to the good. Data is now more uniform and consistent and the entire effort has concentrated publishers attention on the value of good data. Nevertheless issues clearly remain in how this data is used and how processes can break down.
There is no good reason why a store should be selling these books before the publisher has told them they can. Marketing and promotional spending, author appearances, buy-in commitments and other activities are all predicated on the official on-sale date. Stores that hold these titles off the floor are disadvantaged if they are available at other stores. The industry has toyed with the idea of an specific release day of the week to focus attention on all books released during a week (Music companies do this on Tuesdays). This tactic would be pointless if retailers ignored the timetable.
The physical nature of book distribution requires that books be shipped well in advance of release date which is where the process tends to break down. Spare a thought for the bookstore which recieves shipments everyday and they can't afford the time and effort to segregate the titles which they have to hold. Most stores will have little storage space in the first place and a limited amount of time to check in boxes of books. The tendency then will be to open everything and get it out on the floor as soon as possible. That doesn't make this right but it is a reality. Limited staff time and knowledge at the recieving point results in the carefully laid plans of the sales and marketing department to fail.
If publishers care about this issue - and they must do otherwise why have embargoes in the first place - they should address this issue with an understanding of the bookseller's situation. And publishers should treat all books equally if they want to be serious about on-sale dates. It would be pointess and confusing to selectively monitor this process only for the 'important' titles.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Monday, October 02, 2006
The God Delusion
The new book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion has caught my eye and it is getting significant play from a number of reputable sources. This weekend The Guardian (Joan Blackwell) reviewed the book. It was also reviewed in last weeks Economist here.
It was The Economist where I first came across the book; the sub-head as follows: "Richard Dawkins has long trumpeted the rationale of science. Now, at 65, he has finally marshalled a lifetime's arguments against believing in God." The reviewer goes on to characterize the book as irreverent - which I think is somewhat the point. Real believers are not going to read this book; however, look for a raft of bible bashers on thier soap boxes denouncing the book nevertheless. If this happens of course it will indeed lead to more attention paid to the book and a higher Amazon sales rank. My best part of the review is the reference in the book to his contention that fervent religious indoctrination given to children amounts to child abuse.
In the Guardian, Blackwell touches on some of his social commentary regarding the encrochment of religion into social policy (in the UK and US) such that "many of us who might want to stay outside theological debate can't afford to when it is influencing social policy." In the US of course this is seen increasingly in many areas and are too numerous to mention. In our publishing world this is seen in text books that must present 'intelligent design' as though it is a scientific option while at the same time describing evolution as a mere 'therory.' Blackwell writes that Dawson reserves his best arguments for why religion has persisted.
Here is the book on Amazon.com. The initial reviews are all positive but in the forum section at the bottom things are starting to hot up. At the moment it is number five on the Amazon.com sellers list.
It was The Economist where I first came across the book; the sub-head as follows: "Richard Dawkins has long trumpeted the rationale of science. Now, at 65, he has finally marshalled a lifetime's arguments against believing in God." The reviewer goes on to characterize the book as irreverent - which I think is somewhat the point. Real believers are not going to read this book; however, look for a raft of bible bashers on thier soap boxes denouncing the book nevertheless. If this happens of course it will indeed lead to more attention paid to the book and a higher Amazon sales rank. My best part of the review is the reference in the book to his contention that fervent religious indoctrination given to children amounts to child abuse.
In the Guardian, Blackwell touches on some of his social commentary regarding the encrochment of religion into social policy (in the UK and US) such that "many of us who might want to stay outside theological debate can't afford to when it is influencing social policy." In the US of course this is seen increasingly in many areas and are too numerous to mention. In our publishing world this is seen in text books that must present 'intelligent design' as though it is a scientific option while at the same time describing evolution as a mere 'therory.' Blackwell writes that Dawson reserves his best arguments for why religion has persisted.
He cites his own concept, the meme, the social equivalent of the gene, as the way ideas are spread and handed down. As a Darwinian he is keen to understand what is so beneficial about religion that makes it eligible for survival. He has an interesting theory - exemplified by the moth being attracted to the flame and thus to its death - that an arcane survival mechanism is operating in grossly distorted circumstancesRegretably, our world is increasingly becoming defined by religion and over the next 100 years our biggest conflicts will be oriented around religion. The question is whether secularism will rise as a force strong enough to counter this train wreak - I have my doubts.
Here is the book on Amazon.com. The initial reviews are all positive but in the forum section at the bottom things are starting to hot up. At the moment it is number five on the Amazon.com sellers list.
Blogger Issues
Blogger has consumed 30mins of my time this morning to fix the RSS feed. Lesson: don't compose in Word and paste into Blogger. Feedburner refuses to work since some hidden code is transferred in the process. The RSS feed still isn't working correctly but it is at least working. Inexplicably, it has re-dated a post I did last week on Supply Chain and is ignoring a post I made in the middle of last week. All are displaying correctly on the blogger site however.
Frustration reigns. Apologies.
Frustration reigns. Apologies.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
All for the Apocalypse
In a strange synchronicity, I just finished a novel by first time novelist Alex Berenson named The Faithful Spy about a deep undercover CIA operative who ultimately saves Times Square (that's about 1.5miles from me) from vaporization. It was an enjoyable book. In last weeks' New York magazine (here), Kurt Andersen describes how all 'the apocalyse thing' has become de rigeur. Apparently, 2012 is the year. Savy New Yorkers are buying Nova Scotia real estate mainly for investment purposes but also on the off chance they can escape to it should the worst happen.
I have always wondered about disaster plans; I mean if something terrible happens to New York it isn't going to be convenient. I am not going to be able to get to my stash of currency, or water or wind-up electric radio. I am going to be stuck on the number 7 between Grand Central and Times Square. So what if I have prepared if I can't travel anywhere. And of course, I won't be with any of my immediate family either so how are we to know what to do?
Andersen narrows in on Cormac McCarthy's The Road which in his description of the book it reminded me of Stephen Kings' The Stand. (I read this when I was sixteen and thought my mom would like it - ooops.) On this theme he says "...Millions of people -Christian millenarians, jhadists, psychedelized Burning Men - are straight-out wishful about The End." McCarthy's novel is about "..a transcendentally bleak, apparently post-nuclear-war-ravaged American of the future." Excellent. I am thinking why read the "historic" The Emperors Children about post 9/11 over vacation when I can read about the future.
And if you thought this was good - read my next post.
I have always wondered about disaster plans; I mean if something terrible happens to New York it isn't going to be convenient. I am not going to be able to get to my stash of currency, or water or wind-up electric radio. I am going to be stuck on the number 7 between Grand Central and Times Square. So what if I have prepared if I can't travel anywhere. And of course, I won't be with any of my immediate family either so how are we to know what to do?
Andersen narrows in on Cormac McCarthy's The Road which in his description of the book it reminded me of Stephen Kings' The Stand. (I read this when I was sixteen and thought my mom would like it - ooops.) On this theme he says "...Millions of people -Christian millenarians, jhadists, psychedelized Burning Men - are straight-out wishful about The End." McCarthy's novel is about "..a transcendentally bleak, apparently post-nuclear-war-ravaged American of the future." Excellent. I am thinking why read the "historic" The Emperors Children about post 9/11 over vacation when I can read about the future.
And if you thought this was good - read my next post.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Publishing Week in Review
It was banned books week this week (Sponsored by ALA). Here is a list of the most challenged books from 2005. No word yet on 2006 but I expect to see perennial favorite Catcher in the Rye on the list again. Pretty much any children's or young adult book that deals with sex education, dangly bits, and snogging is guaranteed at least an honorable mention. Throw in Why do I have two daddies? and you will have cracked it.
Litlove had a recent post about two new mystery writers she has started reading. Both Reginald Hill and Susan Hill produce great stories but as she points out in the case of Reg that the characters have been hijacked by TV script writers. I am not sure I like this trend which also happened with Morse and is now happening with Inspector Linley. The 'ghost' written stories don't seem to have the same substance of those that come from the authors books.
Many years ago I attended a conference given by Stanford University and Guy Kawasaki was the dinner speaker - it was a small affair. He was at Apple in the early days and is now a VC among a number of other things. His blog is very interesting and he had this recent post on 'distribution' which does sound boring but he has an interesting view point. Additionally, he also published a post at the end of last year which if you are a frequent user (and abuser) of Powerpoint you will want to read. Lastly, from a traffic and design stand point you can see how he has taken a particular approach to the way he creates the content for his blog that results in maximum attention. If you are interested in this - and who wouldn't be - here is an article.
Here is a little more on the Google decision made by the Belgium court that I commented on earlier this week. Google clearly did not like the requirement to post the judgment and replied very strongly to the court on this issue. There is another hearing in November where they are likely to rely on industry practice that enables any web site to effectively close itself off to spidering. In this case had this technology been invoked by the plaintiff would have avoided the law suit. But then, where's the fun in that?
Eoin Purcell had a post on comics and beat me to a reference from the New York Times article on same. There have been a few other articles that I have noted over the past several weeks in addition to this one. Firstly, the 9/11 Report is being published in a comic book version. Interesting...I am not sure the point, but perhaps comprehension and reading ability has something to do with it or maybe it is a "...let's see if we could do this.." kind of thing. As the article points out it is a little hard to generate the gravitas of two aircraft slamming into the WTC with a simple ...KABOOM!! Here also is an article from the Houston Chronicle about Comic book Bibles. (I just report the stuff I don't believe it). Comics are of course huge business and a number of large US publishing houses have undertaken publishing programs or distribution deals for comics or Manga.
Finally, I haven't had a link to The Daily Show for a while but Hugo Chavez was such great comedy that it has to be referenced. Oh and Norm Chomsky - assuming he earned out his advance - running all the way to the bank.
Litlove had a recent post about two new mystery writers she has started reading. Both Reginald Hill and Susan Hill produce great stories but as she points out in the case of Reg that the characters have been hijacked by TV script writers. I am not sure I like this trend which also happened with Morse and is now happening with Inspector Linley. The 'ghost' written stories don't seem to have the same substance of those that come from the authors books.
Many years ago I attended a conference given by Stanford University and Guy Kawasaki was the dinner speaker - it was a small affair. He was at Apple in the early days and is now a VC among a number of other things. His blog is very interesting and he had this recent post on 'distribution' which does sound boring but he has an interesting view point. Additionally, he also published a post at the end of last year which if you are a frequent user (and abuser) of Powerpoint you will want to read. Lastly, from a traffic and design stand point you can see how he has taken a particular approach to the way he creates the content for his blog that results in maximum attention. If you are interested in this - and who wouldn't be - here is an article.
Here is a little more on the Google decision made by the Belgium court that I commented on earlier this week. Google clearly did not like the requirement to post the judgment and replied very strongly to the court on this issue. There is another hearing in November where they are likely to rely on industry practice that enables any web site to effectively close itself off to spidering. In this case had this technology been invoked by the plaintiff would have avoided the law suit. But then, where's the fun in that?
Eoin Purcell had a post on comics and beat me to a reference from the New York Times article on same. There have been a few other articles that I have noted over the past several weeks in addition to this one. Firstly, the 9/11 Report is being published in a comic book version. Interesting...I am not sure the point, but perhaps comprehension and reading ability has something to do with it or maybe it is a "...let's see if we could do this.." kind of thing. As the article points out it is a little hard to generate the gravitas of two aircraft slamming into the WTC with a simple ...KABOOM!! Here also is an article from the Houston Chronicle about Comic book Bibles. (I just report the stuff I don't believe it). Comics are of course huge business and a number of large US publishing houses have undertaken publishing programs or distribution deals for comics or Manga.
Finally, I haven't had a link to The Daily Show for a while but Hugo Chavez was such great comedy that it has to be referenced. Oh and Norm Chomsky - assuming he earned out his advance - running all the way to the bank.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Publishers Fight Back
Some of you will be aware that Google lost a copyright case in Belgium last week that ruled that Google infringed on German and French newspapers copyright by reproducing article snippets in search results. Publishers everywhere will probably feel somewhat emboldened by this ruling. Google on the other hand were very sulky in their response; they initially refused to place the ruling on their web site as required by the court. I haven't heard that they plan to appeal but I would think this is not the last we will hear of this.
This story was interesting to me but not particularly earth shattering until I read this report in Silicon.com which discussed a publishing industry initiative named the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP). Once implemented a search engine will be able to recognize the content owners' access and permissions use rights. Rather than shut down their sites publishers will be able to manage the indexing that search engines conduct and tell search engines under what terms the content may be used. The World Association of Newspapers produced a briefing paper on this initiative.
Gavin O'Reilly the current President of the WAN had the following comment: "Importantly, ACAP is an enabling solution that will ensure that published content will be accessible to all and will encourage publication of increasing amounts of high-value content online," he said. "This industry-wide initiative positively answers the growing frustration of publishers, who continue to invest heavily in generating content for online dissemination and use."
Clearly, the briefing paper makes clear that the content owners are not looking to restrict the use of their content but I wonder how this fits with the recent announcement by some major US newspaper publishers. Perhaps there is no impact and this merely 'automates' what these newspapers have set out in their legal agreements with Google.
The WAN are not the only participants in this initiative and the International Publishers Association are also sponsors. This is the international association that most national publishing associations are members (AAP, PA, APA). Jens Bammel, the director of IPA is quoted in the Silicon article in support of the initiative. Here is another article that appeared in CNET.
This initiative does represent an interesting aspect since not only are companies within these associations cooperating and funding this program but associations across industries are cooperating. Interesting what is possible when the stakes are so high: publishers and content owners recognising that their content is being used without permission to create value for an entity that had no hand in its creation. But before you rush to judge that statement, we will also continue to see proven the reality that content owners need the search engines to enable content users to find and use the content.
This story was interesting to me but not particularly earth shattering until I read this report in Silicon.com which discussed a publishing industry initiative named the Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP). Once implemented a search engine will be able to recognize the content owners' access and permissions use rights. Rather than shut down their sites publishers will be able to manage the indexing that search engines conduct and tell search engines under what terms the content may be used. The World Association of Newspapers produced a briefing paper on this initiative.
Gavin O'Reilly the current President of the WAN had the following comment: "Importantly, ACAP is an enabling solution that will ensure that published content will be accessible to all and will encourage publication of increasing amounts of high-value content online," he said. "This industry-wide initiative positively answers the growing frustration of publishers, who continue to invest heavily in generating content for online dissemination and use."
Clearly, the briefing paper makes clear that the content owners are not looking to restrict the use of their content but I wonder how this fits with the recent announcement by some major US newspaper publishers. Perhaps there is no impact and this merely 'automates' what these newspapers have set out in their legal agreements with Google.
The WAN are not the only participants in this initiative and the International Publishers Association are also sponsors. This is the international association that most national publishing associations are members (AAP, PA, APA). Jens Bammel, the director of IPA is quoted in the Silicon article in support of the initiative. Here is another article that appeared in CNET.
This initiative does represent an interesting aspect since not only are companies within these associations cooperating and funding this program but associations across industries are cooperating. Interesting what is possible when the stakes are so high: publishers and content owners recognising that their content is being used without permission to create value for an entity that had no hand in its creation. But before you rush to judge that statement, we will also continue to see proven the reality that content owners need the search engines to enable content users to find and use the content.
Monday, September 25, 2006
The Publishing Supply Chain
A number of years ago I was asked to speak at a conference on the future of the book. I did not take this title literally and decided to examine the inherent inefficiency of the publishing supply chain. Importantly, I believed the future of the book had as much to do with profitability and efficiency as it did with creativity.
Since that meeting, I have presented the themes of this post on a number of occasions. As I noted earlier this month an old colleague of mine, Michael Healy has been named BISG Executive Director and he joins BISG with a mandate to address the inefficiencies that are endemic to our industry. Many other industries have successfully addressed supply chain issues and have significantly improved all major functional areas in their organizations; some have created competitive advantage from their attention to these supply chain issues. The publishing industry on the other hand is still characterized by vertically constituted monolithic organizations which rarely share information and rarely collaborate with their supply chain partners to common advantage.
In my presentations, I proposed a structure named The Intelligent Publishing Supply Network (IPSN) which would be dependent on the sharing of information regarding activities in their market. It is information that increases speed and improves productivity, enables better and faster decision making and supports an environment suitable for innovation and development. Time and effort is not distracted with non-productive activity.
The most obvious information limitation publishers and retailers have is accurate sell-through and channel data. Without real time or near time access to information about what is happening – and notice I use the present tense - in the supply chain most publishing industry participants are forced to make ill-informed decisions. Large levels of inventory, sales promotions that sell-out before their sale period ends and uneven product distribution are but a few of the examples of our inefficient supply chain.
Both BISG and BIC (UK) must address the supply chain issues our industry faces and become advocates for improvements similar to those supported by GS1. GS1 is the leading global organization dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains. This organization grew out of the grocery and food business but now spans many industry groups. It may be a viable strategy to integrate some of the publishing supply chain programs of BISG with those of GS1. Not surprisingly they are far more advanced in their programs and there is no sense reinventing the wheel.
Over the next several weeks, I will expand further and update some of the ideas I have presented over the past few years. What is readily apparent however, is that there is a willingness from retailers, wholesalers and publishers to cooperate more to improve efficiencies in the publishing market. BISG will become more relevant in this context.
Since that meeting, I have presented the themes of this post on a number of occasions. As I noted earlier this month an old colleague of mine, Michael Healy has been named BISG Executive Director and he joins BISG with a mandate to address the inefficiencies that are endemic to our industry. Many other industries have successfully addressed supply chain issues and have significantly improved all major functional areas in their organizations; some have created competitive advantage from their attention to these supply chain issues. The publishing industry on the other hand is still characterized by vertically constituted monolithic organizations which rarely share information and rarely collaborate with their supply chain partners to common advantage.
In my presentations, I proposed a structure named The Intelligent Publishing Supply Network (IPSN) which would be dependent on the sharing of information regarding activities in their market. It is information that increases speed and improves productivity, enables better and faster decision making and supports an environment suitable for innovation and development. Time and effort is not distracted with non-productive activity.
The most obvious information limitation publishers and retailers have is accurate sell-through and channel data. Without real time or near time access to information about what is happening – and notice I use the present tense - in the supply chain most publishing industry participants are forced to make ill-informed decisions. Large levels of inventory, sales promotions that sell-out before their sale period ends and uneven product distribution are but a few of the examples of our inefficient supply chain.
Both BISG and BIC (UK) must address the supply chain issues our industry faces and become advocates for improvements similar to those supported by GS1. GS1 is the leading global organization dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains. This organization grew out of the grocery and food business but now spans many industry groups. It may be a viable strategy to integrate some of the publishing supply chain programs of BISG with those of GS1. Not surprisingly they are far more advanced in their programs and there is no sense reinventing the wheel.
Over the next several weeks, I will expand further and update some of the ideas I have presented over the past few years. What is readily apparent however, is that there is a willingness from retailers, wholesalers and publishers to cooperate more to improve efficiencies in the publishing market. BISG will become more relevant in this context.
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