MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 36):

Someone (Michael Birch, founder of Bebo) thinks they can reinvent the dictionary: Telegraph

The site will feature traditional word definitions, etymologies, quotations and pronunciations, but will also include professional and user-generated video content. Baker is known to have filmed hundreds of videos of people defining their favourite words during this year's Edinburgh Festival. Wordia will launch into a crowded marketplace, with the likes of dictionary.com, owned by US publishing group InterActiveCorp, and Oxford University Press' Oxford English Dictionary already active on the internet.

Informa shares fell 7% as investors reacted negatively to the rejection of a lower than expected bid from a private equity consortia bid led by Blackstone. Timesonline. Pluck, which is a social media services company has signed a 'wide- ranging' deal with the Chicago Sun Times. MediaPost.

Pluck positions itself both as a provider of white-label social networking tools for enterprise clients like USA Today and now the Sun-Times, while also running BlogBurst, a vast blog syndication network which connects newspapers and other media sites to a network of some 5,500 selected blogs. "We're providing publishers with the tools to bring online conversations into their own networks, where they can best monetize it," said Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck and EVP of Demand Media, which acquired Pluck earlier this year. Pluck SiteLife service helps online properties engage site visitors with a range of social media capabilities including user comments, ratings, recommendations, reviews, photo and video sharing, forums and social networking profiles called Personas. SiteLife includes widgets and a set of platform-level APIs for publishers to tailor a social media experience to their audiences. Pluck's social media services are presently live on some 300 top brand, media and retail sites, including those of Circuit City, Condé Nast, The Guardian and USA Today, serving more than 2.5 billion interactions each month.

Age Banding on Children's books has been a contentious issue in the UK over the past year. The argument pits publishers against publisher and author against publisher. Here Scholastic's Kate Wilson suggests the approach may not have been flawless (Guardian):

"I would suggest – and I am speaking entirely as myself, rather than as the representative of anyone else or anybody here – that there were some regrettable errors in how publishers went about the introduction of age guidance," said Scholastic group managing director Kate Wilson. "I think most of them, if they had their time again, would do it differently and in greater consultation with authors." She was the only representative of the publishing industry who accepted an invitation to a specially-organised debate at the Children's Writers and Illustrators conference at which Philip Pullman condemned the initiative, branding the labels "not true" and questioning the research which motivated their introduction. Wilson, responding as an individual publisher, albeit one which has supported the policy, was conciliatory on the principle of consultation. But she was vigorous in her defence of the research and the need for children's books to find a more competitive edge against other forms of spending on children. "Age guidance isn't perfect but it is another ingredient added to the marketing mix that the majority of book buyers surveyed said they'd welcome."

In the US, some children's and YA titles receive 'lexile' measures that are intended to describe the reading comprehension level of the materal. So a 20 year old with a 'reading comprehension' of an 8 year old can readily find (or be given) a book that is appropriate, and let's face it that's a lot better than recieving a book that has printed ont the spine "for eight year olds." Not only would that be embarrasing but it would deflate any enthusism the individual had for improving their reading. (This is just as true if the reader were 10 not 20). Robert Giroux has died. Many have noted he picked The Catcher in the Rye but wasn't allowed to publish it. (NYTimes)

More than a year later, Mr. Salinger sent Mr. Giroux the manuscript of “The Catcher in the Rye.” Mr. Giroux was all set to publish it, certain it would be a winner. Then Harcourt’s textbook department intervened, saying “Catcher” wasn’t right for the house. Mr. Giroux retreated, forced to reject what turned out to be one of the great successes of the century. Furious at the interference, Mr. Giroux began looking to move to another house, and in 1955 he joined Farrar, Straus & Company as editor in chief. Almost 20 of his writers at Harcourt eventually followed him, among them Eliot, Lowell, O’Connor and Malamud. It was a display of loyalty returned; Mr. Giroux was known for the care he lavished on his writers, whether visiting Stafford in the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic while she recovered from a breakdown or insisting that Eliot raise his fee for poetry readings.

Bloomsbury announced an academic imprint. The Bookseller.

Bloomsbury is making a bold move into academic publishing with the launch of an "on demand" imprint that will publish titles online for free. Bloomsbury Academic will be run by publisher Frances Pinter, making a return to UK publishing, with Jonathan Glasspool m.d.

Informa Bid Disappoints

The Private Equity bidders looking to grab Informa have been told in no uncertain terms to sharpen their pencils. On the basis of initial interest that pegged the value of the company over £2.obillion, the formal offer made today is significantly lower. The Times reports that the Blackstone, Carlyle and Providence Equity bid of £1.87Billion is much lower than what management expected when they allowed prospective bidders to look at their books:

The source said: “Nothing at all has changed since July to make the company believe its worth has fallen so by so much. The board agreed to open its books at an offer of 506p and that is what they think it’s worth.”

Derek Mapp, Informa’s chairman, said: “The board believes that the revised offer significantly undervalues Informa. Informa has attractive future prospects and is continuing to deliver growth across the business even in the face of a weaker economic environment.” The company confirmed that it had continued to trade in line with its expectations. Shares in Informa closed down by almost 8 per cent at 414½p yesterday.

If a deal is to be done, then this consortium looks most likely to complete it; however, it is likely that negotiations will result in only a slightly higher price if the deal goes down. There doesn't appear to be any other bidders although having said that perhaps others on the sidelines will be encouraged by a slightly lesser price.

Harlequin Launch Reader Panel

There is a dearth of valuable primary research in publishing and Harlequin has decided to take matters into their own hand by creating a reader panel to advise on product development and new ideas. From their press release:

Tell Harlequin is an online advisory panel designed to enhance Harlequin's relationship with its readers through an ongoing dialogue whose insights will help guide the evolution of the publisher's business and allow Harlequin to publish the best in women's fiction. Participants on the Tell Harlequin panel can make their voices heard on topics such as cover designs, new miniseries ideas, new series concepts, new promotional ideas and more. The staff at Harlequin will then consider Tell Harlequin suggestions along with the publisher's own plans as it develops editorial for the future. Contributors to Tell Harlequin receive free Harlequin novels and sneak peeks at upcoming books, participate in entertainingonline surveys and exchange opinions and ideas with other readers.

There are fundamental difficulties in managing programs like this. Harlequin will need to mitigate the natural 'need to please' of its participants who in the case of Harlequin love the brand so much they may not be cold hearted, critical or incisive enough for this to be valuable. On the other hand, assuming there is an awareness of the difficulties then this program could benefit the company as it is vital that direct communication with customers supports product development.

Informa Bid Likely to Go Ahead

Reuters is reporting that Carlyle has secured financing for the acqusition of Informa. From the report:

Carlyle and Providence have now assembled a group of around twelve banks to provide a leveraged loan of around 1.5 billion pounds that will finance the purchase, along with a large equity contribution, several senior bankers said. "On the Carlyle side the financing is in place. The financing is already largely done," a senior leveraged banker said.

The report goes on to suggest that a competing bid/financing package might be unlikely given that some of Informa's existing banks are included in the financial team Carlyle has organized and the general difficulty in getting financing for any deals is problematic at this time.

DailyLit And Tom Peters

DailyLit is a pathfinder in the selling of books in serial format. The company has only been around for a short time but already has an inventory of over 1,000 classic and contemporary titles available for free or for a small fee. Readers sign up for the service via their web site, select the titles they wish to read and specify the time that the content is delivered to them. Each short book installment is sent via e-mail or RSS feed to arrive in the readers in-box where they can be read on a mobile device or laptop.

The company already has a phlanx of dedicated readers who can download a wide array of content from romance to business titles. The company announced today that they have signed a deal with Random House to feature several of management guru Tom Peters' books in serial form:

The books now available in short installments include The Brand You50, The Professional Service Firm50, The Project50 and The Pursuit of Wow!—titles geared to make employees and management more competitive in the evolving workplace of the twenty-first century. The books, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, are available for $4.95 each on DailyLit. "I am thrilled to be serializing these Tom Peters books on DailyLit," said Susan Danziger. "His work has currency and relevance, and our format—with a workforce that has a computer, Blackberry or iPhone almost always within reach—suggest this is a natural fit for us. Published in short installments—many of which can be read in 30 seconds—these titles are perfect for any busy professional. I am also excited to be featuring Knopf titles on DailyLit as Knopf is an imprint I have greatly admired since my days working at Random House."

Open Text Book Revolution

Wired Magazine takes a look at start-up Flat World Knowledge that is looking to revolutionize the College textbook business:

The idea behind open textbooks began with people frustrated with the industry, Frank says. The movement then led to non-profit aggregation platforms like Connexions at Rice University and the Global Text Project at the University of Georgia. But he believes they are one of the first to turn this into a commercial venture. "On the surface they're (traditional publishers) doing OK, but underneath the surface there are lots of problems," says Frank. "The internet has caused so much disruption in the distribution that there are so many used books and international books and pirated copies out there that after about two years, publishers have to bring out new editions in order to capture revenue again."
Frank says the firm is also in the process of releasing a version for Amazon's Kindle, but is working out several technical hurdles before finalizing anything. Amazon is thought to be toying with the idea of a Kindle marketed to the college crowd, and wired.com readers have been somewhat vocal about the need for textbook support in the device. Official launch is not until next January, when the company plans to offer eight textbooks, each written for Flat World by scholars who have also produced texts for some of the major publishing companies. It will test its
business model over the next semester in a private beta with more than 20 U.S. universities.

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 35):

The E-Book comes to England and Timesonline is there to mark the occasion:

Electronic books have had a lot of false dawns. People have had the ability to download books to their computers, phones and other handheld devices for years but so far, in the West at least, few have chosen to do so. This week Waterstone’s will be hoping to usher in a new chapter in reading when it helps to bring the Sony Reader to the UK. The Reader is smaller than a hardback, can store up to 160 e-books, comes with a screen that is more restful to read than a computer’s and a battery good for 6,800 continuous page turns — enough power to read War and Peace five times.

German publisher Bauer is a little known lesser version of Bertelsmann (Guardian):

Given the size of the company - in 2007 it was projected to turn over €1.79bn - it is surprising just how little leaks out of Bauer; publicly available information could fit on a side of A4. In fact, one morning after the takeover, Emap employees found a company biography of exactly that size on their desks: Bauer is a family-run company that owns 238 magazines in 15 countries and is now the largest consumer magazine publisher in the UK. It has TV and radio interests internationally too, with 12 million listeners in the UK following the Emap acquisition - and Magic in particular is now performing well at breakfast time with Neil Fox. They have been told little else since.

Apollo enters the bidding for Reed Magazines (Reuters). And they have apparently allowed the bidders to re-submit their order of magnitude estimates of purchase price. Certain bidders said this was needed because not enough information was available. Bids all fell but no indication that this had anything to do with current business performance. (Guardian)

The re-bids, not officially a second round, were allowed because bidders felt they were not provided enough information on the business in the first round, the sources said. After being presented with more information, the newer bids came in "slightly lower" than those in the first round, one of the sources said. All bids were non-binding. Yet more information on the unit is expected to be provided to bidders in the next few days, and a final round of offers will likely be due in early October, one source said. Reed put the unit on the block in February to reduce exposure to cyclical advertising markets.

If I had less important things to do I would have commented on how everyone is falling over themselves to anticipate Kindle revenue or where they will strike next. (Almost) Thankfully no new Kindle this year. NYTimes:

Talk of a new version of the Kindle e-book reader, aimed at college students, has been echoing around the blogosphere and has even reached your dutifully vacationing Bits correspondent. I asked Craig Berman, Amazon’s chief spokesman, for comment on a possible Kindle 2.0, and Thursday he responded

Why would a student who carries their whole life around on their Mac want to augment that with the (un)iconic Kindle? Jobs must be laughing his head off. More from ArsTechnica before Amazon announced there would not be a new Kindle.

It's this "new" version of the Kindle that will appeal to students the most, assuming Amazon decides to go ahead and pursue that market. There are other changes that have to happen with not only the Kindle but the e-book market in order for a "textbook" Kindle to be a hit with students, however. Continued price drops for e-books will help, as they'll be more attractive to students who currently resell their used textbooks at the end of each semester. A large inventory of textbooks will also help (there's no use in getting a Kindle for textbooks if you can only get one or two books on it), and the addition of student-friendly features (such as the ability to make annotations) would round out the list of things that would make such a thing appealing to students. Oh, and a low price would help too.

I don't get why a) this needs to be a 'special' version and b) why this is an opportunity given the lack of formatted content and c) I guess trade isn't actually driving millions in unit sales? For the educational publishers however a bonus, since they will have watched from the sidelines as trade publishers have performed muppet like as they annouced sucessive Kindle initiatives. Lastly this from Frank Rich in the NYTimes:

We [Journos], too, are made anxious and fearful by hard economic times and the prospect of wrenching change. YouTube, the medium that has transformed our culture and politics, didn’t exist four years ago. Four years from now, it’s entirely possible that some, even many, of the newspapers and magazines covering this campaign won’t exist in their current form, if they exist at all. The Big Three network evening newscasts, and network news divisions as we now know them, may also be extinct by then. It is a telling sign that CBS News didn’t invest in the usual sky box for its anchor, Katie Couric, in Denver. It is equally telling that CNN consistently beat ABC and CBS in last week’s Nielsen ratings, and NBC as well by week’s end. But now that media are being transformed at a speed comparable to the ever-doubling power of microchips, cable’s ascendancy could also be as short-lived as, say, the reign of AOL. Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum, which monitors the intersection of politics and technology, points out that when networks judge their success by who got the biggest share of the television audience, “they are still counting horses while the world has moved on to counting locomotives.” The Web, in its infinite iterations, is eroding all 20th-century media.