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US Justice Department Formally Asks: Have We Been Googled?

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a formal investigation into the settlement between Google and book publishers over the digital publishing rights to certain books, citing antitrust concerns. Judge Denny Chin, who is ruling on the settlement, received formal notice of an investigation from the DOJ and released the letter as part of the court docket concerning the case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Google issued a statement: "The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions. It's important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S."

Google has recently embarked on a charm offensive , making the argument that Google really isn't that dominant a company and reminding everyone that the competition "is just a click away."

Trinity Mirror To Close Down 9 Locals

We all are aware of the advertising and digital challenges facing the newspaper industry worldwide. The locals are being hit hard by free models and a downturn in advertising and the nationals are losing the meatier advertising and are competing with there own free and online challenge.

Today Trinity Mirror announced the closure of 9 UK local newspapers in the Midlands and the lay off of some 120 staff. They are proposing to close the Loughborough Trader Xtra, Lichfield Post, Tamworth Times, Burton Trader, Ashby Trader & Echo, Coalville Echo, Walsall Observer,the Bedworth Echo, Rugby Times and two niche publications, the Earlsdon Blog and Farm Ad and merge the Solihull News and the Solihull Times in Birmingham. In addition Trinity's Midlands printing business is also being impacted by the layoffs.

The problem with the changes that are happening is that they are breaking up the newspaper infrastructure which develops journalists, feeds larger newspapers and news industry with validated stories and sustains many business print demands via their presses. The change could have long term effects on the quality and authority of what we read and the development of people writing it.

There Are 2 Million Free Electronic Books On The Internet

Project Gutenberg has joined forces with The World Public Library and Digital Pulp Publishing, Internet Archive, Baen to promote The Forth World eBook Fair. Two years ago The First World eBook Fairs introduced 1/3 million books, which became a million and a quarter last year and this year tops two million. They expect to have 2 1/2 million by July 4. The contributions come from 100 plus eLibraries including; Project Gutenberg, The World Public Library, The Internet Archive, eBooks About Everything and IMSLP's Music eLibrary.

Michael Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg and co-Founder of World eBook Fair has ambitious goals of widening the number of devices and programs people can read ebooks on and clearly has his eyes on mobiles. In addition he wants ebooks not just in the top six languages but for the 250 languages with over a million speakers.
The goal of World eBook Fair is to provide free public access for a month to 2 Million eBooks.

For more information: http://worldebookfair.org

eBook Price Wars?

Are the gloves coming off and are we seeing just a pricing skirmish or a battle of wills and pricing nerves between Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble?

According to TechFlash Barnes & Noble, is now offering ebook versions of New York Times bestsellers for $9.95. This obviously is a fraction under than Amazon's standard $9.99 ebooks price for same books.

So is $9.95 better than $9.99? What is probably more important is the clear message it is sending to consumers and there is only one direction many go from here.

Sales Tax Impacts Amazon Affiliates

Amazon continues with its affiliate program in New York but has now stopped its affiliate programs in both Rhode Island and North Carolina. All three states have passed laws that would have required Amazon to collect sales tax on their affiliate program. Obviously, some states are worth the effort others maybe not.

So what is this sales tax and why is it affecting affiliate programs?

Sales tax is applied to the total amount of the order including gift-wrap fees and is based on the shipment's destination state and local sales tax rates. States that impose sales tax collection on Shipping & Handling expenses require that sales tax be applied to Shipping & Handling when the item that is being shipped is subject to sales tax. There are exemptions such as magazines, bibles and some states have no sales tax. The US also needs to note that goods sold to Canada incur GST (Goods and Services Tax).

The state of many state budgets is forcing them to look again at Sales tax and the opportunity to close loopholes and collect money. After all the tax is exactly the same as someone buying a book or goods in a retail store, they total the goods up and then sales tax is applied at the checkout. In the case of the affiliate program they would have to collect the tax and many may claim this would impact their business. So as an affiliate it would appear I have an economic model built on tax avoidance.

The question then is whether Amazon is right to blame the tax system for their withdraw from North Carolina, but accommodate it in New York? Many, such as Barnes and Noble, operate affiliate programs and deal with the taxation issues, so why can’t Amazon? Some may say that the affiliate program was just a way to build their brand and drive more buyers to what was an Amazon store that was being merchandised by others. They would also point out that the Kindle is ‘affiliate free’ and there has been a steady change in the affiliate business model that has been applied in Amazon’s favour.

There needs to be a level playing field between the physical store and the virtual one. Like so many issues, digitisation is now forcing us to question boundaries, rules and practices that have never been really tested.

Will The Kindle Swim In Germany?

Amazon’s Kindle plans to dominate all markets and break out of the US have taken a setback. One of its main market targets, Germany, is proving a difficult one with respect to their wireless connectivety. We have already written about Whispernet and its limitations now Wirtschaftswoche, report that negotiations have stalled. The issue is Amazon’s inability to strike a deal with the main wireless companies in Germany, T-Mobile and Vodafone.,

It is suggests that the problem may not just be about money but the fact that T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom, who is reported to be working on its own reader! Meanwhile Sony, with its PC tethered ereader offer continues to claim ground in Germany where it has struck a distribution agreements.

Amazon’s greatest strength is its wireless connection , but this only works if it is able to leverage that advantage, otherwise its lays like a beached whale, unable to swim and unable to move. Some would say that it would be relatively simple to make a dual device that offers both wireless and PC tethering, but that assumes you realized and built that architecture in the first place.

The Pirate Bay Sold

Earlier this year the founders of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of $3.6 million for running the site. Now Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X has announced the acquisition of The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns and also an agreement to acquire the shares in Peerialism , a software technology company that develops solutions for data distribution and distributed storage based on new p2p technology.

Global Gaming Factory X has stated that The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which “satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.” They intend to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.

The Pirate Bay has issued a statement claiming that it is being sold for less than its value but that the basis of the service will remain. It a bit like when Napster was bought out and the question now is whether The Pirate Bay will remain a force but under new rules or that like others before them the new rules dilute the service and turn off its followers.

Wattpad Goes Android

Love them or hate them the self publishing online services are here. Some may say that the likes of Scribd and Wattpad often hide behind their DMCA (digital Millennium Copyright Act)safe harbour sanctuaries and act irresponsibly towards vetting content, others that the service they offer is long overdue and its up to copyright owners to police infringement not the service provider. Its an argument that isn’t going away and is at the heart of much infringement debate – do take down notices work or are they trying to bolt the stable doors after the horse has bolted?

Today Wattpad announced the availability of its popular mobile application on Google’s Android Market. This will now comptiment its iphone and Blackberry and Nokia Ovi applications and means that they have the major mobile smartphones covered. Wattpad claim to generate more than 2.5M visits, 20M pageviews per month from its website and mobile site and over 3 million downloads.

Scribd and Wattpad could clearly be very positive forces into the future and offer both writers and publishers new opportunities. The question is whether the content can be controlled proactively and they can become a trusted player, or whether they stay on the fringe offering so much but never quite trusted by all.

Barnes & Noble Launch Iphone Bookstore

Barnes & Noble have announced the launch of its iPhone and iPod touch app. , promising users access to millions of titles. The Bookstore app enables users to access millions of titles, click on a jacket and within seconds they receive product details, editorial reviews, and customer ratings. Consumers may find and reserve a copy at the nearest B&N retail location, or make purchases via their BN.com account. The Bookstore also offers details on upcoming Barnes & Noble events, directions to their 777 bookstores in 50 states, bookseller recommendations, video clips and author interviews.

Earlier this year B&N acquired digital ebook retailer Fictionwise for $15.7 million and announced that they were is collaborating with Sprint and an unidentified manufacturer to develop an ebook device to rival Amazon.com's Kindle.

Carpe Diem

It’s the aspiration of the vast majority of the population to write a book. So has digitisation made it easier or even harder to get published today and what are the dependencies, relationships and rewards in this dynamically changing environment?

The publishing trade is shifting from one where publishers looked to cultivate long-term relationships with authors and develop their stable, to one where the greater emphasis is now to sell books. Some would suggest that it’s not a bad thing to focus on moving books rather than merely printing them. However, does that change the relationship and with it the contract between creator and producer?

Some see digitisation as just a change in output format whilst others recognise it challenges the traditional relationships. In a world where print on demand can effectively remove the term ‘out of print’ , we now have to understand rights reversals, term contracts, the line between promotional material and content itself and much more.

The changing marketplace is being driven by global economics, network connectivity and technology. Territorial boundaries that existed in the physical world are now questioned in the virtual world. Roles that controlled the physical world are being challenged by networks and what once was a unique, or highly skilled operation is becoming commodity available to all. Define an; agent, publisher, distributor, wholesaler, reseller, library and digital aggregator, then ask what the following are; Amazon, Google, Ingram, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Sony, FPD, Lulu, Scribd? Are we seeing the divergence of the market into more highly focused vertical segments or richer flatter horizontal ones? Which is better, volume through a supermarket, book club and internet sales or the traditional trade channel? Is publishing becoming more a ‘department store’, or niche and boutique? Are ‘special sales’ becoming a little less ‘special’ and what is the impact of all the above on the author?

So where does the aspiring author pitch their manuscript? Do they go the traditional route and hunt the agent? Do they put their manuscript up on the many social slush piles and hope to get spotted? Do they self publish and pay to achieve their ambitions? Digitisation certainly helps in both the availability of options and the lowering of the economics, but is it enough? The fact is that the number of titles ‘published’ by whatever means and in whatever format is going to continue to grow. The number of ‘best sellers’ are going to reduce and the traditional bookshelves will get smaller. The digital world enables consumers to be more discerning, eclectic and virtual and it also increases the potential for more consumers to read what they would never find today.

The biggest challenge is not digitisation, but its impact. We may focus on the consumer, the latest devices, even the price of books, but unless we pay equal attention to the authors of yesterday, today and tomorrow, we may find as with other media sectors, it is they that hold the keys to many digital doors. What is the appropriate royalty expectation on digital sales? In a world where pricing is ill-defined, should royalties be based on list price or net sales? When digital removes ‘out of print’ should contracts be term based? Musicians, sportsmen, entertainers have all started to take control; is this now possible in the world of the book?

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that the aspiration to write will not go away and irrespective of how it is achieved, neither will the reward sought for doing it.

Universal Mobile Charger

Life could soon be easier for millions of mobile phone users across Europe.
Having left mobile chargers in hotel and meeting rooms the news that agreement has been finally agreed between the mobile industry and the European Commission to create a standard phone is welcome. Obviously they may not be effective until you have the handset to take it but once achieved the deal also offers 50% energy savings to the 400 million users across the EU.

The deal isn't legally binding and will use a micro-USB connection. Under it the companies, which represent 90% of the European mobile and include LG, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola, Research in Motion and Samsung, are committed to developing the charger next year.

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen says he also wants to see the common charger expand in the years ahead to cover other phones, existing phones, cameras and laptops.

It Would Be Funny If It Didn't Spend Public Funds

It appears the phrase ‘Double Dutch’ is back, as we read that Amsterdam is one of 20 cities participating in a pilot aimed at replacing all paper documents with electronic ones. Does this mean that they will be issued with netbooks, iPhones or laptop tablets? No, Binnenlands Bestuur reports, that council members are already being issued with an e-reader, and that after the 2010 election, all council members in the participating municipalities will get one.

We know the strong ties that Holland has to eInk, but at a reported cost of around 700 euro this hardly looks a smart move. The readers will obviously be grey, have no wifi and still need to be attached to a PC to move documents and have limited capability compared with a host of cheaper options. So we can safely say a complete waste of their taxpayers’ money and obviously driven by a misguided bureaucrat who didn’t realise the restrictions of these devices or doesn't understand the word hype.

Adult Only iPhone Apps

Apple previously rejected an iPhone app ‘the Kama Sutra’ and also has denied South Park and Nine Inch Nails apps for explicit language. Many questioned the logic, but its strict guidelines and approval process are generally accepted and admired. However, this may be changing now with the introduction of age-verification with their new 3.0 software. When a user attempts to download age restricted app, an alert pops up asking if the user is over 17 and parents now will also have the ability to limit what type of apps their children can download if they share an iTunes account. The age-verification process may now be shifting the responsibility to the end user and avoiding Apple having to determine what is objectionable content and also speed up the app approval process.

In what appears to be a shift from its previous guidelines, Apple has approved the first App Store program with nudity. ‘Hottest Girls’ and its sister app Sexybytes come under the genre ‘lifesytle’ and are available for £0.59.They appear to be rather tame compared to what is available at a click all over the Internet and show pictures of scantily clad women, with some of the models being topless. They demonstrate once more that the sex industry is always at the front and although tame in this case, are knocking at the door. They could also signal a new adult only app boom.

AAP Musters Its Support

AN OPEN LETTER FROM
THE PRESIDENT AND CEO
OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS


Dear Industry Colleague:

In the countdown to the October 7 court hearing on the Google Book Settlement we are encountering heated rhetoric from opponents, much of it hyperbolic and misleading. My job at AAP’s helm is not only to shepherd our membership through the coming months but to remind the industry at large that the Settlement offers enormous benefits and represents our best hope of remaining competitive and vibrant in the digital environment.

Millions of copyright-protected books are out of print and largely out of reach, available only through the largest research libraries in the country. The Google Book Settlement announced in October 2008 – the result of 30 months of negotiations between and among authors, publishers, university libraries and Google -- changes all that, working a revolution in the access to knowledge. If approved by the court, the settlement will:

• Provide readers and researchers with access to millions of out-of-print books, many of which are currently difficult or impossible for readers to obtain, in a searchable online database.

• Turn every public library building in the U.S. into a world-class research facility by providing free access to the online portal of out-of-print books.

• Permit any college or university in the U.S. to subscribe to the same rich database of out-of-print books.

• Give new commercial life to millions of books, while protecting the economic rights of authors and publishers.

If not approved by the court, the litigation between AAP, the Authors Guild and Google may continue for years, and with a great risk that authors and publishers will have no effective means to stop the widespread use of copyrighted material that is likely to follow.

In recent days some strong arguments in favor of the Settlement have appeared in print. They are all the more impressive because they come not from AAP, Google, or the Authors Guild, but from individuals who are not party to the Settlement.

One is a letter to the Financial Times from David Balto a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and former Policy Director of the Federal Trade Commission. It can be found at:

Booklovers should cheer Google’s plan
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8bf99ea8-6057-11de-a09b-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

The second is a remarkably lucid piece by financial columnist (The Big Money) Mark Gimein. It can be found at:

In Defense of Google Books
http://www.reuters.com/article/bigMoney/idUS104837430520090624

The last is a statement by Paul N. Courant, Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan. It can be found at:

Google Agreement will extend U-M libraries’ accessibility
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2009/06/other_voices_google_agreement.html

For a better understanding of what’s at stake, I urge you to read these.


With best regards,

Tom Allen

Digitisation Is All About The Money

Some 10 years ago an 18-year-old Shawn Fanning released his Napster file-sharing program on the internet and started to destabilise the business models that had supported media over the best part of the last century - a digital revolution that continues today. Fanning turned the computer into a media and entertainment player and created ‘free’. At its peak in February 2001, more than 60 million people worldwide used Napster and in that month downloaded 2.79 billion songs.Putting the cat back in the bag was going to be hard.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft, warned that all media companies should not plan for revenues to bounce back to pre-recession levels, that traditional media business would continue to see their share of the advertising revenue move to digital. He stated that newspaper publishers have failed to generate new revenues from the digital opportunity and predicted that within 10 years all traditional content will be digital and online. He claimed that the old approach of simply trying to replicate a print newspaper online is doomed to fail. He failed to say where the money was.

Earlier this year, US Congress made permanent a requirement that all research funded by the National Institutes of Health be openly accessible, and others are following. Academic and scientific publishing is being challenged by online, free and searchable open access. Newspapers face meltdown as they attempt a digital transition and find that their ad revenues have left the room without them. Music is moving from the album and track to live and the musicians are taking back control. Music prices are in ‘free’ fall.

The challenge we face is not digitisation, but the business model or models to support digital media, be it books, films, music, TV, games, podcasts, whatever. We now have to also ask whether we are focusing on the right part of the value chain, or merely trying to prop up the traditional one? Yesterday, all creators, artists, authors were ‘lost’ and needed a publisher or intermediary to shape them and present them to the channel. Publishers understood the packaging and production of the media and also had the relationships to maximise its exposure to the market and its distribution through trusted channels. The consumer, creator and the reseller, all required the intermediary. However , does that translate to the digital world? Will all today’s players make it to the Brave New World, or just as with previous major changes,will some become victims of the change in business models and value?

Who do you think has a place in the future; the author, the agent, the publisher, the wholesaler/distributor, the reseller, the library, or a different player? More importantly, where’s the money and who gets it?

Twitter Sees Stella Growth

Twitter has gone from the 969th most visited UK website to the 38th, the 5th most-visited social network and Traffic to the site grew by more than 2200% from May 2008 to May 2009, according to web analysts at Hitwise. The stats even exclude people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications such as Twitterific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck.

Twitter has been the fastest growing major website in the UK over the last 12 months and given its high public profile certainly is one of the most talked about today.

Interestingly it is failing to drive sales and against Google’s 30% and Facebooks 15%, Twitter only gets 9.5% of its traffic clicking through to transactional websites. However, Dell, claims to have generated $3m in sales via Twitter, but appears to be the exception rather than the rule today.

Like others before them they now have to find the money and hold onto the eyeballs but they have already provided that YouTube news moment in getting news out of Iran and disciplining all to those all to few characters.

Intel, Nokia and Flash10

When it comes to partnerships we see two or more players getting together that can change the market or at least make it sit up and take notice.

We have the world's largest chip maker Intel teaming up with the world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia. This "technology collaboration" could deliver mobile computing products even beyond the existing smartphones, netbooks and notebooks. However, all they are saying today is collaboration.

But both companies added it was still too early to talk about product plans.
The deal gives Intel its first real breakthrough in the multi-billion dollar mobile-phone market.
The partnership will centre around several open-source mobile Linux software projects and Intel will acquire a licence from Nokia that is used in modem chips.

Intel's microprocessors are found in eight out of 10 personal computers, while Nokia boasts around a billion mobile customers. This partnership obviously pitches Atom chips against ARM chips and accelerate the adoption of smartphones in the world from its current 10% of market share to the majority of the market.

Far more exciting is the news that Adobe Flash10 is coming to the mobile world for most mobile operating systems later this year, including Google Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian and Palm WebOS. However, no mention of Apple’s iPhone.
Developers will be able to get their hands on a beta version of Flash Player 10 mobile later this year.

Why is Flash10 such a big deal? Flash Player 10 will enable smartphones to offer a richer Internet browsing experience, support videos embedded on some websites and importantly enable web based applications and breaking the reliance on app stores and control.

Flash8 or Flash Lite has been available on mobile platforms but the new Flash Player 10 will bring an improved graphical and audio performance, across more mobile operating systems.

The big question is Apple who face so many challengers on so many fronts but continue to go a lone path. This could serious help the real contenders such as Android and Palm's WebOS.

Ring Mummy and Daddy

Would you want to give a four year old a mobile phone? More than half of children in the UK aged between five and nine now own a mobile phone.

A mobile phone targeted at children is to be launched in the UK from Firefly. The glowPhone has only five buttons, one is a direct line to the child's mother, another to their father, another accesses a phonebook that can hold 20 numbers - all individually entered by the parents. The phone can also be set up to block any incoming calls from unrecognised numbers.

No internet, camera, or SMS just a simple phone.

Will it be allowed into the UK? The glowPhone, is already on sale in the US and Ireland, is expected to cost £85 without a SIM when it is released in the UK. Over 7,000 of the phones have already been sold by O2 in Ireland, where it is available on the O2 network.

We don’t think that publishers will be able to target this market but we bet the calls could soon mount up especially to the parents when they are out of site!

Plastic Logic Demo

If you want to look at the Plastic Logic from Wall Street Journal 'Plastic Logic: The Full D7 Demo'

Looking at the demo it looks still like a prototype. It sounds like a technology looking to solve a problem and one that was announced very early, no pricing, still crude and clearly shows they have some way to go yet.

Children Always Have To Ask 'Why?'

My daughter wanted to buy her mother something special for her retirement. Her mum lives and works in education in Kala Lumpar and spends half her year there and the other in Toronto. She reads a lot and travels a lot.

I was next asked,’ Why does the Kindle only work in the US?’ I explained although I somehow found myself repeating the question.

‘What other reader would you suggest?’ Again I gave a long list and explained what little differences there were and found myself wondering how you would honestly choose.

‘Can she buy books and download them anywhere?’ Why do they need to be downloaded to a PC first my Apple doesn’t?’, ‘If I buy a download will it play on any device?’, ‘Can I share books with my mum?’, ‘Are the books cheaper?’,’Are all the books in shops available digitally?’, ‘ DRM?’, ‘Why is it only greyscale?’, ‘isn’t a bit silly carrying hundreds of books around with you all the time?’

You may think my daughter is young , she isn’t. You may think she is a bit dumb, she isn’t and holds down a major job with a major global blue chip broadcaster. You may think she isn’t technically savvy, she has a Blackberry, netbook (work) and iPhone and laptop (private) and often teaches me stuff. It wasn’t till I was put on the spot and had to answer hard question I realised how difficult we make digitisation for consumers.

The answer was an iPhone but I was then told she likes handle books not gadgets.

Are All Pirates Treated Equally?

The piracy battles rage on with on one hand the content owners resolute to take on the fight through every and any means and on the other the pirates who play by different rules and vales. Some may think it’s a battle of morals between right and wrong but the reality is that both sides do not agree even on the definitions and therefore are fighting over principles that they will never agree on. Media companies are struggling to persuade consumers to pay for video, music or news online and many consumers believe content on the Web is free.

“The history of file-sharing is that every time the industry takes action, by the time it tackles a bigger source of the problem, the problem has moved elsewhere,” said Mark Mulligan, analyst at Forrester Research.

A recent study has found that 8 %of consumers have admittedly watched an illegally downloaded video file. The study, conducted by research firm Futuresource Consulting, surveyed consumers in the US, UK, France and Germany. The survey also found that 90 percent of those who watched video content online had never paid to watch news or recently-missed TV shows. Just over half had never paid to watch new movies. But most said they would or might be willing to pay in future.

Last week Jammie Thomas-Rasset was found guilty and received what many see as an obscene fine totally out of proportion to the crime. Was she guilty – Yes. Should she be fined – Yes. However the fine itself has just made life more difficult for all as its hardened one side and introduced an element of bad press for the winners. Where The Pirate Bay guilty – as Napster, Kasaa and others before. The the RIAA (Recording Industry Assn. of America) has failed to cut into the volume of copyrighted material on peer-to-peer networks, what has started to shift the balance has been broader licensing. Often people still turned to piracy because they couldn’t find what they were seeking on authorized channels.

In last week’s Digital Britain white paper the government set out its ambition to reduce online piracy by 70 per cent. Its plans included requiring internet service providers to write warning letters to customers spotted illegally downloading music, TV shows and movies, while persistent “offenders” could be pursued in the courts.

If, after a year, fewer than 70% of those receiving warnings ceased downloading, Ofcom could impose measures such as barring specific sites, filtering illegally acquired content or limiting the speed and capacity of broadband connections.

So on one hand we have everyone trying to control. Restrict and grapple with copyright infringement but is this message a consistent one?

Google scanned significant copyright material in the guise of fair use. The case was never proven because it was railroaded to produce a settlement that only lawyers can comprehend. It is also viewed by many as rewarding those who infringed. What message does that send out to the market?

What we face is a law and governance that flies with the wind or some may say the dollar. What is right to prosecute those who as individuals can make little impact on the numbers, prosecute the carriers who give them a portal, prosecute the services that are happy to work within DMCA and a safe harbour or those who scan first, claim it is for humanity and then say they are going to be a bookseller and sell the stuff they effectively took?

Crazy world and clearly one where some are more equal than others.

iPhone News

We note that over one million iPhone 3GS units were sold in just its first three days and take a quick look at iPhone world..

Three Book App Moments
OUP has made 11 of its reference dictionaries available for the first time on the iPhone and iTouch Apps at £8.99 each. They are searchable, have unlimited bookmarking and you can email the definitions to friends.

The available titles are: Oxford Dictionary of Accounting; Oxford Dictionary of Biology; Oxford Dictionary of Business & Management; Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry; Oxford Dictionary of Computing; Oxford Dictionary of Finance & Banking; Oxford Dictionary of Law; Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary; Oxford Dictionary of Music; Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy; Oxford Dictionary of Politics.

In another launch IDW Publishing is a new line of digital comic apps allowing fans to download comics directly to their iPhone or iPod Touch. The 12 new movie-related digital comics are a must-read for all TRANSFORMERS fan, setting the stage for the upcoming TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN film. The iPhone comics are supported with a custom landing page on the iTunes store and feature panel-by-panel viewing, easy to use controls, such as “swipe” navigation, and a convenient table of contents function. These come on the back the 40 digital comics, such as Star Trek: Countdown that IDW have already created.

After reference and comics we also note that The Audiobooks app has captured the number one Apple's free App spot for the books category. The app introduces a catalogue of 1,800 free audiobooks to iPhone and iPod Touch users and potentially offering a audiobook long overdue moment.

The catalogue of nearly 10,000 hours of listening is to be applauded as it uses recordings from the LibriVox Project, which is a collection of volunteer-read audio books from the public domain.

Market News
Meanwhile anyone who doubted that Apple had created the winner of the smartphone pack need to look no further than the news that a survey, by market research firm Crowd Science, found that 40% smartphone users who don't have an iPhone want one next time round and 80% upgrade to the next Apple device next time. Interestingly only 14% of non-BlackBerry users would switch to a BlackBerry device for their next mobile phone. According to Gartner Apple has doubled its share of the worldwide smartphone market in the first quarter to 10.8% from 5.3% a year ago. Another interest note from the Crowd Science study was that 71% of smartphone subscribers use them for both personal and business purposes, with only 3% using them just for business.

The Downside
One downside appears the news that all the exclusive carriers appear to wantto charge for tethering, or being able to use the iPhone as a mobile modem for the laptop. Some say its hard or almost impossible for them to detect and others point users to simple way to break it via benm.at. Tethering is an obvious benefit to mobile people and was made available as part of OS 3.0 so it seems harsh that the carriers are using to raise revenues and create a barrier to buy when it would be a major plus if it was free within the unlimited Internet access plans.

The other downside appears to be the news that the Interim Federal Communications Commission chair Michael Copps is calling for an examination of exclusive handset deals to establish if they are restricting innovation. US Senator Kerry wrote to the FCC suggesting that such deals risk giving too much power to dominant networks, with particular reference to the iPhone and AT&T.

Tecnology In Schools Isn't About Digitising Textbooks

In ‘A Day In The Life’ The Beatles sung about the news story of 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, but The Telegrapgh gave us a different sort of news story from there today.

The Redeemer Church of England Primary School has been voted top ICT (information and communications technology) primary school in the country with the judges remarking that ICT had been "totally embedded" in all aspects of the school experience, there was "exceptional practice" at foundation stage, and pupil assessment was "exemplary, not least through self-assessments".

Four of the school's brightest 10-year-olds have won a nationwide computer-engineering competition, which required them to programme a Lego vehicle to perform precise manoeuvres against the clock. Educationalists from all over the world now stop off in Blackburn to see what's been achieved at The Redeemer, and with what equipment. Most significantly, the school has been declared a regional training centre by computer giant Apple, whose products proliferate throughout the classrooms.

In 2005, Ofsted rated the school among the bottom 10 % in the country; now it's in the top 10 %. The school is only five years old and has spent as little as £40,000 in making its transformation.

So what is different and how did this school transform itself?

They not only have embraced technology but have built it into the learning experience. instead of geography and history, pupils study "knowledge and understanding of the world" and instead of art and crafts, they do "creative development".

Head teacher Alison Ashworth-Taylor says, "While teaching children to operate within the present pen-and-paper examination system, we are at the same time training them for a future in which technology is going to play an ever bigger part. Quite what form that will take, no one knows. But at least our children will be ready for it."

Not every school has the knowledge or the talent to be a Redeemer, but it’s refreshing that they are not merely replacing textbooks with screens but using technology to enhance and engage the children in learning.

Thomas-Rasset Gets Huge Fine

In the only file-sharing case to go to trial in the US, a jury in Minnesota has found Jammie Thomas-Rasset, guilty and ordered to her topay $1.9 million (£1.2m). Her first trial ended without a verdict.

A spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said the companies are willing to settle out of court for a much smaller amount. Most people targeted by the RIAA had settled for around £1,500 each. The massive damage award, which increased from $9,250 per song in the first trial to $80,000, might sounds could actually work against the RIAA and further entrench those who support file sharing.

With Thomas-Rasset and the defense team talking hard about continuing the fight and with such a huge fine it looks certain that the battle was won by the RIAA but that the war is far from over.

Companies including Sony, BMI, Universal and Warner Music say they are now concentrating on working with internet service providers to crack down on the worst offenders of file-sharing.

"D'oh!",

Publishers build social networks sites around, students, authors, genre, and of course teenagers. Some like Tor.com are trying to create a vertical community, in its case for Sci-Fi lovers, others such as the new ‘Pulse It’ from Simon and Schuster, just go for them young.

Do they work? Well if they didn’t they would be building them would they? When you start with a base near zero then all sales look good. It is not difficult to see why Simon and Schuster shouldn’t get traction as they are; giving away one book a month to be read online for free, points for reviews and site actions, and users can win free books and other prizes. The trick is often not starting a social community but still being there and getting that ‘stickyness’ to keep them coming back. Obviously publishers also have to be able to compete with the others. The everyone needs to respond to change and get that most important thing the user gives - time. We wish them well, but wonder if it were better inside a larger social site rather than competing with other publishers and social sites.


We looked a Tor.com and were impressed that they have taken an inclusive and not exclusive position, inviting other publishers to sell and promote their own titles alongside theirs. This is a brave move indeed for a publisher and one we have long advocated and support. Is it any different to sites like Baen,com? Well that a personal call but we believe it lacks that Baen roughness and clear Sci – Fi design. However, the designer tee shirts and mugs and blogs are all interesting.

However, why did HarperCollins put the Simpsons Mini Calendar and Simpsons Work Calendar 2010 on the Tor.com site – obviously not quite science fiction to most of us, or perhaps they knew something we don’t. After all Homer does work at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant!

MSN To Get Off Their Soapbox?

Microsoft launched the Soapbox video user streaming brand in September 2006, days later Google purchased YouTube. Did you know that through Soapbox MSN Video has 35 million unique users, who watch 250 million video streams each month. No – well perhaps why it was reported today in The Register that Microsoft plans to "significantly scale back" its Soapbox service.

If you are still curious as to what Soapbox gives you today then watch this Cnet video.

Speaking with Cnet, Microsoft vice president Erik Jorgensen said that Soapbox's YouTube-like user-generated video setup is just too expensive considering the state of the economy. But he didn't exactly say how Microsoft plans to cut the service's costs.

Quote On The Great Book Bank Robbery

"That settlement needs to be revisited, and is being revisited....It doesn't seem right that you can get a prize for violating a large set of copyrights."






Jeff Bezos on being asked about the Google Book Settlement in an interview by Steve Levy, Wired Disruptive by Design Event in New York, June 2009.

Publishing News in The 19th Century

The rich and interesting 19th century of British history can be now read online via the newspapers of the day. Some 49 national and local newspapers have digitised by the British Library with funding by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and technology from Cengage Gale.

Over 2 million pages, from newspapers such as; The Birmingham Daily Post, The Aberdeen Journal, The Daily News, The Examiner, The Northern Echo and many more. They cover the rich tapestry of events such as; The Napoleonic Wars, The Great Exhibition of 1851, The Whitechapel Murders, Urban Growth and Social Reform, the Crimean War, the abolition of slavery, the rise of the British Empire and much more. In 1800 around 40% of males and 60% of females in England and Wales were illiterate, in contrast by 1900 illiteracy for both sexes had dropped to around 3%. This was the age of mass education, reading and the papers fed the new skill.

On 5 January 1900 the Manchester Weekly Times advertised itself: 'All who enjoy breezy, healthy fiction should make a point of reading these deeply-interesting and up-to-date serials.' Serious news was central to the role of the press, but also the wit, gossip, and articles on entertainment and lifestyle were essential to their popular adoption, appeal and commercial success.

Access to everything bar The Graphic and The Penny Illustrated Paper cost £6.99 for a 24-hour pass with up to 100 downloads or £9.99 for a seven-day pass with up to 200. This contrasts with individual titles who have digitised their own back catalogues such as The Times, The Guardian and The Economist and cost in the case of the Economist Historical Archive, some £1,500 a year.

Is the service is purely one of archive, for the researchers that will use it or a public sevice to be enjoyed by all? It would be great if this wealth of public work were opened up free for all to delve into enjoy as a national treasure. Constructed as is we feel it will feed researchers who have specific topics to investigate, but will not encourage the public to merely dip in and enjoy.

US University Presses Face Tough Calls

US University Presses face difficult times with declining readership and tax revenue budgets forcing public and school libraries to buy fewer copies of university press publications.

Utah, Washington, Yale, New York have all claimed difficulties and cuts. Now they are joined by Louisiana State University Press where officials are considering cuts or even closure as they face state budget cuts of $40 million at the Baton Rouge campus alone. Chancellor Michael Martin claims that they allocated $500,000 of university money to the press in the last fiscal year, but that they spent $1.4 million!

If they digitise their program and its archive it will cost money. If they don’t digitise they face a growing market, which is cannibalising their sales and where they don’t compete. Should university presses be forming publishing consortiums which may offer economies of both scale and scope? Should they just cut back and if so what is the appropriate level to support them? Should they look for grants or sponsorships to publishing books in specific fields of research?

Whatever the answer, university press operations are no longer a given. LSU may believe that their value to the university is in its four Pulitzer-winning works, 240 other awards and in the 75 to 85 new titles it publishes each year. However, others may question any organisation that exceeds budget by 180%.

Spainish Pirates Ahoy

Pablo Soto launched Blubster in 2001 and it grew from its humble Spainish routes to be one of the world's most popular peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing programs of recent years. Within days of its launch nearly 1 million people worldwide had downloaded it. Although Soto collects advertising revenues he still operates out of his grandmothers apartment and lives in a rented flat.

Now Soto finds himself in the latest major piracy battle against the music industry. Promusicae, the Spanish record label association that includes Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI, is suing Soto for 13 million euros. Promusicae hope the case will mirror court rulings against operations such as The Pirate Bay and also force Spain to draw up new legislation and enforce it.

According to the U.S. copyright industry group International Intellectual Property Alliance, some 2 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded in Spain in 2008, compared to 2.2 million purchased legally. This represented a loss of $1.6 billion in revenue in 2007 and 2008.

Soto, 29 claims that Blubster is a fully legal Internet tool and that he is not responsible for what people do with it. He claims legitimate uses include downloading historic speeches, uncopyrighted music and public domain intellectual property such as music and books. Soto argued that if he is guilty, so too are companies such as Google and Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica that permit the process. Downloading copyrighted material is illegal in Spain but is not a criminal offense, and courts rule it an infringement if used for commercial profit.

Social Space

Social networks can be like fashion they come and they go. How many social networks can one belong to?

We have seen Friends Reunited, BeBo, LinkedIn and many more come stutter and wane. Now it’s the turn of that one time leader of the pack MySpace to experience downturn. It no longer is in the prime slot which is now held by Facebook. It has announced it will cut staff by 30% to better compete.

So is cost cutting going to change the service, alter the consumer and market perception or is it just damage limitation?

They may appear more attractive to purchase now and get bought. They may reinvent themselves, or remain in downspin and become just another site with the hundreds of what2bes. Social sites come and go as fashion, people put enormous amounts of effort to climb there slipper poles and socialise but when crowds move they often leave empty spaces behind.

News Magazines

As news magazines such as Time and Newsweek struggle this is an interesting interview with Michael Hirschorn by The Atlantic. It discusses how The Economist in a global world has succeeded where others have struggled with a parochial world and offers some interesting thoughts.

Textbook Viewpoints

On one hand we have Seth Godin’s view on textbooks.

‘They are; expensive, don't take you from a place of ignorance to a place of insight, are out of date and don't match the course,are far from engaging or inspirational and are incredibly impractical.’

‘Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online... Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness.’

‘This industry deserves to die. It has extracted too much time and too much money and wasted too much potential. We can do better. A lot better’.



California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has launched a program widely reported and that is intended to get public schools to use fewer textbooks and more online learning materials. However are his motives on the same lines as Godin’s? Maybe Arnie is trying to turn the planet green and sees the paper and process of textbooks wasteful? Maybe its all down to money and voters?

The aim is to get the state's 6 million public school students to use more online learning materials and saving millions of dollars a year in textbooks. The question is how much will the program cost and will the savings be greater than the cost. It’s interesting to note, that in the state that spawned Google, Apple and Facebook, the biggest beneficiaries may be the Silicon Valley companies that drive much of the state and will have to provide the infrastructure.

"We expect the first science and math books to be digital by this fall," Schwarzenegger said. "If we expand this to more textbooks, schools could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and that's hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to hire more teachers and to reduce class sizes."

Will Schwarzenegger's proposal merely increase disparities between students in poor schools and those in middle-class or wealthier districts or provide a level playing field for all?

Schwarzenegger has already billions of dollars from school budgets over the past two years and has proposed another $5.3 billion in education cuts next year cutting the textbooks and instructional materials from $419 million to $350 million last year.

One factor that could undermine the initiative is the extent of technology in California classrooms. Education Week gave the state a D-minus this year for having on average, just one computer for every four children. The online material is likely to be supplemental to the textbooks and will result initially in California still buying traditional books.

California's plans to drop traditional textbooks in favour of online material will no doubt get many plaudits but will it succeed in improving education, the budget or merely keep the Valley folk happy?

Samsung Jets In But Is IT Enough?

Samsung has launched the Jet S8000 smartphone in the UK. Its 3.1 inch touchscreen display has an impressive 800x480 pixels, sharper than any others. It also has a new version of the Touchwiz Navigation system, a fast 800MHz processor and universally accepted connectors such as a 3.5mm headphone socket and a microUSB port. In addition, the phone comes with a 5-megapixel camera with a flash, built-in GPS, DNS and SRS Sound effect, DiVX and XVid video support as well as Samsung's own Dolfin Webkit-based web browser plus support for Microsoft Exchange Active Sync. Other goodies include WiFi and 3G connectivity, a FM Radio with RDS, 2GB built in memory and support for a further 16GB worth of storage through microSD card reader.

On the plus side it certainly has the power to deal with Flash and video on the minus side it comes with Samsung's own operating system and although thousands of Apps are promised its this aspect that is deciding the winners from the rest today in what is becoming a crowded space.

How Global Is The Google Settlement?

We received the following comment to a blog we posted last week and felt that it was appropriate to raise it in its own right for all to read.

You wrote: "We must note that although the Google Book Settlement is a US only issue..."

That's right only in the limited sense that the settlement can only impacts U.S. copyrights. A U.S. federal district court can't alter how the copyright laws of other countries are applied within their borders.

But the "U.S. copyrights" impacted by this settlement are not just formal copyrights given U.S. citizens or foreigners living here by our copyright office. They include U.S. copyrights automatically granted by treaty to the citizens of the some 160 countries with which we have treaty agreements. Publish a book in India and you automatically acquire a U.S. copyright. You need not file any document or pay any fee. That's a marvelous aspect of those treaties.

But keep in mind a perverse result of those treaties. They don't permit a country to treat treaty-granted copyrights any different from those it grants its own citizens. The assumption was that countries would treat their own citizens more favorably. But that treaty obligation works in reverse. The settlement can't screw the U.S. authors without screwing all such authors om the world. That is the chief sticking point of the settlement, not the muddled anti-trust implications.

This means that virtually everyone who has written a book published any where in the world will have their U.S. copyright castrated by this settlement. Because of the perverse 'opt-in if you don't formally opt-out' provisions, far-distant authors have never heard of the settlement will be hurt. All Google need do is find a copy of that book, and with a willing library, it doesn't even need to buy that copy.

You are right that this settlement could "unravel" international agreements and the good will on which they depend. Google's scheme depended on other countries not knowing of what the settlement meant until after it was approved. The four-month delay I and six other authors got the court to approve ended any chance of that. European politicians now know what the settlement means and have begun to act.

Google's lawyers also made a major mistake. They assumed those they want to manipulate are stupid. Google had hoped they would counter this settlement with something similar, something to screw obscure U.S. authors, allowing Google to reap most of the benefits. But Europeans aren't interested in reading obscure American books. They are interested in reducing the impact Hollywood has on their cultures.

That's why they're will hit us elsewhere. There's not much money to be made in displaying out-of-print works. Google knows it can only profit from them by being ruthlessly efficient and cheap.

But if this settlement is approved, Europeans will almost certainly hit us where it hurts most. They'll weaken copyright protection where we make the most money: in movies and music. For that they'll be loudly applauded by virtually every member of the creative classes in their countries.

Because of the issues of orphaned works and display on the Internet are so closely linked to existing treaty obligations, there is only one way those issues can be settled. A mere federal court can't do it. Lawyers in the Justice Department certainly can't do it. Even Congress can't legislate an answer for all the world's writers. These issues have to be dealt with by amending those treaties, taking care to be fair to all involved.

--Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien

Twitter Captures The News

We all remember Flight 1549 crashing on take off from New York and almost hit George Washington Bridge, captured on a mobile and downloaded on YouTube. News no longer waits for the next edition or even the news broadcast slot, it’s instantaneous and captured by everyone with a mobile with a camera.

Techdirt today offers a useful and insightful way in which how and what we communicate is still evolving. Twitter may not seem the right vehicle to capture events in a few words but it constant stream of twitter can provide views and thoughts uncensored, unedited and raw as they happen.

Today it has given us insights into the troubled post election Iran which have been posted on the Iran Twazzup page . This view into Iran was made possible by Twitter and the ability of thousands of people to easily communicate on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. It's really quite impressive, and I'm hard pressed to see how anyone could look at what's coming out of Iran via Twitter, and then claiming that Twitter isn't a useful or different communication tool. It doesn’t mean every comment is genuine, nor that each is worth the read, but together they capture a movement and within them there are those gems which truly capture news.

We can think back to disasters that happened in the last half of the 20th century and what would have been different if we had Twitter and You Tube and of course the mobile phone. Would the fog that surrounded Hillsbough or Bloody Sunday still be with us today. Would we have sorted out what happened on that grassy knoll in Dallas.
Techdirt also reported that Twitter’s data center partner, NTT, have actually chosen to delay some critical updates, knowing that cutting off communications from Iran just as so many people are relying on it would be a disaster.

News tomorrow will be broken by the person on the street with a smartphone.

Africa Banking Bypasses Bankers

Over one billion people in the developing world have access to a mobile phone, but do not have a bank account. It is estimated by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) that the number will to rise to 1.7 billion by 2012.

This creates an enormous opportunity for mobile banking as bank face enough problems back home let alone make the investment to set up a banking infrastructure.

One of Africa's first mobile banking system, M-Pesa, was launched in Kenya in March 2007 and has now expanded to include countries such as Tanzania and Afghanistan and is planning to launch in India, Egypt and South Africa. Through a network of more than 7,000 agents, the people can make deposits and get cash from a network made up mostly of mostly shopkeepers, with users authorising payments on their mobile phone using a Pin code.

The service has also expanded to include Safaricom, East Africa's biggest mobile operator and others such as South Africa's MTN and Kuwait's Zain are piloting similar services.

The lesson this teaches is that not everyone follows the same technology evolution. Sometimes those that appear to be far behind can leapfrog over a step change and in some cases even overtake others purely because they have less baggage, restrictions and maybe have to do it differently.

The Day The News Was Different

For one day, 10th June, Haaretz, the Hebrew language Israeli daily and Isreal’s oldest newspaper changed how the news was written. The paper’s editor-in-chief Dov Alfon exchanged 31 reporters for 31 of Israel’s finest authors and poets. The objective was to honour Israel’s annual Hebrew Book Week and give authors the opportunity to witness and report on the events of the day. Apart from the sports section and a few other articles, The authors’ articles filled the pages, from the leading headline to the weather report.

Writers used the first person and showed up in nearly every photograph alongside their interview subjects, including the likes of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres.

Author Avri Herling summarised the stock market, “Everything’s okay. Everything’s like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything’s okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place… Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points…. The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again….”

Eshkol Nevo’s TV review started. “I didn’t watch TV yesterday.”

Roni Somek wrote a poem, titled “Summer Sonnet.” For the weather report.

David Grossman spent a night at a children’s drug rehabilitation centre in Jerusalem and wrote a cover page story about the patients and ended it, “I lay in bed and thought wondrously how, amid the alienation and indifference of the harsh Israeli reality, such islands — stubborn little bubbles of care, tenderness and humanity — still exist.”

Yoram Kaniuk wrote about couples in the hospital cancer ward, “A woman walking with a cane brings her partner a cup of coffee with a trembling hand. The looks they exchange are sexier than any performance by Madonna and cost a good deal less,” Kaniuk a cancer suffer too, wrote. “I think about what would happen if I were to get better…how I would live without the human delicacy to which I am witness?”

June 11th the paper resume normal service. What a wonderful way to celebrate the diversity of writing.

Pirates: One Step Forward , Two steps Back

France's top legal body, the Constitutional Council, which examines whether bills that have been passed by the French parliament are in accordance with the French constitution, has rejected a key provision of the new legislation aimed at punishing internet pirates. The law, approved last month, gives officials the power to remove web access for those caught repeatedly downloading protected material. However the Council ruled that only a judge could bar people from the web, describing access to online services as a human right.

Some consumer groups had warned that the wrong people might be punished, should hackers hijack their computers' identity, and that the scheme amounted to state surveillance.

We then have the case of the RIAA versus Jammie Thomas-Rasset in her retrial in Minnesota. The defence lawyers Kiwi Camara and Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson aimed to question the very substance of the RIAA case to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer.

However they have already had one set back as their attempt to bar Media Sentry’s evidence on the grounds that they were not licensed as a private investigator in Minnesota has been thrown out. They still aim to challenge the RIAA to prove it owns the certified copies of the copyrights in question. If it can't establish that fact, the case could be dismissed.

eMartketing Thoughts: 5. Store Once, Render Many

Context is the metadata, bibliographic information, marketing materials that helps everyone find content and of course value it. A significant amount of the Context can be derived direct from the content itself and what we once thought of as content can now be used to promote, sample and validate before you buy.

Today publishers should be storing everything once and render many times. The rendering should be as much as possible dynamic and avoid holding multiple versions and formats in many digital folders and even databases. We should be creating context directly from content avoiding further duplication and effort. Publishers should ask themselves how many times they hold the same context information, which is the authoritative source and who and how it can be changed? We all saw the rise of the ‘book in hand systems’ in wholesalers who couldn’t trust the data feeds. We can now surely do it better.

Delivering emarketing marketing becomes so much simpler when the widget, the digital review copy, the digital catalogue, the online rendition are basically the same file or files seen through different viewers. Mass marketing and direct marketing materials are the same but again viewed through a different viewer by different people. Bibliographic feeds are no longer dry bits and bytes, but now are whatever is appropriate and in many cases can be cut from the content itself. Finally, we now see the emergence of the digital emarketing container which not only reshapes what we distribute but who distributes it and when.

eMarketing today is not just about creating many experiments, social sites, direct campaigns, viral marketing but all these and above all serving the existing channel and enriching their opportunity to sell more physical and of course digital works.

Spotify Android Move

It has been widely reported that Spotify, has demonstrated an offline version of the service running on a Google Android mobile phone at Google's I/O developer event and it appears that just like the desktop client it’s a potential winner. It even has "offline mode" that uses cache to store a playlist and turns the phone into an offline MP3 player with Spotify as its client.



Spotify is working on several mobile versions but the big question is wheter Apple will allow or block what is a clear threat to iTunes. Here is an earlier TechDigest video 'showing' Spotify on a iPhone.

Craigslist to Top $100 Million?

As newspapers struggle with declining ad revenues online classified ad site Craigslist is forecast to exceed $100 million revenues this year. That’s a whopping 23% increase of last year and its bottom-line is likely to be even healthier. First launched in ’95 as a email list the company was quick to undercut newspapers and appeal to a wider audience. Newsprint still dominates but over the last decade has seen its revenues drop 50% from $20 billion in 2000 to $10 billion last year.

Employment advertising, once the a mainstay of the newpapers is expected to account for some 85% of Craigslists revenues which leaves significant potential for future growth in other areas. It is also worth noting that 40% of their revenues comes listing in just three major cities; New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Again this leaves significant opportunities for further growth.

Craigslist employs just 30 people!

eMartketing Thoughts: 4. How Green is Your Catalogue?

We have ebooks, we have environmental friendly books, but we still have huge amounts of book miles and waste. However we often ignore that many still promote their books with ‘unfriendly’ catalogues that are scattered like seeds, far and wide. These often eye-catching glossies contain some books form whom the catalogue is often their only real chance to be seen over the parapet and to attract attention. The question is whether digital technology can help; spread the word better, reduce the waste and increase sales?

Last month Ingram Marketing Group performed a survey which attracted some 2,000 responses from buyers in; public libraries, independent stores, chains, school libraries and higher education. It found that over 49% of respondents were open to using an ecatalogue instead of print one and some 60% had already reviewed books via an ecatalogue. Interestingly 81% of chains said it was a good experience and the majority all said that an ecatalogue was a useful supplement to the physical one. Again the two greatest benefits respondents felt ecatalogues gave were in; improving the environment 28% and reducing clutter 23%.

So it appears that the market is responsive to making catalogues digital.

Do we merely replicate the physical catalogue and send it as a ‘flat’ PDF via email, or do we open it up with embedded widgets, weblinks and extra information that space doesn’t permit within the printed version? The question is about whether we maintain the constraints of the physical page, or break out of them and the structure it imposes?

There is the obvious timing issue. There are catalogues of forthcoming titles whose materials may still be in flux and there are catalogues which reflect the full list on offer and often have both depth of material and are accurate. Unlike the physical world, the digital world can offer real time accuracy and authority. The digital catalogue should always be current and if you changed the jacket today, it will be instantly rendered to all.

A digital catalogue is virtual and can be dynamically rendered many ways from the same source. It’s like looking into a house through different windows, same house different views.

Finally, the digital catalogue offers that one extra it can automatically capture, feedback, queries and of course the order of the physical books which can even reflect individual terms and be posted directly into the publisher's back office system, cutting out even more waste.

Connecting You Sir

Have you ever wanted to ring someone but didn’t have the phone number? Yesterday that was easy you merely looked them up in a directory and hoped that they weren’t ex directory. Then came the phone directory services and for a small charge the number was available. However when mobile usage exploded and it became the primary phone for many people getting unknown numbers was very hard and losing them was a nightmare!

Now a new UK service, run by 118800, plans to change all that. It claims to have some 15 million numbers and will cost £1 and use databases of numbers. It will even act as a switchboard between parties to ensure calls are acceptable to the receiver and of course will offer an opt out service to remove numbers that people want to remain private.

Watch the BBC video to find out more.



The interesting think it shows once more is how easy it is to effectively buy and acquire lists of numbers and address details. The potential use of those little tick boxes at the bottom of agreements now become even more visible.

US Justice Department Asks: Have We Been Googled?

News that the US Justice Department has issued formal requests for information to several of the parties involved in the Google Book Settlement would indicate that everyone is now looking hard at all aspects of the proposal. It doesn’t mean that the US government will oppose it, nor that the several Attorneys general in several states who are looking at the antitrust aspect will oppose it but it does mean that it will be fully scrutinized. It also means that Judge Denny Chin’s September Federal District Court date may also be further postponed.

Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times report that the Justice Department has sent the requests, called civil investigative demands, to involved parties, including Google, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and individual publishers.

We must note that although the Google Book Settlement is a US only issue the deal will have a global impact on the digital world, copyright and will be difficult to unravel if we get it wrong. We welcome the investigation, the debates that are ongoing and some may say that we have seen with some of the recent announcements, the GoogleWorld is not always what it appears at first sight. Google’s intent to be the information indexer, the search source, the repository, the library, the bookseller and the advertising revenue manager does beg the question what’s left.

Is It The Same Old Song?

Below is a story we published on the back of a Mirror article and other coverage. Today the story is reported as being unfounded and that no agreement has been reached. It interesting to see the twist and turns of the club and wonder what next?

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan’s book club is to return to TV.

The Mirror reports that the show that died a million deaths on that obscure digital channel ‘Watch’, has been snapped up by Channel 4, or should that be More4!

Can the phoenix rise from the ashes and be the savior of all? Well it appears that the Richard and Judy Book Club return is without Richard and Judy. A bit like Jonathan Ross Show being hosted by Michael Parkinson perhaps? Apparently there are some great names in the frame to host it but they aren’t called Richard or Judy!

Television offers so much but has never really succeeded in getting past the couch. It tried with the book quizzes but they often made university challenge questions look simple and didn’t sell books and some would say reading. Programs such as IQ , Have I Got News For You have made highbrow fun, but there again they don’t sell product. So it’s a return to the couch, the celebrity reading group and the stickering of the books in the shop window. We can’t knock it but just wonder if there is a better way to do it and whether the Richard and Judy format is past its sell by date?

Personal Computer World to Close

Many in the UK have used its pages of reviews to guide us through the often confusing array of options available when we buy a new PC, laptop, notebook etc. Now after 30 years of service Personal Computer World, one of the UK's oldest consumer technology magazine titles, is closing. We remember it well for being among those geeky magazines that were often heavier that the weekly shop and crammed with adverts, comparisons and reviews.

A combination of factors including the economic downturn and the decline of the computer magazine market have forced the closure and once again demonstrate that it’s not just the economic climate that is changing but our reading and research habits. Yesterday magazines that helped us select cars, PCs, household goods etc where in demand, today we can click and compare online.

Incisive Media, which owns Personal Computer World and more than 100 other business magazines have said that it’s looking to cut up to 50 staff from its 800-strong workforce.

eMarketing Thoughts: 3. Books for free?

Publishers in all sectors have always given away physical books to promote their sale. In some cases we hope to get it reviewed, in others it’s treated as a sample and in others such as education and it’s given with the aim of achieving the book’s adoption. In some the cases, the percentage of inspection copies that are ‘given away’ could be between 10 and 15% of the initial print run and that’s without the associated costs of dispatch and follow-up. In some cases the inspection copy is even invoiced and a return is requested if it is not adopted – more waste. The extra copies can be well worth the cost if they lead to greater sales, but in today’s difficult economic climate and digital world there are now potentially smarter ways to achieve the same and more, for less cost and waste.

People often say that the review practice of giving away physical copies is now better managed and that far fewer books are given away today. Others will point to the basement floor in The Strand bookstore in New York and the shelves of gratis review copies that have been cashed in and some with Editors letters still inside! A trade journal told us that the practice was dramatically reduced. We merely asked them to turn around in their office and describe what they say on their shelves – books. How many had they actually bought let alone read?

Whether its review, sample, or inspection copies, there are now better ways to achieve the same result at far less cost.

Digitally galley and un-proofed copies have been around for some time and continue to grow as they become easier to generate. The challenge here is to ensure that they are created at the appropriate time, that they are secured as assets and that follow up is achieved. Digital inspection copies are now also starting to appear and offer more cultural challenges but significant opportunities for both efficiency and sales across the adoption cycle.

It is not a case of merely scattering digital copies where once we scattered physical ones.

Digital inspection copies should created the opportunity to understand what is read, annotated, bookmarked by whom and when and even if the books was ever opened. They offer the opportunity to better manage distribution lists, offer shared copies, understand what is and isn’t important, capture feedback and follow through the process to adoption. Joining the dots from inspection review to purchase in today’s physical world is often difficult and wasteful. However, irrespective of whether the resultant sales are for a physical or digital rendition, the digital world offers everyone involved in the process reward and benefit. Some may see the digital inspection copy as the vehicle to cut out the campus store and go direct, others as the vehicle to engage the store and strengthen its role in the process and join the dots.

Some may say that reviewers will only accept physical copies and that may be true for some, but not all.

Digital marketing is not exclusive to digital books and removes physical waste.

Interactive Advertising Displays

UK based digital creative agency Clusta have partnered with CBS Outdoor to develop an iPhone-enabled advertising platform for digital LCD screens at London’ largest shopping mall at Westfield. The platform, will enable consumers to control the advertising display on the 57” HD KLCD screen via their iPhone.

The iPhone can make the object represented on the display spin to the left or right and also, by using the ‘pinch’ and ‘stretch’ finger gestures, zoom in or out of the object displayed on the screen and change the colour of the item. The technology is planned to be developed for other smart phones and also include SMS interactivity to receive more information about the product.

Want the latest movie download, blockbuster or just more details on a product? Who needs a kiosk when you can see, select and potentially download in front of a advertising display. Today advertising displays don’t engage they merely broadcast, tomorrow they may capture interest or make a sale.

eMarketing Thoughts: 2 What is a widget?

Is it a book sampler, a look inside the jacket, a look before you buy? We have seen many widgets of all shapes and sizes. Some were very impressive giving you the real book experience with turning pages in duplex views and full colour, others crude scanned pages that in some cases weren’t even scanned straight! Some merely followed instructions and on displaying the first 10 pages even showed us the blank ones! Amazon gave us a ‘surprise me’ option which was often a poor surprise as it displayed a totally meaningless page and was not even a smart move. Others could only be managed by the publisher so were limited in their application to resellers. Although the reseller could with dexterity change certain fields like the buy now button resolution, each publisher did it differently!

We would suggest that the widget is just a container - nothing more and nothing less. When one starts to look at it this way one avoids the trap of it being a one-dimensional vehicle to merely sample a few pages. It is a marketing box which can offer as little or as much as appropriate, it can become the new tip sheet or advance information sheet, a door to more information, a collector of comments, requests the reps suitcase and much more.

We must remember that eMarketing isn’t about selling digital content but about selling all content; digital, physical, audio, rights and combinations of.
We must also remember that the material never leaves the repository - it is merely viewed and when viewed the information is current and real time.

The widget offers competitive advantage today which is sustainable.

We would suggest that the widget is the base entry point into the world of eMarketing. By itself it is not the answer, but part of the answer in this exciting new engagement with the market.

eMarketing Thoughts: 1. Show Me the Results

We aim to write four more articles this week to expand our views on eMarketing; the use of widgets, digital inspection copies, catalogues and the creation and management of context and content.

Marketing holds the biggest digital prize for the book industry in these changing times. Some have long argued that Context is more valuable than Content. In the late 90’s we were responsible for the highly acclaimed publishing research programme ‘Publishing in the 21st Century’ and some would suggest that our most significant report that we published was ‘N to X : From Content to Context’.

Today’s task is not finding digital content but finding good or the right digital content. Its about finding the digital needle in the digital haystack. We have many sources of information, many degrees of detail, many different ways to look for and value content and content itself is no longer a single format.

We are moving away from the advertising budget being spent on full page spreads in the trade press to viral and direct marketing, from scattering seeds in the wind to running campaigns where every hit, click and resolution can be tracked and the marketing department held accountable for spend! We know can find out not only what we know but potentially what we don’t know.

In yesterday’s world we produced glossy printed catalogues and posted them to anyone standing. Yet we had no idea who read what page or even opened them. Did they themselves provide all the information needed to make a decision or merely opened the door? We distributed advance information sheets which fell somewhere between a flysheet and a genuine information sheet and often ended up being filed with the waste paper. We spent money advertising to the channel to get the book on the shelf and had little left to promote the book to the public. The trade magazines were happy to take the money for the full page colour advert but did it deliver, give demonstrable results, or merely spend the money?

As we move it the digital eMarketing world we are not obviating traditional spend but supplementing it with more auditable and accountable campaigns that can even be integrated into the whole process and help join the dots from Author to Reader.

Spotify Continue to Make Smart Moves

We continue to be impressed by the clear thinking of the people who run what is fast becoming the music model streaming site. Spotify continues to learn from others and navigate what are challenging waters where many have floundered before them.

They now allow unsigned musicians to upload their music onto the service. So are they now going to get flooded with pirate tracks and illegal music and wash their hands and claim a safe harbour like many today across the media market or take proactive action to control what is uploaded? Spotify has signed a deal with Ditto Music, where acts can upload their music and are now be able to type their band's name into Spotify and see their tracks. Ditto Music charges a £2 per month and has made a name for itself bringing unsigned acts into the charts through digital distribution. Like regular acts, unsigned bands will be entitled to royalties when their tracks are played . US band Finch, will be one of the first available on Spotify through the new deal with Ditto Music. By introducing a filter and charged service they have taken a wise step to avoid pirate uploads.

Spotify has also gained official approval by the UK’s Performing Rights Society (PRS) which clearly places them on the right side of the industry and avoids the disputes that others have found others such as YouTube embroiled in.

As We Await Apple

So as the world awaits Apple’s next announcements on Monday and the undoubted media blitz that will follow we have taken a quick look at some of the others vying for space in this crowded market.

Palm Pre
The Pre has made its long awaited entrance and now its down to the consumers to decide whether it lives up to the hype or becomes just another also ran. The webOS, Palm's new operating system enables concurrent applications open at once. You simply organized the apps like a row of cards and you flick the screen to switch between them. WebOS will also notify you of events that need your attention, no matter which application you're in. Again, making the iPhone look cumbersome and others just clumsy and slow. The Pre’s webOS aggregates contacts and calendar items from multiple sources, like Google, corporate Exchange servers, and can even insert your friends' Facebook photos into your contacts list. This obviously wins over the iPhone’s in many ways but is it enough to make consumers buy or even switch allegiance? Will we get iphone app overload and will the Pre give us the apps that are clearly driving this market?

Whether you get a Pre or not, its has clearly raised the bar on the software will leave its mark on the phones you buy in the future.

LG
We have long awaited LG GD910 mobile watch will be hitting the UK in July but unfortunately only being available via Orange and with a £1000 price tag. The price will almost certainly put off many from being James Bond but will it become a designer status symbol for chavs or merely a nice product at the wrong price? As previously reported it has a 1.4 inch touchscreen, looks good being only 14mm thick, has 7.2Mbps HSDPA, voice recognition, text to speech capability, Bluetooth, MP3 player and tells the time too.

HTC
HTC are about to unveil its third Andriod mobile and rumours suggest the announcement will be on June 24th . The HTC Hero is expected to launch in two models, one with touchscreen only and one packing a QWERTY keyboard and so offering appeal to all. With Google’s arsenal of potential opportunities and its cross platform design, the Andriod phones are certainly ones to watch.

ACER
Acer’s new Tempo F900 smartphone arrival to the UK appears imminent. First shown in Barcelona in February the device looks set to have a £429 price tag. It features a 3.8 inch VGA screen, Internet Explorer 6, with JavaScript and Adobe Flash Lite, and high-speed HSDPA. Acer has clearly stated it wants to be a smartphone player and have adopted Acer 2.0 user interface to aid navigation and ‘desktop’ customisation, in addition to Google Search, Google Maps and YouTube. Acer is not alone in the move from netbook to mobile and could bring some interesting user friendly aspects to the table.

INQ
UK based INQ is to launch a Twitter phone which it claims will be the first mass-market phone to have a client for the social networking phenomenon built-in. It will use the internet to send and receive tweets, rather than text messages. The question is what is so special and surely everyone else can easily follow. Like Skype you don’t buy a device just make it easy to twitter or do you?

Fighting the Flood of Digital Piracy

The UK Publishers' Association is reported last week in the Bookseller as having recorded around 800 illegally uploaded texts and successfully helped to remove almost 90% of them from the web in February. The PA’s infringement software adopts the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) approach of issuing take down notices and tracking the files removal and offenders.

The one thing that is certain is that relying on take down notices is akin to Hans Brinker sticking his finger in the dyke at Haarlem to plug the hole, but this time it doesn’t work, is too much effort and we only have so many fingers.

The problem we have written about is that this is based on a safe habour approach for the services hosting the files and is reactive and not proactive, so acts after the cat is often out the bag. Service suppliers can only go so far in vetting files being loaded before their safe harbour status can be brought into question.

Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, that potentially offer so much, are caught between a safe harbour and a hard place. However they are only the tip of what is and remains a big iceberg. We have been shown a pirate copy of a highly expensive and prized work which the publisher had not digitised for fear of being pirated. Some may say an open invention to the pirates and one which they have taken. The quality of the pirated work was impressive and amazingly it was being given away by the pirate for free.

So we now have the altruistic pirate who is not even after the money and will spend considerable time to create a near perfect digital rendition of a complex work. This is a digital cover made from the physical book being scanned, OCRed, and then text over image and links being applied to match any digital rendition. This cat is certainly out the bag and having kittens.

So like rabbits you shoot at one and ten more appear all over the place all in different sizes and shapes!

The UK government look set not to follow the French ‘3 strikes law’ and move instead to a half way house where ISP have to slow the pirates down by reducing their access speed. It’s akin to condemning a driver to the slow lane because they broke the speed limit. We can’t see the music industry liking it, nor the ISPs, so it’s a perfect compromise and will leave all unhappy. Importantly it fails to address the cause and merely sticks yet more plasters on the patient.

There doesn’t appear to be an answer or a route that at least mitigates some of the risk? Some would argue that the problem is small, on a similar level to store shrinkage and maybe not worth any extra effort. We would disagree.

Today the book industry is ill prepared for the potential risk. On one hand everyone is jumping up and down heralding the digital dawn and ebooks and ereaders and getting more publicity than previously dreamt of. On the other hand the digital content is for many reasons only slowly materialising, which fuels the appetite of the pirates. We have exclusive device deals which restrict and marginalise the market. We have a lack of clarity on pricing which confuses the consumer and again is a green light to pirates who can make their offer simple and uniform. We have DRM.

Digital Views From News Corp's CDO

Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s new chief digital officer, is reported in Daily Finance.com saying that he envisions a future where at least some of the TV shows and movies on Hulu, the premium video site co-owned by News Corp. (NWS), NBC Universal and Disney (DIS), are available only to subscribers.

Miller is in charge of coordinating News Corp.'s efforts to find new ways to get consumers to pay for digital content generated by News Corp.'s properties , which not only includes Fox but The Wall Street Journal, HarpeCollins and much more. He also said that newspapers will have to do to convince readers to pay for articles that they're used to getting free on the web.

He has expressed the novel idea of bundles not only of content but also against locations such that you could have a Washington bundle, a New York bundle and offer these at a single price.

Interestingly prior to joining he flipped his Wall Street Journal subscription to a cheaper one from Amazon. He now sees the other side of the table where the Post loose him asa subscriber and Amazon gain him as Amazon subscriber. Not good for the Wall Street Journal won loss both the customer management and the money.

WIPO to Consider Radical Changes To Support the Visually Impaired

A committee of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has agreed on "facilitating the access of blind, visually-impaired and other reading-disabled persons to copyright-protected works." A proposed t would effectively change copyright laws to allow the supply of books across borders for the benefit of blind people.

According to the World Blind Union (WBU) around 95% of books are estimated to be never published in any format other than standard print. So rendering many 'print disabled'. The new draft treaty would effectively relax copyright restrictions and allow the creation and supply of accessible books without the need for prior permission from the copyright owner on a non-profit basis. Since 2002 the UK Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons) Act, has made this legal in the UK. However the law is limited to visually-impaired persons and does not allow the supply of a digital book to a customer overseas.

The treaty, if signed and ratified would protect all 'reading disabled' persons and it allows the supply across borders of accessible works, as a Braille hard copy or as an e-book. This would enable an accessible version of a book in the UK available to send that to another English-speaking country where they don't have the resources to make books accessible.

Provided copies are supplied exclusively for disabled customers the proposed treaty would also allow for the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM). The WIPO copyright committee has agreed to discuss the treaty at its next meeting in November and its supporters are confident it will make progress

Going From Free to Pay

John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corp. which owns cable channels, satellite-television operator DirecTV and baseball’s Atlanta Braves, among other properties—and Liberty Global Inc., an international cable operator was recently was interviewed by Walt Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal.

When asked - how did you get people to pay for what was free TV? Malone responded, ‘ This was a huge fight that we had going back 30 years, 35 years. Everybody said television’s free, television’s free. We were blocked by federal regulation and law from offering television for a fee. That was a law change that allowed us to actually offer it.

The way it was successful was blending together the transport service with the charge for the content. When you were a cable subscriber, you weren’t sure whether you were paying for connectivity or whether you were paying for the content that was embodied in the connectivity.

You had broadcast television initially. Then you started out with distant broadcast. That’s where Ted Turner comes in. Distant broadcast television is brought into a market and added and a charge is increased. You want to get the superstation; it’s another dollar, right? Were people paying for connectivity or were they paying for content? Then, as that blurred environment continued to grow, along comes HBO and says you can watch non-commercially-interrupted movies, but now it’s optional. You don’t have to take it, but it’s another X dollars a month.

At that point, the concept of paying for some television was well enough established in the public’s mind that paying a little more for some premium television started to sell. Of course, that created the opportunity to add the CNNs and the Black Entertainment Televisions and the Discoveries and all of that. Every time we added a channel, we charged a little more. Some of the money went back to the producer of the content.
When the Internet came along, I was terribly concerned that here’s something that’s “for free.” People will pay for connectivity. The industry’s never made successfully the transition to higher-quality content or unique content delivered by the Internet you should pay for. That’s a big intellectual jump.

When asked - How having not charged for something, do you then all of a sudden turn around and charge them for it?

Malone responded, ‘ That’s really the challenge. You should be asking a psychologist. We did it by tying together something that people are perfectly used to paying for—connectivity, communication—with content. If you can introduce incrementally—now you’re getting this 4G wireless data service and, by the way, part of that are these three very interesting things that only work if you’ve got enough speed to enjoy them. Perhaps that’s a way that it can be introduced, just the intellectual concept of paying incrementally for content.

I suspect that it will evolve over time. People will pay on a per-view or on some kind of subscription basis for content on the Internet if the quality is there and there’s convenience. The question you have to ask yourself is, is there going to be an aggregator doing that? This is the role that HBO traditionally did in movies. They aggregated movies and they sold you in bulk. You got 30 movies a month for seven bucks when they started.

The cable industry would love to be the aggregator. Hulu would love to be the aggregator. There’ll be a real competition for that role in the future.

To read the full article 'Show Me The Money'

A Year is a Long Time in Today’s Technology World

We now see the inevitable division of content delivery focus, with Google going for the online reading route, others sticking to the offline reading route and Amazon probably trying to cover every conceivable option.

We are already in the device battles with eInk versus the rest. Mobiles versus ereaders and ereaders versus netbooks, laptops etc. We are just starting to see the app battles with Apple versus Andriod, versus Blackberry, versus Symbian versus Microsoft. What is certain is that whatever device you use today it will not be the device you will use, or want to use, in a couple of years.

So where would we place our bets today?

Will the ereaders survive as a one dimensional product, or will we look back fondly at them in a few years time as some quaint Delorean car, a great looking prototype that had to evolve. We hear lots about colour eInk but the demand is today not necessarily tomorrow. What is clear, is that we will see many more eink ‘lookie likies’ some merely rebadged, some exclusive, some heavily financed and some not. The price today is too high, the technology to restrictive and the concept of carrying a library around with you at all time ludicrous in the extreme. Only when we view this technology as throwaway and transient commodity will it change its appeal. This can happen as a result of adoption by a WalMart, Tesco etc or like MP3 it just becomes cheap commodity.

We also still have formats to sort out. Many may man the barricades and demand an epub world as others before them demanded an SGML or an OEB world. The truth is today the best format for most will remain the PDF in the Adobe eBook form, which contrary to popular urban myth works perfectly well on devices such as the Sony Reader. Many feared that reflow was essential and that epub gave us the answer, that the reality is now different. Don’t get us wrong we welcome epub, but it no longer is this issue as times move on.

Will DRM (Digital Rights Management) still be with us in say three years time and if so how will it work is another interesting challenge? We have seen only one aggregator switch to-date, but it gave us an insight to a potential risk. Technology may be replicable moving forward but the encrypted licences needed may be dependant on the original server or service being in place or under contract. Adobe have started to minimise this exposure but it still exists for many who have not opted for a neutral licence service. Watermarking has still to make its mark, but will it coexist with DRM, replace it, or be a nice to have?

We believe the biggest technology choice remains online versus offline. Google have clearly placed their bets online while may others scramble around trying to develop to perfect offline experience. There is no reason why eink should work with online. The issue is the mindset that says we have to own a library and we need to carry it around with us just in case we want to read another book! Is the book market the only one facing this question? We only need to look at Spotify and music, TV and the iPlayer and Hulu, games and even news and magazines. What and how we consume on the move is different to what and how we consume when not on the move. We access and use media and information differently according to the role we are playing at the time and what we want from it and yet we appear to be wanting to shoehorn a one size fits all technology approach into the market.

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that it will be different to today.

HP Have eSkin?

HP has announced a new display technology called “eSkin”.

“HP eSkins is in fact a dynamic digital surface (and not just a static display) that can be controlled to address up to 80 segments to give the perception of movement and eye-catching motion. The segmented display can be turned off and on to create visual effects.”

Well that’s as clear as mud and sounds somewhere between eInk and LCD. Is it just a bespoke designer logo or device labelling product to personalise your device or does it hold other display features? No doubt it all will become clearer soon, or maybe not...but we like the name.

Indigo To Launch a EBook Reader?

CTV Canada broke an exclusive that Indigo Books & Music Inc. are currently planning to go with an exclusive E-Book Reader manufacturer deal in Canada by the end of this year. Reporter Kris Abel gotthe news direct from a chat with CEO Heather Reisman who was appearing on Canada AM. The Sony reader is already in Canada and enjoying some success and the Kindle remains constrained by its network below the 49Th line. So some would suggest that the move to support a ebook reader is a logical route. After all, Indigo is enjoying some success with its ShortCovers mobile app, which is currently available for the iPhone 3G, iPod Touch, BlackBerry and Android-powered devices.

Why do retailers enjoy exclusive deals and this obsession with beating the easy to beat competition? Indigo is a great store with a dominant position in Canada but who is their greatest threat today and tomorrow? If they go down an exclusive route with a reader then others in Canada will have to either fold under their competitors or go it alone? We saw Waterstones make an exclusive deal with Sony which on the face of it some would say alienated them and marginalised the opportunity. If every major UK retailer had launched with Sony last year we would be looking at a healthier market today in the UK.

Picking the winners from the losers is a hard bet in the ereader market today. Some would say – leave it to the consumer and market to decide the device, reading experience and even the terms (purchase versus rental) and make sure that the service and offer is the best. Exclusive means binary decisions which are black or white and pushing consumers into these is often a foolish route.

Google's Wave

Only yesterday we wrote about peeling back the layers of GoogleWorld and now we read about another. Wave, is a new communications platform that combines the likes of instant messaging, email, wikis, photo-sharing and document-sharing within a single browser. A collaborative, communications, open source navigation tool that can potentially bring under one roof and onto one platform all office applications: email, instant messaging, document-sharing and the like.

"A 'wave' is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more," Lars Rasmussen wrote on the official Google blog. "In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content -- it allows for both collaboration and communication."

Wave could redefine applications and the role of the server giving users more control in how they communicate and where they communicate the key will be the ease of use and navigation.

Pinning the Tail on the Donkey

Today book pricing can be often regarded on a par with pinning a tail on a donkey. It’s not an exact science, its often a stab in the dark and as long as its in the general vicinity who cares. We would challenge any book buyer to go to any bookstore and accurately price the majority of books on the shelves. These can come in different shapes, sizes, pagination, with or without graphics, pictures, whatever, the diversity is very visible both of works and prices.

The issue of pricing for digital works is often complex. Do publishers base the price on the overall cost and effectively cross subsidise the various renditions and manifestations, or let each stand on its own with just the core acquisition costs being spread across all? As the revenue and cost mix changes, then the cost of producing and servicing the physical could rise, whilst the cost of the digital content should fall. However, we are a long way from that making a significant impact to many today.

So we have a digital investment cycle where publishers have the cost of establishing the infrastructure and support of digital workflow, content, metadata and marketing materials, rights management, distribution etc. with relatively little return. On the other hand they still have the cost of the physical world. To make matters worse, many still only create the digital content as an after thought and maintain the physical editorial and production process as the primary development process. Its perfectly understandable, but this ‘digital afterthought’ can also perpetuate the duplication of effort in creating and managing bibliographic and marketing materials, which in a digital workflow should be fully integrated.

So we come back to the thorny issue of pricing digital content. Yesterday the Rand Corporation announced that the suggested retail pricing on all RAND e-books was to be $9.95 each. RAND is a nonprofit research organization with some 900 titles which are available for the Kindle, iPhone, Sony and other platforms such as Overdrive, Books 24x7, ebrary, Ingram Digital/ MyiLibrary, netLibrary, Questia etc.

"In the past, we based our e-book price on the retail price of the print edition," said John Warren, marketing director for RAND Publications. "It's clear, however, that the economics of e-book distribution are different than print, where the cost of printing, distribution and returns factor into the price paid by consumers. Colour charts and a greater number of pages, for example, drive up the cost of print-on-demand, but are not a factor in electronic books."

So we have the infamous Amazon $9.99 price point and now a $9.95 one from Rand. Rand may not be a significant publisher to many, but the move again raises the issue on how to price digital content. Some will choose to base it on a discount off the latest edition. We can all see the issue when the paperback replaces the hardback and the price drops. We can all see the discount wars and a physical 3 for 2, which today is hard to replicate in the digital world. There is also the question of why the digital copy should be aligned to a physical one given that some may say it has, in some cases, been falsely inflated to accommodate deep discounts.

Often, when the situation becomes muddled, the market dictates. Look at music and the somewhat naïve moves by the trade to maintain artificially high regional and CD pricing against clear consumer backlash. They won the battle with the monopoly board, but lost the war on the street. The problem in publishing is that there are thousands of publishers and a growing number of digital resellers and it may only take a few to brake the ranks and set the price perception for all.

eInk and PVI Crearte One Vertical eInk Company

E Ink, the company that invented the e-paper displays on all the lookey likie ereaders such as the Kindle, Bebook, Hanlin, IRex and Sony and many more, has been acquired by Tiawanese Prime View International, which makes e-paper displays for the majority of the ereaders. The price is claimed to be some $215 million.

PVI acquired the e-paper business of Philips Electronics in 2005 and partnered with E Ink to provide ereader displays for the likes of the Kindle and Sony Reader. PVI also invested in flexible displays and has acquired a majority stakeholding in Hydis Technologies in Korea, who supply the transistor backplanes used in e-paper. The new combination creates a single company dedicated to electronic paper that will potentially speed up development.

E Ink and Prime View (PVI) were already partners and the goal is now to combine forces and expand capacity and e-paper improvements and push developments such as the long overdue colour and flexible displays.

The Show Must Go On?

Things change. Sounds glib, but reality is that nothing remains as it is forever. So why are we taken aback when many start to question the very social fabric of publishing – the book fair?

We didn’t go to BEA this year, not because we didn’t think it worthwhile, but simply because we felt a holiday break may prove more rewarding. We didn’t miss the frantic scurrying from stand to stand, the eating on the floor, the missed or late appointment and the sore feet? We missed the people one only sees at these events and of course Fred Bass’s Strand party. But life moves on and so should BEA, Frankfurt and London. We remember sitting in Frankfurt as the economic crunch was happening and thinking we were on some weird Titanic that refused to stop partying despite the reality of the world outside.

Just as the UK Booksellers Association has realised with their annual conference that the agenda moves on and there is always a need to question, revisit and improve. The BA conference may not work moving forward, or in its new form, but it has no god given right to do so just for the sake of it. It will be a pity if it now failed, but it has been doing so for some years, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.

It would be interesting to add the newsprint column inches devoted to Hay on Wye compared to the London Book Fair? Some may say that you can’t mix business events and consumer ones, but anyone who opens their eyes will tell you different. It’s a Book Event and should be managed, run and presented as one and remember there are only two people that matter, the creator who pours the effort in and the consumer who pays for it.

GoogleWorld Is One Big Onion

So Google is now officially going to be the biggest digital bookseller on the planet. The New York Times reports on the latest layer to be peeled back on the Google onion as it plans for media and content domination.

They certainly know the buttons to press and the words to say. Imagine you could paint a picture of a big bad wolf, blame them squarely for screwing up digital pricing, blame them for the audacity of dictating terms, point at them and deride them for creating a digital silo ereading offer that only worked in their world, with their content and on their devices. Then calmly turn around and claim that you (and only you) can save the world from this single state monopoly, give pricing back to the publishers, make digital content available anywhere, anytime and secure and delivered from a single digital warehouse. Not difficult to see the appeal of such a white knight.

The NYT claim that the Google white knight appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market. Some would be more sceptical and suggest that they are merely herding sheep. Some would suggest that many can only see Grandma in bed and are unable to see the big bad wolf in Grandma’s clothing.

Mr. Turvey, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Google, is reported saying that Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go.” He also said that Google would reserve the right to adjust prices that it deemed “exorbitant.”

If we step back and look at the potential scenarios that could evolve:

1. Google’s Book Settlement goes backwards but Google is seen to be ‘nice’ and a settlement is sweetened by their books position with publishers and ‘free’ subscription deals with libraries.
2. Google’s Book Settlement goes through and you now have the biggest retailer, custodian, whatever, single source of new, old, and everything ever written. Who will dictate terms then? What alternatives are there to it?
3. As Google shift the model online they effectively kill off the lame ereaders and exposing their greatest weakness – the old ownership/ download model. The move creates a single source repository for all - Google Book World.
4. Google enters the print on demand world and render these through affiliated printers.
5. Google roll Audio into You Tube, or ‘You Play’ or ‘You whatever’ but do so on a streamed ad model (a la Spotify)
6. Google becomes the bibliographic source of reference and holder of all secondary material.
7. Google Book Search becomes the physical book search and discovery source using physical sources as affiliates for supply.

Forget the discounting battles of today what Google can even afford to do is shift the price up and maintain or even grow margin. This sounds like the answer to everyone’s prayers, or those still left standing after the digital Tsunami.

3 Screens In One could Kill Single Screen eReaders

Imagine a screen that operates in different modes; full colour, bright and conventional LCD; a very low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a low-power, basic colour transflective mode. If successful, the displays could effectively bridge the high-speed, full-color benefits of traditional LCDs and the low-power, reader-friendly qualities of electronic ink displays. They could drive netbook sales and deliver new readers free from the current eink reader straightjacket.

Having designed the One Laptop Per Child’s (OLPC) reflective screen, Pixel Qi founder and CTO, Mary Lou Jepsen has good credentials and has posted the first pictures of the new 10.1” 3Qi display on her blog and plans to show engineering samples at Computex Taipei 2009.

The screens are initially expected to be available in 10.5-inch and 7.5-inch screen sizes and Jepson predicts will be available in the second half of the year in netbooks and e-book readers. A lot depends on the price of the 3Qi and if Jepsen can deliver close to regular LCD netbook panels, standalone LCD and e-ink panels might have a hard time justifying their existence.

E-reader makers have reason to fear such innovation because people will be able to buy devices with more functions for about the same price.

picture gizmodo

Connections From Ibiza

The last few days we spent time with a good friend David Currey in his and his partner Gary Hodge’s wonderful villa on the lively island of Ibiza. Hence the lack of recent posts!

What stuck us was how a villa half way up an island in the middle of the Mediterranean was better connected than we are in London and how global telecommunications are.

For instance we spoke about the success of the BBC iPlayer and then watched last week’s Apprentice that we missed. How can you connect to iPlayer outside the UK? The mobile reception was patchy but we then made a call back to the UK to a friend over his land line at UK rates using a UK number. All day Dave was receiving UK calls ordering Gary’s paintings and the other parties thought they were ringing a UK number. We could watch TV from around the world and Hulu from the US, even though its restricted to the US today! Of course he now is converted to Spotify. For business and personal reasons they also have multi currency accounts so can even pay many ways and the list goes on.

So before people tell you that territorial restrictions can be enforced we can reliably tell you how easy it is to break them.

Thanks for a great break Dave and if you want to see Gary’s wildlife and award winning art

Brave New World's 1,000th Article!

When we started this blog at the end of 2006 we had just finished the Brave New World report and set out to continue to inform the publishing community of digital media events, trends, opinion, insights and whatever we thought may be of interest. We never expected to write 1,000 articles and never anticipated to be still enjoying it today as much as the very first day.

It’s interesting that much of what we wrote in the report has happened, is happening, or is still likely to happen. Many of the threats risks and issues we envisaged have materialised. The omnivores we described have lived up to their billing and today we are faced with Google, Adobe, Sony, Amazon, Apple. These new entrants clearly talk about the legacy, the book, but do not share the same business drivers and models. Will they reshape the book as we know it today, almost certainly, but will it be once again driven and shaped by the format, or become format neutral and no long jacket bound?

It isn’t a surprise that Google followed by Apple and Amazon dominate the Brave New World index, with the Google Book Settlement being the most blogged about subject and the iPhone the most indexed device.

The report was written in the spirit of collaboration and promoted a vision of players working together to make it happen and support each other. However we have seen the increasing use of ‘exclusive’ digital deals. These can often have a marginalising effect and be counter productive in growing the market. Collaboration is a word much used and like interoperability is often little practiced. Many follow the new entrants and look to go direct to the consumer and in doing so adopt an ‘I am alright jack’ approach. The resultant duplication of effort may sort the real opportunities from the also rans, but it can also lead to much consumer confusion, duplication of industry effort and of course, waste. It is hardly surprising but understandable that today, as an industry, we still lack a point of digital reference, terms, table of comparisons and somewhere independent of ‘agendas’ for all to share and use. It is not surprising that many have exploited the lack of consensus, built their digital fortresses and land-grabbed orphan works.

There is still a lack of real digital leadership from within publishing and the big issues remain; DRM and its restrictive nature, territorial rights within a global economy, pricing and the $9.99 price point, the royalty model and author reward and the fact that digital is often an afterthought and produced on the back of analogue and linear production processes.

However, we see the digital shift starting to gain momentum and many opportunities ahead for authors and consumers. The big question is who will remain between these two in years to come? Who will be seen by both parties to add value and who will be disintermediated in the digital Brave New World?

Nokia launch Ovi App Store

Nokia the number one mobile player has finally launched its Ovi Store. The service will rival BlackBerry, Android and of course Apple’s app stores and will be available to 50 million Nokia users worldwide, allowing them to install software and games directly on to their handsets. Nokia intend to follow others by retaining 30% of apps sales revenues onsite.

Apple’s iTunes App Store has lead the field, with customers downloading more than a billion apps in the nine months since the service launched. It is expected that Microsoft will also launch its own mobile app store with the release of its new Windows Phone operating system later this year.

The list of Ovi compatible handsets is limited to 50 although Nokia's supports 125 mobiles . Interestingly operator billing is supported in the, which may result in micropayment, try before you buy apps and free minimum model opportunities.

Google Attempts to Placate Its Library Community

Sometimes you read news and can go straight to the core point and understand it other its like treading through treacle and you have top think hard what they are trying to say. So when the University of Michigan announced an amended deal with Google over its scanning programme we were perplexed on many fronts.

Some would say that Google is now bringing the libaries into the agreement albeit once more by their favoured back door. Others that its Google’s attempts to placate criticism, potential justice department eyes and win over the confused masses still trying to understand the settlement deal. Whichever the driver is we then have the agreement.

Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder and its president of technology is widely reported claiming opposition to the settlement is “pretty short- sighted and contradictory…There was no option prior to this to get these sorts of books online.”

The new agreement, which Google hopes other libraries will endorse, lets the University of Michigan and any of the other 21 US institutions that lend books to Google for scanning object if it thinks the prices Google charges libraries are too high. Any pricing dispute would be resolved through arbitration.

The new agreement also gives the university, and any library that signs a similar agreement, a discount on its subscription proportional to the number of books it contributes to Google’s mass digitization project. To rub the point home, Michigan will receive Google’s service free for 25 years and is hardly ever going to complain about anything. Some may see it as saying ‘I scan your books you get them cheap I don’t you pay my rates and can’t object.’

The new agreement does not cover the issue of orphan works and privacy of readers of Google’s digital library. Importantly it starts to raise the question of whose the library are we
http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/Amendment-to-Cooperative-Agreement.pdf

iPhone Appworld

Gartner report that the apps are clearly driving the smartphone market which has grow by some 3% and is now 13.53% of the total number of phones sold. Apple has seen a rise of 128% and with nearly 4 million units in the first quarter of 2009, they have doubled their share of the smartphone market to close on 11%.

So what is happening in the app world re ereaders?

Last week Apple censored the Eucalyptus ereader iPhone app because it carried ‘offensive content’ in the form of a download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg. There were no pictures just text, but they say that reading is about imagination. The dispute is now over and Eucalyptus has received its publicity and the app is live on the app store at $5.99 with 20,000 public domain works from Project Gutenberg.

Is Eucalyptus any better or worse than the other ereader apps? It has some pluses and some minuses but despite the 20,000 titles you can’t help think where does it want to be when it grows up? Does it want to be an iPhone front end to project Gutenberg - a laudable mission but hardly one that is going to go places. Does it want to fill the possible space that may be now left by Stanza – again understandable, but is it as good or just placing itself on the shelf to be bought? We see a nice reader but little else today.

A few weeks after its purchase of Stanza Amazon just announced an upgrade to its Kindle for iPhone app. Is this following and mimicking the features developed by Stanza? The new release allows consumers to read in the landscape mode, pinch-zoom and scale-up images, use a tap or a flick to turn pages and you can now change backgrounds from black on white to white on black or even a sepia background for easier reading.

The big difference between Amazon and Eucalyptus is content. Eucalyptus has 20,000 public domain works, the Kindle’s has 275,000 titles. Amazon’s may be for sale but they are more relevant and its no good having the best reader if you can’t read the books you want to read on it.

Borders Enter A Brave New World

Borders Uk in going live with its new e-book service in the UK has taken a significant step into the Brave New World we reported on some two and half years ago. Some would say it is merely just another ebookstore and after all Waterstones has been selling ebooks for some 8 months and US retailers a lot longer. However, there is a difference and a significant one, for all the UK retailers who wish to sell digital books - it is powered by Gardners Books Digital Warehouse.

Gardners Books were the first to adopt an ‘inclusive’ technology that enables them to distribute not only the titles in its warehouse but titles in others digital warehouses and the resellers aren’t Gardners but any retailer with a connection. The same technology also underpins major digital publishers such as Taylor and Francis and the Danish library system eBog.dk.

No more does the publisher have to give even reseller, or even an aggregator their digital files. Everyone just agrees the messages to be exchanged and the files are held once, wherever and are only supplied direct to consumer when sold. Importantly it enables resellers to sell digital alongside physical books and have the books drop shipped direct to the consumer. No more is the customer handed over to another when they want an ebook. The retailer retains the transaction and the customer. This enables any retailer to sell ebooks on the internet, over the phone even in store and importantly continue to own the consumer relationship and their transaction.

Well done Borders for adopting an ‘inclusive’ not the ‘exclusive’ digital model of others.

Pirate Bay Judges Walk the Plank

The founders of The Pirate Bay were recently found guilty of breaking copyright laws and sentenced to one year in prison. The men were ordered to pay £2.5 million in damages to entertainment companies including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures. That ruling was appealed because the judge who sent them down - Tomas Norström - was a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association.

The possibility of personal bias raised its head and Norström was replaced by Ulrika Ihrfelt, who has now been stood down because she's a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association. A final decision on whether the case will return to court could still be many weeks away, but the chances of an appeal must certainly be increasing and unfortunately the law is once again is making an ass of itself.

So is $9.99 the eBook Price Point?

BooksOnBoard, the online eBook and Audio Book shop, has announced a massive discount on current New York Times Bestsellers, slashing prices from around $20-$30 to the price point of $9.99 and below. The price reduction is scheduled to last until Wednesday, May 27. So we see short term promotional price discounting similar to that done by Fictionwise, who some may say had one every weekend to celebrate everything and nothing. So what is the big deal?

Firstly $9.99 happens to be the price point chosen by Amazon for its ebooks and irrespective of whether they held it or not the perception sticks. So just like Apple did with the iTunes price point we now see others following with the $9.99 ebook price point.

Digital pricing may now no longer be established by the publisher or even the retailer but by the market. Once you have a recognised price point it is hard to drive consumers away from it. Look at the recent reaction when many raised concerns that they perceived Amazon was trying to raise the price from $9.99.

The question is not whether $9.99 is right or wrong but what is that impact on both the value chain and the author, publisher, aggregator, reseller etc? What is the knock on impact on the physical book model? Is the price point sustainable or merely a promotional price and how is that managed?

We have seen many readjustments in the ebook model such as the initial author rewards split being pegged back, with some advocating that they should now only receive a flat fee on digital.

Whenever we look at pricing there is that classic cause and effect implications that have to be thought through but in a market which has tens of thousands of authors, thousands of publishers, thousands of titles the point of aggregation often makes the decision and often based on their needs and their margins.

Readers Only Need One Place?

ReadersPlace aims to be the social networking site for book clubs, offering global interaction, debate and thoughts about their favourite books. They can web chat with authors live, get reading guides to more than 200 titles including author details and interviews, plot summaries, starting points for discussions and suggested further reading. Of course their will be promotional and discount deal offered at www.rbooks.co.uk.

West Midlands Library Authorities have been part of the pilot helping to develop the site and comes on the back of many innovative new services from Random House.

We welcome this more social engagement with readers and linking authors to their readers in every way possible. Our only comment is that its Random House and what a difference it would be if it embraced more publishers both large and small and all books. At a time when Richard and Judy are being put to rest and a simple twitter from Jonathan Ross can generate a twitter storm and best seller, one questions why its so hard for publishers and retailers to collaborative and embrace an inclusive model and approach? Some would say that its every man for himself and publishers are all after the same sale, but some would suggest the bigger prize is being lost and there are now some big gorillas sitting in the back yard who also don’t understand collaboration.

We believe that if say the major six UK distributors, all of which are owned by the major publishers, actually collaborated to create a joint social network it would probably cover 75% of the UK market and more importantly provide a real incentive for everyone to participate from the authors to th readers and that sales would flow to the deserving but the buzz would be significant. There again we are only dreamers.

Who Needs Esperanto

Esperanto was a ‘quango language’ developed in some vain attempt create a generic language we could all use. It failed.

For some time Google has offer it translate function under its search and we have often dropped whole chunks of text in it in order that we can understand text written in a foreign language. It may not get the grammar right but in a few seconds it does a great job of translation.

Following hot on the heels of its native PDF support, Google have now announced that it will embedded the feature into its email service GMAIL. A simply enables "Message Translation" from the Labs tab under Settings, and when you receive an email in a language other than your own, in one click Gmail will help you translate it into a language you can understand.

The question is whether it will be enough to get people to move to GMAIL, or whether users will simply cut and paste into the existing Google translation service.

Hulu To Step Into Kangeroo Void

Its ironic that the day that news broke that Orange has decided not to acquire the technology that was developed for Project Kangaroo, Hulu announced it was coming to the UK in September.

Kangaroo was the UK video on demand venture service proposed jointly by the UK broadcasters BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4, to position themselves in a global market and fully online. The service and some may say naively squashed by the government when it decided it wasn’t part of their Digital Britain plans and raised competition concerns. It emerged that Orange was considering making a purchase of Kangaroo's underlying IPTV technology for its Orange TV services in France and elsewhere in Europe, but now that is no more.

Hulu, the free online video-on-demand service backed by News Corp, NBC Universal and Disney, doesn’t face the same governmental controls and is set to launch in Britain in September 2009, with 3,000 hours of American content and ITV and Channel 4 as content partners. Hulu is also understood to be in talks with the BBC.

So rather than have a strong UK service we now all fall in with a very strong US one. It beggars belief what the legacy of this UK government will finally be but good decision making will not be high on many peoples lists.

It is rumoured that negotiations have paused due to Hulu wishing to retain control over Channel 4’s and ITV’s advertising sales on the platform. Who will give in and what ad model will prevail is unclear but it’s a shame that a UK solution was scuppered in the first place.

Its Good To Talk

What may you ask is the mobile termination rate and what does it mean and cost UK mobile users?

UK telecomms regulator Ofcom has announced a public consultation into the issue but public awareness may also help push the agenda forward and just as with roaming charges the EU may have a role to play in bringing about change.

The charge is a payment to mobile networks for receiving calls outside their network. Its set by the receiver and although it has dropped over the years it is now seen by many as counter productive and a money spinner. There are many devices are now exclusive to a network and the predominant user model is fixed term usage. This leads to users get tied into networks and the majority of calls received almost certainly being from fixed line and other networks.

The charge is currently 4.4 per minute for Vodafone and O2, 4.5p for Orange and T-Mobile and 5.4p for 3. The charge ultimately costs fixed line operators around £750m a year generates 14% per cent of mobile-to-mobile revenue. The USA, the model is effectively reversed and incoming minutes count as part of your bundle.
Ofcom also agrees that terminating networks have a monopoly position on the charge and is considering a number of options. So it appears we may soon be paying a lot less to talk.

To read more The Register

So What Do You Between The Sheets?

We used to curl up in bed with a good book and if we were cold a hot water bottle but today perhaps the computer gives us both and some radiation to boot!

According to figures released today by data security specialists Credant technologies, 57% of people in the UK who their work in bed “do so for between 2 and 6 hours every week.” Yes the survey did say work, not watching movies, catching up on iPlayer or playing games, but work. They also said their partners found it "a very annoying habit". 8% also confessed to spending more time on their mobile devices during the evening than talking to their partners and 4% said checking email was the last thing they did before going to sleep. So, if you’re turning down your better half’s sexual advances in favour of some hot newsfeed or email thoughts from a colleague, then perhaps you have a problem.

Obviously people are now so mobile and technology fixed they will work anywhere – even in bed." There again, these were city workers!

So just how dependant on your technology fix are you?

Used Games Kiosks

Ars Technica gave us a fascinating insight into used games with a report ‘The facts behind the game-trade kiosks’. It tells of a new kiosk being deployed ePlay in 77 Wal-Mart NorthEast US stores and 200 other locations.

The gamer wanting to sell his game can get it valued on line or take it to the kiosk and scan it in. If the trade in price is ok the disc is inserted and the kiosk identifies its condition and authenticity and the seller’s id and the empty jewel case is inserted into the trade bin beside the kiosk. If the disc is not genuine or poor condition the kiosk spits it out and says it’s unacceptable.

If the disk is unidentifiable or does not match what the user stated, there will be a screen that advises the user that the disk did not match and the disk will be returned credit will be withheld. Recovered disc are then sent to their refurbishing and distribution centre.

These kiosks also enables the user to purchase or rent games. We can’t see it in the Book business where even the kiosk dispenser has failed to catch on.

Can You Live Even a Week Without Technology?

The BBC have a video of some teenagers in Los Angeles who took part in an experiment to find how they would cope without their electronic gadgets for a week. It worth watching and is an interesting insight into our dependency on both technology and electronic communication.


Perhaps, its time we had a technology rest day just to remind us of what these kids experienced.

Looking at the World Through a Lens

The New York Times has launched a large-format photo blog to showcase photojournalism projects. The blog is aptly called Lens, draws on the prestige of the paper. The blog has no dedicated staff and no budget for photography. It will showcase work shot for the Times’ print edition, personal projects by Times photographers, wire service photographs, and work provided for publication at no cost.

The Times promises to also highlight "the best work of other newspapers, magazines and news and picture agencies." According to the site, images from the Times pictorial archives, said to number in the millions of images dating back to the early 20th century, will also be shown.

You can expect us to ask you for your photos on some topical subject or theme," notes Times blogger David W. Dunlap.

Lens has an Adobe Flash interface that lets viewers view images using arrow keys and allows them to display photographs full-screen without the clutter of menu bars. You can view all today's images and makes reviewing the news through a lens very interesting. Well done for something very different

How Thin Is Your TV?

How thin can TVs go? Apparently by changing the underlying technology LG has created what it claims is the world’s thinnest LCD TV panel which is 5.9mm thick or thinner than the average pencil! The screens are only available in 42in and 47in screen sizes and weigh only 6.1kg for the 42in and 7.3kg for the 47in which is claimed to be 50% lighter than similar sized LCDs lit by cold cathode elements.

Instead of placing LEDs behind the screen to light the display the technology uses LEDs placed around the edges of the screen. The technology is not new or unique with Samsung introducing a 32-55in range of edge-lit screens earlier this year.

So TVs may becoming like pictures anyone can hang on the wall and maybe without extra strong fixtures!

Cybook Opus Takes Ebook Readers Smaller

So as the eink readers go after the textbook and newprint world and get larger one has decided to go pocket size and compete with other mobile devices. Bokeen has announced the Cybook Opus E-Reader a small 5.3 ounces device has a 5-inch e-ink screen, with a 600-by-800-pixel resolution, and can display text in 12 different font sizes. It's also designed to be operated with one hand, with shoulder page-changer buttons and a central joystick-like control; has a motion sensor to rotate the display for landscape orientation, and 1GB of on-board storage. It supports ePub and PDF formats

Palm and Apple Will Contest June

June looks to be the ‘mobile month’ with the much awaited launch of the Palm Pre in the US on the 6th June and whatever Apple are going to announce two days later on the 8th.

We can only speculate on the Apple moves but we can clearly state the Palm Pre ones. The device announced as the ‘iPhone killer’ finally arrives albeit in the US only and also only on the Sprint network. No launch date has bee announced for the UK. The much-anticipated handset will cost $199.99 (£129), after a rebate, and buyers must take out a two-year contract when signing.

One of the most appealing features of the Pre is webOS, the operating system that combines a variety of online services into a finger-friendly user interface. The phone automatically recognises when owners connect to social or e-mail services and builds up a global list of contacts and login details as it is used. Unlike many other phones, the handset also allows owners to have several different applications running at the same time.

The large touch screen, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, 8 GB of storage, and Bluetooth, all stack up well against rivals like the iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Storm, and the T-Mobile (Android) G1.

Palm will also be launching the Touchstone charging kit June 6. This puck-sized device can charge the handset wirelessly. The Touchstone charging kit will be sold for $69.99. Palm is also investing in an iPhone-style software development kit for third-party developers to create applications for WebOS called theMojo SDK.

The Pre's release date could be a gamble coming two days before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference and theBlackberry Storm, was also billed as the iPhone killer.

On Demand Overtakes the Rest

We now have more US on demand and short run titles coming to market than those produced by traditional production methods. However, what does that mean and if the trend were to continue, what are the likely implications? Bowker report today that whilst traditional title production fell by 3% to 275,232, in 2008, the on demand titles rose 132%, to 285,394 and the number of titles rose 38%, to 560,626 titles. The rise in on demand follows the record increase of 462% in 2007 and since 2002, has risen 774% in comparison to a 126% increase in traditional titles.

Today on demand is not just about self publishing or keeping that back list alive and is gaining a wider publishing take up. Yesterday was very much print just in case and accepting that ‘extra special print run-on’ to reduce the unit cost. Today is more print in time, producing short print runs with the ability to quickly respond to demand if required. The long tail is getting longer, with more publishers looking at their back list, or to keep titles in print by flipping them to POD and so avoiding rights reversals. The investment is low and has long attracted self publishing authors wanting to see themselves in print. It has also worked well for high priced mongraphs whose sales are low and reasonably predictable. Some such as Cambridge University Press have proved themselves ver adept in using POD to increase revenues.

However, POD has not only helped built the Ingram Lightning Source but also help kick start the Ingram Digital Ventures. The flip from POD to ebook is but a small step and as PDF based Adobe eBooks are still the dominate format, the relationship between POD and eBook will surely grow ever stronger in many ways.

We now see new POD entrants and the production of service neutral files linked to automated formatting and distribution makes much sense moving forward.

Finally will the self publishing model now move online or ebook and away from POD, or will the lure of a printed book still seduce these authors? Whatever the direction the file once created can potentially serve both.

Giving eink a Bad Name?

So you roll over in the early hours of the morning and look at your watch and can instaly see the time , no more squinting and trying to read the luminous dials in the dark. However is that really the ultimate use of eink technology or vanity gone mad?

Phosphor are introducing a line of e-ink watches which look a liitle less Bond and a bit more Thunderbirds without the FAB. The retro-future style is probably clunky to most but will appeal to some and the oversized fit the oversized price ticket of around $200.

The Digital Hour model has two different views, one with huge numerals and another with a circular hour dial. The Phosphor Calendar, tells you the time and a month’s calendar, with day-of-the-week indicator.

Personally we still await the LG wrist phone which has style, functionaly and unfortunately a high price ticket.

Digital Textbooks Are Only Part of The Solution

We read today in the Bookseller that ‘Amazon prepares for 'textbook e-reader wars'’. The story emulates from Evan Schnittman, vice-president global business development at Oxford University Press who claims that amazon had revealed the device early so it could stake out its territory before the academic market becomes home to the "textbook e-reader wars".

The reality is that there will be a battleground in all levels of education for what is a very lucrative prize, that of the device of choice for students of all ages and the sale of content to them. Will the solution be the same? It’s a hard call, but what is clear is that the device by itself will not be the answer. The device plus ebooks, in whatever format, is even not the answer. To everyone but the textbook publisher these are merely part of the answer.

Students require connectivity, reference, to be able to capture notes, bookmark, diaries, collate files, create documents, will probably not be restricted to text, or even greyscale. Therefore ask yourself as a student with limited disposable income, would you rather invest in a Kindle DX at $489 (£325) or more suitable devices that are not tied to content and a single business model and that can’t connect to all resources and can do more than download and store mere documents.

Ask these three basic questions to the students:
Do you own a iphone?
Do you own a kindle?
Do you own a laptop / netbook?
Next ask them if they don’t have all the above would they expect to buy one in the next 12months?

The King or Kindle may have new clothes but it’s the same underneath.

Scribd today iTunes Tomorrow?

Last December Social publishing firm Scribd announced that it has raised $9 million and had hired George Consagra, former chief operating officer of Bebo, as its president. Since then the news has been ‘mixed’, it now claims 60 million visitors a month, has got some support from some publishers uploading their content and on the downside a significant amount of bad press over their hosting of copyright infringed materials. Inherently it is a document sharing site – a YouTube for documents, letting anyone upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail. It claims to have amassed 35 billion words in a mix of books, PowerPoint presentations, legal briefs, and other documents.

Today Scribd has moved up a gear announcing it will be an ecommerce site enabling publishers, authors and owners to charge for their materials so moving from YouTube to eBay, or as they hope iTunes. A logical step and one that should result in a deluge of previously self published materials, publisher experiments and without doubt some more questionable pirate works. The new store will enable users to set their own price for their work and keep 80% of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with DRM security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.

Scribd has also announced plans for an application for the iPhone next month and that it is also building a database of copyrighted works in an attempt to help filter out pirate works and negate publisher’s fears and frustrations. Scribd may hope that by enabling publisher to make money it can mollify its critics but may be hard for publishers to back a venture that is at the same time seen to be undermining them.

The interesting aspect will be not the mainstream publishing works which will no doubt be poured in by many eager to see if they can make extra revenue at no cost but with self published works. Will it change the vanity market from print on demand to online? Will it bring more short stories or serialised stories to the market? Will it undermine the position of the publisher who will now clearly site alongside every budding author on what may be a level playing field? Will it provide the market tested slushpile of the future? Will the database of copyright be seen to perform or undermine its adoption?

We now await the market reaction and obvious response from others such as Wattpad.

Kindled

Would you pay to read this blog? The answer would probably a resounding no. We may get upset but the reality it isn’t what you pay for and there are plenty more where this came from.

However, Amazon's latest experiment may start people to think about the value of the things they read as they try to persuade consumers to pay for online content such as blogs. By paying a nominal price for a subscription, users can have automatic access to their favorite blogs. Well we couldn’t ignore the opportunity to experiment with them so as of a day soon (it has to be moderated first) those of you in the US with a Kindle will be able to read this blog. Obviously any colour, animations will be missing but it will be interesting to watch and we never cease to be amazed at what happens in this new world.

It will be interesting to see what the subscription price will be set at and if there are any takers.

You Are Never Too Old

Who said that the technology and digital revolution was only for the young? When Ivy Bean heard that a 97 year ago French woman was the oldest member of Facebook she decided to join. She soon attracted 5,000 friends and has 17,775 people waiting to be her friend. Unless you know someone older, Ivy from Bradford is now the oldest Facebook member at 103 years old and has now joined Twitter and already has 9500 followers!

Her daughter Sandra Logan, 61, said: "It has given her a new lease of life and she has met some marvellous people all over the world. She speaks to a woman in Norway who has named a cow after her."

Her latest twitters read :
‘hello im going to spend my morning reading papers ‘, ‘i have now reached 5,000 followers so im saying goodnight for today be back tomorrow thank you everybody ‘, ‘had a loverly afternoon with my friends here at hillside just had tea just having a chat with the staff.’

The PC may have past many of the older generation by and been seen by them as a mere expensive toy, the mobile may be viewed by many as a complex phone and only used as a phone, email may dominate our lives but unless you have others to email its not essential. Now thanks to new high-speed broadband connection in public libraries, thousands of pensioners are now able to only to join Ivy and learn new ways to communicate. This older group may now have found the way to start to be engaged in the digital world and influence its direction.

They may not have the disposable income but they have the time, a wealth of knowledge and experience and are historically heavy readers. Many may want to capture their own history and experiences, not necessarily for money but as a legacy, others to just find new friends. It is relatively easy to see many social communities develop that were not possible a few years ago.

Is it possible that we may start to see a shift, not only the source of content for the self publishing market, but also to break away from the current vanity publishing business models that may be seen to exploit vanity, more than encourage writing. We don’t need long works and these new tools demand shorter more focused content. Maybe it’s the older generation that will lead us to rethink the book in a digital form.

Well done Ivy and long may you enjoy twittering

Making Your Mind Up or Not?

Apparently by some divine intervention, or stab in the dark, The New York Times will decide by the end of June how to charge content and what content it will charge for. So what are the options that they are considering and what will it mean to their readers the news and the future of the paper?

But in the same week it announced its charging review it also announced that is changing the way it delivers online news to its readers, in rolling out its new Times Reader 2.0 desktop application. The app is built on the Adobe AIR platform, offering a desktop readers news by categories in easy-to-read columns. The important difference will be that the days news is downloaded at the start of the connection , obviating the need to be online to read it. Each section of the paper is represented in the Times Reader 2.0 and appears on the same day it would appear in print. It also provides the user with the opportunity to browser the paper and happen on stories they way they would with the physical paper. It also supports video and crosswords.
The Times Reader 2.0 will be included in the cost of a print subscription. Otherwise, interested readers can download the Adobe AIR application and read the news for a subscription rate of $3.45 per week.

So what about these other options and why the mixed stories. The New York Observer claims that in its report that Executive editor Bill Keller told a staff meeting last week that one includes a "meter system." The user roam freely on the Web site until hitting a predetermined limit of word-count or pageviews, after which after the meter starts and the reader is charged for every movement thereafter. This is obviously fraught with negatives; the user may be prepared to read under the limit then switch off, alternatively set the meter too high and the reader will never pay. The second proposal is a membership to the community. “You write a check, you get a gift and access and join the club. Again how do you plan on such a club having the right appeal for the right numbers to join? It is reported that Kerr said that once the decision is made it may take some time to implement that a pay model may be applied to The Times' mobile Web site first before the Web site as a whole.

So either we have contradicting stories in circulation or NYT is tapping the keyboards whilst Rome burns.

Hearst's Views on Digital Magazines

The Telegraph covers an interesting interview and article with Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines Cathie Black president of Hearst Magazines and the First Lady of glamorous glossies

Talking about the range of titles under her control she says "You have Cosmopolitan magazine with a cute picture on the front. Then there's the internet, the mobile site, the e-reader, the books, the television programme, the radio show. Only then do you have a 360 degree brand."

Black strongly believes that the e-reader, hand-held devices will be the next big medium for magazines and have the potential to exploit the stylish layout of a consumer magazine. She is reported saying, "The company has a big investment in a product called Firstpaper," but concedes two hold ups, "Most readers don't do full colour yet and there's no way it can handle advertising at this point. But there will be advertising. That has to be that part of the model."

She doesn’t think that paid for subscriptions for magazines, “because they are not informational like a financial newspaper…We have to think of magazines and newspapers as two very separate entities – not disassociating ourselves exactly, but we do need to keep our distance."

We have already reported on the Hearst marketing initiative in fitting microchips that showed a scrolling, eye-catching advertisement for a cable television channel to the February edition of Esquire and Black is certainly keen to continue to experiment.

"Maybe now there's too much choice in the digital world," she finnishes, "How funny if we all ended up back with our print copies."

Spotify Plans and US Entry?

Our favourite music streaming service, Spotify, which has more than a million UK users and provides a legal alternative to unlicensed file-sharing services and enables artists, record labels and music publishers to receive royalties, has announced it plans. They are working on an iPhone application, but also wants to make the service available on other handsets. The mobile service will be only available to paying subscribers.

They also aim to improve sound quality, enabling new releases before they hit shops, more social networking features, exclusive tracks, behind-the-scenes material from big-name artists and merchandising such as T-shirts, concert tickets and vinyl will be sold to fans as they are listening to their favourite band. Spotify are working on a deal with Last.fm to provide song recommendations and making it easier for fans to find acts they like.

Spotify is currently available in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and Spain, but now plan to take the service to the US.

A Cheap Kindle?

A Kindle for under $100 on Ebay!


Be careful with the splinters in the finger!

Asus has launched the Eee PC Seashell slimline netbook in London. The 10” LED screen, has a power-efficient Atom N280 processor, 1GB of memory, 160GB hard drive, multi-touch trackpad, Windows XP Home and Microsoft Works. It weighs a mere 1.1kg, and is claimed to run for up to 6 hours. Asus are primed to also launch a number of other EEE related products in the next few weeks.



The 1008HA Seashell is clearly one of a number of Macbook Air and MSI has also announced its ultra-thin X340 and X320 notebooks will be released in the UK at the end of May. These weigh-in at 1.3Kg and measure 330mm x 224mm x 19.8mm. The X340 and X320 both offer widescreen 13.4The disappointment is the price with the X340 predicted to cost around £850 and the X320 and around £650.

No More A Roaming We Will Go?

Vodafone has become the first mobile phone operator to abolish roaming charges, meaning its customers will pay the same price abroad as they do at home. From June 1, Vodafone’s 18 million UK passport customers will be able to call and text phones in Britain from 35 European countries for the same price that they would be charged in Britain. This is initially on offer until the end of August. It is this move could be followed by other mobile operators as caps on roaming fees are due to come into force on July 1.

Viviane Reding, the EU Telecoms Commissioner has targeted the charges a “roaming rip-off”, with a two-year plan to cut charges by an average of 60%.The price of a roaming for a British customer in Europe could be cut from an average 25p to a maximum of 10p and the cost of downloading a megabyte of information will cost no more than 92p if consumers pay standard rates. The current cap of 41p per minute for a call made to Britain from another EU country will drop to 31p by July 2011.

Vodafone has also announced plans to launch a mobile application store for their 290 million worldwide customers, following similar announcements from others such as RIM, Nokia, and Microsoft. Software developers will be able to use to store as a single point of access to Vodafone’s global customer base. Developers will be able to use Vodafone’s billing system to charge for apps with a share of their profit going directly to Vodafone.

Sony Reader to Carry Adverts

New Media Age reported that Sony is likely to soon include third-party advertising opportunities on its Sony Reader as more publishers come on board. The devices is claimed to have sold over 300,000 units globally and today is seen by many as the opponent to Kindle and outside the US its often viewed as the only offer and certainly the only device that can render DRM epub today. However, as other devices adopt the Adobe ACS4 toolkit it position as the only epub device will soon be negated.

So why adverts and how will they appear? Will Sony discount the device in line with the ad revenues expected or publishers use it as a sampler similar to the Kindle? Can we get an ad free device at a premium? Are ads coming to accomadate newspapers, magazines and a larger reader – afterall Kindle has 3 models and Sony only has two. Are ads part of a larger programme to be wireless and therefore offer the ability to not only connect without the Adobe Editions mothership but also transact direct from the Sony reader?
Steve Haber, president of Sony Electronics’ digital reading business division, is reported “Advertising is not part of the business model at the moment but I would imagine that when it comes to periodicals, newspapers and magazines, those businesses are built around the advertising model so I would imagine it going in that direction.”

So what does the ereader want to be when it grows up?

Perhaps it can take on some of the business that Craiglist is now turning away. The US classified ads website says it will remove its erotic services category. Apparently, it promotes prostitution and prostitutes and clients use the site for illegal sexual encounters.

Several law enforcement agencies across the US have threatened the management of Craigslist with prosecution and last November Craigslist announced a deal with 40 state attorneys general that said it would charge for erotic services ads and require advertisers to use a credit card for payment.

In place will be a new closely monitored adult services section.

Encore une fois

Amazon has announced a new program called AmazonEncore in which they will license and republish previously-published books that they believe have been overlooked and also by authors that they believe show potential for greater sales. The announcement notes that in addition to offering titles through Amazon, the Kindle store and Audible, they will make Encore books available to the trade. Amazon intend to publish the English-language edition of encore books in all countries where they have a web site.
The first book chosen is by 16-year-old Cayla Kluver and is her self-published fantasy romance novel LEGACY, which Encore will republish in hardcover in August. Amazon acquired world English rights from the original publisher Forsooth (created by Kluver's mother to publish the book).

It is not clear today whether all Encore’s books will be from previously self published titles and whether Amazon is trying to make serious inroads into attracting self published authors into their stable, or whether Amazon is taking steps to redefine itself as an end to end player. There is no reason why the same model can’t be applied to orphan works, previously mainstream published works under a new licence and whether they will also now buy into reprint runs. Amazon has the clout and focus to make any descent book a bestseller, even if that is within there own fortress. Some may say that this will further strengthens their control of the market and their bottom-line.

The driver for the new venture will be based on, "information such as customer reviews on Amazon websites." Amazon has long captured feedback and if added to its sales data and also that from its other services such as ABE it makes a solid base on which to select its titles. ‘Brought back by popular demand’ is also a very customer centric approach which will resonate with many who may today see shelf space being bought and what some may also call manufactured winners.

French Three Strikes Makes the Statute

The media world has been quietly watching the French attempts to implement a ‘three strikes and you are out’ law for punishing people who download music and films illegally by cutting off their Internet connections. First it was happening then no one turned up and it didn’t get passed now the first government agency to punish online pirates has been created in France.

The vote has cleared both chambers and is to be French law, or is it?

Critics say the law misses the point, targeting traditional downloads at a time when online streaming is taking off and others claim that users using public WiFi hotspots or using masked IP addresses might make them impossible to trace.

Last week the European Parliament prohibited any EU governments from cutting off a user's Internet connection without first passing through a court of law. This still needs ratification by the European Council but would impact the new French law before the ink has even dried.

Critics say the law misses the point, targeting traditional downloads at a time when online streaming is taking off and others claim that users using public WiFi hotspots or using masked IP addresses might make them impossible to trace.

Brave New World Revisited Part 1: Are we all Participating

There have been some interesting debates in the blogshere and over emails about what appears to be the threat of the new entrants and the overall balance of the publishing marketplace. These are not new and were well documented in our Brave New World report close to 3 years ago. What is now new is that the reality is starting to happen, changes are starting to be seen and the industry is now starting to wake up and smell the coffee.

So what are we talking about? Today we look briefly at the independents’ digital opportunities

First, there is contrary to many beliefs a real place for the independent bookseller in the digital marketplace but they need to want to participate and be allowed to participate. There are no free lunches and natural extensions of the physical world. Equally those who believe that the independents can’t participate or wish to steal their market better wake up and think about how they bridge the revenue gap – if you take out your existing channel you take out your existing revenues. You may not like who you have to do business with tomorrow.

Second, unless the digital divide between those who can and those who aren’t allowed is closed then the digital divide could come home to bite all. Publishing has long been said by some to be like spread betting you place many bets and hope that the overall receipts will outweigh the bets placed. When you narrow the market then spread bets become harder and mistakes a lot more painful. By retaining and supporting the existing channel we can ensure options are not closed down. The digital age gives us the ability to create a level playing field but all too often we choose the technology to narrow and close down the field.

Third, Digital is good and can live alongside physical. They are only mutually exclusive if we want them to be. Yes, digital may reduce the effectiveness of a general offer but it can also reduce the effectiveness of a vertical one. Those who advocate either or, do not respect that the world is not binary today, nor tomorrow. Digital offers booksellers and librarians the real opportunity to engage, add value and develop their communities but if all is achieved is a ‘white label’ web site they have failed miserably. That doesn’t preclude them from selling white label stock, that’s a given, but giving away their customers or treating them as mere distant buyers is not a wise course to pursue.

Fourth, price matters. Of course consumers will always be drawn to price but this tends to be for know items not browsing. So the key is to capture the browser, the impulse buy and keep hold of him and use the bookselling skills to sell to him irrespective of price but built on trusted relationship.

The Brave New World report has so far failed to deliver its promise. Some may say it couldn’t work and the cards were stacked against it, others will point to the infamous BA conference walk-out and the bad positioning of some of the follow-up process, others to the power of the new entrants, some would suggest the folly of exclusive and marginalised deals etc. We believe that only today with the imminent roll out of inclusive and not exclusive services such as Gardners Digital Warehouse in the UK, do we see a opportunity for all to participate. However, even as we write some may suggest that there are rules set for some that are not being allowed for others.

BBC iPlayer Under The Sheets?

We have written before about the hugely successful BBC iPlayer but were amazed that it now claims to stream 12GB of data every second, and seven petabytes (PB) of data every month.

BBC iPlayer boss Anthony Rose, who was previously CTO at that famous music file sharing service Kazaa, disclosed much about its future in an exclusive interview with CNET UK, 'BBC iPlayer Numbers Revealed'.

Interestingly they clearly back the streaming route over downloads and according to Rose, its clearly what everyone wants today. He intimates that there could be a personal service feature sending alerts, enabling pre booking and updating your online library. The usage must reflect lifestyle and peaks about 10pm, about one hour later than TV , but the iPlayer on the iPhone peaks at about midnight with a further peak on Saturday and Sunday morning at about 8-10am. So users obvious now curl up with their iPhone to catch up on their favourite TV.

Dell Deliver the Mini10 Netbook

Dell has announced the arrival of its Mini 10v netbook which is now available on it website. So the netbook market is starting to hot up and we remind ourselves that these aren’t a replacement for the laptop today but will provide that portable device that is capable of much more than a mobile, significantly more than a greyscale ereader or any dedicated device and weigh little and have a small footprint. The quest is to get the price right and ensure that the accessories are bigger than the device itself!


Dell have launched the Mini series in a variety of colours, (Ice Blue, Cherry Red, Jade Green etc), with hard-drive space from 160GB and 1GB memory as standard, built-in webcam, new internal 802.11b/g WiFi connection , Bluetooth connectivity and a choice of Linux Ubuntu or XP operating systems. The screen is 10.1”, a 16.9 ratio and can be connected to a larger screen or TV and is around the size of a large ereader but with colour and much more! The keyboard is 92% the size of a normal keyboard and is ‘spill resistant’! The weight is under 3 pounds and it claims extended battery life. The price starts at £199 which for a new product is fair but is now likely to drop as more come onboard.

Interestingly Dell have also announced the Inspiron 15 a laptop with 15.6-inch HD display, a 'large' hard drive and DVD burner and are priced from £299.

Another Day Another eBook Reader

We read today in Tech radar of yet another ebook reader set to launch in the UK later this month. At first glance it looks the same as the rest only in a snazzy colour jacket. So why does its designer and self styled "entrepreneur, author, avid reader and world traveller" Neil Jones, believe it offers the "iPod moment" for e-readers?

It is apparently lighter weighing only five ounces, its batteries are claimed to last for weeks, it’s thinner at one-third of an inch thick and it comes in 8 languages and in 8 colours, but does it pass the so what test? Finally, it will be available from Coolerbooks.com along with a library offer of over a million eBooks for download from the end of the month. Its owners, Interead from Reading, claim to have the iTunes moment but somehow we believe they have just more noise. The pictures look very similar to a rebadged reader already in the market. Their claim of a million titles is certainly interesting, as it would give it the biggest library on the planet after Google and even Sony’s half a million public domain works would look small, but where would they get a million titles and are they what the consumer wants or mere fillers?

We wait but fear hype, albeit coloured hype.

Book Piracy: A Case of Whack-A-Mole

Last month we wrote about the issue of digital book piracy and along with others such as Peter Cox at Litopia, raised the bar on the public awareness of the issue. Today the New York Times wrote an article ‘Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web’, which again raises the agenda further.

One quote from the article which can best describe the problem was made by Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates who said “It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole, you knock one down and five more spring up.”

When Litopia raised the issue of Scribd, some said it was unfair and the site shouldn’t be targeted, as it tried and was responsive when take down notices were sent. Others said the same about Wattpad. Our defence would be to browse Scribd and see the volume of taken downs that have been actioned and where they state the file has been removed. There isn’t a takedown without an infringement!

Some say that piracy is small and only the same as shrinkage and theft in physical stores, but is that a real excuse, or merely a case of apathy?

Plead all they can, the sites simply allow any material to be posted and only if it is a know infringement, or they get a take down notice, do they respond. They may claim that taking proactive action could land them with the liability so to take no proactive action is safer. The problem is that the mechanism of the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) is inherently flawed, as it is retrospective action and is like trying to put the cat back in the bag – its too late its out its out and having kittens!

The efforts being expended by publishers in tracking infringements is growing, with many large house having to have dedicated staff continuingly trawling, tracking and issuing take down notices. This may work for the large corporate, but is it realistic across the thousands of medium or small publishers? Some may say that it’s like giving each a shovel and asking them to all to ‘wack-a-mole’?

Today we are only talking about whole works and not even attempting to cover part works or content of sufficient size to warrant permissions. Rather than build infringement databases that just generate take down notices, why not address the problem. We are trying to manage a rights business with no rights management.

This has been raised over and over and the proposed BRR registry isn’t the answer but only part of the answer. We have bibliographic agencies who catalogue all titles. We know that you can’t resell a digital file and each rendition and manifestation is unique. We have identifiers which identify genuine booksellers, publishers, libraries. Yet we can’t join the dots up and create a proactive environment. Some may say that we let businesses hide behind ineffective DCMA.

If leadership is not taken, then we may all find that ‘Whack-a-Mole’ becomes an increasing part of the publishing business.

Bring Your Own iPhone to College

It may have been the case once that you could go to school without a pencil or a textbook but the Missouri School of Journalism have taken it to new heights insisting that students who wish to be budding journalists have to bring their own iPhone or iTouch if they wish to attend. According to their web site they have insisted in students having their own wireless laptop since 2005 and obviously have strong ties with Apple and they recommend that too.

Missouri School of Journalism state that students will be able to electronically download material to either of the devices from iTunes University, a no-cost component of the iTunes Store. The school’s technology store, claims that 90% of Missouri students have iPods. Students with financial aid packages may include the cost of the iPod touch or iPhone and packages because it is mandatory required.

So we clearly have the technology companies all lining up to get a slice of the college market and now joined by Amazon with their new Kindle DX and lining up with textbook publishers. Amazon are also playing the iPhone field with their reader application designed for the iPhone and iPod touch, which is available through Apple’s App Store and the announcement yesterday of their Safari book store for the iPhone app.

So the old saying about ‘catch them young’ may be coming true as students who become very familiar with a certain device and technology may be hard to ween off it after they have finished their course and therefore we have a double wammy with the technology companies retaining them for many years. Mind some would say that the banks have done the same for years.

Notes from Old Amsterdam

Last week we spent a few days on business in Holland and were struck by the presence of books- Yes physical books in all sizes, old and new. When one visits cities such as Amsterdam, you can’t but be impressed by the number of independent bookshops and used books on sale on what appears to be most streets. It’s also interesting to see locals reading books everywhere.

We have visited many European cities and cultures over the last few years, but have never seen such open reverence and connection with the printed book. This after all is the country that, through the likes of Phillips, has driven so much media innovation and change and boasts such ebook players as iRex, BeBook and Internet stores as Bol.com.

Maybe the king hasn’t quite got new clothes on yet.

The School Laptops Project Continues in Malaysia

We have previously written about the Malaysian state of Kuala Terengganu and their mission to give school children technology

shoolbags-still-on-track-to-get-lighter

Just to keep you updated, the notebooks / e-books for Year Five pupils in the state will be distributed in stages from the end of the month. The first batch of the 15,000 units arrived from Taiwan last week. And is part of the state government’s project aimed at providing quality education, and also reducing the burden of heavy schoolbags for the children. They still intend distribute the devices free of charge to all pupils and we hope to cover the entire primary level in the next few years.There are some 23,000 pupils in the state who will benefit from the e-book project.

The Gong Badak factory is projected to produce 10,000 units a month while the state has commissioned some 100 graduates in the field of information technology to coach schoolchildren and teachers on using the e-books.

Magazines on Demand

Back in October last year we cover the Magcloud magazines on demand from Hewlett Packard.

Today we share with you a video from The New York Times which shows the construction of the fashion magazine 'Bare' and how vanity publishing may work in the on demand world.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/30/technology/internet/20090330-MAG-AUDIOSS/index.html

Android Comes to the Netbook

So what is so important about Computerworld reporting the Skytone Alpha 680?
First it’s an ARM-powered netbook that will be available in the next quarter, but more importantly it’s an Android based netbook. Although the price ticket of $250 disappoints some, the move of the Google Android platform onto netbooks could herald a new era both for Linux, the ARM chip and also the netbook.

We do not see the netbook as a laptop replacement but as a replacement for other devices such as ereaders. They offer connectivity and ease of use to ‘my world’ whilst on the move and the convergence of the two would appear inevitable. The key to the Android netbook will be getting the apps developed on the platform and Flash on the ARM chip to enable full video support and for it to be able to compete with the ATOM chip devices.

Below are two You Tube videos we found on Engadget who weren't too enthusiastic on the Skytone Alpha.

News: Thought for today

Nicholas D. Kristof recently wrote in the New York Times, The Daily Me:

“The decline of traditional news media will accelerate the rise of The Daily Me, and we'll be irritated less by what we read and find our wisdom confirmed more often. The danger is that this self-selected 'news' acts as a narcotic, lulling us into a self-confident stupor through which we will perceive in blacks and whites a world that typically unfolds in grays.”

News is Not Grey

Are those enlarged eInk devices such as the Kindle DX/3, Plastic Logic and other big tablets really going to save the world of the newspapers?

We don’t think so, nor do we believe that replicating a broadsheet on a slab in greyscale is going to turn the masses on. It reminds us once again of Michael Douglas running up the beach with the earlier mobile that resembled a brick or Fred Flinstone reading the daily news from a stone slab. To some size matters but over and over again the consumer tells us convenience, portability, compactness and style score over clunky. Let’s face it the thieves are going to have a birthday with these as they aren’t exactly things one puts in one pocket and they aren’t cheap! Picture a busy tube, bus or train and everyone reading a grey slab.

We think we have already given too much space to the eink slab reader, however we note that eink obviously feel that they are on a winner bring a grey world to the masses. Wired reports that they have released a new line of its broadsheet prototype kits aimed at attracting newspaper developers. The AM-300 kit offers a 9.7-inch display and allows companies to experiment and build their own prototype readers on the larger format. They did something similar in releasing a kit for ebooks last year which was priced at $3000 and was taken up by companies looking to create ebook reader lookie-likies and we’ve see plenty of them!

The new developer kit has a graphical electronic paper display with pen input and also includes a Linux x86 operating environment, E Ink API software for Broadsheet, sample images, open source software drivers and other applications that support MMC cards, Bluetooth and USB. The 9.7-inch AM300 kit will begin shipping on May 27th, priced at $4,000.

We believe that newspapers like all media needs to navigate the stormy waters of digital change, but it has to first decide what it wants to offer, how that offer can be communicated, paid for and value be perceived by consumers. It is a journey of baby steps and experimentation. News isn’t dying, nor is the demand for it, just the way its communicated, consumed and paid for.

Another Day Another Kindle

We have been away on business whilst the Kindle 3 hit the market. The device was as expected and the reaction and pitch has been interesting to catch up on after the event:

Digital Demographics
Bowker, at a BISG's ‘Making Information Pay’ conference revealed demographic information that claimed that older readers are the biggest buyers of ebooks. The statement caused many industry thinkers to start to ponder about the attraction of large print, weight, ease of handling and much more perceptions. The reality is that older buyers are those that buy books full stop; they have more time, disposable income and much more. Is it surprising they are the ones buying ebooks – No? Some would say that it’s obvious that the grey market is the one with the largest opportunity and its somewhat condescending to find it a surprise.

Newsprint and magazines are going to go Kindle.
Newspapers may be going downhill but that doesn’t mean that the wave of large screen eInk devices have the answer. We now have PC news sites, smartphone apps and the ereader device. We know that Murdoch wants one, Hearst wants one and we assume the public want one, but the operative word may be one not three or four.
One important digital newspaper issue is how do readers want the news presented? Do they want it in alerts tuned to their personal preferences? Do they want it to look and feel like a paper, after all it has taken many years to perfect the user experience? Do they want it in summary with detail on request? Do they want ads or ads free? Do they want a fully interactive experience and animated experience or merely a captured textural one splattered with the odd greyscale image? Do they want colour?

Once we have addressed the format then there is the price or subscription issue? Then there is the issue about geography and getting the news delivered locally wherever you are in the world. We could go on...

Making the ereader bigger so it looks like a newspaper may not be the answer.

Textbooks are going to be Kindlebooks
Students are going to embrace the new Kindle. The logic appears to be that textbooks are too expensive so ebooks will take the market. So we expect the students to carry around a laptop or netbook, a Kindle and a smartphone? As we walk around the streets of Amsterdam this weekend we wonder who has smoked the most weed? Students require more than ebooks and they already have laptops and smartphones so why would they spend on a device that will give them nothing they don’t have today? Cheaper books have to be offset against the device cost. Students have to live and study with an open, connected campus world and will that fit with fortress Amazon? Princeton and other campus may adopt the device to drive their paperless dream but why not simply adopt a netbook and offer the student’s real choice. Some may say that its easy to create a news splash but living up to the logic can be hard.

Finally, the Kindle DX is priced at whopping $489, a higher price point than a Netbook.

Stan