Beyond the Book Interview with Cory Doctorow

Sounding more like a college economics professor than a bestselling sci-fi author, Cory Doctorow offers his suggestions for how publishers should arrive at the “right price” for e-books. As for copyright, he defends “fair use” and questions strict interpretations of the phrase, “all rights reserved.”

For publishers, authors and their readers, 2010 will likely go down as the year when e-books finally and decisively won a permanent place in the literary hierarchy. At Beyond the Book, we’re following this story from a number of angles, and we will continue this special coverage in coming weeks with a focus series on e-books available on BlogTalkRadio.

Penguin's View of the Future (Video)

Penguin CEO Makinson - Definition of the book itself is up for grabs and we're not sure yet what consumers are willing to pay for. We will only find out via trial and error and 'dynamic' pricing.

Video of his comments:



Video demo of some of their current ideas:



Via Paidcontent

Book Movement

This means little but it is intellectually interesting to me: On Sunday night 60Mins had segment on the Armenian mass murder that took place during WW1. During that segment, they noted Armenian Golgotha written by Grigoris Balakian which was written about the atrocity and published in March 2009. On Sunday night the hard cover, paper and Kindle books were ranked 108,172, 42,618 and 21,975 in their respective bookstores. By Tuesday morning, the numbers where significantly changed: 9,201, 2,036 and 7,623. As far out on the sales curve as 102,172 is probably means that any news or pr is likely to move the title significantly up the curve however, the title doesn't seem to have moved as far up in popularity in the Kindle store as it has in the hardcover and paper formats. There's probably some math equation there that explains all.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 9): Cool reading, Dick Francis, Reader's Digest, "Free" is Advertising

Lucy Mangan writing in the Guardian: How to make reading cool (Guardian)

World Book Day is a wondrous hive of activity. There are exhibitions, school visits by authors, story­time sessions, the distribution of vouchers, trips to libraries and book shops, and all of this is, of course, A Very Good Thing, pointing as it does the way for many to an unfamiliar source of entertainment. But it does all have that slightly worthy, top-down feel that only heightens the real problem with reading, which is that it is and always has been terminally uncool (even in Victorian times, the boy with the hoop and stick got more kudos than the one who got the third volume of Jane Eyre before anyone else). What it ­really needs to get kids reading en masse is a few initiatives to rupture that link. A free Bacardi Breezer with every book next year, perhaps. Or black T-shirts for everyone that say, "Fuck off, I'm reading." Or ­borrow a trick from cigarette ­advertising and warn that this ­volume might give you cancer.

Hand wringing over celebrity books (Guardian):

John Sutherland He rejoiced to concur with the common reader, said Dr Johnson. I don't exactly rejoice at the triumph of celebrity books, any more than I rejoice at the Economist, Spectator and New Statesman being elbowed off my local newsstand by the latest instalment of the Katie Price / Peter Andre / Alex Reid saga. But it's a fact of life. Live with it. We don't have much choice.

The book world's not so mystery bloggers (Guardian):

The most venerable of these is more of a traditional newspaper diarist rather than a faceless guerrilla blogger, but as Horace Bent has embraced the internet and does appear on his (we must, of course, presume masculinity from his name) Twitter profile with a bag over his head (though this has, in an indication that publishing is rising out of the recession, recently acquired a drawn-on face and a couple of authorial cats). Bent writes for the Bookseller and is, in his own words, the custodian of the Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year.Bent's nuggets are often drawn from the dry sales figures the Bookseller avails itself of, with a nice line in arch commentary: "Sales of Andy Murray's memoir were up 150% last week – to 45 copies sold. Cripes, even A Scattering [small press Costa winner] sold more than that!" and sotto voce asides: "I wonder whether the three bespectacled members of Channel 4's TV Book Club went to Specsavers?"

Informa has moved its tax domicile to Switzerland to save £12mm per year in UK tax. They are following the example set by others including UBM who relocated to Dublin. (Times) The Times reprints the last interview with Dick Francis from September 2009 and in it he talks of collaboration with his son Felix who will keep the books coming no doubt (Times):

The Dick Francis way of doing things is clearly a winning formula and Francis has sold more than 75 million books since he first put pen to paper in 1957 for his autobiography, The Sport of Queens. “You know what you’re going to get with a Dick Francis,” says Felix. “Horses, jockeys, danger, good triumphing over evil, but not on a smooth and even path. I like to think, or at least I hope I’ve made the books a bit younger, and given them slightly more humour.” Though Francis senior can hardly be accused of losing his sense of fun - since having a foot amputated two years ago, he signs his letters “Legless Dick”. Richard Stanley Francis was born in Lawrenny, south Wales, in 1920, and grew up in Berkshire with horses and racing in his blood. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been steeplechase jockeys and horse breeders. “I always loved riding, ever since I was so high” he says, stretching out his hand close to the floor. The outbreak of the Second World War delayed his foray into racing and in 1940, he joined the RAF, working as part of the ground crew repairing planes in the Middle East, before completing his pilot training and returning to England to fly Spitfires and Lancasters.

The Mail on Sunday is reporting 'significant interest' from possible buyers for Reader's Digest UK (Mail):

The administrators of Reader's Digest UK said today there was "significant interest" from potential buyers of the business and confirmed the magazine would continue to be published until at least April.The 72-year-old British edition of the magazine collapsed into administration earlier this month when its embattled US parent Reader's Digest Association (RDA) said it was no longer able to support it following a crisis in its pension fund.Today, administrator Philip Sykes, of Moore Stephens, said there was "significant interest" as he sought a buyer for the business.Mr Sykes said: 'While we are reasonably optimistic, it is difficult to predict a timescale, but negotiations with interested parties have begun.'

Research suggests free on-line content does not hurt paid student enrollment (Chron HEd)

New research takes a close look at what happened when one institution, Brigham Young University, experimented with granting free access to the content of some of its distance-education courses. The study examined the cost of opening up those materials and the impact their publication had on paid enrollments, a concern for institutions worried that giving away free courses could cannibalize their ranks of paying students. The data suggest they needn’t worry. Opening the courses “provided neither a large positive marketing effect that boosted enrollments nor a large negative free-rider impact decreasing enrollments,” wrote Justin K. Johansen, who conducted the study as a dissertation in instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young, where he also serves as director of independent study. “Really, the OpenCourseWare ended up serving as an advertising tool,” Mr. Johansen said in an interview. Over all, the six opened courses attracted 13,795 visits and 445 paid enrollments in four months. But Mr. Johansen cautions that the limited length of the pilot study meant that a “statistically significant” measure of the impact of opening the classes on paid enrollment “was not possible.”

And from the twitter (@personanondata) this week: Guardian:Teenage fiction's death wishes "why are teenagers so fascinated by tales of death and dying?" (Guardian) Seattle Public Library opens conversation on its future: Seattle Times "We want people to think big about the library," (ST) A Win For Publishers: Gain an injunction against German file-sharing company Rapidshare AG (Inside HigherEd) I've finally cracked Meacham's American Lion and hopefully I can find the time to finish it quickly.

Alibris Buys Monsoon Software

Alibris has announced they have purchased marketing services company Monsoon which helps companies manage their on-line retail operations (OregonLive)

The companies did not put a dollar value on the deal, but Gopalpur said Monsoon's early backers -- who invested about $2 million in the company in 2005 -- "got a very good return on their investment."

Monsoon employs 50 in Portland, and the company said all those workers will keep their jobs. Monsoon said it also plans to fill two open positions and add more jobs later in the year.

Monsoon's technology helps independent sellers on big online marketplaces -- Amazon.com and eBay, for example -- manage their inventory, pricing and order fulfillment, according to Gopalpur. He said its business fits neatly with Alibris' online book, music and movie store.

Monsoon's 2009 revenue totaled just above $7.9 million, according to Gopalpur. He said the company plans to add new services, and new employees, in 2010.

The interesting thing about Monsoon is whether the company offers an industrial version that medium and larger publishers could use.

From their press release:

Monsoon Chief Executive Officer Kanth Gopalpur, who will continue as CEO and join the Alibris Holdings executive management team post-transaction, said, “This transaction will provide the combined Monsoon-Alibris customer base with even more opportunities to expand their businesses and increase sales. We will be able to take advantage of additional resources, technology, and capital in order to deliver more and better solutions to grow our customers’ businesses on all online marketplaces.”

Leveraging the best of what each company has to offer, the Monsoon-Alibris merger will broaden sellers’ reach, giving them increased sales potential with the best tools, world-class customer support, and an extensive network of business partnerships, including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Chapters Indigo, eBay, and Waterstone’s. Monsoon will continue to run as a separate operating company led by Kanth Gopalpur and the Monsoon senior management team. Combined, Alibris and Monsoon managed more than $400 million of book, music, movie, and videogame sales for its sellers in 2009.

re-Set Conference Series from HarperStudio

HarperStudio is launching an interesting conference series featuring 'brand-name' authors and speakers. Sounds interesting - from the website:

re-Set Business is an innovative speaker series designed for senior-level executives to share thoughts with the world’s leading visionaries about how the world does business in a variety of fields, today and in the future.

Speakers on tap include Michael Eisner, Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin.

BISG Needs You!

In advance of this year's Making Information Pay (May 6th, McGraw Hill Auditorium), BISG is sponsoring a survey on "Exploring the Digital Transformation of the Book Industry" and will use the responses during the day's conference. Here is their press release:

A new Book Industry Study Group (BISG) survey, opened today, explores the ways in which new technologies are dictating “points of no return” in how books—both digital and physical—are being acquired, produced, distributed, marketed and sold.

The survey is being conducted as part of preparations for BISG’s seventh annual Making Information Pay conference, to be held Thursday, May 6, 2010 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City.

The survey is open to all members of the publishing community and can be found HERE. “The Making Information Pay Pre-Event Survey has become a vital learning tool for the conference over the past few years,” said Angela Bole, BISG’s Deputy Executive Director. “It’s a great way for members of the book community to become involved with the program and be sure their voice is heard.”

As new technologies revolutionize the book business, Making Information Pay 2010 will address key “points of no return” through an open exploration of how close we are to a fundamentally different publishing paradigm driven by:

• Books without bindingsBestsellers without agents or publishers
• Retailers without storefrontsSales efforts without sales forces
• Distributors without warehouses

Featuring a lineup of book industry leaders sharing practical insight into how they respond daily to the waves of change affecting the book industry, Making Information Pay 2010 will explore how we can know when systemic change is actually happening. Speakers and a full agenda will be announced at a later date.

If the above link doesn't work copy this: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8987JRX