McGraw Hill Plotting to Buy RBI

The Telegraph handicaps some of the interest in the sale of Reed Business information and offers the intreging notion that MGH would purchase the Reed titles. What they don't discuss is what would happen afterwards. As I have speculated, some assets are likely to be sold after a sales of RBI and this article compares the 'overlap' between the RBI titles and those currently owned by MGH.

The McGraw Hill Companies, owner of Standard & Poor's credit rating agency, has titles which overlap with RBI in aviation and construction. McGraw publishes aviation Week and a collection of architectural and engineering titles, while RBI has a large portfolio of construction titles including Construction News and Professional Builder.

And:

The sale of Reed Business Information (RBI), whose titles include film industry bible Variety, Flight International and New Scientist, began last week when information was sent to prospective bidders. If RBI fetches the asking price, it would be the biggest media takeover since the sale of Emap at the end of last year.

MediaWeek (Vol 1 No 29):

Amazon.com speaks to the NYTimes about cloud computing.

Customers of Amazon’s new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programs on a cable video-on-demand service. That is different
from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, which require users to download files to their hard drives

Christian book retailing is either treading water and just surviving or being destroyed depending on who you listen to. Here the Washington Post looks at the business.

Meeting customers where they are has become the mantra of the Christian retail industry as its stores face stiff competition from big-box chains and online retailers. With more stores closing than opening each year, industry layoffs and a key publisher staying away from this week's annual International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, retailers and publishers say innovation is key to thriving.

The Bookseller notes that Lonely Planet got their books into the Apple Store in quick order.

John French announced to staffers through an internal memo that he was stepping down as CEO of Penton Media. Speculation about who will replace him included Mike Marchesano currently at JEGI. Folio.

The AP reports on a new book from Mitch Ablom which is being offered exclusively through Amazon.com. The book is actually an eBook version of a commencement speech the author gave this spring.

More on the civil war between the UK office of Hachette Book Group and Amazon.com over pricing. Times Online.

The online bookseller has imposed extraordinary sanctions against the publisher, ... It is listing Hachette books but preventing the public from purchasing them by removing the “buy new” button from its websites.

James Murdoch seems to be moving closer to Big Boss. MediaGuardian. Notes on other Media bosses.

Sadly, Publishing News in the UK is closing down their magazine operation. PN But before they go they note a HarperCollins implant at Amazon.co.uk.

Conde Nast's Portfolio takes a look at HarperStudio. (Briefly).

John Makinson thinks outsides aren't welcome in the publishing world. The Bookseller.

All the Pretty Things

Now I am a sucker for a pretty face as much as the next guy and I probably wouldn't have looked at this short article in the NYTimes this morning if it didn't feature the visage of Kelly Wearstler. The short is about her interest in design books and in particular her favorite bookseller in LA:

Her favorite design bookstore in Los Angeles is Potterton Books, tucked inside the Pacific Design Center. (There’s also one in Midtown Manhattan, on Third Avenue near 59th Street.) “I can always find a book that is amazing that I probably haven’t heard of,” she said. Other shops she loves: the Strand in New York and Hennessey and Ingalls Art and Architecture Books in Santa Monica, Calif.

That's the good part - nothing wrong with that.

There is also an 'interactive' link to some selected photos of books. You could be forgiven for thinking that the intimate nature of the book purchase process described by Kelly would be evident in the slide show as well. Not so. In the small catalog of interesting design titles the NYT supplies links to your favorite - far from intimate - on-line bookseller only one of which is Potterton. Huh? Since Kelly mentions other stores why not use them; especially the Strand, which for the record has a huge selection of design and architecture titles.

JibJab: A Time For Some Campaignin'

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Those on RSS or email may need to return to the site to see this video. Click on the headline. Or visit jibjab.com

Rack Jobbing The EBook

A change, equivalent to the launch of the mass market paperback just took place but did you notice? Months in advance of the expected release of the new iPhone thoughts ran wild on the potential for an Apple iBooks store as much for its potential impact on sales as for its counter point to Amazon.com. With the launch of the 3G iPhone publishers have been found wanting, sadly waiting for the market to be gifted to us rather than proactively setting out to define it. This post from Kassia Krozer sums it up perfectly:

On a weekend when headlines were there for the grabbing and customers were searching for both toys and content, the publishing industry, perhaps practicing summer hours, was curiously silent. Not a single major initiative, announcement, horns-blaring call to check out these great offerings on iTunes.Call me crazy, but I’d expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million “mobile is the future” customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you’re still hiding the goods. I get this isn’t the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines?

Publishers are again about to have a market dictated even as they continue to complain about the market power of the online retailers. Now $9.99 may become a defacto RRP for eBooks and as volume increases via the prodigious iPhone apps store publishers won't know whether to laugh or cry. When mass market paper backs gained market acceptance at Woolworths in the 1930s publishers gained access to a market they never would have developed on their own. Books were suddenly available for a dime and as publishers stood on the sidelines it wasn't until years later that they entered the market directly or bought up the main suppliers. Will history repeat itself with publishers buying ebook apps suppliers like Fictionwise or build their own applications? Hopefully, at least one or the other.

Traditionally, we think of distribution and content development as separate disciplines within publishing companies but in the e-Publishing world they co-mingle. Content optimization becomes the normative state where the end-user builds their own product out of a content repository created by the publisher without limitation on how the end product is rendered. The 'distance' between publisher and end-user (where distribution as a function currently sits) is wide but becomes virtually non-existent in the future state.

To bring us back to the iPhone circumstance, as long as publishers continue to think in terms of traditional functional silos and roles and responsibilities they limit themselves in their ability to leverage their assets. In contrast witness Amazon which has never considered any aspect of the publishing value chain to be off limits and more publishers need to think in this manner if they want to redress some of the advantages Amazon and others retain (or new competitors develop) in the marketplace.

Some other views on a similar theme:

Teleread
Adam Hodgkin
Shimenewa
theDigitalist

The Beatles on IPOD?

A report in Rolling Stone says that Bloomingdales (of all people) will be selling a limited edition IPOD with every Beatles tune on it. Many have speculated that the Beatles catalog would be available on the IPOD but who would have thought Bloomies would be the one to bring it to us. RS is saying there will only be 100. If the mock-up is any thing to go by that is one ugly IPOD. I suggested that the front and back of the special Beatles IPOD when and if it came would be suggestive of the center label on all vinyl albums: the green apple on one side and the cut-away inside the apple view on the back.

On another related Beatles note, fellow traveller Joe Esposito has a look back at the Beatles and how their touring lead to popularity and record sales but the model ultimately broke down when the band stopped going on the road.

A peculiar fate befell the Beatles, however, in that they, like a very small number of other musicians, found it impossible to continue the touring to promote their records. Touring became dangerous and, playing in huge stadiums to screaming teenage girls, artistically unrewarding. The Beatles thus left the road, risking their business model, as the essential relationship between live performance and the sale of records was broken. Famously, the Beatles responded by inventing a “live” audience: the first thing we hear on “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is the sound of the invented audience. The imaginary audience did not contribute to the Beatles’ economy, however. That economy continued to be based on the sale of records. It was the Beatles’ good fortune that their fame was such that they no longer had to go on the road to promote the sale of their intellectual property. Perhaps it was just as well: when asked about the relative benefits of a live performance over a recording, John Lennon remarked, “Well, I’m a record man myself.”

He suggests the time of their break-up coincided with the "apotheosis of a particular business model for the media industry, the now-derided practice of creating copyrighted works and selling them, copy by copy, for profit." Read the whole article.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 28)

Some headlines from this past weeks publishing and media actitivity. The Canadian Publishing industry sees a slight decline from the prior year: A report from the government agency released Thursday said operating revenues from the book publishing industry in Canada edged down 1.2% in 2006 to $2.1 billion. NationalPost. The NZ Herald reports that New Zealand sees an increase in booksales but is the future ominous? Last year, the New Zealand consumer spend on books and similar merchandise topped $1 billion for the first time - capping off a trend of phenomenal growth that seems, for the moment, immune to the speed wobbles hitting other retailers. Informa Deal News: At a function held by private equity investor Alpinvest Partners in London last week, dealmakers from Permira, KKR, and Blackstone all talked openly about how they could come up with an offer for Informa to rival the 506p-per-share approach submitted by Providence, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman. Telegraph TimesOnline reports on a lost Shakespear portfolio that has turned up in suspicious circumstances: The folio, printed in 1623 and valued at up to £3 million, was among a number of valuable books and manuscripts taken from the Durham University Library in December 1998. Last night a middle-aged book dealer was being questioned by police after the discovery of other historic manuscripts at his house in Washington, Tyne and Wear. There is a curious tie in with this story in the TimesOnline about Hemingways House in Havana. I think there is a connection and I wonder if the gent "helping the police with their enquiries" has even visited Havanna. PW reports that Susan Driscoll is taking a senior role at Wolters Kluwer. Wiley has purchased some titles from Cengage as part of Cengage's need to divest titles as part of their deal agreement with JD. The acquisition provides Wiley entry into the Introduction to Business course area, with a market-leading title, Contemporary Business,12th edition (13th edition to publish early in 2009), by Louis E. Boone and David E. Kurtz. These titles serve the first business course and offer Wiley an excellent opportunity to showcase its other business titles. The acquisition also will leverage Wiley Higher Education's language program, which is currently centered on Spanish, transforming Wiley into a more full-service provider to college and university language departments by offering learning materials in Introductory and Intermediate Italian and French, German grammar, and Business French. Business Week reports on actions to limit the influence of ratings sevices like Moody's and Standard & Poors and also argues why these firms are still needed. With investors' losses topping the hundreds of billions as many once highly rated securities have tumbled, ratings agencies have come under withering criticism for issuing scores that have proven far too optimistic. Already, under rising pressure to rethink their roles, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced a deal with the three largest ratings agencies to reform the way they collect fees from debt issuers. Now, the Securities & Exchange Commission is moving to lessen investors' reliance on the scores. Reuters also report on the ratings services: Many financial companies, including banks and lenders, have been sued following the housing market bust; but the cases against ratings agencies may be among the most closely watched. As reported on earlier in the week, USAToday looks at textbook pricing but more specifically 'open' online textbooks. Frank [ex-Pearson] and his business partner, Jeff Shelstad, in January plan to launch Flat World Knowledge, the first commercial open textbook publisher. It will offer free online textbooks that can be printed and bound, for about $25 for black and white and $35-$39 for full-color copies. The average price of a traditional textbook varies by subject; many new textbooks cost about $150, Allen [director of the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign by Student Public Interest Research Groups] says. Comments are interesting. CNN Money looks at the Indian Educational market and estimate it to be worth over $120bill. US publishers are jockying for position in this market. Technopak, a Delhi-based investment consultancy, estimates that the current private-education market is worth $40 billion a year, and that this could roughly triple to $110-120 billion in ten years’ time. The potential is attracting foreign companies such as Pearson Education (PSO), part of the UK-based publishing group, and McGraw-Hill (MHP), as well as private equity firms that include Blackstone (BX), New Vernon, and Deutsche Securities, part of Deutsche Bank (DB). Reuters reports Bertelsmann has sold its US book club business. TimesOnline notes that ReedElsevier is starting a search for the successor to Crispin Davis. The will look internally and externally. PDN prediction: it will be a current employee. Guardian picks up PaidContent parent company (for reported $30mm). WSJ on textbook pricing. PND