The Big Picture

The Big Picture - nterview with Steve Potash, CEO Overdrive-Digital Library Reserve

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - by industry consultant Laura Dawson
INTERVIEW: - Steve Potash – CEO of Overdrive-Digital Library Reserve
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - EAN
INTEL: COMPANIES - Overdrive teams up with Navy General Library
INTEL: PRODUCTS - Google Custom Search Business Edition launched
INTEL: PEOPLE - Former Muzers join MyStrands
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Visit the new LJNDawson.com on-site job board!

From The Download:
"I recently did a consulting gig for an e-commerce website whose database was about 10 years old. Essentially, we scrapped the old database and built a new one – which involved some very careful, step-by-step cleansing of their metadata before plugging it into the new structure. Titles, author names, subject classifications – all had to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb in an Excel spreadsheet.

Not the sexiest gig in the world, and I believe the lead developer (and he’ll confirm this for me, I’m sure) was bored out of his mind with that process. But immediately upon pumping the cleaned data to the website, customers wrote in to say they could find products more easily. (I was shocked, frankly, that customers would take the time to do this – you’re supposed to be able to find things; that customers don’t take this for granted while shopping online just tells me how bad search is these days.)

Finding products more easily, of course, leads to better sales results. If you can find it, you can buy it..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the August 8, 2007 issue in full.

The Big Picture - Interview with Cliff Guren, Microsoft Live Search Books

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - by industry consultant Laura Dawson
INTERVIEW: - Cliff Guren - Director of Publisher Evangelism, Microsoft Live Search Books
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - BIC/EDItEUR
INTEL: COMPANIES - MediaBay dissolves, liquidates
INTEL: PRODUCTS - The inevitable Harry Potter hubub
INTEL: PEOPLE - BISG out of office indefinitely
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Visit the new LJNDawson.com on-site job board!

From The Download:
"I was talking to a young man recently who works in IT at a major publishing house. He has just started grad school, and was kind of in shock at what libraries had to offer. “Whatever it is that we can think of for our books,” he said, “they’ve probably already invented it.”

I don’t know that I would quite go that far, but it is true that libraries have done a lot more with search and categorization of content than publishers are aware of. And as publishers enter this age of Google and Live Search, of widgets, of social networking – as publishers look at what technology can do to help potential readers discover their books – they probably could stand to look at what libraries have already done so they don’t re-invent the wheel..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the July 24, 2007 issue in full.

The Big Picture - The Digital Divide Hasn't Gone Away

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - The Digital Divide Hasn’t Gone Away - by industry consultant Laura Dawson
INTERVIEW: - Robert Martinengo, co-founder of Center for Accessible Publishing
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - ONIX - Online Information EXchange
INTEL: COMPANIES - Bill and Melinda Gates gift $12.6 million to Webjunction
INTEL: PRODUCTS - SirsiDynix introduces new, improved platform: Symphony
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

From The Download:
"I was having a conversation with a financial type, wearing my hat as a market analyst, and we were discussing the migration of textbooks from print to ebook format.

I was really touched when he brought this up: “What about students who can’t afford their own computers?” This guy – young, smart, obviously being compensated very well – was concerned about the kids who might not have access to electronic resources.

Being in Brooklyn, I think a lot about this issue, actually. My kids go to public schools – very good schools, made better by heavy parent involvement and donations, to the point where they are real estate magnets. But there is actually a pretty wide economic variation at these schools. Not every family owns a brownstone. Some live on the edges of the neighborhood, crammed into smaller apartments. Some go to the school illegally – using the address of a friend or relative in a better, less affordable part of the neighborhood. Some get a precious “variance”, allowing them to come in from another part of the borough..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the July 10, 2007 issue in full.

The Big Picture Introduces Interviews

Tomorrow's issue of The Big Picture will feature not just the usual "This Issue's Acronym" (ONIX!) and my biweekly Download rant (in this instance, about the still-lingering economic digital divide in this country), but an interview with Robert Martinengo, who recently gave a session at O'Reilly's Tools of Change conference on accessible technologies for disabled readers.

This is the first of a regular series of interviews with folks in the industry who are inspired by, working with, or creating the technological shifts that affect our business so deeply these days.

The Big Picture

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - by industry consultant Laura Dawson
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - BISAC/BISG
INTEL: COMPANIES - R. R. Bowker buys Medialab Solutions by Amsterdam
INTEL: PEOPLE - SirsiDynix names new CFO
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

"Amazon’s Kindle shows no sign of being born and the thundering hordes are not stampeding to buy Sony’s Reader.

Meanwhile, the digital revolution in publishing is happening…more or less around this e-book problem, the elephant in the living room.

As Mike Shatzkin et al told crowds at Klopotek’s Digital Asset Distribution conference last week – and as a host of panelists parsed at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference – publishing is taking a great leap forward into the realm of the technological.

(Well, there’s some argument as to whether publishing is leaping or being pushed, but that’s another column; I’ll let Jim Lichtenberg address that one.)

This, despite a viable e-book reader..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the June 26, 2007 issue in full.

The Big Picture finally here

Subscribers to The Big Picture will see their newsletter in their inboxes today - sorry for the delay, but it was for a fantastic reason: Our SEO and programming wizard Hamid has gotten his visa to the US, and he and the goddessly Tess will be moving here in a few months! They were all week in Turkey ironing out the details.

We are back on track with our publication schedule, and this issue is already loaded up on our wiki, so check it out, and feel free to comment, edit, and otherwise play around.

The Big Picture

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - by industry consultant Laura Dawson
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - GDSN – Global Data Synchronization Network
INTEL: PRODUCTS - 979 ISBN prefixes on the horizon
INTEL: PEOPLE - Founder of Questia leaves to start new project
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

"An interesting private meeting at BEA…not back-room politics, but an outgrowth of the fantastic discussions we’ve been having at the BISAC Identification Committee. A group of people faced with the collision of digital distribution into physical products – the heads of Nielsen Bookscan, US ISBN, ISBN International, BISG, BISAC, Ingram Digital, and several publishers ranging from large (Random House) to midsized (a university press) to small…as well as a smattering of consultants (me and Michael Holdsworth) – well, we all got together around a table and just talked.

The meeting covered a range of topics, but we began with the proliferation of formats of digital content: Different codecs of audiobooks, for example; different formats of ebooks to suit different readers. Should each of these formats get a separate ISBN? The ISBN standard says yes, each one should..."

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

The Big Picture...will be late this week

Just a quick note that The Big Picture will be going out later this week than usual - the goddessly Tess, my assistant, is in Turkey at the moment, helping her husband Hamid (our hero of SEO and PHP) get a visa so they can come to the US. Very exciting news!

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

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.

The Big Picture

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

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..."

Big Picture Thanks

The Big Picture

In this issue of The Big Picture:

THE DOWNLOAD: - by Laura Dawson
TIA - THIS ISSUE'S ACRONYM - DOI – Digital Object Identifier
INTEL: COMPANIES - Library of Congress and Bibliotheca Alexandrina form World Digital Library
INTEL: PRODUCTS - BBC expands distribution of audiobooks via Perseus
INTEL: PEOPLE - Fran Toolan raises funds for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Boston Marathon
THE JOB EXCHANGE - Listing the hottest jobs in the sector

"Maybe it’s the Sudafed, but this morning I woke up thinking about identifiers.

I’m consulting to a company that distributes e-audio books, and onsite we’ve been talking a lot about how useful ISBNs are. I’m also chairing the BISAC Identifiers Committee, where we engage in rambunctious conversations about what the best identifier is for this product and that – conversations that get more rambunctious with the introduction of digital products for sale. And over the last week or so, all of these discussions coalesced for me into some cogent thought (or, at least, I hope it’s cogent).

As more and more book content is available to consumers, the question of how to identify it becomes more important. And here’s why: so long as a company is offering digital products for sale on its own website, identifiers are only important insofar as that company can track sales. But when that company begins exchanging information with other companies – sending out data feeds for distribution on other websites – it’s crucial that the products get identified in ways everyone can understand..."

Click here to access our newsletter archives and read the April 17, 2007 issue in full.