Publishing Trends

If you've signed up for PW Daily, or go to the Publishers Weekly website, these are some of the headlines you'll have seen in the last few days:

• Penguin Sees Major E-Book Sales Spike
• On Demand Titles Drive Jump in Book Output
• B&N Launches Mobile Friendly Retail Site

What's their common denominator? Non-traditional publishing platforms and operations. So while traditional publishing continues to be shaky, non-traditional publishing is ever-evolving and growing.

Publishing companies, as the above headlines indicate and as the recent BISG seminar indicated, are making appropriate adjustments. But professionals, especially print production ones, need to adjust as well. Personally, I've been taking web design and coding classes, signed up for alerts and blogs, and am just trying to keep abreast of all the changes and trends.

What adjustments have you made and which ones do you feel have or can be the most useful to keep your career on track?

New Media and Educational Publishing

I was at an event this weekend, talking to another first-grade parent, and she told me about the interactive "whiteboards" her son's school uses. Imagine this: instead of the traditional green or black chalk board, there's a touch-screen large monitor that allows the teacher to write on it, but also allows her to access the Internet and her files. When I Googled this topic, I was amazed at how many hits I got, the lead being a New York Time article on this very topic. These "smartboards" are apparently only available in affluent neighborhoods for the time being, but will be more prevalent once prices drop.

Along similar lines, the digitalist blogged about the "One Laptop per Child Project" and the new XO2 laptop, which will more resemble a larger iphone than the traditional laptop.

Since educational publishing is a seasonal and ever-struggling business, will new media--and the lack of its "print" necessity--give these publishers a chance for more stability? And what kind of training will editors and other publishing professionals need to keep up with interactive media and publishing?

B&N and Returns

Barnes and Noble changed it's return policy a while back so that consumers need to return books within two weeks instead of the traditional 6 weeks. I remember when a B&N clerk first told me this; my reaction--out loud--was "it's about time."

Returns have always crippled publishing, and now B&N seems to be ready to change this, as per Publisher's Weekly article:

(Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 5/22/2008 8:24:00 AM)

In Barnes & Noble’s first quarter conference call, CEO Steve Riggio gave his firm backing to looking for ways to end the traditional returns practice and predicted that it could be possible to find a solution “in a year or two.” Riggio said B&N has always been open to finding alternate ways to deal with unsold books, calling the current practice “insane” and “expensive.” Changing the returns policy would lower costs for both publishers and B&N, Riggio said. He speculated that the given the current environment, publishers might be more receptive to seriously looking to change the returns model.

How Interactive?

We all know that social media has taken off like mad and it's here to stay; now it's just a matter of what will Social Media 2.0--or 3.0--entail. We've seen how social media can affect consumer purchases (my previous post on Twitter) and NYU did a talk on how social media affected the election.

Then there's interactive media, like the Kindle and interactive websites, which as of now are not social. But as Marketwire announced today, Wetpaint is going to enable users to add social content to most websites. They predict:

"The next explosive growth phase of the web will come as every website on the planet transitions to become socially published, with user-generated content existing alongside professionally authored content," said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. "With the power of the Wetpaint platform now embeddable for every website publisher and operator, Wetpaint will power the massive transformation of solitary sites into social sites."

Up until now, the answer to all content questions seemed to be either "xml" or "cms." While both of these will allow publishers to reuse content simultaneously and on different platforms, this only deals with the "professionally authored content" referred to above. How will publishers be able to integrate user-generated content into their workflow?

Will user-generated content be pre-vetted, and if so, by whom and with what standards? Will this be copyedited/proofread, or just published as is? Who will own the copyright for this content?

Obviously having all publishing and media become interactive and social will lead to many questions and changes, many more questions than I have mentioned here. How do you think publishers will or should deal with interactive media?

Change of Focus

I've been concerned for a while that my blog did not serve a unique purpose, given that I linked to other postings most of the time and that there are enough other blogs focusing on the same topic. My blog still may have been useful for those who did not have the time to stay abreast of all the changes going on in the industry and/or did not read the other blogs...but that still did not make it uniquely mine.

So going forward, I am changing the focus of my blog to the "rapidly changing world of Publishing Operations," as my tag line now indicates. I may not post on a daily basis going forward, but when I do, I'll have more to contribute since publishing operations is where my experience and expertise lie.

Hope you enjoy the new focus and let me know what you think.

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.

A Look at Book Publishing's Opportunities in Digital Marketing

Peter Brantley
May 9, 2008

Richard Bawden and Mark Harding from KPMG discuss future scenarios for book marketing and product enhancement:

With virtual worlds like Second Life and social networking destined to splinter into hubs focused on shared interests, publishers and retailers are in a strong position to leverage people's love of books ... Publishers must also consider how books on screen can enhance the reading experience, with sound and vision adding extra dimensions. Think of the crunch that the snow could make as Lucy walks through the wardrobe and enters Narnia for the first time, offering extra sensory pleasure to younger readers.

Experiences like these will trigger behavioural shifts from generation to generation and will bring on the slow decline of traditional business models. If publishers choose to embrace innovation and lateral thinking, such experiences can prompt new revenue streams which will sustain their businesses. If, on the other hand, they choose to deny the digital future or fail to prepare adequately, they will hinder growth.