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November 28, 2005

Category: E-commerce, Google, Metadata, Publishing

New York magazine jumps into the Google party this week with a snappy summary of all that’s been going on. But it’s the London Times that adds a new argument. In an article by a small publisher, it’s noted that if Google scans all scholarly books into its databases, even for search purposes, libraries won’t need to buy so many books. A user can enter a search term, find the exact books that the search term appears in, and discover whether or not it’s even worth cracking the covers of the books – or ordering them via interlibrary loan. The number of books in any given library will decrease – there will be more sharing of titles. And so publishers will find fewer buyers, will publish fewer books, etc. etc.

In other news, we’re back on the GDSN train – trying to synch up book databases so they can be used by grocery stores, drugstores, other-than-bookstores. Why is this such an obsession: well, anybody who’s been to my house has seen all my books. I am a far worse book fiend than shoe fiend – and I have an impressive shoe collection. Stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Wegman’s, Publix - these are selling books now, as we all know. What some of us might not know is that they are selling a tremendous number of books. All using data that’s insufficient, inaccurate, and in some cases barely even there. Still, they are managing to keep the book industry pockets pretty well lined in ways that traditional booksellers seem not to be able to do.

So why the push on data?

Because if the book industry cannot continue to make it easier for those stores to sell books – if the book industry cannot get its shit together and present non-traditional book outlets with good sales data, there’s gonna be no incentive for them to continue to sell books. Books will be replaced by DVDs, music, video games, magazines, whatever stores find (when they finally wake up) is easiest to sell – and good data makes a thing easy to sell. And then, we’ll find, we’ll have made it harder for people to buy books. We’re already competing for mind-share here, folks. Why make it more difficult on ourselves?

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Posted by Laura Dawson, 2:53 pm, Comments (0), permalink

A great convergence

Category: Copyright Law, Metadata

Stanley Greenfield is brilliant.

On Sunday, I came across this little gem about selling books by the chapter or passage, citing programs in development by Google and Amazon. Stanley, of course, has been doing this for YEARS – he began in the 1980s, with Dial-A-Book, where you could call up and hear the first chapter of a book. As the Internet took hold, Stanley digitized these chapters and distributed them to Amazon, B&N, Borders, Ingram, B&T, plus all the independent Internet bookshops.

There was a period during the bust, as these bookshops began collapsing like a house of cards, when a lot of us were wondering whether Stanley would be able to make it. The market for digitized chapters seemed to shrink drastically, and it seemed like he’d saturated it.

But he held on. Stanley is both wise and tenacious, and he knows a good thing when he’s got it. He drove his own costs down – he was one of the first people I ever knew who outsourced to Asia. And lo and behold…now that Amazon is doing "", now that Google is contemplating a "book rental" program (hello? anyone ever hear of ebrary?), Stanley looks damn near prescient.

Then there’s China.

In the 1970s, Stanley was doing a lot of business with China. Now that China’s opened up again, Stanley’s got a whole infrastructure of contacts there, already in place – he knows how to work the government, and the kinds of political/economic machinations that thwart a lot of US companies are a breeze to him because he knows the ropes already. Yesterday, Stanley sent me a press release which began thusly:


Xinhua China Ltd.., the majority shareholder of the largest book
distributor in the People’s People’s Republic of China, has signed an
agreement with Dial-A-Book Inc. to mount more than 25,000 Chapter One book
browsing excerpts of English language books on its dealer network in China.

Stanley, you’re amazing.

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Posted by Laura Dawson, 10:17 am, Comments (0), permalink

Asian Pirates and Outsourcing, Oh My!

Category: Uncategorized

Those pirates are still at it, of course, but some news came out of Hong Kong this week – Chan Nai-Ming was sentenced to 3 months in jail for sharing files of 3 movies – posting them on his computer and then advertising on newsgroups that the files were available for download for free. Don’t know whether this is a genuine tip of the hat to Western business interests concerned with copyright law, in an attempt to get those business interests to invest more in Asia; or if it’s just a gesture. It’s interesting, nonetheless.

An interesting outsourcing tale – a friend of mine is overwhelmed with responses to her personal ad on Craigslist. She too is a client of the goddessly , our amazing assistant in Bangalore, and of course the obvious occurred to her – why not add "managing men" to Tess’s (increasingly crowded) plate? What do you say, Tess? Can you respond to Elizabeth’s legion of swains? Oh, the possibilities….

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Posted by Laura Dawson, 3:25 pm, Comments (0), permalink

Monday morning news

Category: Publishing
Still reeling from the weekend, when my mind was blown by Stevie Wonder’s Original Musiquarium while I took a long walk around Prospect Park in the gorgeous November sunshine….At any rate, Alex Dake at Cosimo Books tells me he is looking for an Online Marketing Manager:


Results-oriented, marketing professional with strong leadership skills and
proven online and publishing experience needed to manage and grow innovative
publishing company.

Key responsibilities
include:
- Identify target
audiences for on-demand Cosimo Classics book collection of approximately 400
titles annually and develop and execute an effective online marketing
program to reach those
audiences.
- Develop and
implement Internet promotions on Cosimo web site as well as with other external
web sites, relevant news groups, etc., that will build awareness of Cosimo books
and drive retail sales.
-
Create and issue Cosimo
e-newsletter.
- Work with
team to design and manage website and
database.
- Implement online
book publicity campaigns, feeding excerpts and other marketing material to
online booksellers, media outlets, reviewers,
etc.
- Monitor and report
results of all marketing/ promotional activities to senior management.

Requirements:
- Creative, strategic and
self-driven marketing professional looking for new challenges: hands-on with 4
years prior experience, preferably in publishing and online marketing.
- Proven achievement in
similar field or position.
- Candidate should have
excellent organizational, written and oral communication skills, interpersonal
relationship and project management skills with the ability to successfully
market a wide range of books and meet
deadlines.
- Knowledge of
Microsoft Office applications is essential and knowledge of HTML, Doubleclick
and other web-based applications is preferred.

Please email your
cover letter, resume and salary requirements to:

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Posted by Laura Dawson, 9:27 am, Comments (0), permalink

Open for Business

Category: Copyright Law, Google

Folks, get’cher book searches here – Google Print is open for business. Launching today over the hue and cry from publishers and authors, the long-awaited book search component offers full-text-searchability for thousands and thousands of titles. Google itself has proudly blogged here. Now they just have to get U.S. copyright law changed, and they’ll be good to go.

Meanwhile, in less-publicized news, Amazon has announced it is selling books BY THE PAGE. Useful for those who only need a chapter, who would otherwise either have to buy the whole book or (far, far more likely) wouldn’t buy the book at all. Great incremental sales.

Microsoft, not to be left out, announced a partnership with the British Library to scan its public-domain titles – some 75 million items – although its agreement with the British Library is a little fuzzy as to the distribution of that content.

So many books…so many copyright laws…so little time….And they told me being an English major was useless.

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Posted by Laura Dawson, 5:16 pm, Comments (0), permalink

Google Print: Bandit or Robin Hood?

Category: Copyright Law, Google

Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Creative Commons movement, chimes in not a moment too soon on the Google debate. In the Sydney Morning Herald:


Professor Lessig makes the point that if Google Print is illegal, so is Google
itself. Google is simply indexing and organising text, which is what any library
does. The fact that it is using the internet to do so is irrelevant – it just
makes it easier to do what any visitor to a physical library does. All that’s
changed is the technology, which means the old ways need to be re-examined.

The article largely covers Tim O’Reilly’s stance on copyright and piracy (wherein O’Reilly says, wisely, "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy"). But this is an interesting thought and one we’ve been advocating for quite some time – yes, Google Print is a violation of copyright law. Absolutely. But does that mean the project should not go forward? Not necessarily. Digitizing the text of every book you can get your hands on and putting it in a search database is of course a very useful thing. But when technology bumps up against deep legal tradition, interesting things happen. And frequently the law gets changed.

InfoToday reports that Microsoft is getting in on the book-digitization act (of course) starting with public-domain works. (Now THERE’S a risk – how many different iterations of Jane Eyre are out on the web? By my count, there are at least 6 on the first two pages of a Google search. How many do we NEED?)

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Posted by Laura Dawson, 9:47 am, Comments (0), permalink
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