Faulkners Birthday

American Heritage has a long essay on Faulkner. For those who don't know much about him (like me) it is interesting reading on one of America's finest writers.

Faulkner was apparently a single minded individual and didn't have too much patience with many things including frivolity. He lived most of his life in Mississippi but found himself in Hollywood on a number of occasions as a screen writer. On one of those occasions, he grew so frustrated with the movie set lifestyle, the wasted time and the shallowness of the life on set that he asked his director if he could work from home. The director said sure no problem and Faulkner proceeded to fly back to Mississippi. I always found that story funny.

American Heritage.

Luckily, I am only down $10

My blog of last week (Sept 19, "I know what you said about me yesterday"), challenged marketing and publicity professionals to utilize technology, specificially Technorati , to follow what is being said about their titles in the blogging world. I choose three titles randomly from the Amazon Top 100 and challenged the publishers to find me within 24 hours--for each that did, I'd donate $10 to First Book . The result?

Only Fritz Foy, Senior VP of Holtzbrinck (I chose Middlesex, published by Picador, a Holtzbrinck imprint, as one of the titles), found me. He did it in two days but I still donated the money. It is a good cause, after all.

All publishers could be using tools like this to identify the most influential blogs, maximize marketing budgets by initiating inexpensive blog tours, and provide superior service to their authors. Many are already doing so, and successfully (see New York Times a friend forwarded the article to me). This is a trend to watch.

Five Questions with Bondi Digital and the Playboy Archive

The first DVD archive of all the 1950's issues of Playboy magazine will be released at bookstores and retail outlets by Bondi Digital Publishing on November 2nd. (It is now available for presale at www.covertocover.com). Long considered an icon of 20th century publishing the eventual full set of DVDs will cover every Playboy issue since the title launched in 1953. Bondi Digital Publishing has undertaken the task of truthfully representing each page of the magazine so that buyers of the set will be able to see the magazine as it was originally published.

The first set of Bondi Digital Publishing's Cover to Cover Series covers the launch of the magazine in 1953 with the now unforgettable Marilyn Monroe featured as Playboy's first centerfold, up through the beginning of 1960.

Included with the box set is a 200 page 'behind the scenes' companion book covering the highlights of Playboy's humble launch by 27-year-old Hugh Hefner and the rise of the magazine during the conservative 50s. The box set also includes a complete reprint of the famous first issue featuring Marilyn Monroe.

David Anthony is co-founder of Bondi Digital Publishing and I recently sat down with him and asked him my five questions.

1. You also did a similar project for The New Yorker. Tell us how these three projects came about.
   
   There was a fellow who worked at the New Yorker named Andy Pillsbury, who I had known for years, long before he was with The New Yorker. I had shown him some interactive magazine viewing technology that I was working on in the late 90s. So fast forward 5 or 6 years, and he is now at the New Yorker and he and Ed Klaris, their general counsel, are talking about doing a complete digital archive of all 80 years of the New Yorker. He looks me up and contacts me, and in the meantime I had started a DVD design and production company with Murat Aktar – which was actually great background for what the New Yorker had in mind. At the DVD company, we had been thinking about and designing all these DVD interfaces, including things like the Rolling Stones Four Flicks box set, so when it came to thinking through how people might like to experience half a million pages of a magazine, I think we brought a very unique perspective to the project. It was, of course, on one hand a huge technical challenge, but in a very real sense I believe the greatest challenge of these kinds of projects is trying to help people make sense of the vastness of the media, while at the same time making sure that the digital experience is fast, intuitive and hopefully fun and useful, all at the same time.
   
   Coming off of the New Yorker project, we thought, hey this is kind of cool. I wonder what other magazines might like to have complete digital archives? Right off the bat we were thinking about Rolling Stone and Playboy. They are both very innovative magazines, and both had a rich and long history – and they had these visionary founders who were still at the helm. Besides, we are both long time readers of the publications. So it made a lot of sense to talk with them – and low and behold both loved the idea and we were able to work out deals with them.
   
   
2. Were the projects similar? What have you learned from one project to another?
   
   From a publishing perspective, the big difference with the Rolling Stone, Playboy and The New Yorker, is that beginning with Rolling Stone Cover To Cover: The First Forty Years and Playboy Cover To Cover: The 50s, we launched Bondi’s publishing arm and are bringing these out under ourselves. While Bondi developed the software platform for the Complete New Yorker, it was published and distributed by The New Yorker and Random House.
   
   All three magazines are very different, so a big challenge that we have in any of these projects is to first analyze each magazine’s format and create a schema for its database that makes sense of all the idiosyncrasies of each magazine’s particular formatting characteristics.
   
   As far as the software platform goes, the Bondi Reader, which is what we are calling it now, has continued to evolve quite a bit. We now support full text search, using a very powerful indexing engine. This is a great step forward and has sped up our searches to the point where the local experience compares favorably to online searches. Also we are adding the ability to import and exchange reading lists, which will allow two people who own the same archive to share what they find very easily.
   
   
3. There is a lot of interest in the Playboy products because the magazine is such an icon for our times. Tell us about the conception for the product – breaking the titles into decades – and the thinking behind the design.
   
   Each decade of Playboy has a unique tone and feel, and by publishing the magazine’s archives decade by decade, Bondi is able to offer distinctive features for each digital archive collection. Playboy Cover-to-Cover: The 50s will not only include all of the magazine’s issues on DVD, but it will also include Playboy 50s – Under the Covers, a 1950s-focused companion book that is absolutely chock full of never-before-published photos and letters from Hef’s personal library and archive. As well we have created a page-for-page reissue of the very first Playboy from 1953 with its iconic Marilyn Monroe cover.
   
   
4. What most excites you about the products? (Rolling Stone, NYer, Playboy)?
   
   I guess it is seeing all these amazing stories, photos and ads come back to life – in their original context. I for instance did not know that Annie Leibovitz had taken that great cover shot of John Lennon curled up with Yoko but a few hours before he was taken from us. That is a hugely important fact in helping to understand the impact and importance of that cover. But that was 1980 and I was only 13 years old – so I never experienced the magazine itself. I, like I imagine a lot of people, have only ever experienced that shot as a stand-alone photo. We have seen that cover reprinted over the years, but without seeing it in the context that it was originally published you might never understand its true significance. And that is extremely exciting to me – that we might be playing a part in not only preserving these magazines legacies, but also allowing for people to understand these very real cultural events in a full and clear way.
   
   Not having been alive in the 1950s it was also a real eye-opener to see the Playboy issues from the 50s. From the first issue, the voice and outlook are clear. But at the same time you begin to see the role that Playboy played in both women’s rights and also civil rights. In the 50s women didn’t work out of the house, let alone have a sense that they should be allowed to own their sexuality. And as I found from working on the project, the publishing of Playboy was a bit of a watershed moment in the turning of society’s views on women’s rights, and then also civil rights. So all of that is exciting to us. And then to see that Hefner from the beginning courted writers like Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, Jack Kerouac and Steinbeck – well you get the point. Turns out there is a reason for all the jokes about the articles.
   
   
5. What is next for Bondi? Are you looking at any other implementations you can tell us about?
   
   At the moment we are concentrating on finishing up the software production for both the Playboy Cover to Cover and Rolling Stone Cover to Cover products. Then we focus on deals with several other magazines. As excited as we are about the success of the Complete New Yorker and the release of our Cover to Cover series, I don’t think that the general public really understands what a searchable digital archive of a magazine is yet. And so it is important that this not be a category of one or two products. Our focus for the time being is working with other magazine publishers to develop similar Cover To Cover products. We are just about ready to announce Playboy Cover To Cover, The 60s, which will bring our Cover to Cover series to three. By the holiday 2008 season, we hope to have six - eight Cover To Cover titles in the line.

Bondi PR is being handled by Catherine Lewis at The Rosen Group: http://www.rosengrouppr.com/

Let's Not Go

Young, commercial, beginner’s guidebook, with frivolous, silly humor represented some of the responses to a survey conducted by St Martin's Press about the Let's Go series of guides. That was in 2001 and St Martins have just decided that they won't be renewing their 25yr partnership with the Harvard student run organization. The current deal expires in 2009. Citing stiff competion and free travel information sources,

David Moldawer, a St. Martin’s editor, told the New York Observer last week that the break with Let’s Go reflected “a change in our publishing strategy and how we see the travel book market.”

The Crimson went on to say that the Let's Go editorial staff were putting on a strong face and view the change as a chance to rethink and reevaluate the publishing strategy. They also wanted to ensure that there are no job losses for students. The survey results were fairly damning and suggest that hopes of continuing the publishing program after 2009 maybe a pipedream.

The report, which was based on four San Francisco focus groups, suggested that Let’s Go discontinue its guides and reopen with a different brand name. “It is extremely difficult to change an image of a brand which has lost its stature as a leading brand, especially when the re-positioning is not supported by heavy marketing and advertising dollars,” the report read. “It may be more prudent (and cost effective) to introduce a new series of guides under a new name with an updated format rather than trying to convince the target that ‘Let’s Go’ is new and improved.”

They have a few years to think about it although one wonders how much sales support St. Martins' will give the series and how likely retailers will be to re-order titles from this point on.

Borders UK Operations Nearly Sold

Ten years ago, Borders Group was a book store chain willing to take risks, try new things and seek new business models. Alone among US booksellers they embarked on an international expansion and bought a high street UK retailer named Books Etc. They paid $65million for the company but things didn't go well from the start. Over the course of the past 10 years virtually nothing was shared between the US and UK operations in terms of operating efficiencies, product management and management expertise. Attempts to manage the some of the operations from the US failed but it was the nature of the UK market which posed the most challenges. Most of the 30 or so Books etc stores were small and located on busy main roads, the net book agreement collapsed which intensified competition between retailers, Internet selling grew exponentially and attempts by Borders to expand the superstore concept was slow to gain customer traction. It is unfortunate that these issues conspired to defeat what could have resulted in a remarkable international retail success: A strong Borders retail brand in Europe, Australia and SE Asia.

Now it is all over bar the tears with the announcement today that the UK operations have been sold for a paltry $20mm in cash and $10mm in deferred payments based on performance. Borders are also forced to take a 17% interest in the resulting new company. No doubt they would have liked to have made a clean break. UK management, who have worked hard to keep the company a float and who now have a real chance to improve their prospects may be the only group seeing a silver lining in this situation. I hope they succeed and prove that the book super store concept can flourish in the UK as it has done for computer and electronics retailers over the past 10 years. It will be tough since the UK book retail market is a wasteland.

When Borders completes the deal (PR) it will hand over 41 Border's superstores and 28 Books Etc stores located in the UK and Ireland. Given the original price paid for Books Etc and the investment the company has made over the past 10 years it is not surprising that the company expects to book an after tax loss of $115million with minimal tax benefit meaning they get no future benefit from applying the loss to future earnings. If I were a shareholder, I might want to ask why book value for the UK operation wasn't almost zero on their balance sheet. (I also wonder what is the value of the UK inventory?)

On a more positive note (unless like me you wonder why they are selling off in the first place) Borders may do OK with the sale of the Australian/New Zealand business. Sources suggest the operations could go for $85mm but if BV is higher then they may book another loss. Well best to get all these items out of the way before Mr. Jones' strategy starts to gain traction and a private equity buyer shows up to take the shareholders out of their misery.

College Textbook Affordability Act

I wonder how many votes these legislators expect to gain from legislating capitalism - at least as it pertains to textbook pricing. Ex-academic and now Californian Democratic state senator Ellen Corbett notes a particularly poignant and, yes, unique excuse for not finishing a class assignment.

"One of my students told me they were not going to finish their homework because they couldn't afford the textbook," she said. "That stopped me dead in my tracks and broke my heart."

No doubt the student received a passing grade for creative writing but an F for initiative. Corbett is sponsoring a state senate bill that will attempt to regulate textbook prices:

"For too long, California college students have dealt with outrageous textbook costs. Publishers set the cost, faculty makes the choice and students pay the price," Corbett said. "It is time for the textbook publishing industry to level with their consumers and end their deceptive marketing practices." If passed, Senate Bill 832 would take effect in January and require publishers to fully disclose to faculty their wholesale or retail costs, an estimation of how long the book is expected to stay current, and a breakdown of differences between current and past editions.

Textbook pricing and the publishers are an easy target and provide an annual respite from dealing with truly important issues like (in the case of CA) a mammoth budget deficit and (topically) rising tuition fees. On the other hand, here is something that is sure to please students and could provide for the budget deficit: Legalize it!

Borders Stores Australia

The sale of Borders Australia/New Zealand retail operations appears to be coming to a head. Reuters is reported a source has told them that the Private Equity firm Pacific Equity Partners has lodged an indicative offer of interest in acquiring the operations. This is typical of the auction process where initial non-binding offers would be made as a prelude to more rigorous reviews of financial and operational details. The report also noted that the sale is unlikely to conclude before November. The long timeframe since this was announced is somewhat surprising since there are only a handful of parties considered real candidates but perhaps the time taken to put the books in order and complete the fiscal year delayed matters. Regardless, PEP are the front runner and the deal is expected to be completed for A$100mm.

Reuters