What Circulates In England

The UK public libraries let us know what their users read the most. The TimesOnline relates a report on the top circulating titles in UK public libraries:

Figures published today for the year up to last June offer a fascinating glimpse into the nation’s reading habits. Patterson’s novels, which have sold more than 130 million copies worldwide, were borrowed from libraries more than 1.5 million times. A former advertising executive, he began writing in his spare time and he has published almost 50 novels. He now produces up to eight books each year with the help a team of co-writers. In third place was the children’s writer Daisy Meadows. The name is in fact a pseudonym used by a collection of writers, including Sue Bentley and Sue Mongredien, whose seemingly endless sequence of Rainbow Magic fairy books have risen from 26th place the previous year.

Proves that the author brand is most powerful and developing more author brands whether related to authors that exist or not should be more of a focus. I've mentioned this before (Brands to Publish).

Zadie Disqualifies the Awards

TimesOnline reports Zadie Smith has suggested that literary awards have become prostituted to commercial interests. Surely, this is not news? Haven't the arts always been subject to commercial bias? Haven't the arts always maintained an uneasy alliance with the money that supports them and an inherent 'obligation'? Too deep for me, but the criticism of her comments concentrates on her, "I’d also like to know if her publisher is going to put her forward in future for literary awards" sniffs one, rather than on the larger point of both the extant quality of writing today and the relevance the awards have for the book buying public. Both issues seem to be immaterial to the notion that Zadie Smith is an ungrateful swine.

The whole tempest in galley seems to have erupted due to the frustration at being unable to present an award.

The three-person Willesden Herald panel between them read all 850 entries and then drew up a list of 20, which were sent to Smith. She and her fellow judges decided that this year they could not find “the greatness” that they were looking for and so decided not to award the £5,000 prize, which had been raised privately by Moran

Smith then voiced said frustration on the newspapers' blog site:

No entry was good enough, Smith declared - before going on to savage more famous literary awards, such as the ones she has won, for doling out prizes for commercial imperatives. The blog under her name declares that she is “depressed by the cookie-cutter process of contemporary publishing”.

Awards do have a function; however, we are seeing more and more discussion about how important they are to the general public (not really) versus the publishing community (Big, Big Big). This topic maybe this year's book reviews angst.

Innovation in Publishing

BISG and The Idea Logical Company have started what we think is a very exciting project, which will culminate in the program for Making Information Pay on May 9. We are trying to understand the nature and impact of "experimentation and innovation" in publishing in the digital age—both in attitudes and in practice.

As part of the project we want to collect data via a broad survey on what is now taking place in terms of experimentation and innovation. Using information obtained in the survey, we will then research and write up 8-10 case histories – accounts of experiments that have been tried, whether or not they were deemed to have "succeeded". The findings will be presented at the event on May 9.

We would like your help with this project by completing the survey.

The survey is now open and is available on Survey Monkey for voluntary participation, which we hope will be widespread, at your company and all others. To take the survey, please use the following link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ttAYUp778M0QmwPd7yOHtQ_3d_3d

The link in this email will work ONCE. The survey, which should take you about 10 minutes to complete, closes on February 21. Please note that the information obtained in the survey will be treated confidentially and no individual responses will be divulged.

We also hope to see you at Making Information Pay in New York City on May 9. Please register for the event at http://www.bisg.org/conferences/mip5.html.

Thank you in advance for your help with the survey.

Best wishes.

Michael.

Michael Healy
Executive Director
Book Industry Study Group.

Telephone: 646 336 7141.

Hachette Reports

Lagardère the French conglomerate that owns the book publishing unit Hachette published their full year results yesterday. They reported group revenues up 8.5% over the prior year and 3.3% up on an apples to apples basis. The wide disparity was due to the full year inclusion of the Time Warner Publishing Group (now Grand Central) in the current year's numbers. This is a widely dispersed conglomerate but the news report did carve out the publishing unit for praise as follows:

Publishing (formerly the Books division) – Excellent quarter in virtually all the countries in which we operate. Sales were particularly robust in the United Kingdom, driven by a raft of successful fiction and non-fiction titles. The very strong growth in the United States since January 2007 was maintained. In France, Literature and Illustrated Books both ended the year strongly.

For the full year they reported the following:

Revenues reached €2,130m (up 8.6% on a reported basis), including an extra quarter of sales from the Time Warner Book Group (impact: €80m), which in 2006 was consolidated from April 1.On a like-for-like basis, an excellent final quarter propelled full-year revenue growth to 4.7%, versus 3.0% to end September 2007.In the United Kingdom, the year ended with a surge in sales. The group published 7 of the top 10 Christmas non-fiction best-sellers (including Bobby Charlton, Russell Brand and Al Murray), and 5 of the top 10 fiction titles (including Martina Cole and Patricia Cornwell).In the United States, the strong growth seen since the start of the year continued, driven by best-sellers (including Patterson, Baldacci, Hitchens and Meyer) and healthy backlist sales. In France, the fourth quarter was boosted by a fine contribution from Literature, thanks to authors such as Simone Veil and Philippe Claudel. Illustrated Books also enjoyed solid year-end sales.In Spain, sales are traditionally sluggish in the final quarter. Over 2007 as a whole, Spain recorded further strong growth not only in Education, but also in General Publishing and Children’s Books.Finally, Part-Works ended the year well, with steady sales growth in Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan.

In related French publishing news, France's number two publisher Editis has been placed on the block by its private equity owner Wendel. (Reuters) The company is said to be worth approximately €900mm. Spanish publisher Planeta and Italy's Mondadori were immediately suggested as potential purchasers. The following is from their corporate web page:

With 2400 employees and about 40 publishing imprints, Editis holds leading positions in three segments of the publishing business, in particular Literature (trade and mass market formats), Education (scholarly, scholastic aids, middle school, high school, university, legal and medical), and Reference (dictionaries and encyclopedias), as well as in the field of publishing services (promotion and distribution). Prestigious publishers and efficient group-wide services have made Editis number two in the world of French publishing and a major player in Europe. Editis has a clearly stated objective: to strengthen its position on the French market, to continue its growth, and to expand its influence throughout the French-speaking world.

I have noted Editis once before. On their web site they offer their take on the future of the book/reading experience. It is in French but none the less interesting. Here.

TV Guide

There is a dearth of deep bibliographic information available on television programs. Some information is collected by TV Guide as part of its programming but they haven't databased the full history of broadcast TV and as more and more TV programming is available for sale and download the requirements for deeper bibliographic details here increase. It is a business opportunity for someone who likes television. With the data that TV Guide does have, it has never appeared interested in becoming a database provider - in addition to publisher of the magazine. Opening up their database via data sales, widgets/asp, services etc. would seem to me to be an imperative given the rapid decline in the fortunes of the magazine. The company struggled mightily with the development of their online presence and they still have not been successful creating a portal or destination site for television fans.

That said Gemstar/TV Guide is in the process of being acquired for well over $2billion. The company purchasing Gemstar is Macrovision and not an obvious acquirer.

Macrovision offers content protection, digital rights management, and software licensing solutions that enable businesses to maximize the value of their digital content and software products. Our solutions are deployed by companies in the entertainment, consumer electronics, gaming, software, information publishing and corporate IT markets to solve industry-specific challenges.

They are not a database or information management company, but they do (I think) realize that use of bibliographic information in the businesses they own could be an advantage.

It doesn't appear however, that they couldn't achieve the same advantage by licensing the data rather than paying over $2bill for a company which not only is a debatable fit with Macrovision but has its own questionable history of business execution and business strategy. Since the announcement of the purchase Macrovision shares have fallen significantly (although so has the market as we all know) as have shares in Gemstar. Shareholders of Macrovision are not excited about this deal and there is some potential that the deal will get derailed. At the least, it seems the deal should get revalued and pressure for this should become more acute when Gemstar release their latest quarterly results in mid February.

More from Mediapost.

Harpercollins Rebounds

After a slow start to fiscal 2008, Harpercollins seems to have rebounded and reports sales up moderately from $393mm to $406mm for the quarter. Operating profit improves nicely up $13mm to $67mm.

As quoted in Publisher's Weekly, Jane Friedman noted

"I’m very happy about the recovery this quarter. I thought it would happen, but until it does you hold your breath.” She also noted that the improvement was driven by what Friedman called the “three Ds,” The Daring Book for Girls, The Dangerous Books for Boys and Deceptively Delicious. The three titles are continuing to sell well into the third quarter, and Friedman said the titles should become strong backlist works.

From the Newscorp Press release:

HarperCollins reported second quarter operating income of $67 million, an increase of $13 million versus the same period a year ago, which included charges due to the bankruptcy filing of a major distributor. The 24% growth included strong sales of The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden and Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. During the quarter, HarperCollins had 40 books on The New York Times bestseller list, including 5 titles that reached the #1 spot.

Given the slow first quarter, HC remain short of its prior year sales and operating income numbers. No mention of HC on the earnings call with Newscorp management which is true to form.

New York Times

Marc Andreessen writes on the 'deathwatch' of the New York Times. It isn't much more than most of us will have heard about as the company released their latest financial reports; however, the review of the current board membership is a bit of an eye opener.

On another note, I have commented on The Times a number of times (link below). Currently, I only purchase the Sunday print version. Generally as I sit reading with the TV on, their ad comes on selling subscriptions to the print. It happens with regularity, and yet as you might watch a slow moving train approach a cliff, I always seem to watch and listen. As their subs and newsstand sales fall off a cliff there is almost no indication to the wider world that this company has an online strategy. The thinking seems to be if they promote the website, About.com or even the Times Reader that will accelerate the migration away from print and so they are prohibited. Most other information companies try to accelerate the migration but then these companies have figared out a new revenue model which NYTimes hasn't.

But really, these ads are horrible and exemplify better than anything else their lack of understanding of the new media landscape. Print ads on TV, what could be worse when you should be an internet company?