Cengage Learning Announces Streamlined Operating Structure

From their press release

Cengage Learning Announces Streamlined Operating Structure to Allow Greater Synergy, Focused Technology Investments and Increased Innovation Across Company

Incorporates Library/Reference, Academic/Professional and International Business Units to Provide Research and Learning Solutions Unmatched In Industry
STAMFORD, Conn., July 7

/PRNewswire/ -- Cengage Learning, a leading global provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions, today announced that the company will consolidate its business units into one streamlined operating group, a new structure that will allow for greater synergies, more focused technology investments and increased innovation both domestically and internationally. The move brings together the company's Academic and Professional Group (APG), including such well-known brands as South-Western, Delmar, Wadsworth and Brooks/Cole, with the market leading library/reference group, Gale, and the company's international operations. The transition will begin immediately, and is expected to be completed in September 2010.
"This is an exciting change for Cengage Learning and our customers, making it possible for us to provide a range of research and learning solutions that is unprecedented in our industry," said Ron Dunn, President and CEO of Cengage Learning. "Unlike any of our competitors, we can leverage the combined resources of Gale and APG to bridge the gap between the library and the classroom, developing innovative new solutions that combine Gale's unparalleled expertise in creating, organizing and distributing content with APG's deep understanding of pedagogy, teaching and learning styles, and assessment. This combination will allow Cengage Learning to better serve customers worldwide -- in classrooms, libraries, and anywhere else people engage in research and learning. It represents an alliance of abilities completely unique in our industry -- a blend of content, technology, and expertise -- drawn from more than half a century serving both classrooms and libraries."
As a result of the restructuring, Patrick C. Sommers, President of Gale will retire at the end of July, and Ron Mobed, President of the Academic and Professional Group will be leaving the company. Dunn's new Executive Committee will include: Adrian Butler, Executive Vice President, Human Resources; Ken Carson, General Counsel; Dean Durbin, Chief Financial Officer; Rich Foley, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing; Manuel Guzman, Executive Vice President, Learning and Research Solutions; and William Rieders, Executive Vice President, New Media.
About Cengage Learning
Cengage Learning is a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions for the academic, professional and library markets worldwide. The company's products and services are designed to foster academic excellence and professional development, increase student engagement and improve learning outcomes. Cengage Learning's brands include Heinle, Gale, Wadsworth, Delmar, Brooks/Cole and South-Western, among others. For more information on Cengage

Lufufe Kwetshube Was Terrified By Reading

This arrived from the Cape Town Book Fair people unsolicited:


Cape Town Book Fair literacy campaign set to change lives.

By Joanne Smetherham

Lufufe Kwetshube was paralysed by shyness and his terror of reading in his first year at Observatory Junior School, Cape Town. He would answer questions in monosyllables and dared not look adults in the eye.

“We thought he would be one of the small minority whom we wouldn’t be able to help,” said Maurita Weissenberg, founder of the Shine Literacy Programme at the school.

Lufefe entered the literacy programme in his second year, after he failed the first set of national benchmark tests on literacy – as did a staggering three-quarters of his classmates, who all took part in the programme. To Weissenberg’s surprise and delight, Lufefe was a transformed child after 18 months.

Within months, he was able look adults in the eye and answer them with confidence. Best of all, he was asking to read books. And instead of avoiding the imaginary games using plastic animals, he would eagerly ask: “Can I please play that one?” Then he would come up to hold up a giraffe or a zebra, telling his tutor all about it.

“He’s happy, and he’s enjoying learning. I’m so proud,” said Lufefe’s grandmother Princess Lutshebe, who is bringing him up because his mother died. “Help with literacy was all he needed to change this child’s life and allow him to take control of his future,” said Weissenberg. “And it didn’t even take that much.”

Lufefe is one of large numbers of South African children who do not receive the help with literacy that they need, in their school lessons. A study by the UCT Children’s Institute last year found that two-thirds of junior school learners nationally were functionally illiterate and innumerate. It is against this background that the Cape Town Book Fair (CTBF) together with Literacy Campaign (LitCam) of the Frankfurt Book Fair – a part-owner of the Cape Town Book Fair - as well as community organisations is launching a far-reaching literacy campaign.

This will see reading and learning (RaL) rooms set up in the poorest areas of Cape Town, and will also include a writing competition and a conference on literacy. “Literacy allows people to reach their full potential as human beings, and enables us to take part in society, especially in our globalised world,” says CTBF Director Claudia Kaiser. “Our vision is to give people easy access to books, in their own neighbourhoods, because people can’t always get to libraries”, adds Karin Ploetz, director of LitCam.

There will be a variety of books and learning tools in the RaL rooms, where special literacy programmes and workshops will take place. The project leaders will work in co-operation with the librarians at the new Khayelitsha library. The campaign organisers will also hire teachers to work in the RaL rooms.

The first three reading rooms in Cape Town - two in Khayelitsha and one in Mfuleni - will be finished by July 29. This is also the date of the launch of the RaL-room project. Five more RaL rooms will be finished by October.

The proposal for the RaL-rooms has been integrated into a broader community action plan, said Michael Krause, team leader of Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), one of the community organisations working with CTBF on the literacy project. “The reading rooms are what the community wants,” he said. “The project will start small, but the model could be widely replicated. It’s a great partnership.”

The first RaL-room will be in a building in the Western Forecourt of the Khayelitsha train station, where volunteers, some of whom have poor literacy skills, work for a local neighbourhood watch. The second RaL-room will be a container near a crèche in Monwabisi Park. A VPUU secretary will work there, issuing books to the crèche teachers for the children. The third will be at the Women for Peace centre in Mfuleni, catering for families. The aim is to set up further RaL rooms in Pretoria.

The learning tools in the RaL rooms will be Discovery Boxes, provided by Siemens, which contain materials for children to conduct 22 science experiments. Poet, performer and writer Diane Ferrus will be among those running writing workshops for children at the RaL rooms, and acclaimed poet and writer Antjie Krog will be among the authors who will give readings.
A writing competition called “Football moments – short stories from the townships” will be announced at the launch of the RaL-rooms. In addition, the CTBF is also organising a conference at which organisations working on literacy will be able to share their experiences and network. This will take place on Saturday July 31 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, during the CTBF.

LitCam is an international literacy and basic education campaign launched four years ago by the Frankfurt Book Fair and its partners. One of its projects, Football Meets Culture, aims to help some of Germany’s four million illiterate children. The children taking part in the programme experience the fun of football along with remedial education, and discovery that learning can be fun, the programme organisers have said.

In his literacy lessons with Shine at Observatory Junior School little Lufefe, too, made this discovery. His tutor, Leigh-Anne Nathan, remembers a day three months into the programme, when he came in as shyly as always. However, when he lifted his head to greet her, he grinned, showing off a big set of false teeth. Leigh-Anne burst out laughing, just as Lufefe had wanted, and realised they had made a breakthrough. Lufefe was enjoying himself.

The Cape Town Book Fair runs from 30 July to 2 August. This year for the first time the first day of the fair will be a trade day, with the fair opening to the public on 31 July. For more information on the CTBF visit www.capetownbookfair.com and join our Facebook page to take part in competitions, write a story that will be read at the Fair and much more.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 27): Economist Issue, Newspapers, Pixar, Copyright, Internet Retailing, Price or Scale

A backlog of Economist issues has resulted in the following "Economist Issue" of my weekly review. An obituary of author Martin Gardner who died on May 22nd (Economist)

Yet he was far more than a synthesiser. Indeed, all his non-fiction—he also wrote novels, short stories and poetry—was rigorously analytical. And though he was shy, usually shunning his fans’ two-yearly “Gatherings for Gardner”, he was not afraid to speak his mind. Any beliefs he thought pseudoscientific, such as homeopathy, Scientology, creationism, anthroposophy, spoon-bending, astrology and flying saucers, he would dismiss with cool efficiency. Other ideas, such as Ronald Reagan’s beloved Laffer curve, were derided in spoof articles: Mr Gardner had a sense of humour, and used it to effect. But he was not malicious. Though he enjoyed hoaxes, he would sometimes turn them on himself, once writing, under a pseudonym, a withering review of one of his own works in the New York Review of Books. Did he spread himself too thin? It is hard not to think that anyone who writes more books (70-plus) than many people have read, as well as numberless articles and essays, must be at the controls of a sausage machine, yet the sausages were usually good. The harder question is where it all came from, to which the only answer is himself—and reading.

The strange survival of ink - speaking of newspapers from June 12 (Economist):

That emphasis on giving readers what they want to read, as opposed to what lofty notions of civic responsibility suggest they ought to read, is part of a global trend. Newspapers are becoming more distinctive and customer-focused. Rather than trying to bring the world to as many readers as possible, they are carving out niches. Proprietors and editors are trying to identify distinctive strengths and investing what money they have in those areas. In America many newspapers have plumped for local news and sport, leaving everything else to bigger outfits or to wire services like The Associated Press. Several of them now refuse to deliver papers to readers far from the urban core. Such readers are expensive to reach and less alluring to advertisers. Papers are also courting small local businesses with technology that allows them to design their own ads cheaply. In short, metropolitan newspapers are turning into city newspapers. That may help them in the long term. Jim Chisholm, a newspaper analyst, points out that small local papers have fared better than larger regional ones in many countries, including America.

An interesting article about Pixar and planning for the future (Economist):

Pixar’s approach to creativity is striking for two reasons. The first is that the company puts people before projects. Most Hollywood studios start by hunting down promising ideas and then hire creative teams to turn them into films. The projects dictate whom they hire. Pixar starts by bringing in creative people and then encourages them to generate ideas. One of its most successful recruits has been Brad Bird, who has presided over two Oscar-winning feature films, “The Incredibles” (in which he also provided a character’s voice) and “Ratatouille”. The second is that the company devotes a lot of effort to getting people to work together. In most companies, people collaborate on specific projects, but pay little attention to what’s going on elsewhere in the business. Pixar, however, tries to foster a sense of collective responsibility among its 1,200 staff. Employees show unfinished work to one another in daily meetings, so get used to giving and receiving constructive criticism. And a small “brain trust” of top executives reviews films in the works.

A look at the Apps market: Apps and Downs (Economist):

As this is all part of the ongoing “platform war” between different mobile operating systems, the numbers should be taken with several grains of salt. The more the numbers are puffed up, not least with some double-counting, the more users and developers the respective app stores hope to attract. Ilja Laurs, GetJar’s chief executive, admits that his tally includes different versions of the same software—because this is industry practice. What is more, many apps are the mobile equivalent of marketing: they are given away to tout other wares. On June 15th Apple even released an app that lets users order the latest version of its own iPhone. Others apps are labours of love that have been put out free by passionate developers. Nevertheless, research firms are trying to measure the market with tried and tested methods, sensing there are lucrative reports and consulting services to sell. In a recent study Juniper Research put last year’s revenues from mobile apps at nearly $10 billion and estimated that it will more than treble by 2015. Yet such figures are educated guesses at best, argues an analyst with a rival market-research firm which has refrained from making predictions of its own because of the paucity of data.

Can booksellers learn anything from Uniqlo? (Economist):

Fast Retailing also has a distinctive business model. Zara and H&M bring the latest fashions to the masses quickly, ordering new lines many times a year. Fast Retailing, by contrast, sells only around 1,000 items, far fewer than its rivals, and keeps them on the shelves longer. “We don’t want to chase after ‘fast-fashion’ trends,” explains Mr Yanai. This lets Fast Retailing strike lower-priced, higher-volume deals with suppliers (most products cost $10-20) and makes managing inventory a much simpler and cheaper affair. Uniqlo makes up for the narrowness of its offering by selling the same item in many colours: socks come in 50 hues at its flagship store in Tokyo. Such basics, the firm believes, have the added benefit of appealing to a wider audience than the preppy Americana sold by Gap or the faddish wares of Inditex and H&M.

Owning the news: Copyrighting facts as well as words (Economist):

FACTS, ruled America’s Supreme Court in 1918 in the “hot news doctrine”, cannot be copyrighted. But a news agency can retain exclusive use of its product so long as it has a commercial value. Now newspapers, fed up with stories being “scraped” by other websites, want that ruling made into law. The idea is floated in a discussion document published by the Federal Trade Commission, which is holding hearings on the news industry’s future. Media organisations would have the exclusive right, for a predetermined period, to publish their material online. The draft also considers curtailing fair use, the legal principle that allows search engines to reproduce headlines and links, so long as the use is selective and transformative (as with a list of search results). Jeff Jarvis, who teaches journalism students to become entrepreneurs at New York’s City University, says this sounds like an attempt to protect newspapers more than journalism.

The click and the dead: E-commerce favours large companies but only because that is what people want (Economist):

Everywhere people bemoan the replacement of the local and the quaint by outposts of big, homogeneous chains. But how true is the notion that the internet in particular has hastened the demise of some retailers, and that those it hurt were overwhelmingly small? A new study* on this subject by four economists at the University of Chicago looks at three industries—bookshops, travel agencies and new-car dealerships—for answers. They find much truth in the conventional wisdom, but also some solace for those who believe small is beautiful. .... The study finds evidence for this, too. Among booksellers, all the smaller categories withered in the internet age—save one. The lone exception was the very smallest, shops with between one and four employees. These appeared to have weathered the storm unscathed: in Harvard Square itself, Curious George, a children’s bookshop run by the same people who owned WordsWorth, flourishes to this day. The internet allows customers to see businesses’ true colours. The adjustment that follows may be wrenching. But the net effect is one that conforms to what consumers want, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

Media's two tribes: Scale or pricing? (Economist):

Paywalls are rising across the media landscape as many firms conclude that revenue from online advertising alone is not enough to make ends meet. The Tallahassee Democrat, a newspaper owned by Gannett, starts charging from July 1st. Hulu, a free video website that was launched in America in 2008, said this week that it would begin selling subscriptions. Yet there is a strong drift in the opposite direction, too. For every outfit that is trying to build a premium subscription service, another is becoming more convinced of the virtues of giving away free content. Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, for example, is something of an anti-Times. Its website, which is heavy on pictures and celebrity news, has grown rapidly in the past two years, both at home and abroad. It had 42m unique monthly visitors in May, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations—more than any other British newspaper website. Martin Clarke, who runs the Mail’s website, reckons people simply will not pay for general news on the web, and is happy to maximise viewers and advertising. The model of giving away content is not broken, he says: “It’s only broken if you are not big enough.” This is not merely a difference of opinion over whether to charge for online content. It is a divide between a strategy based on “up-selling” people to premium subscriptions, and a strategy based on scale and market-share. More fundamentally, it reflects different views about the extent to which consumers can be steered towards the most profitable products.

From the twitter this week: China E-Book Firm Challenges PDF InformationWeek Just what we need. My US orphan estimate cited in Euro Orphans Report But spelled blog name incorrectly. My report. Digital Magazines Don’t Encourage Socializing - NYT Tech Trends: Ereaders, Mobile Devices, and Cloud Computing Library Journal David Rothman on the iPad Stimulus Plan The Atlantic

High Noon on The High Street - Repost

Originally published May 4, 2007: News this week that the prior owner of Borders UK sees the imminent collapse of UK high street booksellers reminded me of this post.


Michael Holdsworth wrote the following article for The Bookseller Daily at London Bookfair two weeks ago and I asked him if I could republish it here. He kindly acceded. Until earlier this year, Michael was Managing Director (EMEA) at Cambridge University Press, responsible for about 70% of Cambridge’s global publishing and 50% of its sales. He now works with businesses on digital aspects of the industry. He is chairman of BIC, and of EDItEUR’s ONIX International Steering Committee.

The Bookseller London Book Fair Daily – Wednesday 18 April 2007

High Noon on The High Street

It isn’t directly the internet or eBooks which are the big threats for high street booksellers. They may just run out of books to sell, says Michael Holdsworth.

Much has been written about the difficulties facing the traditional bookseller – ‘unfair’ competition from the supermarkets, infinite range at Amazon, secondhand at AbeBooks, internecine discount wars, decreasing footfall, and pumped-up property leases.

The market for books isn’t growing as it should. Consumer research suggests that we have the wrong kind of young people, who reject the notion of reading books for recreation and leisure. Or even of using books for information and study. Today’s under-thirties – who ought by right to be tomorrow’s hardcore bookbuyers – live out their lives on the playing-card screens of mobile phones, preferring to interact online with the lean-forward social networks of Myspace, Flickr and Facebook. Inveterate multi-taskers, they listen to their iPods and text their friends, while watching television with laptops, not books, on their knees. For many students, information which is not online simply doesn’t exist, to the dismay of their so-last-century professors. The library is ignored, since the chances are that the book will be out on loan, deliberately mis-shelved, or will have had this week’s chapter razored out; and the bookshop shunned, where the right course books are perceived to be too expensive or rarely available. Time-rich and money-poor, they surf their always-on broadband to find roughly what they need – and preferably free (that is, ripped-off or public domain).

And if that future cultural environment wasn’t looking bad enough for bricks-and-mortar booksellers, rumblings are heard that the eBook may now be tottering out of the last chance saloon, available on mobiles and Blackberrys, or to a Sony Reader (with its magic suddenly-screen-readable paperlike ‘e-Ink’ technology) or to some other top-secret handheld iPod-like contraption, as the technorati scuttlebutt would have one believe, from Amazon, from Google, from Apple or from Sir James Dyson (pick your rumour).

But the most damaging factors powering this one-way ratchet of doom and gloom may be none of the above – directly. The critical disruption that will change the shape of book retail forever will be that booksellers will cease to be the channel for the distribution of information and non-fiction (even when it is in book form). And without that, they simply won’t have enough stuff to sell. And they certainly won’t be selling what they still can sell from stores of over 10,000 square feet as they do on Britain’s high streets today.

For most of us, the Internet is our first port of call for reference and information. We go straight to Google, we Ask Jeeves, we scour Wikipedia. What we get may not be validated content, and may not always be 100 per cent correct, but, hey, it’s free. Will today’s students – tomorrow’s shoppers – buy reference and information titles at all, let alone from bookshops? Will anyone buy maps or atlases? Watch the people on the tube, clutching their MultiMap print-outs.

What’s more we are only on the brink of some new Internet models which will change the way we all think about reading online and paid content on the web. Google and Amazon now have the largest eBook libraries on the planet. And if the Internet rumour-mill is to be believed, it’s only a matter of time before we see these collections monetised, with the full collusion of the publishers, of course. And we know that Microsoft Windows Live, which launched its public domain book search offering last year, and Yahoo, are watching and waiting in the wings.

As the physical ‘Blockbuster’ model of video rental through video stores collapses, giving way to anytime mail-order and high-bandwidth movie downloads, information book consumers will for the first time discover online subscription and rental. Why buy the book when all you want is to turn the pages for a day, or research the topic for a week? Why buy the whole thing when you only need a chapter; why buy a guide to France when all you need is Chartres Cathedral?

Amazon’s Upgrade – the first consumer eBook-and-print book bundle – isn’t yet being offered outside the USA. This path-breaking new service allows buyers of the print book to pay an additional 10 or 20 per cent on top of the print price for immediate and perpetual online-only access to the full searchable text. Publishers may think that Amazon is selling this additional access too cheaply, but there is no doubt that it is already proving a most attractive proposition. Not only does it fulfil the 1970s Martini dream of having the books you own available to you "any time, any place, anywhere . . .", it also offers customers the gratification of using the book (and remember, this is mainly about ‘extractive’ reading, not the immersive long-form narrative of fiction or biography) immediately the credit card has gone through, without having to wait for the postman.

Amazon Upgrade may prove a pivotal tipping-point for two reasons. First, because Upgrade (and other services such as Google’s Book Search) will for the first time start to encourage and facilitate really-easy online reading of book content by ordinary people, not academics, students or geeks. Amazon and Google have the reach and access to democratise this new habit in a way that specialist eBooks never will, with their often rebarbative DRM and user experiences. Some people may actually prefer this new way.

Second, we can anticipate that bundled online access for non-fiction and information titles will become the norm. It will become a sine-qua-non of this sort of publishing, exactly as online access has long been for scholarly journals, and as additional blended elements are increasingly de rigueur for school and university textbooks. Just as cars now come with radios, and hotel rooms come with TVs, it will quite simply be what bookbuyers will come to expect. That they can get into their home book collection from anywhere, whether it’s a recipe for must-have pineapple upside-down-cake while on holiday in the gite; or settling a holiday argument from The Guinness Book of Records. Pervasive GPRS on mobiles and public-access wi-fi will simply accelerate this trend. And this won’t just be an Amazon thing. There will be other aggregators, digital distributors and of course publishers providing these services. But not, easily, traditional booksellers…

So take away that non-fiction and information stock-in-trade – professional books, computer manuals, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, travel guides, DIY guides, atlases, maps, annuals, wine and cook books, almanacs, yearbooks. What kind of damage will that do to high street retail? Will only the most niche, the most specialised, the most responsive, the most remarkable – and the smallest – booksellers survive, in the most affluent cities? Such relict survivors will need to add a lot of value in service, ambience and expensive coffee as they hand-sell books as objects, as gifts, as things of beauty, as coffee-table items. Speakers at Google’s Unbound conference in New York in January introduced us to the scary concept of the non-fiction print book as ‘souvenir’ – as a permanent and tactile reminder of an information experience you’ve already had. You’ve enjoyed its immediacy and its primary utility online; now own the physical book as memento, as curio. But the owning bit is optional.

Is High Street book retail holed below the waterline? Or will the BA's new initiatives (at Godalming etc.) bring results in time for our booksellers to reinvent themselves? They probably don’t have long.

This article is covered by a creative commons licence.

Michael can be reached via email at the hard to forget michael@michaelholdsworth.com

Springer introduces new open access journals

In 2008, Springer acquired open access publisher BioMed Central amid worries the publisher would curtail the open access model despite claims at the time that they viewed open access as a viable business model and expected to expand the operation. This week, the company announced an expansion of the open access model to all disciplines under the trade name SpringerOpen.

From their press release:

SpringerOpen (www.springeropen.com) will cover all disciplines within the science, technology and medicine (STM) fields and will be offered in cooperation with BioMed Central. The entire content of SpringerOpen journals – including research articles, reviews, and editorials – are fully and immediately open access, and are accessible to anyone with an internet connection. No subscription is needed.

“We are seeing an increasing interest from our authors and from funders in all areas for open access publishing options and have responded to a need in the current market,” said Wim van der Stelt, EVP Business Development, Springer. “We are happy to serve our authors and editorial boards with the publishing options they want and are also pleased to supply universities, research institutions and our other patrons with the ability to use this content online freely and conveniently.”

SpringerOpen journals are e-only journals. Springer is committed to delivering high-quality articles and ensuring rapid publication as with its traditional journals, from online submission systems and in-depth peer review to an efficient, author-friendly production process. The final articles are not only published in a timely manner on Springer’s online information platform SpringerLink, but are also distributed to archives such as PubMed Central and to institutional repositories as requested.

SpringerOpen journals are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which facilitates the open distribution of copyrighted work. According to this license, Springer will not reserve any exclusive commercial rights. The journals ask the authors to pay an article-processing charge, in accordance with market standards.

BioMed Central, acquired in 2008 by Springer, will provide its expertise and technology to help establish the SpringerOpen portfolio. SpringerOpen journals will publish in emerging and interdisciplinary fields and will complement both the established Springer journal portfolios and BioMed Central’s growing list of over 200 life science and biomedicine journal titles. Furthermore, in order to reduce the financial burden faced by individual authors, Springer and BioMed Central are collaborating to extend BioMed Central’s Open Access Membership scheme, offered to institutions, societies, groups, funders and corporations, to include the SpringerOpen titles. More than 300 institutional open access membership arrangements are currently in place.

Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) is a leading global scientific publisher, delivering quality content through innovative information products and services. The company is also a trusted provider of local-language professional publications in Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands. In the science, technology and medicine (STM) sector, the group publishes around 2,000 journals and more than 6,500 new books a year, as well as the largest STM eBook Collection worldwide. Springer has operations in about 20 countries in Europe, the USA, and Asia, and more than 5,000 employees.

BioMed Central (www.biomedcentral.com) has been part of Springer Science+Business Media since 2008. Founded in 1999, the STM publisher has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is the largest open access publisher in the world.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 26): OCLC, AAUP Conference, Intellectual Property Enforcement, Harold Robbins, Book Bloggers

OCLC announced that a revised record use policy will be going into effect on August 1st (LJ):

After more than a year and a half of proposals, withdrawals, and revisions, OCLC's final updated policy governing the usage of WorldCat records is set to go into effect on August 1. The document, an update to the currently prevailing "Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records" (from 1987), is written in the form of an agreement on "Rights and Responsibilities" governing both OCLC Cooperative members and the steward organization itself. This commitment-driven approach is a departure from OCLC's previous attempts, criticized for being opaque and for featuring severe legalistic language. The current iteration has been repeatedly described as "a code of good practice," and stresses cooperative member libraries' vested interest in maintaining WorldCat as a viable and self-sustaining resource for catalog records and other services.

A wrap up of the AAUP conference in Salt Lake City (Chronicle):

The program was praised by many attendees in part because it focused on digital how-to: how to make and market e-books, and how to work with libraries that want everything in electronic form. It's far too early to say that most or even many university presses have made the transition from a print-based world to an electronic one. But most have now recognized that they have to figure out what that transition will look like for their particular presses if they want to keep publishing.

Concluding:

Beyond the practical questions, there was a philosophical slant to the conference, too. The publishers wondered and worried about the future of the long-form argument—e.g., the scholarly monograph. How will it survive in an era of quick Internet searches and piecemeal reading? Nicholas G. Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, wasn't in Salt Lake City, but his argument that the Internet is killing off "deep reading" came up several times.

At a freewheeling session on "information hyperabundance," the audience wrestled with how society ought to deal with the flood of data coming at us. Michael J. Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for National Academies Press, talked about how publishers and the rest of us are up against "a whole industry of distraction engines" that wants us to surf the Web, play video games, and generally do anything but read a book.

A drink writer is a bad writer (Independent):

"The idea that drugs and alcohol give artists unique insights and powerful experiences is an illusion," he said. "When you try and capture the experiences [triggered by drugs or alcohol] they are often nonsense. These drugs often wipe your memory, so it's hard to remember how you were in that state of mind."

LA Times notes that the Obama administration is beefing up the policing of piracy and counterfeiting of goods and e-books are mentioned (LAT):

Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel said her office would review current efforts to curb intellectual property infringement of U.S. goods abroad, especially in China. China also is the source of many counterfeit goods. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection report published last year said 79% of seized fake goods came from China.

The enforcement strategy outlined in a 61-page report released Tuesday contains over 30 recommendations, which includes establishing an interagency committee dedicated to curbing fake drugs and medical products. It also calls for agencies to encourage foreign law enforcement to go after rogue websites and "increase the number of criminal enforcement actions" against intellectual property violators.

"There's not an industry that hasn't been affected," said Dr. Mark Esper, executive vice president of the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who lauded the enforcement strategy. "The next victim out there is probably going to be the e-books and the publishing industry. "

Also in the LAT, book bloggers are inheriting the world of book reviews (LAT):

Blogs like Riley's, because of the genres they focus on, have caught the eye of publishers, who are eager to have a new opportunity to reach readers. "Women's fiction that maybe wouldn't be covered by traditional book sections is being blogged about, talked about," says Jennifer Hart, vice president and associate publisher at HarperCollins for its paperback imprints. "There are books blogs for every niche of publishing — from literary and commercial fiction to young adult, to sci-fi, to cookbooks. This offers publishers an incredible opportunity — we can reach the audience for all of our books, no matter the genre."

Some of this diversity was reflected in the Book Blogger Convention's attendees. Joan Pantsios, a public defender from Chicago just getting started with book blogging, has a fondness for literature. Carrie Brownell, whose Christianity is important to her blogging, is a stay-at-home mom from Oregon. Monica Shroeder, a 23-year-old military service member, devours books with incredible speed — especially those with vampires. Yet despite their different backgrounds, world views and tastes in books, these women — most book bloggers are women — were all incredibly friendly, eager to connect.

Almost complete collection of Faukner's works goes up for auction at Christie's (AP):

The auction could be the last chance to acquire such a large collection of the Nobel Prize-winning author's work, said Louis Daniel Brodsky, a poet and Faulkner scholar, who lives in St. Louis.Brodsky, who donated his own private collection to the Center for Faulkner Studies at Southeast Missouri State University, said he once owned the extremely rare copy of Faulkner's first novel, "Soldier's Pay," in a dust jacket that's part of the lot up for auction."There are five of those known," he said.Also included in the collection are signed copies of "The Wild Palms" and "Absalom, Absalom!" In keeping with common auction house practice, Christie's didn't identify the owner, but said he was an American.A few items offer a glimpse into the personal side of the author, whose stream of consciousness writings explored the complicated social system of the South.Ironically, Faulkner likely would have cringed to know his personal items are to be part of a public bidding war, Griffith said.

The lot eventually went for $833K. Not too bad - pays for a few air conditioners.

News that Author House will bring Harold Robbins back into print reminded me of Basil Fawlty and the Waldorf salad episode of Faulty Towers. This is Basil's review of Robbin's work:

"aimless thrills, ... the most awful American ... tripe, a sort of pornographic muzak." Of course, when he (Basil) learns the Hamiltons (guests) like Robbins, Basil pretends to have been referring to another author named "Harold Robinson." Harold Robbins was an American romance novelist whose peak of popularity lasted from the 1950s through the 1970s. His lurid, melodramatic writings were dismissed by critics as trashy pulp but were international bestsellers.

Here from the press release:

AuthorHouse, a leading self-publishing imprint of Author Solutions, Inc. (ASI), announced Thursday that is re-releasing 12 classic novels from America's top-selling fiction author of all-time, Harold Robbins.

Robbins' widow Jann said she chose AuthorHouse because it provided her the opportunity to make the books available over a wide range of digital platforms, like the Kindle, the nook and through Kobo. Additionally, the books will be re-released in paperback and hardcover formats.

"I'm an avid reader of eBooks and Harold would have loved the idea of making his books available digitally," said Jann Robbins. "His books spoke to all people, and by increasing the ways we can reach readers [through digital formats], I believe we're carrying on his legacy."

Galley editions of the first three titles: Where Love Has Gone; The Lonely Lady; and Goodbye, Janette will be debuted at the 2010 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference Friday through Sunday at the Washington Convention Center in Washington DC.

In addition, AuthorHouse will re-release nine more titles in the coming months. The release dates for hardcover copies and digital versions of the books will be announced in July, but pre-orders will be taken at the conference. "Harold Robbins is an American icon, selling more than 750 million books, in 32 languages, to readers worldwide. He paved the way for mainstream authors like Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins. We are pleased to bring his writing into the new digital age," said Kevin Weiss, ASI president and chief executive officer. The other nine titles being made available through AuthorHouse include: The Adventurers; Never Love a Stranger; Descent from Xanadu; Memories of Another Day; The Pirate; The Inheritors; Spellbinder; Dreams Die First; and The Dream Merchants.

From the @twitter this week:

Guardian: Conrad Black given fresh hope of early release after US supreme court ruling The http://bit.ly/9hImnD
TeleRead: Ray Kurzweil’s ‘Blio’ e-reader: Is it really all that? http://bit.ly/dgwClg
Guardian: 'Operation Thunderdome' takes US paper digital. http://bit.ly/c75mnE http://bit.ly/9fgvDu Digital first print last. Revolutionary
MediaPost Viacom's Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against YouTube Dismissed: In a sweeping victory for Google, a federal... http://bit.ly/bRBAtR

BBC News: Spy novelist Alan Furst takes readers back in time http://bit.ly/bpagJF - Just saw this. He is a great writer. (Video)
Nothing to report in Sport this week.

Amazon As Producer - Repost

Originally posted May 14, 2009

Amazon sells a lot of books but like any retailer they want to sell more. Reliance on publishers to produce the right books, or support the books in the right way, is so old school, and Amazon has determined that in some cases they can do a better job than a traditional publisher. From their press release:

AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon uses information such as customer reviews on Amazon websites to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors that show potential for greater sales. Amazon then partners with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers. This summer "Legacy" will be revised by the author and re-issued as an AmazonEncore edition in print on Amazon websites around the world, in physical bookstores, as a digital download from the Kindle Store in less than 60 seconds, and via spoken-word audio download on Audible.com.

It was really only a matter of time before Amazon entered the acquisitions segment of the publishing value chain and they follow Barnes & Noble and Borders in this respect, but the danger (or opportunity) in the Amazon case is more acute given their market power. Amazon is likely to go about this program in a far more aggressive manner than the other retailers, and the strategy looks like another element of their 'platform' play. Soon it may be the case where traditional book content - once 'generic' in terms of its' availability in all retail outlets - becomes somehow proprietary on the Kindle, in audio and perhaps in print. Amazon has such retail selling power that any publisher selected into the Encore program would have few qualms agreeing to an 'exclusive' sales arrangement. 'Exclusive' since few non-Amazon retailers would be likely to carry the title.

The self-publishing market has long seemed to me to be one of the best things that has happened to the acquisitions editor. The market represents a test bed of potential new authors and book projects. While the number of winners is always going to be small, the work of sifting through this material, which historically would have been done by reading the stacks of manuscript submissions, now takes place in the minor leagues of publishing. Here, there is a ready market of readers and reviewers who en mass can do the job of many AE's; but, Amazon is spoiling all the fun. With their superior data analysis capability, Amazon will be able to select these sleeper hits far in advance of any publisher and this Encore program will conspire to erode a publishers ability to source new books.

On the other hand, publishers will continue to publish authors who have not gone the self-publishing route and will not initially be available to Amazon. Many of these titles don't sell well even though they are good titles. Amazon are telling publishers that they are prepared to step in and help out if they determine that with a little more coaxing the title could indeed find an audience. The question will be on what terms this arrangement will be based.

Amazon as producer is a subtle but important change in the operations of the largest retailer. I often mull what would happen to some of the largest publishers if they lost their top two or three authors to Google or Amazon. It may be that the Amazon Encore program sets the stage for a much larger program by Amazon to establish their own publishing and media production operation - their content supply - that feeds their retail presence. There may be further ramifications from this seemingly innocuous press release.