Publisher Value Add

Back in the day, prior to e-books, when an author "self published," this was done via a "vanity press" and was never taken seriously. With the advent of POD (print on demand), this preconception was challenged, but not severely. Then came e-books.

It is now easier than ever to publish something you've written, and to do it on your own. There are many blogs and courses out there that will teach wannabe authors how to self-publish an e-book. And with the help of either Amazon, who will carry many of these in their Kindle store, and/or the many new platforms being developed to help get these e-books to the public, what value do publishers really provide?

Let's take a step back first: how do you define a publisher? Traditional publishers vet manuscripts for what they believe can make a profit, then polish this into a finished product that (hopefully) will make them a profit. They do this by bringing together various skill sets: acquisitions editors, copy editors, production editors, typesetters, designers, proofreaders, marketers, publicists, etc. Not all of these are employed by the publisher, but those that are not, are hired on a freelance or project basis by someone who does work for the publisher. The author just has to trust these skilled professionals and do as directed.

With e-books, we now have many digital "publishers" who are offering some of these services to the wannabe author, but not all of them. Some just offer a platform; others offer ease of hiring freelancers and/or a community whereby there is support and peer review. Some will specialize in one aspect and partner with the publisher.

So in this shifting new world, how is a publisher defined and how much value does either a digital or traditional publisher still provide? I think ultimately three different parties will have to decide the answer to this question:

1. the author: How much does the author need his publisher to provide in return for splitting the profits? Some will be willing to do more work and forgo the traditional route; others will prefer the traditional route, both for the convenience--and for the prestige. But whichever the author chooses, he will need help. (It's a rare author that can copyedit his own work and even a rarer one that can also typeset, market, etc.)
2. the bookstore buyer: Amazon has chosen to carry self-published e-books but is now cracking down on their lack of quality. When a publisher puts out a book and their name is on the cover/spine, it's their reputation on the line; when there is no "publisher" and a bookstore chooses to carry a book, it's their reputation on the line. And this is where the third party comes in.
3. the consumer: What will ultimately matter to you, the reader, and all the other e-book readers out there will sway what value adds are still considered necessary. Do you, the reader, still care about writing that flows and is without grammatical and other errors? Do you still care about type that is pleasantly laid out on the screen, even when you change the font and leading, as your e-reader now allows? What do you care about enough to either boycott or to keep coming back for?

I don't know what these three parties will decide, but I do know that until quality continues to matter, publishers in all their iterations will have plenty of value they can provide a discerning and busy author. 

Bowker Reports U.S. Book Production Declines 3% in 2008, but "On Demand" Publishing More Than Doubles

NEW PROVIDENCE, NJ -- (Marketwire) -- 05/19/09

Bowker, the global leader in bibliographic information management solutions, today released statistics on U.S. book publishing for 2008, compiled from its Books In Print® database. Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker is projecting that U.S. title output in 2008 decreased by 3.2%, with 275,232 new titles and editions, down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.

Despite this decline in traditional book publishing, there was another extraordinary year of growth in the reported number of "On Demand" and short-run books produced in 2008. Bowker projects that 285,394 On Demand books were produced last year, a staggering 132% increase over last year's final total of 123,276 titles. This is the second consecutive year of triple-digit growth in the On Demand segment, which in 2008 was 462% above levels seen as recently as 2006.

"Our statistics for 2008 benchmark an historic development in the U.S. book publishing industry as we crossed a point last year in which On Demand and short-run books exceeded the number of traditional books entering the marketplace," said Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publisher services for New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker. "It remains to be seen how this trend will unfold in the coming years before we know if we just experienced a watershed year in the book publishing industry, fueled by the changing dynamics of the marketplace and the proliferation of sophisticated publishing technologies, or an anomaly that caused the major industry trade publishers to retrench."

(Editor's Note: Members of the news media who are interested in obtaining statistics from Bowker for specific industry categories are invited to email Daryn Teague, Bowker's public relations consultant, at dteague@teaguecommunications.com.)

"The statistics from last year are not just an indicator that the industry had a decline in new titles coming to the market, but they're also a reflection of how publishers are getting smarter and more strategic about the specific kinds of books they're choosing to publish," explained Gallagher. "If you look beyond the numbers, you begin to see that 2008 was a pivotal year that benchmarks the changing face of publishing."

Among the major publishing categories, the big winners last year were Education and Business, two categories that might suggest publishers were seeking to give consumers more resources for success amidst a very tough job environment. There were 9,510 new education titles introduced in the U.S. in 2008, up 33% from the prior year, and 8,838 new business titles, an increase of 14% over 2007 levels.

By contrast, the big category losers in 2008 were Travel and Fiction, two categories in which publishers clearly saw less demand during a deep recession in the U.S. There were 4,817 new travel books introduced last year, down 15% from the year before, and 47,541 new fiction titles, a drop of 11% from 2007. Moreover, the Religion category dropped again last year, with 14% fewer titles introduced in the U.S., and that once reliable engine of growth for publishers is now well off its peak year of 2004.

According to Gallagher, the Bowker data reveals that the top five categories for U.S. book production in 2008 were:

    1. Fiction (47,541 new titles)
   2. Juveniles (29,438)
   3. Sociology/Economics (24,423)
   4. Religion (16,847)
   5. Science (13,555)

Methodology

The book production figures in this news release are based on year-to-date data from U.S. publishers and include traditional print as well as on demand titles. Audiobooks and E-books are excluded. If changes in industry estimates occur, they will be reflected in a later published report. Books In Print data represents input from more than 75,000 publishers in the U.S. The data is sent to Bowker in electronic files, and via BowkerLink(TM), Bowker's password protected Web-based tool, which enables publishers to update and add their own data.

Books In Print is the only bibliographic database with more than 8 million U.S. book, audiobook and video titles. It is widely regarded throughout the publishing industry as the most authoritative and comprehensive source of bibliographic data available worldwide, and has been a trusted source of data in North America for more than 50 years.

Publishers Participate in Espresso Book Machine Pilot Program

(Book Business Magazine, 4/24/09)

Lightning Source has launched an Espresso Book Machine (EBM) title pilot with OnDemand Books, the proprietor of the EBM.

Participating publishers in the pilot include John Wiley & Sons, Hachette Book Group, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, Clements Publishing, Cosimo, E-Reads, Bibliolife, Information Age Publishing, Macmillan, University of California Press and W.W. Norton. The pilot initially was offered to a small group of publishers that currently work with Lightning Source to enable them to enhance the availability of their titles at point-of-sale EBM locations.

Approximately 85,000 titles from these publishers will be available for purchase at EBM locations throughout the United States in May. Upon the completion of a successful pilot, publishers that print and distribute books with Lightning Source will have the option to participate in the EBM channel. According to Lightning Source, complete channel automation is expected in the first half of this year, and rollout of the program to publishers globally is expected to follow shortly thereafter.

"We see the Espresso Book Machine as an innovative and exciting way for publishers to get their books out into the market," says David Taylor, president of Lightning Source. "There is clearly a place for the in-store, print-on-demand model in the emerging landscape of globally distributed print. … In the times in which we are living, publishers need to be looking at every option to ensure that their books can be immediately available to people who want to buy them."

"OnDemand Books is delighted that the Espresso Book Machine is playing such a central role in a program that is blazing a trail to the future of book publishing," says Dane Neller, CEO of OnDemand Books. "With the book business facing dramatic changes and challenges, we believe the timing of the EBM couldn't be better. Publishers, retailers and libraries alike see the appeal of the machine that collapses the supply chain, boosts backlist sales, matches supply with demand, eliminates returns and powers new, high-growth sales channels for publishers."

E-books, Tree-books, and On-demand Books

I was fortunate enough to attend this year's Publishing Business Conference and although much was discussed in the two-and-a-half days' worth of sessions I attended, there were a few themes that kept reappearing:

1. Traditional books--or "tree books"--and print is not disappearing anytime soon, but publishers should keep inventory and costs down, as well as acquire and market more wisely.
2. E-books may be on the rise, but given that they are currently such a small percentage of book sales, publishers should use them to complement, not replace, tree books: e-book sales are not currently cannibalizing tree book sales.
3. Since print is going nowhere anytime soon, more and more publishers are turning to print-on-demand and short-run digital as an alternative to the traditional offset model. And while the unit cost for these may still be higher than that of offset, the total cost is lower.
4. Inkjet technology will be the tipping point for POD by making color POD economically viable.

And although there were some bleak discussions of the current economic clime, there were hopeful predictions as well. Here's to the latter...

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.

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

Mac Slocum
December 3, 2008

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.

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.

Publishing and the New Yorker

So all week I kept hearing about this article that foretold the death of publishing as we know it. I first heard it from an editor at work, then several NYU alumni at our meetup. Each time I made a mental note to Google it as soon as I could and then forgot, given the crazy week I had. So after forgetting it for the third time, I was surprised when my husband pulled our copy of The New Yorker out of the recycling bin (and I have to admit that I didn't even remember that we have a subscription) so that I could read this great article about publishing.

So I read it...Most of what it mentioned I had read about elsewhere to various degrees, and I didn't find it alarming at all. Yes, publishing as we know is is changing, not dying, but what industry can survive so long without evolving? And yes, print may not remain the primary medium for the industry, but that does not mean that it will only be a rare and expensive commodity either. What if instead of POD as a transition, it becomes another option for the consumer? What if the consumer of the future can easily decide which medium he or she prefers to have their content delivered on, and that the price difference is so small, if any, that everyone can afford it all?

I think instead of people worrying about something that will never die, that they embrace the change and the freedom it could eventually give us, both as publishing professionals who won't have to worry about ever-increasing cost of paper and production and as consumers. And if this new model means consumers pay before a book is "produced," whether in print or online, and then cannot return them, than the publishing industry will actually be healthy and strong enough to focus not on cost of goods sold, but on content.

Perseus Announces New “One-Stop” Digital Publishing Service

The Perseus Books Group, publisher and provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent publishers, announced this week the launch of a new digital publishing service called Constellation, which will enable independent publishers to offer their content in a variety of digital formats—including e-books, online content sampling services and digital files for print-on-demand—through a number of vendors. The service will be available to all independent publishers associated with The Perseus Books Group, including those owned by the group and joint-venture partners as well as those served by Consortium, Perseus Distribution and PGW.

The service already has partnership agreements in place with a number of technology companies, including Amazon (for the Kindle and “Search Inside the Book”), BookSurge, Sony, Google, OverDrive, Ebrary, BarnesandNoble.com (for “See Inside”), Lightning Source and Edwards Brothers (for digital printing). According to Perseus, additional partner announcements are anticipated.

Publishers can select which services, as well as which vendors, they want to use. Constellation negotiates agreements with these vendors on behalf of the publisher. Publishers then load print-ready PDFs to Constellation’s Web interface or provide them via a portable file transfer. (Constellation will also help with the digitization of files for publishers who don’t have them available.)

The Perseus Web site (http://www.perseusdigital.com/constellation/home.php) offers a detailed explanation of how Constellation works and what is required of publishers.

“Up until now, the full range of digital opportunities has been mostly confined to large corporate publishers owned by multinational corporations, and many independent publishers have been shut out,” says David Steinberger, Perseus president and CEO. “Constellation will level the playing field for independent publishers and make it possible to generate new revenues from ‘long tail’ content.”

“The Perseus Books Group is in a position to bring together independent publishers and create opportunities for us that would be much more difficult if we were on our own,” says Munro Magruder, associate publisher of New World Library, a PGW client.

Perseus COO Joe Mangan states in a letter posted on Perseus’ Web site: “This powerful technology- and vendor-agnostic service creates one, central repository and service organization that can help you manage your titles through their life cycle, leveraging—where appropriate—online marketing and sampling, e-book distribution and sales, short print run (short print runs to stock), and true print-on-demand (print only to order).”

North Plains is providing the digital asset management software to support Constellation. “As a company whose mission is to enable independent publishers to reach their potential, The Perseus Books Group is in a unique position to empower ‘long tail’ content owners to generate new revenues from the digital world,” says Hassan Kotob, president & CEO of North Plains.

POD for Magazines

I rarely blog about magazines since I've spent most of my career working with books, but I recently read an interview about MagCloud that I found interesting. What is MagCloud, you may ask: it's the magazine's answer to POD.

MagCloud is an HP Labs research project evaluating new web services that will provide small independent magazine publishers, online content owners, and small businesses the ability to custom publish digitized magazines and economically print and fulfill on demand.

To read the rest of the interview on Mr.Magazine.com, follow this link.

From online to print?

Since most of us are thinking and getting used to digital after being in the print world all our publishing lives, I found this article about an e-publisher experimenting with print interesting.

Book Publisher “Experiments” With Print: Christina M. Brashear, owner of e-book publisher Samhain, on her unconventional business model.

Macon, Ga.-based Samhain Publishing has found its niche in the world of book publishing, despite the fact that most of its titles aren’t resting on bookstore shelves. The e-book-minded publisher has only tread lightly in the world of traditional print publishing since it first opened up shop nearly three years ago.

While print versions of the company’s line of popular romance and erotica fiction are now more commonplace, Owner and Publisher Christina M. Brashear says these traditional books haven’t changed the main focus of providing electronic versions of Samhain’s titles. The publisher has achieved such success selling e-books to loyal readers, according to Brashear, that later this summer she will begin selling other publishers’ digital editions alongside Samhain’s titles on My Bookstore and More (www.MyBookstoreandMore.com), a retail Web site that Brashear also owns.

Brashear spoke with Book Business Extra on her approach to selling books.

Book Business Extra: Beginning primarily as an e-book publisher, what advantages did you see in also offering print versions of some of your titles?
Christina M. Brashear: You do get an idea of what is or isn’t going to do well in print by how well a book does in e-book form. I have found that booksellers who read e-books will write and ask when certain titles are going to go to print. I know those titles will do well and can plan an appropriate print run.

Extra: What challenges have you faced as you have started to delve into print?
Brashear: … I like being “green”—e-books don’t get returned and aren’t destroyed. [With print,] you have to plan carefully so your print runs are on target with the demand. Most of our titles stay in [print on demand (POD)], which can be a hardship because of the stigma attached to [POD]. … We gamble on certain titles and have print runs made based on what we project they will sell. We try to print enough to satisfy the first few months of orders, and then allow POD to fulfill on a continuing basis. If the book is very popular, we’ll go back to press and order additional print runs as demand necessitates.
The next toughest part would be learning to work with the industry schedule. In e-books, you can do things in a shorter time frame and make changes on the fly. With print, you’re planning January 2009’s schedule in February of 2008.

Extra: What did you learn from working with Amazon and Sony to offer your e-books in the formats that their e-readers—the Kindle and the Reader, respectively—use?
Brashear: … All the e-books are picked up by Amazon from Mobipocket, so there is no additional work on our part. I love that. Mobi and Amazon are the easiest of all the processes we have in place right now. We’re in the process of working with Sony to get the titles into the store. It’s not as smooth of a process as Amazon, but Amazon had the benefit [of a process] being already in place. Sony is new—a new device using a new file format. We hope to get everything worked out soon.

Extra: What challenges has the company’s rapid growth presented?
Brashear: … We’ve been on a hiring binge in the corporate offices—trying to address the problems of spreading the workload so the staff doesn’t burn out and collapse into a pile of quivering flesh on the floor. It’s a challenge to keep up with the old duties while incorporating the new, and not let anything slip through the cracks.
Leasing office space is the biggest change due to growth. It does not matter what your top or bottom line is, when someone in the business arena realizes you work from home, you are instantly discounted as not being a legitimate, real business. I miss working from home, but in all honesty, I couldn’t see hiring admin staff and having them in my home. We have a great location. We’re on the 15th floor of the tallest building in Macon, and we look out over this beautiful, quaint city.

Extra: What are the advantages of owning My Bookstore and More?
Brashear: With Samhain as a wholesale-only company, we don’t have to worry about frog-marching people back to the Samhain site to make the most money. I can list many various sites from which people can buy the e-books. We do this now for print, but we plan to [do this as well] with e-books in the next incarnation of the site.
My Bookstore and More was developed as a sister company to Samhain, so that Samhain could focus on the publishing of books and working with authors. Having [the site] as a totally separate entity from Samhain allows us to sell more than just the Samhain titles. We can sell any publisher’s titles by any author, though we have yet to really expand that side of things. That’s coming this summer, once we launch the new, more robust site. We manually add books [that our] authors tell us are available by them through other publishers. But we will be developing an interface with Ingram, so we can automatically update our available products with the latest books available.

The article also confirms what I've always thought: print isn't dead, it's just evolving into more of an "on demand" platform.

What do you think?

Content on Demand

What do POD and digital have in common? Content on demand. What I mean by this, is that the modern consumer wants their content, and wants it now in whatever format they prefer.

As was repeated several times at the Book Business Expo hosted a few month's back, "content is king." How does this translate to the publisher trying to stay on top of the ever-evolving new media trends? How does this translate to the overwhelmed production professional trying to make all this work? It's very simple: let the consumer choose.

Develop good content, tag it with XML or whatever other format works for your CMS, and make the content available in all formats--simultaneously. Let the consumer choose whether they want to buy the book as a traditional print product; a pdf to be read on their laptop; or for their Kindle or Sony Reader (or whatever the next generation e-reader will be). Price these products appropriately, make it easy for the consumer to choose, and they will and will probably keep coming back.

It's obviously not that easy to get to that point, and this may vary from publishing sector to sector, but the more I read about what works and what doesn't, the more I believe it's really about "content on demand" and allowing the reader to choose.

Another example of this is in the educational market. Instead of professors having to create student reading packs to be copied and bound by the university copy center, they can now choose "custom" textbooks. Although only Wiley offers this now, I'm sure that others will soon too, since this is the "content on demand" trend at its best.

So for your given sector of the industry, what are the choices your reader is looking for and how will you make these more readily available to them?

Amazon as Publisher?

I remember when Barnes and Noble started publishing its own classics, competing in the public domain sector, and then in the non-public domain sector with its Spark Notes. Many thought this was an unfair advantage.

Now some, like Sramana Mitra at Forbes.com, think that Amazon's next move will be to cut out traditional publishers and become a publisher themselves. In her commentary, Sramana explains that with BookSurge, Amazon is in a position to cut out the middleman--e.g., the publisher--and offer the authors better advances than the traditional paradigm does.

There is already a discussion going on at Forbes.com regarding this, and I found it interesting to see how many of the commentors did not believe that Amazon would treat their authors better.

I agree that the author/publisher relationship should be reevaluated with the advent of new publishing models and technology, and HarperCollins' new imprint will be pioneering this, but do people not realize how much more than just printing a publisher does? Who will edit, copyedit, and proofread the manuscript? Who will design and market the book? Will Amazon hire all these resources? If they do, there goes the author advance.

My first publishing job was at an STM (scientific, medical, technical) publisher. My sister was studying to be a pharmacist at the time and often complained about the price of a textbook. I remember trying to explain to her what went into creating that two or four-color 400-plus page textbook, and how the publisher was lucky if they came out ahead and actually made a profit.

It costs money to put out quality products, whether they be books, automobiles, or clothing. With POD technology, the author can cut out the publisher, but as I've written before, unless he is than ready to hire the resources the publisher has and makes readily available to him, the quality of his book will suffer.

The ultimate question is, will the market be discerning enough to boycott these shoddy books? Only time will tell...but I personally do not buy self-published books for that reason.

BISG Making Information Pay 2008

I was fortunate enough to attend this year's BISG conference, and will share some highlights:

1. The theme of the conference was experimentation.
2. BISG survey showed that non-trade publishers, more than their trade counterparts, believe that experimentation is important; however, the trade ones believe they experiment more than their non-trade counterparts.
3. Author and Dr. Michael E. Raynor spoke about strategy and innovation. He pointed out that upper management tends to have more uncertainty and experimentation, whereas lower management, to succeed at their tasks, need to be certain and committed.
4. Carolyn Pittis, Senior VP of Global Marketing Strategy and Operations at HarperCollins, discussed innovations that HarperCollins has implemented on a global scale. For example, their UK office launched a preteen website based around a series character; while HC books are included, they are only included and advertised contextually: the focus of the website is more community-driven than sales-driven. HarperCollins has also helped their authors--and themselves--by making it very easy for their authors to create personal websites and they offer a "search inside" feature on their website, which has increased sales and traffic.
5. Michael Cader spoke about his success with Publisher's Lunch and Marketplace, which is due to iteration and constantly adapting their offerings based on what their customers wanted and/or needed, and doing so in a way that kept overhead and costs down. To him, "innovation is iteration."
6. Todd Anderson, Director of the University of Alberta Bookstore, spoke about their experience with POD and how, as soon as their store got the Espresso Book Machine and it became known to the public, they were inundated with POD requests of all sorts. He also showed a funny video: they had been lucky to have the machine work perfectly each time media came to visit, except this once when the camera showed an error that Todd and the reporter didn't notice until the cameraman pointed it out to them.
7. The Innovator's roundtable included Malle Vallik from Harlequin, Gwen Jones from John Wiley & Sons, Neil DeYoung from Hachette Book Group USA, and Julie Grau from Random House.

Overall, as Carolyn Pittis said at the end, it is warming to see how far and fast publishers have been able to adapt to the ever-changing world of media with innovation and experimentation.

Borders Faces the Future Head-on

Several months ago I read an article that Borders and Wiley were going to work together to bring travel kiosks into their stores. These "Trip Recommenders" would help you choose destinations, offer suggested resources, and even allow you to book travel plans right from the Borders store. I remember how impressed I was about this innovative idea and partnership.

Well, Borders hasn't stopped there. Apparently, as Joe Wilkert reported in his blog several days ago, they are changing the way they organize their stores and display books.

Borders Concept Store Opens in Central Indiana

Today was opening day for the new Borders concept store in Fishers, Indiana. Technically speaking, the store is located in Noblesville, but it's so darned close to my house that I'll be referring to it as "the Fishers Borders." As an admitted book nerd I couldn't avoid visiting the store over lunch today.

If you missed this earlier post, Borders is in the process of opening a series of new outlets with more of a high-tech feel. The first thing I noticed when entering the Fishers store wasn't so much the technology kiosks as it was the dramatically improved book merchandising approach. Like most stores, bestsellers are on a variety of front-of-store displays; but this particular layout seemed to be much more open and inviting, not just a rack of face-out titles.

The tech kiosks are all clustered together in an area that's nicely set off from the books and CDs/DVDs. You'll find stations where you can buy customized CDs, research genealogy (and buy a book about your family name), get help with your digital camera/music player or explore the world of self-publishing with Borders partner Lulu. They've also set up a special website to help support these new concept stores, which you can find here.

Borders also recently announced plans to focus more on bestsellers and face-out displays. The change is noticeable in the Fishers store, and I mean that in a good way. Even though the store's footprint is on the smaller side and they're clearly carrying less titles than the typical superstore, the browsing experience felt different from what I've come to expect in the typical big-box store. In other words, I liked it quite a bit and plan to visit it regularly.

P.S. -- For those of you in central Indiana, even though the store is already open, the "official grand opening" is slated for the weekend of May 9-11. According to the brochure I picked up today there will be several author signings, demos and other great reasons to stop by for the grand opening festivities.

Perhaps with innovation such as Borders is demonstrating, bookstores need not become fewer but instead can evolve and offer services that the Web cannot.

POD Repercussions

Authors at first only signed away print rights. When publishers started seeing the advantage of keeping derivative rights, those became a matter of negotiation. Now, due to POD technology, will authors have to fight for reversion rights?

Traditionally, once a book's out of print for so long, the author gets his/her rights back. But what's "out of print" these days when publishers can always print on demand? And should this count?

Simon and Schuster, as reported by The New York Times article "Publisher and Authors Parse a Term: Out of Print" (see full article below), has changed their contracts accordingly, much to the dismay of the Authors Guild.

May 18, 2007

By MOTOKO RICH

When is a book out of print?

A change in standard contract language at Simon & Schuster could effectively alter the answer to that question, and the Authors Guild, a trade group that says it represents about 8,500 published authors, is urging writers and agents to exclude the publisher from book auctions because of it.

Traditionally, if a book falls out of print, authors are contractually allowed to ask their publishers for their rights back so that the author can try to have the book republished somewhere else.

Until recently, that has meant that if a book was not available in at least one format — hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback being the most common — or if sales fell below a minimum annual threshold, it was deemed out of print.

But with the advent of technologies like print-on-demand, publishers have been able to reduce the number of back copies that they keep in warehouses. Simon & Schuster, which until now has required that a book sell a minimum number of copies through print-on-demand technology to be deemed in print, has removed that lower limit in its new contract.

In effect, that means that as long as a consumer can order a book through a print-on-demand vendor, that book is still deemed in print, no matter how few copies it sells.

The Authors Guild says that is not fair. “If a book is only available in print-on-demand, it certainly means the publisher isn’t doing much to promote the book,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “We’re not against the technology; we’re just against the technology being used to lock up rights.”

Mr. Aiken said that authors often ask to take back the rights of out-of-print books so they can place them with new publishers and give their work new life. He cited the example of Paula Fox, a novelist who had six out-of-print novels when Jonathan Franzen, the author of “The Corrections,” cited her work in an essay in Harpers Magazine. Ms. Fox took back the rights for her novels, resold them to W. W. Norton and revived her career.

Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Simon & Schuster, said that the publisher was acknowledging advances in technology that made it easier for readers to order books on demand. “We’re anticipating that it’s only going to get better and that this is the best way to make our authors’ books available for consumers on a large-scale basis over the long haul,” Mr. Rothberg said.

The agent David Black said, however, that in reality, if a book is available only through print-on-demand, “an author’s book is going to be available in dribs and drabs.”

He added: “If there is the possibility that I can take this book and place it somewhere else where somebody is going to publish it more aggressively than on a print-on-demand basis, shouldn’t I have the opportunity to do that?”

Mr. Aiken said he was not aware of any other publishers who had made similar changes. Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, which owns imprints that include Doubleday and Crown Publishing, said: “Our authors’ opportunity to have the publication rights revert back to them should their books go out of print remains unchanged.”

Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central Publishing, said that its contracts allow writers to take back rights if royalties in any format fall below a certain threshold.

Mr. Rothberg said that Simon & Schuster would continue to talk to authors who wanted their rights back, regardless of changes in contract language. “We’ve always been willing to have the discussions with agents and authors if there comes a time when they feel they need to have a book reverted to them and they can make a compelling case to us that it should be so,” he said.

What do you think is fair?

Let's play monopoly

I remember when Amazon first hit the Web, with its useful recommendation database. My husband and I spent so much money buying books on it that we joked about buying shares. Then Amazon became about more than books--and now they're trying to dictate how books ought to be produced.

The Kindle is a nifty device, not perfect nor the only e-reader out there, and Amazon has aggressively marketed it, which is as should be. The problem is that the Kindle requires their proprietary software.

Then Amazon tried to monopolize the POD market by announcing that only books printed through their own BookSurge enterprise can be sold via their site, otherwise five copies would have to be on hand, which defeats the purpose of POD.

So in my eyes, Amazon is no longer playing nice and is trying to strong-arm the industry that helped it become what it is today. I like how Tim O'Reilly states this on his blog:

It is a free-market economy, and competition is the name of the game. But as Amazon's market power increases, it needs to be mindful of whether its moves, even those that may be good for the company in the short term, are ultimately destructive of the ecosystem on which they depend. I believe that they are heading in that direction, and if they succeed with some of their initiatives, they will wake up one day to discover that they've sown the seeds of their own destruction, just as Microsoft did in the 1990s.

At O'Reilly, we have a motto: "Create more value than you capture." It's a wise motto for companies far bigger than we are to adopt. If you do that, you ensure a healthy ecosystem. If you capture more value than you create, watch out, because stagnation is on the way.

Amazon has, so far, created huge value for the publishing ecosystem. Now, as they become more powerful, they need to be especially watchful that they don't irreparably damage an industry on which they too depend.

Until next time.

Where do I see publishing going?

There are as many opinions on the future of publishing as there are different types of publishing, and only time will tell who's right or wrong. I also believe that where each sector of publishing will go will be determined primarily by its readers and its purpose.

For fiction book publishing, where the primary purpose is a good read, I believe that the Kindle and other e-readers will not take over the market. Instead, POD will become cheap enough that there will be POD kiosks in large retailers. One will either walk over to a POD "atm" and order and pay for a book that will be printed while you wait, or one can order and pay online and then walk over to the kiosk later and pick up the book. Wiley has actually taken the first step towards this by announcing that they plan to have "travel kiosks" in Border stores.

For non-fiction book publishing, it will depend on whether the book is narrative in nature or for reference purposes. If the former, then I believe the kiosk approach will work for them as well; if the latter, then the search functions offered by e-readers would be invaluable and will therefore outweigh the benefits of the tried-and-true paper format.

For journals, magazines, and newspapers I believe that it's only a matter of time before e-paper technology takes over. For those of you who aren't familiar with e-paper, see Wikepedia's definition below:

Electronic paper, also called e-paper, is a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike a conventional flat panel display, which uses a backlight to illuminate its pixels, electronic paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely without drawing electricity, while allowing the image to be changed later.

There are several different technologies to build e-paper, some of which can use plastic substrate and electronics, so that the display is flexible. It is considered more comfortable to read than conventional displays. This is due to the stable image which does not need to be constantly refreshed, the large viewing angle, and the fact that it uses reflected ambient light. It has a similar contrast ratio to that of a newspaper and is lightweight and durable, however it still lacks good color reproduction.

Applications include e-book readers capable of displaying digital versions of books and e-paper magazines, electronic pricing labels in retail shops ^[1], time tables at bus stations ^[2], and electronic billboards ^[3].

Electronic paper should not be confused with digital paper, which is a pad to create handwritten digital documents with a digital pen.

Since journals, magazines, and newspapers all have a predefined page length, which tends not to vary too much between issues, e-paper would allow a reader to buy the e-paper version once, and then have the latest issue uploaded at a lower subscription rate. Eventually e-paper will be able to handle high-resolution photos as well as the black-and-white ones, so that won't be a deterrent for the high-end magazines and journals.

With the ever-increasing cost of PPB (paper, printing, and binding), the new technology is definitely a way for both the publisher and the consumer to save money. But there will always be readers, like myself, who prefer the feel of a book in the hand rather than another screen to stare at. And if along with the cheaper POD kiosks there are bins to return the book--perhaps even with a rebate like Staples is now offering for returned cartridges--then the paper can be recycled and reused.

And as a speaker said at the Book Business Conference I went to recently, "the future is here today."

Until next time.