Book Army From Harpercollins

Looks like Harpercollins UK are set to announce a book social networking site similar to Goodreads.com and librarything.com. Named BookArmy, users will be able to build a library of books using ISBNs, tag them and interact socially (online) with other book lovers. Importantly, the site is not restricting the participation to books published by Harpercollins.

In a post I wrote about branding several weeks ago, I wondered who the first major publisher would be to incorporate a books in print database on to their site and it looks like HC UK will be the one. (In comments to that post some did point out Bloomsbury tried this approach years ago).

No doubt there will be some questioning why we need another book oriented social network when we have shelfari, goodreads and librarything. Certainly a valid question, but I doubt the goodreads people wondered if they could complete with librarything when they got started and here they are only a few years later with bigger traffic. There is no reason to believe that HC will not appeal to a new segment - or steal some of the users from the incumbents. I hope they will be able to instill in the BookArmy brand something that is unique and unifying because if the site comes across as HC corporate in disguise it is unlikely to be successful. I think the HC people are smart enough to realize that.

Harpercollins is very actively trying new things online. There US site is vibrant and full of experimentation. Some have argued that they don't go far enough in allowing access to their content but the point is they are not adverse to experimentation. The UK and the US online exercises do seem to be different in approach. It is not that they are uncoordinated but their respective approaches seem different. In the UK BookArmy and Authonomy.com are examples where they have have taken the potential of the web to build community just a bit farther than the US office is doing.

What could be most interesting about this is how successful HC will be in promoting the site across the other NewsCorp sites particularly Myspace. If they are able to gain traction there then we could really begin to see a significant player in book social networking. Perhaps even a transaction site that could become very significant given the concentration of users around the Myspace brand. On the other hand, your typical Myspace user may not be the perfect book reader and therein lies the challenge. Taking the battle directly to the group less interested in reading could be just the thing that builds some renewed interest in published content.*

I hope to have more on this when the site launches next week.


* I am not saying the typical Myspace user doesn't read: We need them to read books in quantity!

E-Books: The End User Experience

Springer has published a white paper on the results of a study they undertook asking librarians and users about their views on ebook adoption and benefits. In two stages, the company spoke to librarians in 2007 and followed that study up with another focused on users in 2008.

The survey uncovered some encouraging results regarding eBook adoption. Most users were aware of eBooks and had accessed them at least once. Respondents also overwhelmingly said that eBooks are useful and that they would like to incorporate eBooks into their information experience more frequently. These positive findings are supported by additional Springer usage research and studies from independent organizations that have found a surprising level of uptake for eBooks given their relative newness.

Other items of interest from the study (and covered in the document in more detail):

• Users mostly access ebooks for research and study while reading reference and textbooks
• E-book usage appears less concentrated than online journal usage
  
• Users find ebooks equally via Google and their library
• Convenience, accessibility, and enhanced functionality are the primary benefits of eBooks
• Current users expect to prefer ebooks to other reading formats over time (next five yrs).
  

The study summarizes the findings as follows:

Users are not reading eBooks cover-to-cover in the traditional sense but instead approach them as a resource for finding answers to research questions. eBooks have the potential to stimulate new forms of book content usage and will require libraries to think differently about how to accommodate the needs of users as their eBook collections grow. Viewing eBooks through the lens of traditional print book usage might cause libraries to miss important opportunities for enhancing the user research experience.

Google Book API

Google Book Search has activated an API that allows third parties to access GBS content directly on their home site. Noted in the initial implementation are several well know booksellers and also library catalogs:

This Google Preview feature is now live on retailer sites around the globe, from Books-A-Million to Blackwell Bookshop and The Book Depository in the UK, A1Books in India, Librería Norma in Colombia, Van Stockum in the Netherlands, and Livraria Cultura in Brazil. Over the coming weeks, this functionality will roll out to even more booksellers, including Borders.com, Buy.com, and Powell's Books.

Beyond these retailer partnerships, we've also worked with a wide array of sites and organizations to bring Book Search functionality to their users:

• Library catalogs. It is now possible to preview books—including a huge number of works in the public domain—right from the online catalogs of the University of California and the University of Texas, as well as through WorldCat.org, a service that lets you search across the collections of more than 10,000 local and institutional libraries worldwide.


• Publisher and author sites. The Arcadia Publishing web site has descriptions of its books about towns from Mountain View to Medford--and now, thanks to the Book Search integration, you can peek directly into these books as well. O'Reilly, Macmillan, Apress, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Stanford University Press have incorporated preview functionality into their sites, as well.


• Social book sites, which allow users to organize and share their reviews, ratings, and favorite books. You can now import your Book Search My Library collection straight into your aNobii account, or preview books within the weRead gadget for social networks. Be sure to also try out the exciting integrations by BookJetty, GoodReads, and BookRabbit.
  

Of course, we know that even more sites will also want to work with the Book Search index in ways we can't even imagine. That's why we've made these tools an open set of APIs, which anyone can use to build applications drawing on the unique search results and preview capabilities provided by Book Search. If you'd like to try out these APIs on your website, check out our brand new developer site.

Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions notes the importance of this announcement for publishing CEO's:

Having, or buying into, allying with, the API's which manage and accesses your content may be the key decision for media companies in the next decade. Either your CEO knows what an API is, and can find out how, in strategic terms, to negotiate Google's, Amazon's, Facebook's and Apple's, or he/she needs to be a media genius who does it by gut instinct (Rupert Murdoch is the only one of those that I can think of and he is the wrong side of 70). The heads of Random House, Conde Nast, Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette and Pearson really ought to have an intuition about the way their business can develop an API to the servers which are hosting all their content. I wonder if any of them do?

MediaWeek (Vol 1, No 38):

New York Times reports on text book sales and pricing.

“The person who pays for the book, the parent or the student, doesn’t choose it,” he said. “There is this sort of creep. It’s always O.K. to add $5.”

In protest of what he says are textbooks’ intolerably high prices — and the dumbing down of their content to appeal to the widest possible market — Professor McAfee has put his introductory economics textbook online free. He says he most likely could have earned a $100,000 advance on the book had he gone the traditional publishing route, and it would have had a list price approaching $200.

“This market is not working very well — except for the shareholders in the textbook publishers,” he said. “We have lots of knowledge, but we are not getting it out.”

VentureBeat notes the success of an IPhone book reader from Stanza:

Stanza is currently the number one ebook app for the iPhone, and chief operating officer Neelan Choksi shared some other impressive stats with me. In its first six weeks, Stanza was downloaded 200,000 times — compare that to Amazon’s Kindle, which is seen as building momentum because it sells 40,000 units per month. Okay, that’s a totally unfair comparison, since Stanza is a free app. But if you can get a free ebook reader for your iPhone, why bother paying for the Kindle, or even a more cutting-edge reader like Plastic Logic’s? (Though of course the Amazon’s and Plastic Logic’s readers offer bigger screens, which is better for long-term reading.) People are actually downloading books, too — Choksi says one of Stanza’s content providers reports 20,000 downloads per day.

Rupert Murdoch has a rethink on subs for the WSJ from the Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch yesterday claimed online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones could rise by $300m (£164m) every year for up to three years, hinting that he will raise access charges to the financial news site.

For the moment the Informa deal appears to be dead (Guardian):

In a statement the consortium - comprising Providence Equity Partners, Carlyle and Blackstone Group - said it "has decided to withdraw its proposal" following the Informa board's rejection of its offer two weeks ago. The consortium also cited "a material change of circumstances" as one of the reasons behind its decision.

John Makinson interviewed by The Times on plans to expand into emerging markets like Pakistan:

Mr Makinson, 53, believes that Penguin can generate 10 per cent of its sales from emerging markets, which amounts to £100 million a year. The operation in India grew by 25 per cent last year, boosting turnover by £15 million and should, Mr Makinson says, generate 5 per cent of revenues in five years.

That fuels a belief that Penguin's growth can be boosted, although Mr Makinson points out that the business “has hardly let the side [Pearson] down - profits have grown in double digits in 2005, 2006, 2007 and is expected to again in 2008”.

University of Michigan places an Espresso Machine in one of their libraries (PR):

U-M is the first university library to install the book-printing machine. The Espresso Book Machine, from On Demand Books of New York, produces perfect-bound, high-quality paperback books on demand. A Time Magazine "Best Invention of 2007," the Espresso Book Machine has been called "the ATM of books." It was purchased with donations to U-M libraries.

Why experience matters. NYTimes. Alison Pendergast notes the University of Ohio is offering grants to faculty to produce course content:

However, in addition to this news, a smaller piece of news that didn't grab as much attention was the University System of Ohio offering Grants to its faculty to produce course content in an effort to move away from having Ohio students purchase branded textbooks. From the Program Synopsis:

The University System of Ohio (USO) will invest $250,000 to create affordable digital content for Ohio students and bring the digital learning materials to market in Autumn of 2009. The program goals are to:

Create learning materials that are cost-free for Ohio students; usher in a new era of digitally-delivered learning materials that, properly implemented, can improve student learning, and leverage high quality authorship and pedagogy from Ohio faculty members.

(Aside, I hope the textbooks they produce get a bit better editing than this RFP...)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is to establish an Headquarters in Dublin and hire 450 people. (It's nice in Dublin). Finfacts:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (formerly Riverdeep) is to invest €350m in eLearning research and development with significant support from Enterprise Ireland. HMH is to establish its global eLearning research and development centre in the greater Dublin area, creating 450 "high-value" jobs over the next 5 years.

A&R Installs First Espresso Book Machine in Australian Market

Angus & Robertson Australia's largest book retailer is heading a group that will place up to 50 Espresso Book Machines in their stores over the next two years. A&R says they will initially offer 20,000 mainly Australian hard to find and out of print titles but expect that title list to exceed 100,000 over the next few years.

The EBM has been mentioned here before (particularly in its implementation in Canada) and the machine continues to roll out steadily in the US. This implementation in Australia could be transformative because of how the Australian market works. The three partners in this effort; A&R, Central Book Services and EBM may have the market power to fundamentally change the book market in Australia.

Firstly, because the market is relatively small there the market for titles written by and for the Australian market is quite small (somewhat similar to Canada); therefore, sheer economics prevent a broad based industry. Implementing an on-demand solution could lower the profit threshold considerably resulting in a more vibrant indigenous publishing program. Secondly, the Australian market is seen as an important but secondary market for US and UK publishers. As a result, decisions are not always taken with respect to the Australian market by overseas corporate offices that are in the best interests of the Australian market. For example, decisions related to price or availability. Sometimes a title is made available only via the foreign entity or Amazon.com because the local publishing division can not promise a market for the title. (Some of these issues are far less a problem than they used to be).

Thirdly, particularly in education and professional publishing the unit sales levels of many titles can be counted in the tens or hundreds. These levels are simply not high enough to stock locally. So if orders are placed with a local publisher the delivery dates could be months rather than days because the title has to be sourced from the overseas corporate parent. The sad thing is many customers (university booksellers and libraries) bypass the local publisher and buy from B&T or Amazon. From these vendors, the title can be delivered in days and yes, that's air freighted in with costs added.

Implementing EBM can start to solve some of these inefficiencies in the Australian bookseller and publisher market. In the process, revenue that had been going overseas might return to local suppliers and publishers - those owners of the local publishing rights - and the total market might become more expansive delivering a much wider inventory of products than could be conceivable today (or yesterday).

Those interested in learning more about this initiative should contact Central Book Services especially if you are interested in adding your titles to the inventory. Contact Warren Broom on 03-92107804 or wbroom @ centralbookservices.com

Sydney Morning Herald

Publishers Lunch Launch Bookstore Maps

Announced today is an ambitious and long needed new bookstore locator product from Publishers Lunch. The database product pulls together store location information from 4200 bookstores selling new titles across the US.

If you are not a subscriber to Publishers Lunch (and face it who isn't) this should provide the motivation you need. Here is more information from their press release:

We are now live at PublishersMarketplace with our latest database project, one of our most ambitious and most essential compilations yet. Charting the landscape of physical retailers that support the entire business, we have compiled and vetted data on over 4,200 stores selling new books across the country.

The database presents basic information for each store, while also cataloging hundreds of associated bookstore websites. Most dramatic of all, we have made the information visual as well, displaying it on Google-powered maps.

A variety of search options make it easy to access the data in multiple ways: You can scan by state, 33 major metropolitan areas, zip code, and store type (chain; indie; etc.), or browse a number of specialty stores (children's; mystery; etc.) Stores are color-coded to easily and quickly distinguish among the four largest chains, general indies, college bookstores and specialty stores.

And special features add utility of particular interest for "trade" use: newly opened and recently closed stores are specially tagged, and we recently added the ability for stores to contribute rich information about the kinds of special events and readings they offer and whom to contact about author bookings.

An "add/update/remove a store" link on the main Bookstore Maps page makes it easy for stores to contribute and correct data and submit information for those Events fields so that publishers can learn more about their capabilities. We also need to bolster the lists of specialty stores and are eager to hear from organizations with comprehensive, vetted data.

Right now this resource is viewable only via PublishersMarketplace, though we are working on variety of additional uses, including a free-standing version for general users. Among the special uses we would be delighted to explore with any of you are:

* Using the database as an always up-to-date and comprehensive "store finder" to run on any publisher's web site, to help support the entire ecosystem of physical and online retail

* Generating national Tour Maps for particular authors, to embed on author sites and pages

* Developing a variety of proprietary in-house versions, using our visual interface as a way of storing your own data about accounts, a way to test visual mapping of POS data, and more

(We're already looking at incorporating feeds of data about author appearances, but help/ideas are most welcome.)

Needless to say, this feature is the culmination of a tremendous amount of work by many people. We are particularly grateful for the generous assistance of Barnes & Noble, Borders Group, the American Booksellers Association, the directors of all of the regional booksellers associations, the folks at publishing houses who viewed our demos and offered feedback, and the many freelance researchers who worked with us in compiling and correcting the data. We look forward to your suggestions for improving and employing this new resource, and to community contributions to the data itself.

To check out Bookstore Maps, just go here: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/stores
[we'll add it to the PM menu bar shortly]

To view sample events data, visit these store links and click the "Events" tab:
Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center VT

Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park WA

The Globe Corner Bookstore, Cambridge MA

Stanford University Bookstore, Stanford CA

When Bowker was sold by Reed, we lost American Book Trade Directory and American Library Directory once the dust had settled. Had we kept them I would like to think we could have done something like this with those data base products. Assuming PL carves out this bookstore information as a separate product I don't see how other databases could compete on quality or price. Now, Bowker should do somthing similar with the Publisher's Wholesalers and Distributors database in advance of someone beating them to it.

A Cool New Reading Device

My friends at Rosetta sent me a link to a presentation by a company named Plastic Logic who demonstrate their proto type for a new e-Reader targeted at business users. Looks very cool.

Here is the video (link) and the product is slated for launch early next year.