Windows Live Search is...Live

Category: Publishing , Copyright Law , Google , Digital Publishing , Industry Events , Microsoft , DRM

The big news, of course, is that Microsoft's Windows Live Search is live. Cliff Guren explained all the features today, and it's very similar to Google Book Search except for this important differentiator - no scanning of books with dubious copyright status. Microsoft scans books that are out-of-copyright, and publishers submit in-copyright books for inclusion (giving their permission for scanning).

There's no cost to publishers for the service. And there's no print functionality, or even cut-and-paste functionality, in the search: "As we all know," Guren says, "hacks run amok." So expect a few wiseasses to create end-runs around the protections that Microsoft has installed.

Publishers are able to control how much of a book they want consumers to see - including blocking certain pages from view altogether (in the case of a mystery, for example), or images to which they don't have the rights.

Guren admitted that the primary reason behind Windows Live is competition with Google for "query share" - which has a heavy influence on ad revenue. Look for a Windows Live demonstration at the Crystal Palace - which sounds like a brothel but is really a section of Javits.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 31, 07, 11:30 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

How many DADs do you have?

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling , Industry Events

Shatzkin once more took the stage in the afternoon as he moderated a panel discussion on Digital Asset Distribution. This was a great panel which included HarperCollins, Random House, Holtzbrinck, and Ingram Digital Group.

Carolyn Pittis of HarperCollins began by talking about using book content "everywhere possible" - emphasizing that publishers should have control of how the content is used. She also noted that "those who scan books for free" (ahem! Google; ahem! Microsoft) don't always produce the quality that an individual publisher can produce if they maintain control of the content.

Pittis also noted that the new widget released by Harper earlier this year has proven to be the third most powerful driver of consumers to the HarperCollins website; 14,000 books have widgets so far.

Up next was Brian Napack from Holtzbrinck, who gave a very wry and witty presentation. Holtzbrinck has chosen Ingram to manage its digital asset distribution, and Brian stressed that a powerful digital infrastructure is key to succeeding in an era increasingly dominated by technology.

He also mentioned that Holtzbrick is launching a social networking site for books called Lovely Books. It's in beta at the moment.

Kent Freeman of Ingram Digital stated that Ingram currently has 170,000 ebooks archived and ready for distribution among a variety of channels - Lightning Source, VitalSource, and MyiLibrary. Their digital warehouse service supports a wide variety of formats (including audio)...and, Kent said, "We have not yet announced our widget, but we will shortly." Which is, of course, a form of announcement.

Matt Shatz of Random House also discussed the Random House widget, which is a bit different from the Harper one - there's no branding on the images, for example, and it includes a search function which the Harper widget doesn't have. Matt confirmed that Random House's marketing efforts amount to "fishing where the fish are" - and that the Internet is universally acknowledged as the space where consumers discover products, sample them, and do research online.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 31, 07, 11:01 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Best Practices for Digital Marketing

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling , Industry Events

Ted Hill, an independent consultant who's long been concerned with digital issues, gave a great presentation on what the best practices are in the digital marketing arena.

He spoke about a study he conducted - along with IdeaLogical and Magellan - for a mid-sized trade publishing house about how to effectively leverage the Internet and associated technologies to market books to consumers.

Like Shatzkin, Hill had some bifurcations in his vision of the market. Hill divided his viewpoint into four sectors along two axes: Access and Discovery. An author appearance on Oprah, for example, has high discovery...but minimal access because Oprah does not sell books directly to consumers (she merely recommends them). A museum store, however, has both high access and high discovery - people are prepared to go to the gift shop after a museum visit, and they easily discover books there.

Hill also emphasized the importance of publishers empowering authors to market themselves online. Because communities easily build up around authors - and authors are great attractors of email addresses, and other targets for publisher campaigns - this is really crucial. "The greatest leverage," Hill said about internet marketing, "may be in teaching authors how to market."

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 31, 07, 10:47 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Mike Shatzkin Explains It All

Category: Digital Publishing , Industry Events

"You either OWN the tollgate, or you PAY at the tollgate."

So said Mike Shatzkin at his presentation this morning on disruptive technologies and the publishing industry. Defining "horizontal" marketing as a sort of carpet-bombing, standardized (mass-market) approach, and "vertical" marketing as an approach that targets niches in the same way special sales departments have been doing for years, Shatzkin talked about the power of the niche, about publishers leveraging the many communities that are coming up around these new technologies like MySpace and Facebook - how empowering authors to do their OWN marketing (because THEY are the brands, and THEY reach the niches) is far more effective than buying banner ads.

He also made this observation, which appealed to me tremendously, as my great-grandmother was a Sooner (one of the Oklahomans who raced over the border and staked a claim just PRIOR to the border opening - getting her land "sooner" than everybody else): "Pubishers need to be Internet-niche Sooners."

Another crucial point - and one I continually try to get across to clients: "Don't shut out your competitors: manage their involvement." A version of "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." We learned about "co-op-itition" in the late '90s - it's come back around again, folks.

His presentation can be found here.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 31, 07, 10:35 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Goin' down to BEA

It's not South Park, but it'll do in terms of surreality and general madness. I'll be at some of the conferences on Thursday, and then back again for exhibits and meetings on Saturday and Sunday. We're gonna try loading up PHOTOS - oh boy! Look for posts late Thursday.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 30, 07, 9:14 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

RFID at BEA, PDQ

Category: Industry Events

Our crew is very busy at BEA this year - in addition to Ted Hill's seminar on Best Practices in Digital Marketing (Thursday at 12:30), Jim Lichtenberg is leading a session on RFID in bookstores, using the by-now-famous example of the Dutch bookstore chain BGN. His panel of 16 participants will have a rousing discussion on the progress RFID has made over the last year. This is on Friday at 9:30.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 29, 07, 8:09 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Public Library Signs Up for LibraryThing

Category: Libraries , Digital Libraries

The Danbury Public Library is the first public library to sign up for LibraryThing, where individual readers classify and comment on books. Library Journal reports:

LibraryThing developer Tim Spalding may have warned in LJ four months ago that public libraries were more scared of user-contributed data than academic ones, but he’s found a taker in the Danbury Public Library (DPL), CT...It went live May 13, and initial promotional efforts are under way, DPL coordinator of library automation Kate Sheehan said. DPL’s tags are "keywords and labels used by regular people to categorize books," explains DPL in its catalog.

Sounds great, but of course, there's a catch...

Patrons can’t add their own tags at the moment, said Sheehan; it would require more work with the library’s automation product from Innovative Interfaces, Inc., and DPL users couldn’t generate the number of tags needed for effective use.

Eventually (sooner rather than later), ILS systems or libraries themselves will have to develop interfaces so that patrons can communicate not just with the library (in terms of requests, or renewals, or what have you) but with one another. The day of the passive patron is over. And it's critical to library relevancy that patrons be able to interact - to chat, to collaborate, to set up their own Library Thing-ish pages - with one another.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 29, 07, 7:53 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Books Are Burning in Kansas City

Category: Bookselling

CNN reports that Tom Wayne, the owner of Prospero's Books in Kansas City, MO, held a book-burning over the holiday weekend...a rather odd thing for a bookseller to be doing:

Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero's Books....But when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn't even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.

So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society's diminishing support for the printed word.

As a Google-phile might say, if it's digitized, it can't be burned. (Or burning the print version makes little difference.) It becomes more an issue of server space, not shelf space.

Y'all know where I'm headed with this one, so I'll just let it go at that.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 29, 07, 7:33 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

The Big Picture - DRM is Not Copyright; Copyright is not DRM: A Primer (Part II )

Category: Publishing , Copyright Law , Bookselling , DRM , The Big Picture

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - DRM is Not Copyright; Copyright is not DRM: A Primer (Part II of II), by Laura Dawson
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - GTIN – Global Trade Identification Number
INTEL: COMPANIES - Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine announces new start-up
INTEL: PRODUCTS - Alibris launches “Alibris Basic”
INTEL: PEOPLE - Muze shakeup continues
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

"Where we left off, before we were interrupted by digital asset distribution issues…the crucial question, “How do we encode e-books with some kind of ‘locking’ technology that prevents people from copying them and sharing them?”

The answer, of course, is that we don’t.

Do we encode print books with a “locking” technology? If I finish a Greg Iles thriller, and I know I never want to read it again, as good as it was (it ain’t Dostoevsky), and I choose to leave it on the seat of the PATH train from Hoboken to 33rd Street for the next likely reader...no law is going to stop me (unless the definition of littering expands significantly)..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the May 29, 2007 issue in full.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 29, 07, 6:05 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

AAP sales reports

Category: Publishing , Bookselling

The AAP released its annual sales report, which like all industry reports is notoriously incomplete and a definite victim to "what goes in is what comes out". Results are culled from its 300 members - and given that there are hundreds of thousands of publishers in the US, it seems that reports like these are more of a Gestalt indicating trends than a true picture of what's going on in the industry.

That said, it's interesting to note that audiobook sales are down this year. I'm wondering if that's due to the rise of podcasts and radio shows and even magazine/newspaper subscriptions being available from many audiobook sellers. In other words, there's a lot more to listen to than just books.

Ebook sales are up - most likely due to the textbook market, which is following in the footsteps of the scholarly journal business; printing is becoming prohibitively expensive, and digital distribution is the most sensible way of maintaining the quality of the publication over the widest possible audience.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 24, 07, 7:40 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Dept of Why Didn't I Think of That

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Department of Why Didn't I Think of That

Dailylit.com offers a service where it'll send a chunk of a public domain book to your Blackberry or regular email every morning, meant to be read in under 5 minutes. It's also available via RSS feed. Titles include loads of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and others you may have missed out on in your English lit classes. It's a very cool idea!

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 24, 07, 7:26 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

More on Amazon/Brilliance

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling , Libraries , Digital Libraries

Amazon's announcement yesterday that it is buying Brilliance Audio sent a few ripples throughout the industry. I was onsite yesterday at Audible, however, and I can say that all was calm there; Barron's blogger Eric Savitz can rest easy.

The one thing Audible's got going for it at the moment is its exclusive deal with Apple. This makes Audible's audiobooks the only ones that are easily transferrable to an iPod. While you can download books from Brilliance Audio, they are only playable on devices compatible with Overdrive's Media Console...devices that do not include the iPod family.

You can burn your Brilliance audiobooks to CDs, and then import those CD files into iTunes and thus onto your iPod, but that's significantly more work.

So as long as Audible's got this exclusive deal with Apple, it will retain the leadership position in the ever-expanding audiobook world.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 24, 07, 7:20 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Amazon to announce acquisition of Brilliance Audio

Category: Publishing , E-commerce , Company News , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

Shelf Awareness reports this morning on the rumors that Amazon is buying Brilliance Audio. PW sort of confirms this: on their story about Simon & Schuster, there's a link to a story about Amazon/Brilliance. However, there's nothing on that page...yet. Nevertheless, the fact that they've got the pod all ready to go suggests that those rumors in Shelf Awareness are about to become fact.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 23, 07, 7:39 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

S&S Responds to Author's Guild

Category: Publishing , Copyright Law , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

PW reports that Simon & Schuster has responded to the Author's Guild suit regarding the reversion (or non-reversion, rather) of rights back to the author when a book stops selling:

S&S says that in recent years it has accepted "contract language that specifies a minimum level of activity for print on demand titles," adding that "our experience with the current high quality and accessibility of print on demand titles indicates to us that such minimums are no longer necessary." S&S insists, however, that "our position on reversions for active titles remains unchanged. As always, we are willing to have an open and forthright dialogue on this or any other topic." S&S notes that POD "is simply a means of manufacturing a book, making it widely available to retailers and consumers."

The Science Fiction Writers of America has responded to S&S by saying that it supports the Author's Guild position, and that this is yet another instance of "an already-developing trend to use technologies, not to the benefit of authors, but as a way to seize rights that writers have traditionally taken for granted."

Another pain point caused by encroaching technology - while authors and publishers now are more aware of how technological advances affect copyright (and this shows in the more recent contract negotiations), there is that inevitable group who didn't foresee this coming, and their books are going to be the casualties of change.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 23, 07, 7:27 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Perpetually in-print: one author's view

Category: Publishing , Copyright Law , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

Maya Reynolds blogs about the S&S/Author's Guild kerfuffle, where S&S is essentially saying they're getting rid of the designation "out of print" - which means that authors who don't negotiate their contracts effectively cede the rights to their book to S&S in perpetuity.

Maya gives a really considered opinion, as an author - bringing in Long Tail concepts, the recent BISG study about used books, technologies such as POD and online bookselling, and the role of agents in all of this. She's incredibly thoughtful, and her post is terrific. Excerpting any one piece of it does the rest a disservice - go here and read the thing in its entirety.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 22, 07, 9:34 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Google Books Asia

Category: Copyright Law , Google , Libraries , Digital Libraries

Google's digitizing efforts spread to India with its latest agreement with Mysore University. According to TMCnet:

Some of the documents are written on palm leaves, and some on paper. Among them, India’s first political treatise, the Arthasastra, dating from the fourth century BC.

Cool!

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 22, 07, 9:27 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

American Lit Idol?

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

Simon & Schuster announced yesterday that they were offering a program (which is based on one already in place with Gather.com) where members of a site called Media Predict will vote on 50 book proposals. The one with the most support from members will be published.

This formula's worked quite well for American Idol, and the idea of letting an audience choose what media they want to consume is pretty sound. There will always be those who argue that "giving the people what they want" is not necessarily the best idea - but there will always be those publishing houses who "give the people what they ought to have" as well; there's no reason to take an either/or approach. In fact, such a dualistic model hearkens back to the older days of publishing, where the mass market titles allowed publishers to experiment with more lofty ones, and really contribute to literature.

Of course, the fear is that publishers WILL take the either/or approach...because they are businesses and not seminars.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 22, 07, 9:15 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Shatzkin & Co.

Category: Publishing , Bookselling , Industry Events

Shelf Awareness reports (though the archive link hasn't yet been posted) that Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company will be giving 2 seminars at BEA this year on the shifting publishing landscape. The first seminar, grandly titled "The End of General Trade Publishing Houses: Death or Rebirth in a Niche-by-Niche World", counsels bigger publishers that as the market fragments into niches, they can nevertheless compete effectively if they listen to that market rather than dictating to it. The second seminar is a continuation of Shatzkin's work on DADs (Digital Asset Distributors), emphasizing how publishers can compete in a world where content is increasingly digitized.

Our friend Ted Hill will also be speaking at his own session on Best Practices in Publisher Marketing. Ted is all about best practices - his work in bringing publishers into more effective communication with their vendors is really crucial. (I've seen the effects of what happens when best practices are NOT followed, and it's costly.)

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 22, 07, 9:06 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

And in Google news...

Category: Copyright Law , Google , Digital Publishing

A federal appeals court ruled that Google is within the bounds of fair use by displaying thumbnail images in its search results. The adut site Perfect 10 (no, I will not supply a link here - find it yourselves, dears) was suing Google, saying that because its business was image-based, displaying those images was a violation of copyright law. Perfect 10 was, in essence, concerned that browsers would settle for the thumbnail images rather than clicking through and paying for the full-sized ones.

However, the court ruled in Google's favor on this one. Now the question becomes...what if Perfect 10's images are pirated by other sites? Are those thumbnails still a copyright violation, if they refer users to those pirate websites instead of (or in addition to) Perfect 10?

Probably not. But you never know how much of an understanding courts are going to have about technology issues.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 18, 07, 8:05 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Speaking of audiobooks

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

The AAP reports that sales of audiobooks are up by 33.6% in March over March 2006. This is due in part to the lower prices of kids' audiobook CDs (you can get quite a few of them for $14.95 or less), but also in part to the rise of e-audio...putting books on your iPod is just too convenient for words. (So to speak.) Audiobook sales are up 19% over last year to date. I have to confess, I prefer to read with my eyes (call me silly), but then again, I live in a city with tremendous public transport, and don't spend long hours in traffic. I can definitely see how audiobooks and driving go together.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 18, 07, 7:56 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Technology racing ahead of ISBNs

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

Yesterday I was compiling some standards documentation for a client of mine who sells (and also creates, in some cases) downloadable audiobooks. The client had applied for a batch of ISBNs, and was in the process of registering some products. We got to the menu for "binding" (which means the format a book is in) on the ISBN website - and while there were some pretty weird options (plush toys, mugs, bakery items as well as the expected CD-ROM, trade paperback, hardcover, etc.), there was nothing for downloadable audiobooks. E-books, yes. But e-audio? Not so much. Looks like "book, other" has been doing the job so far.

There are plenty of producers of e-audio titles out there. Not all of them are filing for ISBNs, however - and that's part of the problem. As the book industry becomes more digitized, the folks coming into the business to help are unaware of the industry's own standards. And something like an ISBN for a digital book becomes an oversight...until the time comes to actually sell that book on a website that's keyed off of ISBNs. And that time happened yesterday.

So it struck me that e-audio had finally reached that level of maturity - that instead of being classified as "book, other", it was clearly time for it to have its own binding code. And publishers who are NOT assigning ISBNs to digital audiobooks are going to have to start, just for commerical necessity.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 18, 07, 7:44 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Publishers continue to flock to Second Life

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

Galleycat reports that Second Life continues to be a draw for publishers: Random House held its first book group gathering there on Tuesday, for "The Time Traveler's Wife". Richard Dawkins is also appearing via video, starting on May 29th - the video is a continuous feed for a week, so users can show up and view it whenever they like.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 17, 07, 7:58 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Google One Step Closer to World Domination...

Category: Google , Digital Publishing , Digital Libraries

...at least in the search arena.

Google announced yesterday that it was combining a variety of disparate databases in search results. Users will now be able to see images, book information, and video clips on their search results pages. It's not quite completed yet, but if you go to Google today you'll notice some subtle differences. I haven't yet figured out quite how the bar below the search box (which lists a subset of the different sorts of searches you can do) differs from the bar above the search box (which lists all the different sorts of searches you can do) - but it seems to have something to do with relevancy and weight of search terms.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 17, 07, 7:36 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Amazon takes on Apple

Category: Company News , DRM

The big news, of course, is that Amazon announced yesterday that it was going to start selling MP3s without DRM. It's big news, and yet...it isn't. Says the Wall Street Journal:

EMI Group PLC, the world's third-largest recorded-music company by sales (and the fourth-largest in the U.S. market) announced yesterday it would license its catalog to Amazon's DRM-free service. The three other major music companies haven't said publicly whether they expect to play ball with Amazon, but people close to all three companies said they don't expect to license content to Amazon in the near future. That means consumers shopping for downloads on Amazon will be able to buy tracks from EMI artists like Norah Jones and Coldplay, but are unlikely to be able to find music by most other major artists, including, for instance, each of the top-10 selling albums last week. Another complication: Apple's iTunes is moving toward offering music without copy protection, and also plans to release EMI's catalog in that format.

As always, Bezos has his eye so far on the future that today's plan doesn't seem so sensible. But in the inevitable loosening-up of copy-protection on digital media, maybe 5 years down the road or more, Bezos's vision of Amazon as a one-stop shop for consumables - regardless of their format - is a sound one.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 17, 07, 7:24 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

ISPI No Longer ISPI

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Libraries , Digital Libraries

This just in from Michael Healy, Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group:

I heard yesterday that at the ISO meeting in Santiago de Compostela, the ISPI working group agreed to change the name to ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier. This reflects a subtle but important change in emphasis, from numbering persons to numbering public identities.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 15, 07, 12:50 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Presentations Up

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Industry Events

The presentations from Making Information Pay, sponsored by BISG, are up on the BISG website, here.

Presentations from IDPF, sponsored by OEBF, are here.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 15, 07, 9:24 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Ebooks and libraries

Category: Libraries , Digital Libraries

Buried in the Library Journal coverage of the IDPF is this little gem:

[Steve] Potash [CEO of Overdrive] also said that econtent producers should look to libraries to understand how their materials are used and what works or not.

This is anything but an aside. Econtent has exploded across the library, but the consumer market simply isn't paying attention. And the library is the perfect business model for econtent producers - members receive the content in a way that appears "free", but which is actually subsidized by taxes or enrollment fees.

And Steve would know this - his products (digital audiobooks and movies) do tremendously well in the library market, even given certain technical platform restraints. Libraries play a key part in the digital supply chain.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 15, 07, 8:55 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Pearson Buying eCollege

Category: Publishing , Company News , Digital Publishing

In a move that makes eminent good sense, Pearson is acquiring eCollege for $538 million. Why more textbook publishers aren't acquiring courseware vendors is a mystery to me. It's a synergy that is begging to be exploited, and courseware vendors are a crucial part of the digital book supply chain.

Acquiring a courseware vendor doesn't mean exclusivity on the part of either publisher or vendor, according to Jim Milliot at PW:

Pearson said eCollege will continue to work with other publishers to develop course materials, while Pearson will work with other distance learning provides to distribute materials through their services.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 15, 07, 8:45 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

The Big Picture

Category: Digital Publishing , Industry Events , The Big Picture

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - by Laura Dawson
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - ISPI – International Standard Party Identifier
INTEL: COMPANIES - Thomson Learning Division sells...finally
INTEL: PRODUCTS - Amazon launches Podcasts Network
INTEL: PEOPLE - Muze staff still playing round robin
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

"I know I promised more about DRM, but this last week saw two important conferences in the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City: IDPF and MIP. So we will take up Part II of DRM Is Not Copyright; Copyright Is Not DRM in the next issue.

Yes, more acronyms – IDPF is the International Digital Publishers Forum; MIP is “Making Information Pay”, the annual conference held by the Book Industry Study Group.

Those who attended both noted the similarities in the concerns addressed by the speakers. Essentially, the importance of data standards – especially when it comes to interoperability of files with different types of hardware – was a much-emphasized topic. But what really struck some of us was how so many attendees were muttering the words “tipping point”..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the May 15, 2007 issue in full.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 15, 07, 7:01 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Scenes from a Sudafed-induced Haze

Folks, it is now 2:00 and I just now realized I completely forgot to post this morning. Olivia brought home some kind of nasty cold that's wreaking rampant havoc in my sinuses, and the drugs...well, we love the drugs but then there are the side effects - like forgetting yo...Hell, I just forgot the end of this sentence.

We hope for cogency by tomorrow morning. If there is none, we can safely assume I've sailed to the land of the lotus - er, Sudafed - eaters, and nothing matters anymore.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 14, 07, 1:49 PM , comments(0) , permalink ,

More on MIP

Category: Publishing , Bookselling , Industry Events

Shelf Awareness this morning has a fantastic summary of what went on at Making Information Pay. If you are one of the few living in a cave in the Himalayas who does not subscribe to Shelf Awareness, check John Mutter's write-up here. It is excellent.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 11, 07, 9:20 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Thomson Learning Sold

Category: Publishing , Company News

The Wall Street Journal justthissecond reports that Thomson Learning's assets are being sold to Apax Partners and OMERS Capital Partners. WSJ has no other details at the moment, but check back to their link for updates.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 11, 07, 9:16 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

BPL's Librarian a Breath of Fresh Air

Category: Libraries , Digital Libraries

The New York Times today has a profile on Dionne Mack-Harvin, the executive director of the Brooklyn Public Library. Faced with "decrepit" buildings and insanely lowballed funding (the library system asked the city for $170 million last year and received only $22 million), Mack-Harvin's challenge is enormous - keeping up the physical facilities, keeping them open for 45 hours a week, and moving the library into the information age. She tells the reporter:

"Information comes in different packages and if we sit back and say we’re all about books and nothing else, we’re going to lose our market.”

Sadly, the reporter loses the point and stresses books throughout the article. Which goes to show how difficult it is to change the perception of the library as merely a place to get books.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 11, 07, 9:02 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

MIP: Where's Malcom Gladwell's Royalty?

Category: Publishing , Bookselling , Industry Events

BISG's annual Making Information Pay conference came on the heels of the IDPF conference at the McGraw-Hill auditorium on Thursday. The running joke during the presentation was that every time someone mentioned the term ONIX, BISG would write that person a check. I want to know who was writing the checks for "tipping point" - because that term was floating around a whole lot more than ONIX.

The general consensus, in casual conversation during coffee breaks, was that the industry is not getting any less digital. That despite fiascos such as iPublish, the Rocketbook, etc., continued investment in digitizing books - whether audio or ebook or online promotions - is not wasted. The train has left the station, the horse has left the barn, the toothpaste is out of the tube - and while certainly consumers are not thundering to Sony's Reader, there are nevertheless some very interesting ways of selling digital book products.

One thing that heartened me, as a die-hard BISAC-er - the persistent mention of standards as crucial to development. Chris Hart of Random House and Allen Noren of O'Reilly both stressed that industry standards (such as ONIX) allowed for interoperability and faster adoption by third parties.

The inimitable Mike Shatzkin had a great presentation about digital asset distribution (DAD) - with some great thoughts about business models. He is turning this into a white paper for Klopotek, which will be available on the Klopotek website shortly.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 11, 07, 8:49 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

IDPF announces new industry standard

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing

Nothing gets me all juiced like a new industry standard. (Which is equivalent to admitting to an unprecedented level of geekdom, I know.)

The IDPF announced at its annual conference that it has completed work on its ebook standard. Says PW:

The new IDPF standard will eventually allow publishers, converters, distributors and retailers to work with one file format, rather than five or six.

This has been a major gating issue to widespread ebook distribution, independent of device adoption...and is huge news. This means that consumers won't have to adopt a format, and pray that the book they want is in that format - or switch between several formats. And while people have been watching the device market in an attempt to glean the "tipping point" for ebook distribution, that tipping point might not be with any given device at all. It may well be with something as low-flying as a standard that allows publishers to provide ebooks in a single format.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 10, 07, 7:37 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Why an Ebook Reader Isn't the Be-All and End-All

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

Calvin Reid at PW covers the IDPF conference, which took place in NYC yesterday. He observes that publishers generally agree that while digital distribution is definitely on its way, the magical solution of the right device has not yet arrived.

I wonder if the device is really the issue. Digital distribution is happening in so many other ways - and e-publishing just might not look like other industries to which the book market is used to comparing itself. Digital audio, for example (downloading audiobooks to devices), is a booming business; marketing for books (Simon & Schuster's deal with YouTube, for example, as well as bookseller presence on MySpace) has gone digital; bookselling has been digital for 12 years now. Certainly back-end systems such as inventory and production and shipping are all done with impressive suites of software.

In that sense, I think the industry long ago "went digital" - and trying to rush the consumer to pick up a product he has no interest in results in things like...the Rocketbook. According to Reid, Sony did not offer much in the way of sales data for its Reader at the IDPF - don't you think that if the Reader was doing phenomenally, they'd be trumpeting that? It isn't doing phenomenally.

The best thing the industry can do is focus its efforts on what IS working. Sure it'd be great to be as cool as the music and video industries, whipping around all this new technology - but that's not what book consumers want. They want books they can listen to on their iPods; they want books they can read on the beach and in bed and on the commuter train; they want books they can buy online; they want books that advertise themselves where consumers are - MySpace, YouTube, blogs.

The iPod didn't just happen - it happened because more and more people were downloading music onto their computers, and computers are bulky to carry around. Ebooks will happen first in the textbook market - because students are already in front of laptops all day long. Inventing an ebook reader to compete with the iPod, or to be the "iPod of the book market", is a wild goose chase. It has to happen as a result of real need. And that need has not yet arrived. Better to focus on where the need actually is - improving back-end systems, marketing efforts, and bookselling.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 10, 07, 7:18 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

More on Grammar Girl

Category: Digital Publishing , Bookselling

David Rothman has further thoughts on the Grammar Girl - the idea of publishing as having beta-versions of books in ebook format, prior to the final print version.

Suppose, as I’ve written here before, that e-books on occasions could precede more polished p-books—a kind of beta approach, in techspeak. For example, if a project were close to completion and major news unfolded, or if another publicity break happened, such as an Oprah appearance, then the publisher could get an e-book online almost instantly. Thoroughly edited and perhaps longer editions, in E and P, would appear later on, reflecting input from readers. Rather than junk, the end result would be superior books, with the writers and editors free to pick up the smarter suggestions and ignore the rest.

It's an interesting concept - one that the likes of Seth Godin, Tim O'Reilly, and Cory Doctorow have also been espousing.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 8, 07, 8:03 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

YouTube to go to the Revenue-Sharing

Category: Copyright Law , Company News , DRM

Meanwhile, YouTube announced that it would begin advertising rev-share arrangements with its users:

Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work.

For now, this is only open to a select group of users hand-picked by Google based on their popularity with other users. But it's truly interesting that Google is launching this program now, before the suit with Viacom is settled - and it will be settled - as they put themselves at risk if these selected users upload copyrighted video.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 8, 07, 7:59 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

S&S to go to the videota - er, YouTube

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

The Wall Street Journal has a story this morning about Simon & Schuster's BookVideos.tv, hosted by YouTube and other vid-sharing services.

The publisher is committed to a flight of 40 videos that will be personality-driven rather than focusing solely on specific new titles. The videos, which be produced by TurnHere Inc., based in Emeryville, Calif., will last two minutes and feature such best-selling authors as Mary Higgins Clark, Zane, and Sandra Brown.

This will be interesting. Perhaps the time of the book video has, thanks to YouTube, actually arrived. Charles Halpin, what do you think?

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 8, 07, 7:31 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Pearson shops for bits of Harcourt

Category: Publishing

PW announced on Friday that Pearson is buying the testing and international divisions of Harcourt. Reports Jim Milliot:

Pearson has been the subject of takeover speculation for several months, but company executives have maintained that the publisher is not for sale. Pearson’s willingness to pay near $1 billion to expand the company underlines its commitment to remain independent.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 7, 07, 8:01 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

“I’m going on ‘Oprah.’ Gosh, I wish my book were done.”

Category: Publishing , Digital Publishing , Bookselling

The New York Times reports this morning on Mignon Fogarty, aka "Grammar Girl". A popular podcast sold by Audible.com, "Grammar Girl" is going to be a book next year, published by Henry Holt. However, when Fogarty was asked to appear on Oprah, the urgency to have some sort of product led her to record a "quickie" audiobook - one hour long, it sells for $4.95 on iTunes and Audible.com. Says the Times,

On March 26, the day the show was broadcast, iTunes’ home page highlighted “Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing,” an hourlong audiobook that could be downloaded for $4.95. By the end of that week, Ms. Fogarty’s presentation had bumped “The Secret,” the advice book that espouses positive thinking which also had been promoted by Ms. Winfrey, from the top spot.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 7, 07, 7:53 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

And What Will We Miss?

Category: Bookselling

Gawker had this brilliance this morning - and I had to go and see for myself. Just read this review of Dana McGreevey's book from the Trentonian, and ask yourself what exactly book reviews like this contribute to "the larger discourse". I honestly can't say I've seen ANY book blogger review a book - no matter how un-literary the book - with this sort of, er, style. And BLOGGERS are bringing the book world down????

I have to go shower now.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 3, 07, 9:28 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

DRM hack-y-sack

Category: DRM

Digg.com has decided to dig in (sorry) its heels and not take down pages of its website that refer to the 32-digit code that allows users to hack into HD-DVDs and copy them. The MPAA had issued a cease-and-desist yesterday, and initially Digg had removed all pages referring to that code. However, Digg's users (who are also its contributors) rebelled, and so the pages went back up, and Digg will now fight the cease-and-desist in court. Another interesting DRM battle.

This, from I Can Haz Cheeseburger, pretty much says it:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 3, 07, 9:18 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Don't Mess with Bloggers

Category: Bookselling

The kerfuffle over the dying book review sections in newspapers - and the ascendancy of blogs - has reached a point of high clamor. GalleyCat yesterday had some great posts here and here and here and here. The larger takeaway seems to be that blogs are regarded as a "lesser" form of journalism, competing with rather than amplifying what goes on in The Newspaper of Record. But I don't think any blogger would argue that she's trying to take the place of newspapers. Blogs are more like the op-ed pages. Book review sections are the op-ed pages of the literary world, and I think it's pretty safe to say that the trend is only going to get more bloggy, not less. Newspapers are suffering, financially, and they are cutting back the sections that folks don't read as much. Blogs step in and fill that void - the niche markets, the regional coverage. What's a small set of readers to a newspaper is a large following to a blog.

Which makes Richard Ford's comment about not wanting his books reviewed by "some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute" pretty nasty - there will come a point where Ford's going to be lucky to have his books reviewed at ALL. Nobody's predicting the imminent demise of the NYTBR, but as the situation in Atlanta shows us, even large metropolitan markets can't always support a book review section - and pretty soon the NYTBR might be all Ford has. Because he sure as hell won't have bloggers recommending his books, after a dismissive and patronizing comment like that - a comment that shows an awful lot of ignorance for outlets like Gawker, Maud Newton, GalleyCat, and even regional blogs like Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn, which recommend books to their readers.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 3, 07, 8:56 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Google's going to keep on keeping on

Category: Copyright Law , Google , Company News , Digital Publishing

Google filed a response to Viacom's lawsuit yesterday in which it stated that Viacom was basically full of it (that's a legal term) and asking for a dismissal of the suit. Says the New York Times:

Google’s court filing gives few new details of its legal thinking, which relies heavily on the so-called “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998. Those provisions generally hold that Web sites’ owners are not liable for copyright material uploaded by others to their site as long as they promptly remove the material when asked to do so by the copyright owner.

Viacom's response to Google's reponse was that YouTube doesn't qualify for "safe harbor" because the operators of YouTube are fully aware that the material that gets uploaded is frequently copyrighted: "“It is obvious that YouTube has knowledge of infringing material on their site, and they are profiting from it.”

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 2, 07, 7:42 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Murdoch likes the print

Category: Publishing , Company News

Yesterday Rupert Murdoch put in a $5 billion unsolicited bid for Dow Jones, confirming, as the Wall Street Journal points out this morning, that

[f]or all the democratic -- and clearly lucrative -- allure of MySpace and blogs and an environment that makes "You" Time magazine's person of the year, the offer is affirmation of a model in which traditional information gathering and storytelling is a valuable commodity.

Of course, Dow Jones has significant online properties as well - and plans for more.

And as more and more print advertising migrates to the Web, the Online Journal, MarketWatch and a soon-to-be-launched personal-finance joint venture with Barry Diller's IAC are among Dow Jones Internet media that add to the company's attraction, BusinessWeek points out. They would seem complementary to a stable that currently includes the likes of Fox News, the New York Post, "American Idol" and MySpace, as the Los Angeles Times says.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 2, 07, 7:35 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

Tutor.com likes the moms

Category: Libraries , Digital Libraries

Tutor.com, the online homework help service, ranked in Working Mother Magazine's Top 25 Small Companies for Women this year. Library Journal reports that with 3 mothers on the executive team, Tutor.com provides flextime, the ability to work from home, 6 weeks paid maternity leave and 12 weeks Family/Medical Leave, a pumping room, and all manner of other benefits for new moms on the job.

Nearly 9 years ago, I took 6 weeks maternity leave (4 of them unpaid, and the other 2 counted as my vacation), and zoomed back to work full-time thereafter - and no, there was no pumping room on the premises. And I thought I had it easy because I'd been hired while I was pregnant - I was grateful to have the job at all!

Needless to say, I'm loving this progress.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 2, 07, 7:26 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

The Big Picture - DRM is Not Copyright; Copyright is not DRM: A Primer (Part I)

Category: Publishing , Copyright Law , Bookselling , DRM , The Big Picture

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - DRM is Not Copyright; Copyright is not DRM: A Primer (Part I of II), by Laura Dawson
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - ISBN – International Standard Book Number
INTEL: COMPANIES - Murdoch’s MySpace expands into Chinese market
INTEL: PRODUCTS - Will the Amazon Kindle launch at BEA?
INTEL: PEOPLE - Genevieve Shore promoted as Penguin's Global Digital Director
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

"It occurred to me, in all the hoo-ha over Steve Jobs’s manifesto to record companies and Jack Valenti’s obituaries citing his work with the Copyright Term Extension Act, that some of the folks covering these events seem a little confused. There’s a common conflation of DRM – digital rights management – and copyright; a lot of writers are not really making a distinction between the two.

Copyright, as we know, is the set of laws that governs one’s ability to copy certain works. An author grants the “copy right” to a publisher, who has the exclusive right to reproduce the work – and pay the author a royalty. Eventually, the copyright expires and the work enters the public domain – meaning anyone can copy it and distribute it..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the May 1, 2007 issue in full.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , May 1, 07, 6:53 AM , comments(0) , permalink ,

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