What's next?

I was catching up on my blog-reading and two entries especially caught my eye.

One was about Harlequin's "enriched editions" on the TOC blog.

Unmasked ... has been enriched with interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites containing photos, historical commentaries, illustrations, sound effects, maps, articles and more ... The interactive buttons have been designed to be unobtrusive, so if one prefers not to access the bonus material, the reading experience remains uninterrupted.

I can't say as this surprised me, since it's been discussed at industry forum and is the next logical step for e-books. The next probably will be options such as posting notes and questions to groups, e-mailing reviews to websites, maybe even chatting with other readers. Who knows where e-books can go once you connect them to the World Wide Web.

The other entry was on Joe Wikert's blog about DailyLit. DailyLit, as the name implies, allows you to sign up for "daily" chunks of books delivered directly to your in-box. As Joe blogged, this is a cool idea and a great way to learn on the go. So I checked out the website, was about to sign up...then I stopped.

Although I still carry around a book with me wherever I go, I rarely pick it up during the week since I'm trying to stay on top of e-mail and blog-reading, thanks to my BlackBerry, while commuting. So why, after spending too much time staring at a screen at work, then spending most of my time to and from work staring at my BlackBerry screen, would I want to read a book on it? That's why I haven't even contemplated buying a Kindle, and that would be way more eye-friendly than this.

But maybe it's just me. Although I appreciate where the industry is going and think it should offer the reader all platforms to choose from, I just think getting more e-mail is not the answer. Check it out and let me know what you think.

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.

Next Generation E-Reader

While several different technology companies are working on foldable and/or more user-friendly e-readers (see my previous post and the this New York Times article), Harlequin has gotten ahead of other publishers with its offering of an enriched "e-dition."

Harlequin Launches Enriched Edition eBooks
Wednesday July 9, 8:30 am ET

Harlequin is the first publisher to release entirely enriched eBooks

TORONTO, July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Harlequin Enterprises Limited (http://www.eharlequin.com/), the global leader in series romance and one of the world's leading publishers of women's fiction, announced today the launch of their Enriched Edition eBooks. With this launch, Harlequin becomes the first publisher to offer entire eBooks that are enriched with interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites with more information about the content.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080709/NYW026 )

The launch title, UNMASKED (http://ebooks.eharlequin.com/D0202CC6-7C9A-4669-AC03-444A8CBCC17B/10/126/en/ ContentDetails.htm?ID=3248E63E-7845-4356-B5CC-21B6FF6331D0) by Nicola Cornick (http://www.eharlequin.com/author.html?authorid=726), a Regency-set historical available from www.eBooks.eHarlequin.com, has been enriched with interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites containing photos, historical commentaries, illustrations, sound effects, maps, articles and more, bringing the world of the novel to life without the reader having to leave the computer or the current screen page. The interactive buttons have been designed to be unobtrusive, so if one prefers not to access the bonus material, the reading experience remains uninterrupted.

By exploiting the interactive possibilities inherent with eBooks, Harlequin is recognizing the opportunity for online reading to enhance the reading experience, evolving it above and beyond the replication of print books.

Harlequin will release select Enriched Edition titles from its many series and imprints, but chose to launch with a historical release since the period setting particularly lends itself to the enriched experience. Obscure period details, customs, terms and references become instantly accessible should the reader wish to learn more about the story's context.

Enriched Edition eBooks are available at www.eBooks.eHarlequin.com and are being sold at the same price as regular eBooks.

I'm actually surprised they haven't combined an audio feature with their enriched e-book, since that and/or video is the only thing left.

Although this "enrichment" of e-books was inevitable and the natural next step, what will it do to the next generation's attention spans and expectations? We've all probably read the Atlantic article about Google making us stupid; we've all seen the trend away from print-only models to print-and-ancillary/online. We've all accepted that the next step will be print-and-multimedia, but with this trend, will there be a publishing industry left, or will it be swallowed up in the entertainment industry as the line between the two blurs?

And as the public becomes used to more flash and interactive media, how many will choose to exercise their brain with the simple medium of the written word?

Trends in the "content" industry

In reading Book Business magazine's article on trends in the manufacturing side of the business, and a recent blog post about content tracking systems, I started thinking about other trends I've noticed and decided to share both:

1. The industry is "going green" and becoming more environmentally conscious.
2. Publishers are responding to higher paper costs and new technology by printing less: they print "just in time" and not "just in case" inventory (Book Business).
   
3. POD is fast catching up to standard print quality and becoming more economical and efficient (Book Business).
4. Content is king and having it multi-platform ready is the key.
5. With the advent of "social" marketing, publishers want their content to be widespread and copied to get the word out (O'Reilly's Tools of Change).
6. Consolidation continues: not only are companies merging, but they are also consolidating what vendors they use and internal processes to increase efficiency and cost savings.

This is not a comprehensive list, so what other trends have you noticed?

Full-spread E-Reader?

O'Reilly's Tools of Change blog reported today on a prototype e-reader, invented by reseraches from Berkeley and the University of Maryland, which further resembles a book. Not only does it have two screens--like a recto and a verso--but it allows you to detach the screens to better compare two different documents or you can just fold one screen behind the other. TOC even has a video of this prototype on their site, which has to be viewed to be believed.

What this prototype is trying to do, as explained by the YouTube video, is better mimic reading habits in an e-reader. With the two screens, it lets you better view more content, flip better, see an image across a spread, and more.

With the unbelievable leaps and bounds in iphone technology, I am sure that eventually "viewing" habits will overlap "reading" ones. For instance, the OnlineMediaCultist just blogged about how the next step will be Princess Leia popping out of your phone. As the video on his post demonstrates, this is possible nowadays with the "holo" text messaging feature of the iphone.

So will e-readers eventually have 3-d art that pops out at you? Will they have videos embedded into them as well? Will you be able to "record" comments instead of writing them? The possibilities seem limitless--or at least limited to the inventors' imaginations--given how far we've advanced.

But how will this affect production? We're all concerned with content being xml-ready so that it can be available for digital, whether online or via e-reader. What more will be necessary to get it "multi-media" ready? And whatever it will take, will have to start with editorial during the development and planning stage.

Any thoughts?

How many ISBNs for e-books?

PersonaNonData blogged about the reasons for e-books to have a unique ISBN per format.

According to ISBN official standards, each format of an e-book should be given its own ISBN. This means if a book is sold in mobi-pocket and Adobe formats each would be given a separate (unique) number by the publisher even if the content is exactly the same. During the revision process for the current standard, this point received intense discussion mostly focused on the burden that applying what could amount to several hundred ISBNs to a single work would have on publishers' processes. We resolved this issue for the standard with judicious use of words such as 'shall' and 'should' but the issue was raised again recently when the ISBN board released a 'policy statement' reaffirming the need for separate ISBN's on each format of an eb0ok.

The reasons for this action is simple. Downstream supply chain business such as wholesalers, distributors and retailers require a unique reference to all products that pass through their operations. If one doesn't exist these businesses tend to apply their own numbers. In actuality, the practice of downstream partners applying their own numbers has been going on since the establishment of ISBN and isn't unique to e-books, but the issue is coalescing now around the obligations of a publisher to 'correctly apply' the ISBN standard to e-books.

At a meeting this week at AAP NYC a number of publishers expressed doubts about the need for this requirement. As a participant in the revision of the standard my view was simple. A publisher should want to manage and control the meta-data associated with all their products and enabling - by omission - the need for someone else to apply their own information never seemed prudent to me. Secondly, the veracity of the ISBN system is brought into question if more than one entity applies separate numbers to the same content. This occurs if B&N and Amazon sell the same e-book in the same format but in the absence of a publisher number they apply their own identifier.

At least one major publisher at the AAP meeting is not following the standard and after several years of distributing e-books and applying one ISBN irrespective of format (.epub for example) they are seeing no issues with confusion or misuse of their meta data. This is a powerful argument and comes from a publisher that is highly protective of their bibliographic information. If reflective of a general consensus the ISBN board should reconsider the wording of there directive. For example, simply changing the wording by inserting the words 'publishers may apply ISBNs to separate formats' would give enough latitude to those publishers that see a need to apply separate ISBNs and those that do not.

There are several qualifications (and others may raise more). Firstly, the issue of downstream partners which need identifiers for their internal process requirements must be governed. For example, in those cases where a publisher expects detailed sell-thru data they may provide ISBN's. If a downstream partner can only use a 13 digit identifier in their systems the publisher may require the partner to use an ISBN provided by the publisher. If the partner can use a non-ISBN (but NOT a dummy ISBN/13 digit id) such as letters and numbers the publisher may see no need to apply ISBN's. Secondly, the danger that rogue ISBNs that are intended to operate only within the operating systems of specific partners (wholesalers, vendors, etc.) escape into the supply chain causing confusion and much remediation is a real one and should be recognised. Currently, there aren't that many e-books and there aren't that many publishers working outside the recommendations of the standard. As e-books explode in distribution, data integrity problems that are virtually non-existent today may become very relevant issues very quickly.

Lastly, in a supply chain world where suppliers and retailers are racing (admittedly not a sprint more a marathon) to apply unique identifiers on individual items via RFID, this discussion runs counter to the logic other more sophisticated industries are following. Quite rightly, with volumes as small as they are, it may not be interesting to know which e-book versions seem to perform better, or get less customer service/help desk calls, or which package of products seem to show up on what platform or which segment of buyers seems to have what behavioral characteristics, or which partner seems to sell what types of products or formats, or which formats tend to be pirated more or less, and on and on and on. As the chain becomes flatter - as it is - publishers are going to want to know this stuff and tying a user to a format may be critical to all aspects of what they do.

What do you think? Should publishers be mandated to provide unique ISBNs for every format or should another identifying system be created for the "downstreamers"?

Offshore Outsourcing

Since more and more publishers are being forced to turn to overseas vendors and printers, whether for full-service or just for specific services, I thought it worth sharing with you Jen Butenschoen's article, based on her session at the Publishing Business Conference given in March of this year.

9 Tips for Building Healthy Offshore Manufacturing Relationships

Jen Butenschoen has spent the past 13 years with Harvest House Publishers, a Christian book publisher headquartered in Eugene, Ore., where she is director of production. She has extensive experience working with offshore manufacturers, and so she led the “Tips for Healthy and Profitable Global Sourcing Partnerships” session at the 2008 Publishing Business Conference this past March in New York. During her session, she presented dozens of tips on how to make the most of your relationships with offshore manufacturers. Here are nine of them.

1. Be sure offshore manufacturing is right for your products.
Offshore manufacturers have different capabilities and technologies than many of their U.S. counterparts. Some are behind on technology, so know what their capabilities are before giving them work.

2. Don’t hesitate to ask your printer’s input on anything on which you’re unsure.
Ask your printer for their suggestions on such issues as file prep, best manufacturing methods, special treatments, etc.

3. Make sure that all costs are accounted for.
Overseas partners do tend to price things out differently than what you may be used to with domestic partners. And be careful, because sometimes you get what you pay for. “Often, there’s a reason for that low price tag,” said Butenschoen.

Don’t forget about additional costs like freight and shipping, and customs’ import and export taxes. For example, there is a significant import tax in Italy on items a publisher would supply to their printer for the work.

4. Request a variety of samples.
Examine them closely. See what they’ve done for other publishers and take a close look at the quality. Would you be happy with the work? If you’re considering placing a job with the manufacturer, request dummies that are made out of the materials you plan to use. That way you can be sure you’re getting exactly the product you want and precisely the product that was quoted.

5. Keep an eye on fluctuating currency.
With the U.S. dollar constantly on the move, quotes can wind up being quite inaccurate by the time the work is done.

6. Pay attention to payment terms.
Strive to get equivalent payment terms with offshore manufacturers as you have with your domestic partners. Often you can negotiate 60-day terms, especially once you’ve built a relationship with the partner.

7. Specifically request not only manufacturing time but also lead time.
Partners will usually offer you a manufacturing schedule with the quote, based on the date of final file approval. You’ll want to consider the full picture, however.

8. Be aware of peak seasons and holidays.
“If you’ve worked with Asia [partners], you know they take a lot of holidays. And it’s not just a few people that take vacation, but the entire plant shuts down,” said Butenschoen.

Printing during peak seasons mean schedules will run longer. Plan your own schedules accordingly.

9. Plan shipping time accordingly.
“I allow up to six weeks … not because it takes that long, but because you never know when one of your shipments is going to be flagged for customs exam. They do that at random periodically and can hold your shipments up to two weeks,” said Butenschoen.

If you’re doing regular overseas work, you’ll probably begin to get a sense for how long it takes to receive your product.