Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold

(NY Times, 12/24/08, By BRAD STONE and MOTOKO RICH)

Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels?

For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com’s wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.

The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her show in October, and blame Amazon for poor holiday planning.

The shortage is providing an opening for Sony, which embarked on an intense publicity campaign for its Reader device during the gift-buying season. The stepped-up competition may represent a coming of age for the entire idea of reading longer texts on a portable digital device.

“The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven’t done anything,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division. “But it’s happening now. This is really starting to take off.”

Sony’s efforts have been overshadowed by Amazon’s. But this month it began a promotional blitz in airports, train stations and bookstores, with the ambitious goal of personally demonstrating the Reader to two million people by the end of the year.

The company’s latest model, the Reader 700, is a $400 device with a reading light and a touch screen that allows users to annotate what they are reading. Mr. Haber said Sony’s sales had tripled this holiday season over last, in part because the device is now available in the Target, Borders and Sam’s Club chains. He said Sony had sold more than 300,000 devices since the debut of the original Reader in 2006.

It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts’ estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.

Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it, Mr. Hildick-Smith said, and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.

So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.

Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.

The Kindle version of the book, which can be downloaded by the device itself through its wireless modem, costs $9.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. The Reader version costs $11.99 from Sony’s e-book library, accessible from an Internet-connected computer.

Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalog, their agents say.

“E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.

Nobody knows how much consumer habits will shift. Some of the most committed bibliophiles maintain an almost fetishistic devotion to the physical book. But the technology may have more appeal for particular kinds of people, like those who are the heaviest readers.

At Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based publisher of bodice-ripping romances, Malle Vallik, director for digital content and interactivity, said she expected sales of digital versions of the company’s books someday to match or potentially outstrip sales in print.

Harlequin, which publishes 120 books a month, makes all of its new titles available digitally, and has even started publishing digital-only short stories that it sells for $2.99 each, including an erotica collection called Spice Briefs.

Perhaps the most overlooked boost to e-books this year — and a challenge to some of the standard thinking about them — came from Apple’s do-it-all gadget, the iPhone.

Several e-book-reading programs have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and Penguin.

All of these companies say they are now tailoring their software for other kinds of smartphones, including BlackBerrys.

Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.

Meanwhile, the quest to build the perfect e-book reader continues. Amazon and Sony are expected to introduce new versions of their readers in 2009. Adherents expect the new Kindle will have a sleeker design and a better microprocessor, allowing snappier page-turning.

Mr. Haber of Sony said future versions of the Reader will have wireless capability, a feature that has helped make the Kindle so appealing. This means that the device does not have to be plugged into a computer to download books, newspapers and magazines.

Other competitors are on the way. Investors have put more than $200 million into Plastic Logic, a company in Mountain View, Calif. The company says that next year it will begin testing a flexible 8.5-by-11-inch reading device that is thinner and lighter than existing ones. Plastic Logic plans to begin selling it in 2010.

Along the same lines, Polymer Vision, based in the Netherlands, demonstrated a device the size of a BlackBerry that has a five-inch rolled-up screen that can be unfurled for reading. There are also less ambitious but cheaper readers on the market or expected soon, including the eSlick Reader from Foxit Software, arriving next month at an introductory price of $230.

E Ink, the company in Cambridge, Mass., that has developed the screen technology for many of these companies, says it is testing color screens and hopes to introduce them by 2010.

Many book lovers are quite happy with today’s devices. MaryAnn van Hengel, 51, a graphic designer in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., once railed against e-readers at a meeting of her book club. But she embraced the Kindle her husband gave her this fall shortly after Ms. Winfrey endorsed it.

Ms. Van Hengel now has several books on the device, including a Nora Roberts novel and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.” She said the Kindle had spurred her to buy more books than she normally would in print.

“I may be shy bringing the Kindle to the book club because so many of the women were so against the technology, and I said I was too,” Ms. Van Hengel said. “And here I am in love with it.”

Sunday, December 21, 2008

47 Tips for Cutting Costs Without Cutting Staff

(Book Business, James Sturdivant, 12/1/08)

With a battered economy dragging down just about every retail sector, a salient fact making headlines has been the ability of discounters to maintain sales growth—a sure sign that the “Wal-Mart Effect” has permeated every corner of the business world, and that raising prices is probably not the way to realize profits. This leaves cost-cutting, which, for obvious reasons, book publishers would like to pursue aggressively without sacrificing either product quality or valued employees. Here are some tips from a cross-section of the publishing world for reining in costs without sacrificing too much in the process.

Tips from...
Dwight Baker, president, Baker Publishing Group
Baker Publishing Group instituted a series of cost-cutting measures this fall and plans to review their effectiveness after 90 days. Baker says the company has not been forced to lay off staff despite the trying economic climate and is doing “everything possible” in formulating a comprehensive strategy to prevent future layoffs.

Short-term:

1. Reduce employee travel.

2. Reduce marketing budgets.

3. Freeze all hiring for new and vacant positions.

4. Reduce inventory levels.
The company is moving to smaller first printings and reprint quantities in offset. “We usually print a 12-month supply of trade books, and a 12- to 24-month supply of academic books. We’re reprinting smaller quantities lately,” Baker says.

Baker Publishing also has a digital component that handles about 15 percent of backlist titles, he adds. “We call the program short-run, because it is not technically an ‘on-demand’ model. We carry stock through the entire year, but never more than one carton,” he says.

5. Reduce book-packaging enhancements.
These include fancy covers with foil or embossing.

6. Reduce exposure at trade shows and conferences.

7. Make a push to sell overstocked inventory more rapidly.

8. Transfer work from outside suppliers/freelancers to in-house staff.

9. Hold off on all new equipment purchases.

10. Prohibit all overtime hours.

Long-term:

11. Avoid high-risk and expensive book projects.

12. Pace new book releases to match capacity of current staff.

13. Defer publishing expansion into uncertain sales categories.

Tips from...
Cären Yang, creative and production manager, Saint Mary’s Press

Winona, Minn.-based religious publisher Saint Mary’s Press has worked with vendor Transcontinental to realize savings in manufacturing and production by adopting lean manufacturing principles. “It affects how we make decisions,” Yang says, “by considering what’s the best way to implement [a practice] so it’s efficient for my upstream and downstream customers.”

14. Add a print-on-demand (POD) center.
For some publishers, it makes sense to add an in-house POD center, which reduces inventory and simplifies order fulfillment. (Saint Mary’s maintains its own shipping/fulfillment area.) “Eighty percent of the products we produce are produced internally,” Yang says. “So it’s a huge cost savings. We keep about one to two weeks of inventory on our shelves for those products.”

15. Set up an electronic inventory and warehouse management system.
Smaller publishers benefit from this as much as bigger ones, Yang says. It allows publishers to coordinate efficiently with printers in order to ship to their docks only what they need at a given time.

16. Use software to streamline workflow.
Saint Mary’s Press saves time and money by uploading documents via the Web for proofreading and other preflight work, eliminating costs for mailing hardcopy proofs. The system also allows errors to be fixed quickly and efficiently.

17. Drop the off-site warehouse.
Thanks to a well-coordinated printing, shipping and fulfillment program, Saint Mary’s now uses a small warehouse in its own facility rather than paying to rent a larger off-site facility.

18. Standardize your paper stock.
With so much volatility in the paper market, Saint Mary’s has worked to standardize the paper it uses. “We are ordering larger quantities of one stock for our products. … That’s been huge,” she says.

19. Print during off-peak times.
Work with a printer to utilize equipment at a discounted rate when not much business is coming in from other clients. With peak times tied to the religious/education schedule rather than other seasonal determinants, Saint Mary’s has gained significant savings this way.

20. Create more efficient PDFs.
Yang recommends asking your printer to share its PDF settings with your preflight specialist. Being in synch with a printer on settings for a print-ready file allows for smaller file sizes and fewer steps in the production process. “These are just little things, but sometimes the little things really add up,” Yang says.

Tips from...
Jim Kalajian, president & COO, Jenkins Group Inc.

Jenkins Group is an independent custom book publisher in Traverse City, Mich. President Jim Kalajian believes a cost-cutting campaign should be coupled with (and hopefully mitigated by) renewed efforts to boost sales—in his case, through lowering margins, offering new services and giving special incentives to smaller publishing clients that might be slashing their promotional budgets. “The bottom line, we have had to look at everything we do and determine if we can save money in some areas without affecting client service,” he says.

21. Ask for cost concessions from freelance designers and editors.
“Essentially, we have said, ‘If you want to keep getting work, you will need to do it for 20- to 30-percent less than last year.’ These changes are hopefully temporary during these slower times,” Kalajian says. Gaining a small concession on freelance costs can greatly improve margins and allow the company to keep in-house staff employed without reducing salaries or benefits, he says.

22. Shift work from freelancers back to salaried staff.
Staffers are now covering some design and editorial work that a year ago would have been sent to freelancers. Kalajian’s creative director will begin helping the marketing team with promotional material, rather than sending it to outside designers. “We also write 24-30 press releases a month for small publishers as part of our publicity-service offering,” he says. “Instead of sending all those to a freelance writer, we now have an in-house staff member write half of them.”

23. Reduce UPS costs bysending files to printers via FTP.

24. Use digital proofing more often to save on the cost of creating and shipping proofs.

25. Cut marketing spending that is not showing a positive return.
Kalajian recommends giving campaigns such as lead-generation or Google AdWords no more than six months to show results.

26. Switch Web site-maintenance services to a firm that bills in quarter-hour increments.
Jenkins Group has found that some firms charge $100/hour in half-hour increments, while others charge the same hourly fee, but allow quarter-hour increments—a significant savings when only a small tweak to the Web site is needed.

27. Cut office cleaning staff from once a week to twice a month … and do more clean-up yourself.

28. Modify a phone plan.
Money-saving measures can include cutting unused 1-800-number fax lines, and eliminating cell phone and pooled minutes across the company.

29. Reduce monthlycompensation of principles.

30. Reduce travel costs.
Kalajian reports a dramatic reduction by eliminating all marketing trips to New York.

Tips from...
Susan Spilka, director, corporate communications, John Wiley & Sons

STM publisher Wiley has been on the cutting-edge of cost-cutting, lately forming partnerships with other publishers and institutions to deliver services and information efficiently.

31. Electronically disseminate comp copies.
Working with other higher-education textbook publishers, Wiley has developed CourseSmart, a service providing digital course materials to consumers. Spilka says Wiley saves money by using Course-Smart to fulfill comp-copy requests, rather than having to mail print copies.

32. Offer supplementalmaterials on-demand.
Wiley has put textbook supplement transparencies in an on-demand program, whereby professors choose a transparency online, and orders are printed and shipped one at a time. This avoids inventory obsolescence for these expensive-to-produce items.

33. Institute a well-functioning content management system (CMS).
“Developing a companywide content management system … allows us to cost-effectively repurpose our assets” Spilka says.

34. Offer online options.
For journal customers, Wiley promotes the option of online-only subscriptions, which helps move toward shorter print runs and lower materials costs.

35. Move CD content to a Web site.
Some publishers have found savings by taking expensive four-color graphical elements and putting them on accompanying CDs. Wiley has taken this a step further by moving such content to Web sites associated with textbooks and other releases.

Tips from...
Dan Tucker, president, Sideshow Media

Sideshow Media is a small, independent book producer, creating illustrated books for publishers and corporate entities.

36. Expect more from your employees.
With today’s efficiency tools at hand, publishers should expect employees to wear more hats than in years past. Sideshow hires smart people and trains them well, says Tucker (who is also president of the American Booksellers Association), allowing them to work more efficiently and do more in less time than would have been possible a few years ago.

37. Keep an eye open for new suppliers.
“We are always looking for [lower-cost] suppliers,” he says. “We do a lot of manufacturing in China, and with costs going up, we are looking at other possibilities, such as India and Egypt.”

Tucker says he is willing to consider suppliers closer to home if the value of convenience and time/cost savings in shipping equals or exceeds the lower manufacturing costs available in Asia.

38. Be flexible.
Smaller publishers should leverage the assets that come with maintaining a leaner, more malleable supply chain, Tucker says, meaning they should always be on the lookout for better deals in printing or shipping, and ready to take advantage of these, especially in a volatile world market. “The difference between how we operate from a [major publishing house] is that, for them to alter the supply chain, I imagine is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier around in a pretty narrow straight. We are more like a small powerboat.”

39. Consider alternate staffing arrangements.
Sideshow has had success with employees working in remote locations and other positions being converted to half-time. These arrangements have led to some cost savings, according to Tucker.

Tips from...
Alex Holzman, director, Temple University Press

Temple University Press specializes in books on the humanities and social sciences. Holzman says university presses are used to operating frugally, but nevertheless can be subject to unexpected budget mandates from their parent institutions. “When cuts have to be made … they aren’t always made wisely,” he notes.

40. When you cut, cut judiciously.
Holzman advises thinking through the impact of any cuts on net revenue, noting that an in-house efficiency that results in declining sales is not a good idea (unless it somehow increases margins). “This probably sounds mundane and obvious, but it’s necessary to at least make an effort to avoid encountering unexpected consequences,” he says.

These consequences can ostensibly be non-monetary, yet affect sales and profits in the long run, he warns. An example would be a cost-cutting measure that damages author relations.

41. Embrace POD.
POD and “born digital” printing allow for tighter inventory control and fewer write-downs, Holzman says. “POD [also] helps with distribution overseas as one can print a book … [overseas] rather than shipping across the pond.”

42. Use electronic marketing tools.
Holzman reports success in steering people to online seasonal catalogs, thereby reducing runs for printed versions. Temple has also experimented with sending PDFs to book reviewers, though Holzman notes such practices must come with appropriate safeguards to avoid the risk of piracy. Marketing efficiencies are also realized by having books on Google Book Search and Amazon Search Inside the Book, he says.

43. Incremental workflow efficiencies add up.
Temple University Press uses Blackboard technology to transmit projects to its editorial board, cutting paper use. It also utilizes electronic copyediting tools and is starting to use XML workflows. “The former, of course, saves time and paper; the latter saves coding later,” Holzman says.

44. Leverage institutional talent.
University presses can sometimes benefit by drawing expertise from other departments, avoiding expensive consulting or service fees that commercial publishers often face when introducing new efficiencies. “For example, a university IT department can often provide very helpful guidance whether or not it also implements any change being contemplated,” Holzman says.

45. Trim paper costs.
There are many ways to incrementally decrease the amount spent on paper, such as, in manufacturing, considering alternative stocks and eliminating jackets for some hardcover titles. For in-house paper use, he says, “We use two-sided copying wherever possible. We try to send electronic files rather than create and then have to ship printed manuscripts. None of this is earth-shattering; you just take every bit of incremental saving you can get.”

Tips from...
Larry Bennett, vice president, Spanish language materials and POD, Replica Books

Replica Books, a division of Baker & Taylor, provides solutions for publishers looking to combine short-run printing of older titles with marketing and distribution services.

46. Use POD to automate the reprint process.
Work with a digital printer to save money by setting up an automatic reprint system for some “long-tail” titles, whereby books are printed and orders fulfilled without passing through a publisher’s hands. Bennett says this makes the most sense for expensive, low-volume titles such as textbooks and art volumes. “Your cost savings comes in avoiding inventory obsolescence and remaindering, and in the inventory-carrying costs. The more expensive the book, the more it makes sense,” he says.

47. Shop around for the best POD solution.
Different publishers have different needs, and one printer’s fee structure, manufacturing and shipping capability, and distribution network may make more sense from a cost-saving standpoint than another’s, Bennett points out.

I see the light...

Everywhere I turn, publishing professionals are concerned with the state of the economy and our industry, and wondering how long their own jobs will be secure. When asked my opinion, I have said one of two things, depending on the context:
  1. publishing is not dying, it's just evolving, and hopefully for the better;
  2. without excess inventory and returns, our industry would be a lot healthier.
Although the above is a simplification of the conversations and possible solutions, everyone in publishing has cursed returns at some point or the other. You will therefore understand how thrilled I was to read Book Business's 12/19 posting called "Borders and HarperStudio Agree to No Returns." Perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel...

Read below and decide for yourself.

Borders Group Inc. has agreed to accept books from HarperStudio—the HarperCollins imprint started by former Hyperion Books publisher Robert S. Miller—on a nonreturnable basis, according to The Wall Street Journal. When Miller, who serves as HarperStudio's president and publisher, joined HarperCollins in the spring to develop the new publishing group, one of the goals of the group was to eliminate the practice of allowing book-sellers to return unsold copies of books.

Under the terms of the deal, Borders will receive a greater discount on initial orders of books published by HarperStudio—58 percent to 63 percent off the cover price instead of the usual 48 percent—in exchange for not returning any unsold books to the publisher.

"The idea of taking inventory and then shipping it back isn't a good idea for anybody. We're open to all publishers to discuss alternatives to the traditional return model," says Robert Gruen, Borders' executive vice president of merchandising and marketing.

"Returns have never made sense in our business, and with the recent economic downturn, publishers and book-sellers are more open than before to experimenting with models that might decrease waste and increase profit," says Miller.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Digital Directions: Does Design Matter in Digital Distribution?

(By Andrew Brenneman, Book Business)

An important characteristic of digital content is its ability to deliver to multiple platforms simultaneously—to print, Web and mobile channels. Invariably, the same content will look different when viewed on various output devices, and it should. Each device has its own display characteristics, and the design of the presentation should be optimized for that device. I can hear the groans from publishers already.

Reach for the ibuprofen now, because it gets worse: Content also varies within the same delivery medium. For example, content may be syndicated on the Web to multiple delivery partners, whose respective delivery models require alterations to the design. Even large-print paper editions require repagination and other adjustments.

This raises fundamental questions about the role of design in digital publishing:

• Do our production and design departments need to grapple with all these new modes of delivery?

• Should design of electronic content be the responsibility of the distribution partner or other external service provider rather than the publisher?

• For that matter, is design strategic at all? Is design an important competency for publishers to have internally?

These are tough questions. The answers are not obvious and will vary from organization to organization.

We were able to dodge this bullet somewhat when digital distribution and marketing programs initially asked for only Web-ready PDFs, digital facsimiles of what was printed on paper. “How nice,” many thought. “We can use the same design as the book. This won’t be so hard.”

However, it soon became evident that an image of the paper-page was by no means an optimal experience for Web delivery. For starters, the aspect ratio doesn’t match. And for mobile e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, they don’t work at all.

Moving away from the use of Web-ready PDFs is a daunting prospect. It requires design departments to understand and deliver multiple designs for different modes of delivery. So daunting is this prospect that many digital-delivery initiatives assumed that this production and design challenge was too great for book publishers to undertake, and the task was off-loaded to the channel partner. Programs as diverse as those of Questia and Project Caravan assumed that the publisher would deliver original-application (manuscript or layout) files from which the channel partner would create the final design for delivery.

The decision to off-load digital-content design from publisher to distributor was a pragmatic one and helped get these programs off the ground. But it raised the question of whether publishers should be doing design at all. The content was what the market wanted, after all.

Is Design Important?
Tim Jones, art director at Harvard University Press, thinks so. “It is strategic. Our mission is facilitating communication of ideas, and design—both how the information is structured and how the page is visually designed—is an important part of that. It is not about being the coolest kid on the block,” says Jones, “but in facilitating communication.

“Great book designers are great at framing communications,” Jones observes. “We are going to be bringing back an edition of the ‘Songs and Sonnets of John Donne.’ The designer [of the previous edition] did such a wonderful job 50 years ago in making an extraordinarily complex layout effortless for the reader. We owe it to readers to ensure that this kind of thoughtfulness isn’t lost.”

The value of design in aiding communication will resonate with all of us who have suffered through a poorly designed book or Web site. And Jones’ position is certainly consistent with the publisher’s mission of facilitating communication. However, what of economic realities? Is there a sufficient return on the increased investment for digital design? In other words, can we afford to do all this?

“We can’t afford not to,” asserts Sylvia Hecimovich, director of production and design for The University of Chicago Press Books Division. “Chicago has an award-winning design department that has proven abilities in successfully designing works across a wide spectrum of subjects. This has always been a selling point in acquiring authors as well as marketing finished works.”

While clarifying the strategic and economic importance of design in publishing organizations, both Jones and Hecimovich acknowledge the need for selective investment. Not all titles require—or warrant—the same level of design complexity. While works of fiction and standard scholarly monographs can be translated to digital delivery relatively easily, complex reference works require much more investment to work well across platforms. “When you take something like ‘The Chicago Manual of Style,’ which is both critically important to this organization and incredibly complex, we need to take direct involvement and great care to successfully bring it into digital distribution,” says Hecimovich.

The ability or desire to invest and develop competency in digital-content design will vary from organization to organization. Indeed, it may vary across publishing programs within an organization. However, some common themes emerge:

• Strategy: Design is of strategic value. Design facilitates communication of content and is necessary to support the publishing organization’s brand to authors and the marketplace. Design is in the publisher’s vested interest.

• The hard truth: Each delivery device and platform will require differential design treatment to some degree.

• Technologies: “Web-ready” PDFs are not a long-term solution. PDFs allowed for some quick wins in digital delivery, helped everyone get their feet wet, and primed the digital ecosystem. But paper-page design will not provide optimal cross-platform presentation. Moving toward XML-based-production approaches will help support cross-device delivery, but the hard work of designing for different delivery modes remains. XML is a component to success, but not a panacea.

• Resources: Internal design staff needs to understand the design implications of the various digital channels and devices, whether they are directly involved in designing for these platforms or not. Digital design skills are key for all publishers.

Not all works can support high levels of direct staff design involvement—decide which titles and programs warrant it. If design is to be handled by distribution partners, your distribution agreements should include sign-off by staff designers before going live. If application files are submitted to distribution partners, ensure that licensing for fonts, illustrations and other embedded design components are consistent with such a hand-off.

I’ll be the first to admit it: This is a big deal for publishers, an area of long-term, fundamental change. It is also a key factor for successfully making the leap into digital content.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Don't judge a book by it's cover...or by it's container

I recently finished a spin-off series by an author I've been following for a while, and since I enjoy her books so much, I logged on to find and buy the original series this was based on. To make a long story short, the publisher--a major publisher who I will not name--let this go out of print and did not reprint her backlist when this new series came out.

I understand that in this economical climate publishers cannot print as much, nor necessarily print backlist that makes sense, but what I don't understand is why this was not made available via POD.

And then I read this blog entry by TOC which perfectly captured the problem.

Publishers: Let the Containers Go

In a guest post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky says publishers who focus on book lovers rather than readers are setting themselves up to fail:

Businesses don't survive in the long term because old people persist in old behaviors; they survive because young people renew old behaviors, and all the behaviors young people are renewing cluster around reading, while they are adopting almost none of the behaviors tied to cherishing physical containers, whether for the written word or anything else. Can you imagine a 25-year-old telling a publisher "To get my business, you should stick to a single, analog format? Oh, and could you make it heavy, bulky, and unsearchable? Thanks."

I know change is scary and oftentimes hurts, and I personally will always prefer a printed book to an e-one, but that doesn't mean that the printed book need be printed before I pay for it.

The publishing industry finally has a chance via POD and e-books to right the two wrongs that have been slowly bleeding the industry dry--returns and having to pay for COGS prior to any sales--and I'd think the large houses that could afford to experiment would be the first to do so... Instead, Amazon Marketplace got my dollars and probably several other readers' dollars.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Q&A With Co-Creator of Classics iPhone E-Reader


(Mac Slocum, November 26, 2008)

We've covered iPhone-based e-readers in the past, but the Classics application offers a few twists: it's not free, and the app's book content is updated along with the software itself. Classics co-creator Phill Ryu discusses the application's design and development in the following Q&A.

Why did you develop a book-centric application?

When we started comparing the iPhone to the Kindle, it was immediately clear to us that we could take advantage of the iPhone's brilliant color screen and touch capabilities to create a reading experience that would stand out from the crowd, so it began as a very, very tempting challenge almost, and eventually turned into a months-long passion project.

How many books do you offer?

We're currently offering a dozen books. They're handpicked favorites of ours, but we'll be adding more with free updates to the app.

Are these books all in the public domain?

Yeah, they are public domain. At the start, [co-creator Andrew] Kaz and I thought we could really do something radical in terms of the digital reading experience, but we couldn't start working with publishers based on the strength of some cool interface ideas, so we settled with the "Classics" name and created this as essentially the first prototype of our reading engine.

Did you consider releasing this application for free?

Yes, for a moment. Then someone knocked on my apartment door and slipped in a rent payment notice letter. The reality of the situation was, we had gone basically broke over the summer working on a pretty cool desktop app, and had to halt development on that until we could find some income. At that point, we came up with the brilliant plan to develop an iPhone app in a few weeks to generate some income, to continue the aforementioned desktop app. Classics of course ended up turning into a serious passion project lasting months of development time, and we went extra broke due to it, so going free was hardly an option. We're rather painfully aware that free apps tend to gather something like 25-50 times the downloads of similarly charting paid apps, and we'd like to reach that audience someday, but most likely it'll be with a spinoff app, and not with Classics.

Are you still developing the desktop app? Does this app also focus on books/content?

I really can't (and shouldn't) talk details, because the app might never fly depending on how talks with some content publishers go, but no, it's not book related.

You're using Apple's built-in software update process to load new books into the application. How did you come up with this idea?

For a variety of reasons. One thing that drove us toward this was gentle but insistent prodding from Apple throughout the dev process to stay away from selling books through our app. We'll be transitioning to server-hosted books later on though, once the collection has grown further.

Did Apple explicitly guide you away from selling books?

They guided us away from selling books directly through our app, which is against the terms for iPhone developers. We're hoping we can figure out an elegant workaround that they are fine with, but I want to stress that overall, they've been very supportive of this app, and have even been showing it off in the ongoing iPhone tech talks around the world.

How often will books be added?

I would expect to see several new books with each app update, the first of which should come later this month or so.

Will updates be free?

Yes. The app may become more expensive later on as it matures, but updates will remain free for all existing customers.

Since the books update along with the software, will users be able to keep/archive titles previously loaded into the application?

We have no plans to remove any books we release. Once the library size becomes prohibitive, we are planning to shift to server hosted books.

Apple requires applications to be under 10MB for download over cellular connections. Does this restriction limit the total number of books you can make available through Classics?

Not really, in that we are already pushing 20MB. We're hoping that we can eventually transition to server-hosted books while retaining the user experience though.

How many people were involved in the development of Classics?

Beyond Kaz and I, there were four designers who helped with various parts of the app (including the cover art, interface, and even processing illustrations for the books), as well as a friend and Web programmer who helped us create some in-house tools for correcting and formatting these books.

The Classics bookshelf interface has a unique look. How much effort went into this design?

Probably more than most people would think! The bookshelf interface for book management was inspired by Delicious Library's visual shelves (an app that Kaz worked on when he was 14). So starting from there, we worked with David Lanham on realizing our own flavor of bookshelf, and slowly refined the look over the next couple months, experimenting with various levels of decoration, tints, etc.

Of course, the other half of the bookshelf view are the custom book covers. As I mentioned before, Classics ended up being a passion project for all of us, and the designers really went overboard with the covers. (In a good way.) We started with the idea of procedurally generating each leatherbound book cover with different colors, sizes and such, with a unique "cover image" for each book designed to look like they were embossed on this set of leatherbound novels. Unfortunately, this ended up looking extremely bland. So after literally weeks of going back and forth on this with Dan Goffin, who was drawing concept art for book covers from the start, we settled on a much more colorful, and less restrictive style of fully illustrated covers.

I think this is the point where it gets a bit crazy. At this point, the concept books were looking much nicer, but we began to feel that the slightly simplified style made them look more like icons than real books. They looked a little fake. So the designers ended up illustrating these in high res, as if they were real books. The user for now actually never sees the vast majority of the detailing, but I think this level of detail adds a really unique level of polish to the app.

Will you port Classics to other systems, such as Android?

We haven't even investigated Android at all yet, but it's certainly a possibility. For now though, this remains an app we just personally really wanted on our iPhones!

Have you used/seen some of the other book-based iPhone applications? What's your impression of these?

Yes. And I feel like you are leading me on a bit with this question, but I'll take the bait and bite. I've tried a bunch of the other book apps out there, and frankly, the overall quality of these apps (in particular the "one-offs") horrified us, and only further motivated us to go full out with Classics. The only other book app out there worth picking up is Stanza.

How many copies of Classics have you sold? Have book publishers or others approached you about including their material in the app?

We've sold over 20,000 copies so far, though there hasn't been so much in terms of profit yet due to our initial investment in the app. We're optimistic though, and we're hoping some leads work out with publishers. There are publishers who want to work with us and sell books on the store, but the main issue for now is that there aren't many viable options for them besides selling one-off book apps, which is not ideal. If there's a nice way to do this though, we'll find it.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

BoSacks on the State of the Publishing Industry

In the current economic times, all industries are suffering and all jobs are a little less stable, yet publishing seems to be getting the brunt of the recession since, for many, it represents a luxury and not a need.

I have always believed, and still do, that although publishing as-we-know-it may be on the way out, the industry is not, nor never will be; BoSacks says this brilliantly on the PublishingExecutive blog:

The Publishing Community Will Not Perish


I'm a journalist, a grizzled reporter if you will, and my beat is the media landscape.

I have a question I want to put forth to the members of the fifth estate and my readership community. If my beat was a metro coverage -- and if there was an onslaught of murders happening in my turf -- shouldn't I do my best no matter how depressing and horrific the news to inform my readers of the dire events happening in our community? The obvious answer is that, yes, it is my professional responsibility.

Today, the media publishing news is not so much about death but about contraction and the loss of published titles, jobs and a missing vibrant economy to grow in. The news continues to be sad and, to those directly affected, depressing. But just like a murder spree, the story has to be covered. It has to be dissected and understood. We need to know what is happening and why. We need to understand that although many jobs are lost and others are under great stress, neither the community nor the industry will perish. The economy, the industry, the country and the world will suck in its gut, exhale and move on. There is no other greater truth than the fact that we will survive. We might change, we might apply old talents in new positions, we might learn new skills, but above all else we will eventually turn the tide, grow and, yes, even prosper after this period of contraction and reassessment.

How we get from here to there is the mystery. How long will the trauma continue? Neither I nor anyone else has the answer. But the fact that these troubled times will be behind us some day is an absolute. The earth will not stop turning, the economy will eventually grow, and people will always be in the need to know. They will satisfy that need by reading what authors and publishers produce.

Should you be prepared for unexpected changes in our industry? Yes. Will there be a day when society won't need to store and distribute information in a multitude of ways? No. We are an essential and critical part of civilization, so we will prosper and perhaps help stimulate that prosperity by the very nature of what we do: educate, entertain and inform.

RH Unveils POD Collection

Random House is to begin marketing its print-on-demand titles as a distinct list, Random Collection, in January. Random is launching a dedicated website, which will be interactive and searchable and there will be a launch list of 750 titles with further books added throughout the year.

Deputy group sales director Faye Brewster, who is co-ordinating Random Collection, said: “We have a massive archive of well-known and less well-known books and it is our policy to make as many available as possible. We’ve had a p.o.d. list for the past year-and-a-half and now that there is a critical mass of titles we can be proactive in marketing them.”

The website will be regularly updated with picks and recommendations by Random House staff and authors. It will also contain a feature enabling booksellers to make suggestions for titles they would like to see made available in the future. Brewster added: “When retailers are asked for a Random House book that is out of print, they can suggest it to us and we will check out the rights.”

She said that being able to search the website by author surname would make the list notably accessible: “It’s usually quite hard to search publishers’ information for print-on-demand books.”

Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green, Patrick White and Josephine Tey are among the authors to feature on the Random Collection list, with some less well-known Nevil Shute titles also set to join the line-up in 2009. Brewster said: “The list is incredibly diverse and includes not just fiction, but the Ebury backlist, for example—all the books where there is a latent demand.”

Random Collection follows the launch of Faber’s out-of-print classics p.o.d. list, Faber Finds, in June.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Don't Pull the Plug on Print Yet

(C) 2008 Business NH Magazine. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved - Business NH Magazine
Jack Cummings has been around the printing industry for pretty much all his life. His grandfather stalled Cummings Printing in 1914. Young Jack forged his printing career working after school and during the summers, toiling in the mailing department, bindery and the pressroom. He also drove the company truck. After college, Cummings took a job in the typesetting department and eventually landed in sales at the Hooksett-based company. It was while he was in the sales department in the late 1990s that he realized that in order for Cummings Printing to weather the desktop publishing and Internet revolutions occurring at the time - and position the company for a more secure future - it had to become more than a local sheet-fed commercial printer.

In other words, Cummings Printing would have to become a company almost unrecognizable to his late grandfather and his small commercial press. To do that, Cummings invested heavily in new technologies and changed its business model. "If we had not laid it on the line and taken major loans to become a magazine and catalog printer - a Web printer versus a sheet-fed printer, which is what we were and what differentiates us from your local printer - then we would not be enjoying the success we am right now," he says. (Editors note: Cummings prints Business NH Magazine.)

Even with his firm conviction, however, Cummings endured his share of nerve-tacking moments - along with just about every other printer during recent yeas. Industry watchers predicted at the turn of the century that the Internet was going to make printers a thing of the past. "I thought we were dead. I thought we were in real trouble," Cummings says.

Today, Cummings employs 107 people and has embraced the Internet for all that it can do for today's printer. For example, its Insite prepress portal system streamlines customer interactions, allowing customers, via Internet, to track job activity and status, proof print jobs, collaborate with Cummings staffers, and approve jobs.

During the past decade, change has been one constant for printers. "Printing industries are less of a trade now, and things are more push button," Cummings says. "What used to take an hour of a skilled artisan's time now takes 10 minutes of a person with computer savvy." Gone are the jobs of the linotype operators, film strippers and conventional printing plate makers Cummings says.

When asked what his grandfather would think of today's Cummings Printing, the grandson says, "I think he'd be sad from a trades perspective - that the trade is much less a part of the industry. But also being a good businessman, he'd be proud that we stayed with technology, we've been able to remain an industry leader, and we've been able to evolve from a commercial printer to being a publication printer."

The Technology Blessing and Curse

The late '90s digital revolution has threatened the printing industry, but it's also enabled printers to become more efficient by allowing them to cut legacy machinery costs, trim headcount, speed up customer interactions and job delivery, as well as offer a wider range of digital services. "We're able to handle any file you can throw at us: from Word files to Publisher files to InDesign and Quark - all the different types of [design] programs out them," says Kevin Boyarsky, co-owner of Print Solutions, a commercial printer in Concord with seven employees that offers one- to four-color offset printing, and digital duplication services. His customers also use FTP (file transfer protocol) Internet technology to transmit computer files to Print Solutions. Boyarsky estimates that typical turnaround times have been cut in half, down to less than a week, from 10 years ago.

But all those efficiencies reaped from new and faster technologies have come at a cost. "Copiers and digital machines that used to last five years are now almost obsolete after two, and they're expensive," Boyarsky says. "We constantly have to re-invest in the company. We have invested a significant amount of money upgrading software, and digital and offset capabilities."

Re-investment in new technologies is an economic reality for Cummings as well. "Either we buy this new piece of equipment, which is going to cost us a lot of money, or if we don't buy this, we won't be competitive," he says. 'The companies that didn't buy them and didn't take the calculated risks, they're hurting now."

Peter Church, owner of Keystone Press, LLC in Manchester agrees. The company spent a quarter of a million dollars this past summer to install two digital presses to improve printing quality and efficiency. "It's state-of-the-art today, but it will probably be outdated in five years, so we have to make it profitable quickly," Church says of the challenge of keeping up with technology advances. "There are two kinds of printers - those who are not keeping up with technology and those who embrace it, invest in it and evolve with it."

Shrinking Industry

The most recent data from Printing Indus-tries of New England (PINE) shows that the Granite State ranks second to Massachusetts in terms of value of shipments each year ($1.2 billion) as well as number of printing-related businesses (226). Printers employ more than 7,500 people in NH; most significantly in the Manchester, Nashua and Portsmouth-Rochester areas, and the majority of the printing businesses have fewer Nan 20 employees, according to PINE.

At the national level, there's been a decrease of 200,000 printing industry jobs since 2000, according to an August 2007 report from the Rochester Institute of Technology. "Most of the decreases in employment can be accounted for by the increasing amount of automation present on printing presses and other printing equipment that traditionally had to be nm by hand," the report states.

The printing industry has long been known for its skilled craftsmen and artisans who worked the presses. But new technology has erased much of the need. "Highly skilled printing tradespeople aren't needed like they once were, and many of the skills that were once needed don't exist anymore," Cummings says. His business, for example, em-ploys 107 people, down from 165 six years ago. 'New technology has eliminated manpower and made it cheaper to run," he adds.

New Hampshire printers say that finding qualified people is difficult today. "There's plenty of people who apply for a job," Boyarsky of Print Solutions says. But there's not a lot of people qualified for the jobs."

The Rochester Institute of Technology report notes that many printers "have been having trouble finding qualified, trained workers to replace their retirees." In addition, there has been decreased enrollment in printing programs at colleges and other institutions across the United States. "Now that graphic design and other computer-based fields of study have become more popular, many graphic arts programs at high schools have been shut down due to a lack of participation," according to the report.

Boyarsky points to a troubling workforce gap in NH. "I don't think the people coming out of the schools necessarily have the skills because the focus isn't on the print side - it's more toward the Web," he says. And then there's the older people who came out of the old typesetting design, and they didn't upgrade their skills to the new technologies. So there is probably a gap in the number of qualified people."

New Hampshire printing executives all say that there are fewer printers in the state now than 10 to 15 years ago. But that doesn't necessarily mean that print is dying or there's any lack of competition. "I wouldn't say there's a dearth of printers around' Boyarsky says. "I think that the printers around have been able to do that same volume of work [when compared with I0 years ago], with less equipment because we am more efficient."

Church says his business is an example of the trends the industry will likely see more of in the future. He owned a smaller printing business when he acquired Keystone Press two and half years ago and merged the two businesses. "You will see a lot of that happening - two smaller companies merging to form a larger, more capable company," Church says. Keystone Press has 21 employees housed in an 8,000-square-foot facility in Manchester.

Challenges

New Hampshire printers are facing the same macroeconomic pressures as other industries face: economic belt-tightening and credit-market wariness, sky-high fuel and utility prices, and increases in health care costs. The printing industry, in particular, has witnessed steady price increases for paper and ink. The industry saw two rounds of price increases for most paper grades this year. "It used to be once every couple of years," Boyarsky says, "but it's now twice this year."

While there may be fewer local NH printers today, say printing executives, competition has only increased. A "survival of the fittest" mentality is apparent through digital printing trends, retraining or hiring employees with new skillsets, and investing in new technology. "There's a lot fewer players-" observes Frank Laguna, president of Papergraphics in Merrimack, a 14-person commercial printer founded in 1982. "But the equipment is more efficicntbecause there's more capacity, which leads to more healthy competition."

In 2000, Papergraphics was able to complete one or two color printing jobs in a day now the printer can do 10, he notes. An investment in a new HP Indigo 5000 digital press in 2007 has allowed Papergraphics to offer same day or next day turnaround on print jobs. That, in turn, has allowed Laguna to deliver short-run printing jobs simply not available just five years ago, he says.

Competition is not just about another printer in your town or one in the city 10 miles away. The Internet and its global networking reach have made any printer a local printer. Sophisticated venture capital-backed e-commerce printing Web sites are both technologically advanced (with design and other applications built in) and able to gain economies of scale that am tough to match - let alone beat - for some local printers, says Boyarsky. "I can't compete in that marketplace," he says. In addition, the desktop publishing revolution and its more user-friendly design software has enabled commercial and retail customers to do much of the work once resented for printers. "The common color copier being networked to a desktop has more bearing now [on the printing business]," Laguna says.

Church says customers are expecting more services, but for prices to remain stagnant. That's a challenge in an industry that is seeing its costs go up, he says. "You have to provide superior customer service," Church says, which will mean fewer customers bid-ding projects to other companies.

Lastly, the growing need to go "green" has affected some pieces of NH printers operations as well as their customer offerings. Boyarsky says that while "no printer can he totally green if they're doing offset printing," new innovations - such as assortments of recycled paper, soy-based inks and waterless presses - allow printers to be "as green as we can be with the technology were using."

Differentiate or Die

Even with the enormous army of challenges in front of them, NH printers are not hacking down. "When has this business ever not been competitive?" implores Cummings. "I've been here 31 years, and there's always some kind of competitive threat."

Print Solutions' Boyarsky says, in this economic climate, printers need to "look for other products and services to serve your clientele." For example, Print Solutions is looking at wide-format printos capable of producing outdoor banners and other types of large signage. "The machines have come down in price and become more friendly to the environment," he says. "That's enabled people to get into markets that otherwise they couldn't have."

The Rochester Institute of Technology report notes that many printers am attempting to reposition themselves as a communications or marketing partner and service provider as opposed to solely a print or commodity supplier. "Becoming a marketing partner or communications company involves going beyond taking print jobs to offering a wide range of print products and marketing solutions to consumers," states the report. "Thus, printing companies - manufacturers and suppliers alike - are striving to grow and sustain creativity and innovation to keep their competitive advantage in an industry faced with many challenges."

Church of Keystone Press says his company is increasingly working with marketing managers at companies where the company previously worked with purchasing agents. Church says he can help companies customize marketing pieces, such as a postcard campaign a company may be sending out. Keystone can individualize each postcard with customized photos and messages, and address them as they are printed.

Lisa Landry, president of Print Savvy in Manchester, agrees that targeted marketing and customization of printed pieces is the future of the industry. She points to Macy's, which developed a specific campaign for its bridal registry, as an example. After a couple was married, Macy's sent them a customized printed piece informing them of the items they did not receive on their registry and what's on sale. Landry says those customized pieces yielded a 70 percent return for Macy's. She says printers will need the capability to work with clients to deliver more pieces like that instead of flooding the market with a generic mass-marketing piece. "It will be more like harpooning. It's going to be targeted and specific," Landry says.

Print Savvy, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, has built its success on being a marketing partner with clients. The company manages printing projects for clients, finding printers with the appropriate technology to meet their specific needs. "We act as a sales and customer service office for printing facilities across the country," Landry says. That means Print Savvy can find printers with the latest technology, without having to bear the cost of investing in that technology itself, Landry says. It's a model that has worked well as clients' needs become more sophisticated, "If you have a sales tool kit with multiple components, there may be no one printer that could handle every piece," Landry says.

Printers say they are leaning on good old-fashioned customer service to compete - listening to what customers want and need, and helping them navigate through all the options available today - something that many of the online sites can't do. "A lot of times we get those clients who used an Internet site back - the card was wrong, there was no customer service, or they waited three weeks for a card and didn't get it," says Boyarsky. "I try to work with clients, understand their business and be able to provide a solution that fits with them. And it's hard to do that over the Internet."

The Rochester Institute of Technology report is cautionary about the future. "Print's long and illustrious history tells us that printing will remain. However, the form in which it will remain, the size of the industry and the types of output that will be produced are all things that no one can precisely predict." Boyarsky, however, is resolute. "I think that the business has definitely shaken out, but there am clients who still need printing," he says. "There's still a good future for print. A lot of it is that you have to be up on your technology to survive. You can't just muddle along with old equipment and old ways of doing things."

Saturday, November 8, 2008

HP Partners with Timsons on New Digital Inkjet System for Book Production

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP has announced a partnership with U.K.-based Timsons, the world's largest book press manufacturer, to develop a digital inkjet system for short- and medium-run book production. According to HP, the new solution will be designed "to take digital book production beyond niche applications to mainstream production."

Next year, European book printer CPI will be installing an HP Inkjet Web Press—which at 2,600 ppm is slated to be the most productive digital press for the publishing industry, according to HP—with a new finishing system developed by Timsons that will enable CPI to offer short- and medium-run book production. CPI is a beta user of the press, which is to become commercially available in the second half of 2009.

“Our collaboration with Timsons is a natural next step in HP’s strategy to move higher volumes of printing from analog to digital,” says Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager, Inkjet High-speed Production Solutions, HP. “The digital book solution coming from this work will open a range of new possibilities to help printers and publishers optimize their supply chains, decrease waste and create revenue opportunities.”

“Timsons is excited to establish this partnership, as it offers a complementary opportunity to the book manufacturers Timsons has served for more than 30 years, with innovative new solutions to help our customers capture the momentum that exists with digital,” says Jeff Ward, managing director, Timsons Ltd. “Timsons is extending its business by offering more choices to our customers with short- to medium-run book solutions and by partnering with HP to gain the benefit of HP’s digital leadership credentials.”

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Vanishing Paper in Higher Education

(Posted: 03 Nov 2008 02:40 PM CST)

Christopher Conway has a thoughtful essay at Inside Higher Ed on the seemingly inevitable trend towards digital text consumption:

"It is becoming increasingly easier to put together affordable 'readers' or anthologies culled from existing print material without bypassing rights and fees and without overloading students with unnecessary expense. If this wave of the future takes hold and becomes the new standard in textbook publishing, I think it will be good for all parties involved. But what about the paper-and-binding book? Say you are teaching David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and you had a choice between an excellent paper-and-binding edition by a major academic press, with useful footnotes and front matter, and an electronic edition that students could download to their handy e-book readers, along with selected secondary articles you have selected for them to read? What if their e-book readers had a stylus and/or a network that enabled the class to annotate those assigned texts, and share them over the class network? I don't think anyone's nostalgia for paper-and-binding can replace the pedagogical value of my not-so-fanciful or far-fetched e-book scenario."

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Google, Authors Win

Google is coughing up $125 million to US authors and publishers for the right to include excerpts from over 4 million out-of-print books in its online search results.

The pact - two years in the making and still subject to court approval - settles a pair of copyright-infringement lawsuits brought against the company in 2005 over its Google Book Search service.

Most publishers already have deals in place with Google that allow users to search for in-print titles - such as Alan Greenspan's "The Age Of Turbulence," for instance - and preview select passages.

The agreement establishes a new market for out-of-print books by creating a framework that allows authors and publishers to be compensated.

The publishing industry has complained that Google's efforts to scan out-of-print books and make them searchable on the Web - an initiative that went unchecked even after the lawsuits were filed - constituted unauthorized distribution of their works.

Under the settlement, Google will allow individuals to preview up to 20 percent of a book online on an ad-supported basis. Google also will sell access to individual pages and complete works directly to consumers.

In addition, Google will license out-of-print works in their entirety to libraries and institutions - a move that is expected to be a big win for many smaller libraries because it allows them to dramatically expand the amount of information they can offer.

Pricing terms have not yet been set, but publishers and authors will take 63 percent of revenue, while Google will keep the remaining 37 percent. Licensing deals are expected to follow a similar split.

The $125 million that Google is paying on a one-time basis to the publishers will go toward the creation of a new Book Rights Registry to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The registry will take an administration fee between 10 percent and 20 percent from the publishers' 63 percent cut.

The deal resolves a 2005 class-action suit brought by the Authors Guild, and a separate suit filed by five large publishers on behalf of the Association of American Publishers. Those publishers include McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster.

It also clears the way for Google to dramatically expand the number of books that can be searched through to expand the library to some 20 million titles in the coming years.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

What If Amazon Bought Borders?...

Be honest. Isn't that a question you've asked yourself a time or two over the past several months? I read this New York magazine article again last night and when I hit this part I wondered about it all over again:

Recently William Ackerman, a major Borders shareholder, suggested they should sell to Amazon instead (of B&N). That probably won't happen, but his reasoning is clear. Barnes & Noble is old news. Amazon is the future.

So humor me for a moment while I speculate about what a Bordazon world might look like...

First of all, finally, we'd see Kindles in a brick-and-mortar outlet. Hooray! I tend to think the lack of Kindles in physical stores has been one of the device's biggest adoption obstacles. That and the $350 price tag.

Next, do you want to see some technology in a brick-and-mortar store? Amazon would probably have tech kiosks on every endcap, enabling you to order all sorts of (book and non-book) products right there, on the spot. They'd probably also figure out how to turn the store into even more of a trendy hangout joint. Think Starbucks meets the Apple Store.

This would also be an excellent opportunity to (finally!) tear down the wall between online and physical stores. How about offering the same discounts online and in the store? You want three books and two are in the store but one isn't? No problem. We'll get the third one to you tomorrow, not when our distributor can get it to us sometime next week! You're ordering a book online? We'll check your zipcode to see if that title is at your local store for immediate pickup -- why wait till tomorrow when you can get it today?

OK, I know the chance of these things actually happening is pretty slim. Sure, the brick-and-mortars have all that extra overhead to deal with but hey, I can dream, can't I?

Although I like Joe's entry and agree with a lot of his points, I'm not sure whether Amazon buying Borders would be a good or a bad thing. Amazon has been such a bully of late, that I'm not really a fan of theirs anymore. But perhaps if they bought Borders and therefore had a brick-and-mortar presence, they'd have to deal with the issues that B&N and other bookstores have to deal with, and would therefore become more reasonable. One can only hope...

And speaking of B&N, have you checked out the new "My B&N" feature? Amazon has been more of an interacitve social network all along, so it's about time B&N caught up. They've actually taken their version a step further and incorporated many of the features you see on sites like goodreads.com. But will this get people to buy more books, and buy them on B&N?

What do you think?

Saturday, October 25, 2008

I Own Every Great Book Ever Written and They Are All in My Pocket

Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but it feels that way. For years now, I have used my Palm TX as my primary way to read books. The only exception to that reading pattern in the last two years has been the "Harry Potter" books, which are not available in a digital format. When I give my lectures on the future of publishing, I invariably reach into my pocket and tell the audience proudly that my Palm Pilot has four movies and 12 books, among other things.

Yesterday, when I went to get my next book, I was confronted with an offer I couldn't refuse. The offer was 3,000 classic titles for $19.00 at the push of one button. All these titles were actually available for free from www.projectgutenberg.com, but not packaged together and not in the format necessary for my Palm. So I pushed that button and now have ready access to a full library in my pocket.

I now have the complete works of Shakespeare, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and a hundred other authors always in my pocket and ready to read at any time. I know I won't read them all, but I will read some that I might never have gotten to otherwise.

So, my point is that the concept of e-books and portable screens are doing a many things that the printed page just can't do and that digitized words should be perceived as counting for more. It is more than the fact that I can read just one book in my Palm, but it's my ability to read a passage from practically any book that exists, at any time I want to, as well as the ability to click on hyperlinks, use the in-board dictionary for words I am unfamiliar with, experience multimedia, and add notes and share sections of passages with others. That is the future of publishing, and it is in my pocket at any time.

Monday, October 20, 2008

The Textbook Evolution

It's going to happen. It's just a matter of time. Far too many parents and students are up in arms over the cost. I'm talking, of course, about the current state of the textbook industry. Here's a related article I read earlier today from The Christian Science Monitor.

I'm always thrilled to see textbook publishers who are looking to innovate, so I was particularly delighted to see the efforts of my former employer, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., were noted in that article. The free digital textbook program Wiley and the University of Texas have created could produce a great deal of useful information to help shape future initiatives; the article didn't say what sort of monitoring and measurement tools might be used, but I'd like to think the system will provide the metrics required to enable both publisher and university to quickly see what works and what doesn't. It would be even more exciting if the results from this program and others like it were to be shared publicly, so that every publisher and school wouldn't have to work in isolation.

That's a nice segue to the various "open source" textbook model that I keep hearing more and more about. The Christian Science Monitor article refers to one called Connexions, but there's another one called Flat World Knowledge that's been getting a lot of PR too. Can the open source model work here? It won't be easy given all the current textbook ecosystem stakeholders who are so well entrenched and have so much to lose. This is also a sector that tends to move at a glacial pace, so sudden shifts are unlikely. No matter how it plays out I definitely think the open source publishers are worth keeping an eye on and much can probably be learned from their efforts.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Lots of E-Reader News

Flexible E-reader to Be Presented at Frankfurt
Polymer Vision announced that it will present its Readius—the “first pocket e-book reader”—at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which will run Oct. 15-19. The new device will feature a flexible display and a wireless connection for downloading books, magazines and even e-mail. The Readius is about the size of a cellphone when it’s rolled up, and unrolls into a 5-inch diagonal screen, according to Polymer Vision.

Sony Introduces Third-Generation Reader Digital Book
Sony has announced the latest edition of its Reader Digital Book. The new model, PRS-700, will be available to consumers along with the previous PRS-505 model.

The new model has the same 6-inch, electronic-ink screen as the previous model, but with added touch-screen capability. Users are able to search terms within a document or book, create notes using a virtual keyboard and highlight text with an included stylus pen. The PRS-700 can store up to 350 digital books in its internal memory, and thousands with a memory card.

The new Reader will be available next month for about $400.

“Readers now have another choice in digital books,” says Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division. “This new model has the eye-popping design and intuitive functionality that people have come to expect from Sony.”

Also this month, Sony will unveil a redesigned page layout, with more prominent book cover art, at Sony’s eBook store (http://EBookStore.Sony.com).

Sunday, October 5, 2008

From Print to E, Some Items To Consider

September 29th, 2008, by Kassia Krozser

Except for the annoying crashes that require hard restarts (which require the acquisition of a paper clip), I’m pretty happy with the Kindle reading experience. It’s not a device that will light the world on fire, nor is it the “iPod of ereaders” (stop with the dumbness, people). It’s a good gateway device, however.

The next generation of ereader will surely be more of everything.

Of course, the fine-tuning of the perfect ereading device is not the issue. The ebook business is building itself without the perfect device. eBooks are not going to be the next big thing; they’re going to be a thing. A part of a complex mix of reading choices. With that in mind, let’s think about ways we can blend ebooks into the publishing culture without pain.

I lied: there’s going to be pain. The pain will come for those (textbook industry, anyone?) clinging to old business models. So let’s play. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order.

  • Rethink Royalties: A few things here. I’ve read a lot of blah, blah, blah about royalties and profitability from ebooks. Most of it makes no sense at all. In keeping with that tradition, I’m going to throw out a royalty rate for ebooks: 30% of wholesale/what the publisher receives. Calculating royalties off retail is a silly artifact of a business that ceased to exist long ago.

    30% might seem high (and it’s a starting point, not a rule), but there’s a bit of logic here. This leaves 70% of every dollar received for the publisher. That amount offsets distributed overhead, including editorial costs, distribution and storage and data centers, knowing that retailers are currently doing most of the fulfillment, and other costs, because there are fare more costs than I can list here.

    Getting hard numbers is, well, hard, so I can’t do a tidy little P&L.

    While I cannot make guarantees, offering a reasonable royalty to authors is a gesture of good will, especially since many authors remain wary of this new business model (even though it’s not really so new). Which leads to:

  • Resist Rights Land Grabs: Maybe it’s because my background is in the motion picture industry, where rights are often granted piecemeal and distribution terms are clearly defined, but enough with the hoarding of rights. It’s a given that the notion of “in print” changes with the availability of ebooks.

    And it’s natural for authors to balk at the idea that a publisher can, theoretically, own distribution rights for decades. While I am not one who believes books will disappear from our lives, I do believe that we’re due for many changes — some of which might even stick — in the publishing business. Of course publishers want to lock down rights to content in order to be positioned to meet new opportunities, but it’s insane for authors to give up their stake in said opportunities.

    Publishers are already seeing a slow trickle from established authors (see: Terry Goodkind) who are seeking better deals outside the traditional industry. It is a dangerous thing, alienating your bread and butter. Rethinking royalties and negotiating rights in good faith are fine starts. You’re not the only game in town.

  • Get Over Your Fear of Piracy: Piracy exists. I mean, we’re still living in an age where pirates board ships and make off with goods (the mind boggles that this is possible, but there you have it). Piracy exists. You can throw up every lock in the universe, but, if someone want to pirate, they’re going to pirate. Stop living in fear. This goes for authors and publishers, but right now, I’m talking to authors.

    Let’s stipulate that a few things are debatable: the number of “lost” sales due to piracy and the actual pervasiveness of true piracy. It’s stealing content, but given the lack of profit motive in most of these instances, shouldn’t we be looking deeper at root causes and reasons?

    For example, look no further than Kirk’s post on reading Thomas Pynchon on the Kindle. Given the number of times he’s purchased various versions of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue (because you need the rare Japanese CD edition), I know that he’d happily pay good money for an electronic version of the Pynchon catalog. There are no legal versions of these books available.

    This is such a pervasive problem that I’m thinking I need to start a new BS feature: Not Available on the Kindle. I was emailing back and forth with an author, and thought, “I should just buy the book now.” Grabbed my Kindle and discovered that this book, published in 2007, was not available in a Kindle edition (it was recently released in paperback, and a Kindle edition is now sold).

    Authors need to be more proactive about getting their books out there. One thing that is absolutely certain is that you cannot make sales if you do not make your books available. I think there’s an economic theory behind this.

    Withholding content doesn’t stop piracy. Withholding content doesn’t increase sales. And withholding content because you have this precious notion of how your book should be read is just plain arrogant.

    Oops, did I type that?

  • Discourage Proprietary Solutions (or, Support The Reader!): Wal-Mart is shutting down its music servers. Customers who bought into this DRM’d content are being told to burn it to CD or lose it. Imagine, for a moment, that a year from now, Amazon pulls the plug on the Kindle. Decides it was a grand experiment, but too costly in the long run. Imagine that Amazon further decides to shut off access to the Kindle servers, meaning people like me lose access to their purchases. Yes, I know, but it’s a proprietary format, and we all know how well those fare in the long run.

    This is not a far-fetched notion. Wal-Mart is the latest in a string of retailers to do this to consumers. I believe that one of the many reasons music piracy remains so robust is because consumers simply cannot trust the people in the industry to do the right thing by them.

    I hate that I am locked into the Amazon system with my Kindle (though, honestly, given my life schedule, Amazon is generally my preferred retailer for many products). There is no competition for my reading dollar, if I want to do my little part for the environment and reduce the number of physical books coming and going from my home by reading as much as possible on the Kindle. I should be able to buy a book wherever I choose and read it however I choose.

    Of course, this swings the other way: I can’t read my Kindle books on my laptop. Or my iPhone. I am locked into one retailer. Do you really want that to happen? Do you really want your customers owned, lock, stock, and ereader by Amazon?

    The real bottom line is that nobody from publisher to retailer to reader should be locked into anything. It’s a crazy way of thinking when you know full well that tomorrow won’t look anything like today.

  • New Business, New Pricing Model: Now that you’re in league with the publishing devil, you’re understanding why the music business is hating on its bargain with the music devil. The music folks created the iTunes business model, more through aggressive failure than active lobbying. They finally got the business they wanted, but the other side of the bargain was loss of pricing control.

    Granted, nobody in the music business wants to sell songs for less than ninety-nine cents. They’re angry because they want to sell for more. The music industry’s ostrich-like attitudes are the topic of another rant.

    I like the idea of flexible pricing. For example, I see a 2008 edition of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice listed for $7.95 for a print copy, with no Kindle edition available (I do know that I can get free electronic versions of this book from other sources, but follow along with this example. Thanks.). Now I have at least two print editions of this book, including a really old one that I stole from my mother, but I wouldn’t mind a well-formatted version, perhaps with some nifty indexing that helps me navigate the text. And I’d like it to be, oh, in the two dollar range.

    I think one telling sign when it comes to the value of books, versus the perceived value (as defined by retailers), is the used book market. It’s not a slam dunk comparison, but there is some value in noting how these books are valued in this so-called secondary market.

  • Think Beyond The Book, And Don’t Forget Serialized and Subscription Content: I can’t remember where I read it, but someone declared serialized content dead. As providers such as DailyLit have shown, there is a market for serialized content. It’s all about the right content and the right market (and, yes, right marketing).

    Another concept that excites and intrigues me (and also ties into the “think beyond the book meme”) is subscription content. I’m already getting the Los Angeles Times delivered to my Kindle on a daily basis, and, yes, actually reading more of the newspaper because it’s more convenient for me. What about literary journals or other periodical content? I’d love a broader range of subscription content, and I’m happy to pay for it.

    Yeah, this plays into the device/content independence thing. I want a cloud system that lets me control my access to the content I’ve purchased.