New Links

In the last few months or so I have started reading a couple of new blog sites.

Tools of Change: Is published by the O'Reilly TOC conference organisers. They have been nice enough to mention me once or twice. Here is there article on Treating E-Books like Software.

Alison Pendergast is an executive at Pearson and has many interesting insights into Educational publishing. Here she speaks about digital music - slightly off topic but minic my own experience and I thought interesting.

Abbeville has launched a blog to support their publishing activities. I liked this post on The Art of Rocking Podcasts. In this post is also a link to a series of podcasts entitled "so you want to work in publishing". Listeners are advised to ignore the sound of tinking glasses, laughter and smoking.

WSJ Interviews Bezos

This interview may not be avialable for long: (some of this has been reported already)

Jeffrey P. Bezos, as chairman, president and chief executive of Amazon.com Inc., made e-commerce mainstream when Amazon started selling books over the Internet in 1994.
Since then, he has turned the site into a virtual shopping mall, where the company and thousands of independent merchants sell just about anything from abacuses to zithers.
He spoke with The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg about cloud computing, streaming movies and why books are like horses. Here are edited excerpts of that conversation.

OUP Believes E-Book Sales are Huge

Evan Schnittman on the OUP blog has some interesting analysis on ebook sales for the balance of this year. He concludes thus,

Success in technology, like everything else, leads to more success. It’s not uncommon to see five-fold growth the year following a successful technology product launch. Think iPod, think Wii, think Blackberry. Whole micro-economies emerge around products that range from accelerated content creation, and all sorts of aftermarket products and services. Versions 2.0 and beyond create better and better devices. The better the devices, the more accessories, the more content there is, and soon a whole world of business opportunity is rolling downhill picking up speed. With this in mind, I can easily imagine the success of Kindle and Reader dramatically expanding next year and growing by a factor of five. If that happens, then the formula above leads to a completely new ebook economy. Five million devices would mean ebook sales of $1,200,000,000, which, by my estimation, is 1.3% of the current global book market of $90,000,000,000.

Call in Sick

From this mornings Chicago Sun Times.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Avoid emotional discussions about politics, religion, racial issues or even matters related to travel, foreign countries, publishing and education. These discussions will either go in circles or die on the vine. People are quick to take offense or assume that something is personal.

Shouldn't the and education be or education. Image people in publishing taking things personnally.

Controversy Continues to Dog BBC Aquisition of Lonely Planet

Earlier this year the commercial arm of the BBC purchased the travel publisher Lonely Planet from the founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler. At the time the purchase raised eyebrows since it represented a particularly overt foray into competitive publishing by an organization that historically did not seek commercial advantages. A number of publishers took issue with this purchase even though the acquisition was made by the for profit business operations of BBC Worldwide. This type of expansion had been published and discussed by BBC Worldwide unit as part of its strategic plans.

The Sunday Times is reporting that Time Out founder Tony Eliot has written to the Office of Fair Trading demanding that the office launch an investigation into the purchase. Eliot believes that the acquisition breeches the BBCs obligations under their fair trading and competition guidelines. From the article:

In the letter, seen by The Sunday Times, Time Out founder Tony Elliott says he fears that the BBC will provide Lonely Planet with “an inexhaustible fund of factual, technical and editorial information and expertise quite beyond the resources of any privately funded organisation such as Time Out”.

The article also notes that Penguin, which also publishes travel guides might also support the action:

Penguin, owner of the Rough Guide travel series, is also frustrated. It requested further details from the BBC Trust last October, under the Freedom of
Information Act, on how the Lonely Planet deal was endorsed and how the company would operate in future.

The larger issue regarding BBC Worldwide's ability to expand and extend their commercial activities has already been established; therefore, it is unlikely that this action will generate any support at the OFT. No doubt Time Out has attempted to galvanise some additional publishing support behind this effort, but has evidently not been able to do so otherwise, the PA would have been party to the complaint.

In related news Judy Slater who had been CEO of Lonely Planet since 2000 has left the company to join an investment advisory group.

Informa and UBM in Take-Over Discussions

Several UK newspapers (Telegraph) are reporting that United Business Media has initiated discussions on a £3billion take over of Informa. UBM has not been as active as other media companies over the past several years in expanding their business offerings, on the contrary the company has deleveraged the business and is now a company with relatively low debt. In the US, UBM owns PRNewswire and runs conferences, trade magazines and data and information products through the CMP and Commonwealth Business Media brands. From The Telegraph:

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that United Business Media (UBM), which has a market value of £1.5bn, has approached £1.6bn Informa about a merger that would establish a powerhouse in the increasingly competitive world of business-to-business media. Discussions between the two companies are at a very early stage and are not yet thought to have progressed as far as substantive negotiations about the structure or price of a potential combination. UBM and Informa may come under pressure to confirm the talks to the London Stock Exchange as early as tomorrow morning.

Informa has been considered a buyout candidate over the past several months since their long time CEO David Gilbertson left to run PE led Emap Communications. Business media and conferencing companies have become hot properties because their subscription based business models mitigate much of the variability in advertising based businesses. Steady cash flow is highly desirable.

More Informa

In the ebb and flow of big media deals it is interesting to note that having spent the last several years on the sidelines unable to compete with the very large multiples that PE players were prepared to pay, some operators like UBM may be well positioned to make significant strategic acquisitions as those same PE companies become skittish in the current market. Last week we saw CQ Press acquired by SAGE and an effort by Reed Elsevier to sweeten the pot for potential acquirers of Reed Business. Analysts are now suggesting that RE may be unable to sell the RBI unit in one piece which would have been unheard of only 18mths ago.

Update Monday: Telegraph confirms discussions and notes share price jump


Other reports:
Forbes picks Candover but not until summer.
Earlier report from The Telegraph proposes other bidders including Axel Springer.
TimesOnline: Informa Garners Attention

The Lost Theatres of Los Angeles

I like neon and in walking along Broadway in Los Angeles there is a feast of it adorning the front of the many old theatres that formed the core of LA's theatre district from approximately 1910 - 1940.

LA city government has announced a $30mm restoration project for this area. It would be great if they could recreate the glamor and excitement that pervaded this area in the 20s and 30s.

Each picture has some description sourced from a variety of sources including the theatre's websites and expert sites such as latimemachines.com and publicartinla.com.