Txtr RIP?

Provisional administrator Christian Köhler-Ma has been appointed to German ebook service provider Txtr.

Txtr provided ebook solutions to retailers such as Foyles, device makers and mobile operators such as Deutsche Telecom. They developed a large international repository of ebooks which they serviced through a cloud based white label ebookstore and a comprehensive set of apps. Their service was based on Adobe ACS4 DRM and they sold ereaders based on eink technology.

At the time Foyles pinned its flag on Txtr in 2012, Sam Husain, CEO said, “Our new eBook store and apps, ‘Foyles powered by txtr’, make buying and reading eBooks as easy as possible, without the added expense of having to buy new hardware. It is the next step in our on-going journey to serve our customers with a choice of books, across the widest possible range, in every format.” The question now is whether their customers will still be serviced from a bankkrupt cloud?

Txtr developed ‘The Beagle’ which they launched in 2012. The 5" device was designed to be paired with a smartphone and to be a "companion reader" with smartphones and subsidized by new mobile contracts. However despite the fanfare, the low price, it was too late to market and came at a time when the smartphone and tablets were replacing the old eink technology.

The txtr team launched Blloon, a new ebook subscription service, which was set up as a separate entity and therefore should not be impacted by the current situation. At its launch last summer txtr founder Thomas Leliveld, said that, ‘Blloon aspires to offering a lower cost ebook service in a market already crowded by Scribd and Kindle Unlimited.’

Blloon's subscription model is different and is based on pages and a lower subscription price. Leliveld said at the time, ‘We aren't offering an expensive ‘unlimited’ service simply because that isn’t the demographic we are targeting. And people can only read so much. We’re welcoming young people, the majority of whom currently read up to 12 books a year. Providing a package that allows them to expand to two or three a month makes it an attractive and affordable offering - without any compromise on the quality of the titles. In time we hope it will encourage them to read even more.’

So as Blinkbox follows Sony and bites the dust it is now to be followed by Txtr. The question is not how many more will follow but what the impact these collapses have on consumer confidence not in ebooks but in ebook services who may leave them and their purchases in the cold. These events also strengthen the case for subscription services. However subscription services may be able to be switch off like a tap and impact the consumer less as he merely moves his subscription to another service

Sly Stone To Finally Get Paid

The music industry history is littered with artists who claim they were duped into bad contracts and not paid a fair amount. There are many that claim that the internet is making things worse. There are those whose work fails to earn out and find themselves locked into a perpetual agreement. There are those who establish themselves only to find that the contract doesn’t reflect the change and is inequitable. Van Morrison claims he never earned a cent for writing and recording 'Brown Eyed Girl' and even penned a song, 'The Big Royalty Check' to vent his anger in later years. However, sometimes justice works and those who need it and were duped out of it, get their reward.

Sly and the Family Stone created a bridge between 60s and 70s white and black audiences and between soul, R&B. pop and were the fathers of funk and their driver Sly Stone was the most colourful of the band. Their hits included ‘Family Affair’, I Want To Take You Higher’ and ‘Dance to the Music’. They even appeared at Woodstock.

However, Stone found himself owed millions of dollars in royalties and has been fighting for some 5 years to get paid. Unfortunately, his fight led to years of struggle with him even being homeless and living in a van in LA. In 2013 an appeal was rejected that deemed BMI, Sony, and Warner were not liable to pay and the argument moved towards events that took place back in 1989 when Stone signed his financial control over to his lawyer Gerald Goldstein and the company Even St. Production. He claimed that they had diverted millions in royalties, leaving him unable to get the money he said was due him.

Stone, testified that he had not received any royalty payments between 1989 and 2000 but attorneys for Goldstein and Glenn Stone contended that the singer was paid millions, but broke an agreement to make new records.

A LA jury has now found in Stone’s favour and awarded him $2.5 million in damages against Even St. Productions, $2.45 million against Goldstein and $50,000 against attorney Glenn Stone. A total of $5 million. However, the defendants claim that they will fight the ruling so the case unfortunately is likely to drag on.

Maybe Harris Should Drink Some Costa Coffee?

What is more important and best for books, a group of intellectuals sitting round a table, or on a couch, talking about a book, or a good adaptation on film which clearly references the works, or a short story competition that stimulates thousands?

Best-selling author and chairman of the Costa Book Awards judging panel, Robert Harris, obviously thinks the couch and in announcing the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year, used his speech to criticise the BBC and its approach to books. He yearned back to the good old days when audiences grappled with Robert Robertson and Melvyn Bragg, often pontificated about the plot and characters in books. Days when authors sat on couches in the limelight and long and obscure words were more frequent than on Countdown.

There have been significant successes and at its peak Richard and Judy made respectable numbers. Oprah made a huge impact in the US. BBC at both national and local radio levels often promotes books through its programming and even with dedicated slots such as on the Simon Mayo show. When publishers promotion and marketing works, slots on prime time are available through the likes of the One Show, but there has to be something more than just another story. One only has to look at the huge appeal of crime, mystery and thrillers on TV and correlate this to the cult type following some authors of this genre now have.

However the corporation does not have an obligation to provide shows just to promote authors and books perched on a couch. Some would suggest that on the night, Harris, was merely playing to his publishing industry audience, others that he is sadly out of touch. 

Wise Investment: Kieron Smith or Blinkbox ?

So would you invest in a service that still has to prove itself or someone who has done it more than once and brings ability to the table?

The troubled UK supermarket Tesco was forced recently to refocused on its core business and as a result dropped its potential universal media service offer Blinkbox. The film/video service was acquired by TalkTalk for a reported £5million and Australian company Guvera entered talks to buy the music service. This left the ebook business Mobcast, which it bought for £4.5m from author Andy McNab and business partner Tony Lynch in September 2012. The Blinkbox ebook service only went live last March.

So would you buy Blinkbox ebooks or look at alternative ways to invest less for more?

Waterstones went for the acquisition to buy the ebook business from Tesco, but they failed to agree and parted. We now have reports that Kobo are after their customer list which is a good option provided they are active, the sales generated are worth the investment, the data itself is in good order and of course the price is right. However, customer lists are not exactly million dollar purchases and list brokers could probably offer a cheaper and equally attractive demographic.  

So the clock continues to tick and the question must be whether Tesco will let it go in a fire sale and write off the debt or will continue to strive to find a home for either the debt or the service?

It hard to see how BlinkBox ebooks making the return Tesco sought and decoupling the three media streams dilutes further any value it had. Some would question how they had grown to 60 core staff, what on earth they were all doing, the price they paid in 2012 and the level of effort and cost they threw at it to rebranded it, repackaged it and re-staffed it. Some would suggest a classic case of buying a pup and certainly something that they could have achieved quicker and for less money.

The markets often don’t follow logic and when someone wants to participate they often lunge for a quick fix and buy what they perceive is a good buy. Due diligence is often hard when its about perception, interpretation and gut feel and none of the major UK supermarkets have been able to bring to market an effective digital media service and with their current refocusing its hard to see them trying too hard moving forward. Waterstones is likewise refocusing and continue to show little appetite, or ability, to take on digital. Some would suggest that buying Blinkbox was never going to fit Waterstones whatever the deal.

So today we hear Kieron Smith is joining Blackwells. Now that’s a smart move by Blackwells and considerably cheaper and wiser than buying a service that you would only spend a fortune on, to take apart, to fight a battle you aren’t going to win.

Blackwells has always had a good history of digital investment and although they have had their own challenges and very difficult markets they continue to press forward. By acquiring the man and not the service, they bring in someone with very strong digital credentials who has done it before in the trade and someone who has proven his ability to adapt and could well add another dimension to their existing market segments.

As pointed out on Dragon’s Den it is often the person that investors should focus on and the service or product may be a bonus.

'The Times They Are A Changin'

Nielsen's 2014 annual review of the music industry has negative signs in front of chain store sales (-20%), total new album sales (-14%), and sales of new songs online (-10.3%), with only positive signs in front of streaming music and vinyl album sales. This is despite CD sales in the US generating some $141 million last year.

Many believe that the book trade should learn from the digital revolution that is taking place within the music business. The reality is that the music business is very different and right across the music business there is both evolution and revolution. Some changes happening quickly and completely killing off the past, whilst others are slowly evolving. From creator to consumer digital change is taking place.

We see many changes at the consumer end. Technology has replaced the preceding technology. Eight track was replaced by cassette, cassette was replaced iTunes, iTunes downloads was usurped by MP3 downloads, which is being replaced with streaming on demand. This is without the parallel evolution from MTV to YouTube and the growth from digital internet radio stations and music discovery services such as Shazam.

Music owners have in the past been forced to replace their collections, but the new streaming technology now questions why they would want to reinvest yet again when it’s all available on demand. On demand is itself is fuelling subscription. The changes are logical but the speed of change is significant and the redefinition of ownership has enabled many to rediscover vinyl whose sound was of a higher quality, but its market share is still only 3.5%. When we first started this blog we thought Spiral Frog would capture the new market, but they failed to cross the line and their place was taken by Spotify.

Spotify now claim 35 million songs on their service and there are many more renditions now on services such as YouTube and SoundCloud. But even with this enormous repository of songs many still go unheard whilst others, like butterflies have one season in which they flourish.  

When you look at the production, distribution and business, change is often less revolutionary and more evolutionary. Social networks and self-promotional marketing are starting to eat away at the mid list. Unless you are in the top 1% which generate 80% of the money, then you may have to rely on the hit makers which now are TV driven by talent shows such as The X Factor, The Voice, Pop Idol.

To be a hit, you now need serious financial backing, or social pull. With these changes come changes in the reward structure for all. Some will say that there are now too many sticky fingers in the diminishing pot. So artists are having to rethink the old models and balance greater control and percentage of revenue, against lower revenues and often chump change return. A good friend and musician commented to us only this week that selling direct gave them 100% whilst scattering to the digital unknown gave them little. Merchandise, concert revenues and secondary rights are growing in importance. This impacts how artists are managed, make money, record and distribute. It changes where the producers and labels make their money and the increases the importance of the back catalogue and Intellectual property.

So can books learn from music?

The consumer end is very different and what is clear is the physical book isn’t going away in all sectors and will retain a major share of the market whilst the distribution economics can support it. However, like music the pot is not growing but changing and this is putting similar strains in the production and development area of the value chain. There are many similarities here with respect to back list, mid list and front list and self-publishing. Even signed authors are having to work harder on their social skills as publishers rein in the marketing and promotion to focus on the best shots.

The one thing that all media segments share is the polarisation of value at either end of the value chain and reducing influence of the middle to many.

Kindle Self-Publishing eTextbooks Offer

The internet age has started to enable classrooms without walls, or even borders and promote the leading educators to engage with all students. But is this reality today or merely technology waiting to be adopted and adapted and fighting much educational technology inertia? We have the same curriculum and exams, but an often significant variance between how students are engaged, motivated, learn and achieve the standards sought.

Learning resources, such as textbooks help teachers to deliver the lessons, but can now technology allows them to do it smarter and more consistently?

One approach comes from, The Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge. They are a leading UK private school and the current ‘Independent School of the Year’, boast some of the best results in England and have announced that they are publishing 12 digital multimedia textbooks for IGCSE biology. The textbooks will be available to download free online from Apple's iBooks online store to use on iPad tablet and cover an entire exam syllabus. The course is currently taken by some 500,000 students in 160 countries.  They also plan to extent the list to cover other topics such as molecules and enzymes and animal nutrition and already claim to have had a significant market response to their 100 course they have made available through iTunes U courses.

Today Amazon announced another new approach via KDP EDU, or what they refer to as Kindle Textbook Creator. This is aimed at empowering all to create eTextbooks and other educational content that is enhanced with digital features such as notes, flashcards, bookmarks and highlights. Content can be prepared, published, and promoted as eTextbooks alongside and other learning material and all can be access on tablets, iPads, Android tablets and smartphones, Macs and PCs. This venture could therefore allow the best educational authors to do it themselves, to self publish and lead to an explosion of material and provide choice. But who will determine the good, bad and indifferent?

Kindle Textbook Creator claims to make it easy for ‘anyone to take any PDF and create a richly featured and widely available eTextbook.’ Kindle Textbook Creator will offer authors royalties potentially up to 70%, while keeping their rights and maintaining control of their content. They can also enrol their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions. But are these potential extras real opportunities for this material, or false incentives to lure authors?

It is often said that each of us has a book inside us and self publishing is unlocking many of these today in the trade market. But does every teacher have a textbook inside them and will this start to unlock these or will the lure of the reward still deter the best to stick with the traditional route.

So which publishing model will prevail, the self published, the traditional, or the best school?   

Many big questions remain. How will Amazon police copyright, through the implementation of plagiarism-detection services and links to registration databases, to ensure copyrighted material, be it text, pictures, artwork, graphs etc doesn’t merely just get ‘cut and pasted’ into a new work. How will quality rise to the surface and will there be a mass adoption of ‘my textbook, teacher notes and associated material, or will the majority opt for the tried and tested and publisher underwritten option? Will a flood of resources effect the current pricing  and drive down or raise the cost of traditional material?

Today there should be no reason why the standard of education is governed by location, your purse or access to materials and resource. Yet education is still localised, standards vary and engagement is down to individuals. Facilities such as TED Ed and the Khan Academy are viewed with skepticism by many, some would suggest that the curriculum is more geared to robotics than to learning and the take up of technology varies significantly in spend, application and quality.

To learn more about publishing textbooks through KDP, or to download Kindle Textbook Creator, visit kdp.amazon.com/edu.

To learn more about The Stephen Perse Foundation’spublishing programme.

DRM Is Not A Binary Decision

Consumer rights with respect of ebooks continue to be up in the air.

Only last week, Sony, the prime driver for Adobe’s ACS4 adoption back in 2006 said that they were coming back into the Digital Rights Management (DRM) market.

This week the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced they have commissioned the vocal DRM opponent, Cory Doctorow, to take on DRM technologies that they believe threaten security, privacy, and undermine public rights and innovation. The objective of their Apollo 1201 Project, is claimed to be "a mission to eradicate DRM in our lifetime."

Named after the US Apollo space prograame which took some 10 years to achieve what on its creation was viewed by many as an impossible mission.

What is certain is that the DRM that today inhibits consumers ability to transfer files between the various ‘walled gardens’, is going to either change radically, or be unilaterally be removed. It is hard to envisage what we have today as being sustainable over the next decade. The EFF mission goes past ebooks and is aimed at games, apps, video and all cases when DRM inhibits interoperability.

EFF raise the issue of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which outlaws the circumvention of copy controls. They agrue, ‘That ban was meant to deter illegal copying of software, but many companies have misused the law to chill competition, free speech, and fair use. Software is in all kinds of devices, from cars to coffee-makers to alarm clocks. If that software is locked down by DRM, tinkering, repairing, and re-using those devices can lead to legal risk.’

However as we have argued many times DRM is not and should not be a binary decision, where DRM is either on or off. We should look hard at the whole issue not just one element and we look at opportunities as well as threats.

One issue that must be addressed is provenance of ownership. In ebook terms look at this as an’ex libris’ stamp that can be traced back to the sale. It doesn’t have to be invisible and it may be open to abuse but if validated could revolutionise the ownership versus licence position and enable the first sale doctrine and resale of ebooks. This may be apporant to many in the trade but if watermarking soft DRM is not adopted then this door shuts whilst the stable door of DRM is potentially flung wide open. Some would say a very stupid situation.

The resale of ebooks is currently being fought out in the Dutch courts where Tom Kabinet is being challenged by the Dutch trade. Tom Kabinet which to resell ebooks and offer a service similar to ReDigi is try to establish in the music market. The court has instructed Tom Kabinet to close temporarily as not all titles can be proven to have full provenance of ownership. So the courts may take a different position if such a position could be established. The door is half open to the trade to create an opportunity, or to blindly slam shut and rejoice in potentially a false victory.

Judith Mariën, a Tom Kabinet’s founder, said that she believes that despite the court verdict, it is ‘good news’ in that the court ruled that the site’s basic business model is essentially legal.

What is important that the trade start to think consumer, think service, think and avoid closed doctrine and protectionism for the sake of protectionism.

Should the Underground Offer Commuters an eBook Library?

Imagine getting free access to an electronic library when travelling on the tube. Well that is what travelers can now enjoy on Line 4 of the Beijing metro.

The metro lines carriages feature barcodes which people can scan with their tablets or smartphones and this then enables them to select from a selection of books.

Howeve,r there are some obvious challenges today. Firstly there is only a choice of ten books and these historical Chinese texts. This may be a novelty today and prove too restrictive for many tomorrow. Next, the books are planned to change every couple of months, which obviously gives anyone who starts close to the end of the cycle a reading challenge. Finally, the length of the texts is not clear, but if they were say the length of UK and US titles, it may prove uninviting to those who don’t commute every day, or whose journey is relatively short. Again it is unclear whether the books are downloaded or read online, so the question of offline, or off rail, reading is also unclear.

However, if we ignore the questions raised and focus on the opportunity we can see the potential for others to adapt the proposition for other commuter communities in other cities.

Imagine the highly successful London underground poems all being available to introduce many to poetry and give that daily food for thought. Imagine sample chapters being promoted by publishers to stimulate interest in their latest titles and not just the bestsellers. Imagine a new novel being introduced Dickens style by serialisation. Imagine a library linked to the city's public library, or the national library and allowing lending on the move to those that are entitled to the service.

The question of whether it is a public or private or joint service is an intresting one but should not be a barrier to encouraging reading.

The opportunities are not restricted by technology, as it exists today, but are only restricted by the vision and commitment to enabling travelers to enjoy reading.

To see the ChineseBTV News Channel report (it’s in Chinese).

Apps versus the Mobile Web

Unlike that old question, ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’, we know the answer to which came first, the web site, or the app. But will this be the case in years to come and are we now starting to redefine the development process and presentation, not based on chronological order but on fast evolving mobile needs?

The IBA have just published a survey they commissioned from Harris Poll, who collated the views of some 2,000 US adults in December 2014. The survey questions some of the conclusions made by an earlier comScore, which claimed that 88% of consumer mobile time is spent in apps, while some 12% is spent browsing the mobile web.

The IBA findings identified that there were many variances between; search, shopping, news and local directory information activity and whilst users may have a preference in one activity they may have the opposite in another. There is then the web use that is in fact ‘web access hidden in app clothing’, where the app is merely a link to open web material. Is this an app preference, or a web preference? Finally, there were some interesting findings on how users find websites, with online search understandably scoring highly 54%, word of mouth 29% and social media 26%.

However, the interesting question all is raises is on how we develop the user interface for tomorrow? We have an abundance of technology, applications, mobile technology and stakeholders. The question is how do we deploy this and maintain control, auditability and yet serve those both within and outside the organisation? Yesterday we built ERP empires that tried to encompass all users, all needs and all to one database, using one technology and one presentation. They worked for the internal user but lacked the external user interface and presentation. Importantly they tried to handle everything transactional, media and stuff and although business to business activity worked well they often failed to deliver to an ever growing consumer interface need.

In many ways we now have a very diverse repository of information, transactions, content and context and stuff which we can liken to a house. We all look through different windows into the house we see different things according to the window we look through. The kitchen window will be different to the bedroom and that will be different to the bathroom and so on. Same house different perspectives. The trick is that we have just capture and process stuff once and store it once but use it many different ways.

Yesterday we viewed a prototype app for a new service yet to be launched and were taken aback, not because it did something we didn’t expect, but because it presented it in a way we had never expected and one that broke the shackles of the old transactional application screens and the web ones too! We remember when we developed a new elibrary in 2006 and were impressed with how Adobe had presented their Digital Editions offer and adopted a similar look. How dated that now appears and this is not because of the web, but because of the demanding new mobile world, devices and the emergence of the app.

The greatest challenge is not segmenting the different presentation needs, or ensuring that the centre serves all, but in segmenting the activities and views and deciding which takes precedent over the other. Does the dog wag the tail, or the tail the dog? Do developers share, or need to share common ground across all presentations? Do we deal with the transactional activity separate to the other activity? Do we build lots of apps, or one app with potentially many children? Do we build the app then worry about the other stuff. Or build the internal view then worry about the external one? Does the app presentation now impact and influence the other presentations? Have we gone past rows and columns and want animation and graphics?

What is clear is that what we see today will be presented differently tomorrow and therefore the investment may have to be repeated as the environment in which it lives evolves.

The smartphone is now starting to impact what we see, access and how we do things and this will surely now drive development and refine the balance between web and app access but app design will drive web design moving forward.

Click to read IBA report

Google Without Glasses and Going to Bits

All technology has a life cycle which starts with creation, through; prototyping, adoption, adaption, development and finally obsolescence. Some make the full cycle others stumble at first base.

Today we read that the much publicised Google Glass eyewear technology is to be effectively pulled by Google in its present form. Future versions will be pursued, but by a different division and those who shelled out $1,500 (£990) will now be owners of the latest ‘Delorean’ technology, which obviously will now become a collectible novelty.

The Glass initiative was launched in the US in 2013 and UK last year, but was plagued with a number of issues. The cost was viewed by many as too high, the battery life was poor and getting consumers to adopt it and drop those features they already had on their smartphones was proving hard. Maybe the look was just wrong and screamed ‘Nerd and Geek’ at everyone brave enough to don a pair.

The other challenge was privacy and although they gave the user visual access to information in a ‘hands free environment’ they also recorded stuff ‘hands free’ which gave those running public places and those concerned with privacy, many concerns.

So will the mass take up of wearable technology happen based on peripheral devices, or will a Pranev Mistry ‘sixth sense’ approach be based on smartphone hubs prevail? Why wear a smartwatch when you can project the time onto anything or see it on the smartphone? How will wearable glasses take a selfie? Voice and audio are already here today on every smartphone so that only leaves smell and touch.

Google has dismantled the smartphone and are to introduced a modular phone which allows consumers to buy functionality in a firmware ‘pick and mix’ fashion.

You want a camera you can select potentially one of a number of specifications and literally plug it onto the smartphone. You want different speakers, batteries, displays, application processor, wireless connectivity, blood-sugar monitors, laser pointers, pico projectors, they all just plug onto the phone and will be held into the shell by magnets. Its like selecting your firmware options and is aimed both at giving the consumer choice but also at making upgrading potentially very different.

Google claim that the objective is to make a smartphone more attractive to the five billion people that currently don’t own one. It would also prolong the life of many phones and potentially that has a big market challenge when the current life of a phone model  is two years. However, by changing the emphasis from model to module it may differentiate Google from their rivals

Google has chosen Puerto Rico to launch its modular offer. Puerto Rico was "mobile-first" with some 75% of its internet access being via mobile devices. There are also more than three million mobile phones in use in the country. Google also benefits as the country is under US Federal Communications Commission jurisdiction and this obviates any later issues getting a solution into the US market.

So the role of the smartphone is strengthened and ways to offer choice are now being developed. We can’t help wonder how much some would pay to have their own module for Prime users?

Jellybooks Introduce ePub Reader Analytics

The buzz is currently is about big data, or collecting very granular consumer and transactional information and then being able to analyse it. The results may help spot trends, aid development, identify detail which was impossible to compute, or even recognise using traditional methods. As we gather more and more data, the trick is to exploit it in a ways that improve the product, enhance the consumer experience and increases revenues or profitability.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t.

The first challenge is to collect the data, the second is to be able to analyse what you probably don’t know, but assume you do, the third is to develop the results such that they make a return. Many companies have laboured over toolkits such as Google Analytics. Many have seen the money going out the door but not necessarily seen the return coming back in. Today it often seems that everyone and anyone who can spell IT and marketing are offering ways to analyse this, raise that and increase everything.

Now Jellybooks claim to have cracked the analytics for ebooks on 3^rd party apps with their new Reader Analytics, which allows book publishers to analyse how their customers read books across third party reading apps and devices. Jellybooks will be giving a sneak preview at Digital Book World next week, aimed at the publisher and utilises either their own invited focus groups and or Jellybooks’ own subscribers to analyse know users’ reading habits.

Andrew Rhomberg, founder of Jellybooks describes the Reader Analytics as, ‘An ePub analytics tool for the smartphone, tablet, eReader generation that works offline and with 3rd party apps and aims to understand how consumers interact with ebooks that they buy through Kindle, iBooks, Kobo and the like.’ It effectively records the reader’s progress against a title, identifying when each new chapter is opened, the reader’s reading speed, the length of the reading sessions, the time of day when the title was read and when the book was abandoned or finished.

However, this sort of analysis and level of information has long been available to some publishers. Whilst services providing online digital libraries, inspection copies attached to ecatalogues or synchronised walled garden environments have tracked every click. With the inspection copy they know not only what was inspected and shared with others, but importantly whether the copy was even opened.

So what is different with the Jellybook offer?

In accepting a free book and enrolling in a focus group, participating readers agree for their personal reading data to be analysed. There is both a potential strength and also a potential weakness. Firstly, like the consumers that agree to be on TV monitoring panels, it captures real users but in doing so we analyse the known, not the unknown. People who read books today are likely to read the book and will continue to read other books tomorrow. Those who are part time, or no time readers, will remain unhooked. Maybe the offer of a free ebook could entice new readers but will their habits be the same when they have to pay for the book?

Rhomberg also notes that, ‘A truly unbiased tool is only possible with an approach that forces cookies and tracking software on users without their consent. That is neither legal, not morally justifiable in our view.’

Some Marketeers will claim that focus groups often exist to reaffirm their presumptions and often don’t serve an independent perspective. Others believe that they are vital market testers. The problem is that it’s all too often, six of one and half a dozen of the other.

The Jellybook book community which claims some 60,000 avid and passionate readers clearly offers more scope and can generate its own reading groups.

But again does it pass the ‘is it wise dotcom test’?

Trade books, which are going to be the majority of those within the scheme, tend to be one off works so offer marginal editorial improvement unless they are pre-press galley copies. However, simply adding more ‘editors’ to the mix surely could potentially dilute not enhance the work. On the other hand, the potential marketing input on the positioning the work could be of benefit, but only if there is suitable elasticity in the marketing budget to respond.

There is the question of the exposure of the pool of pre-press books available and whether there is risk associated with opening this up to the Jellybook community to potentially see all new books on offer and how this would be policed such that these are all genuine independent readers and not potential competitors? It may matter little today but tomorrow will they potential have input to affect the final cut and if not why are they there?

After publication the benefits in fictional work start to diminish as sales and money will speak louder and further titles within a series will be either contracted or down to performance to date.

So forgetting the technology and functionality, is the Reader Analytics to become a pre-press testing market tool, or a post publication one? Is it technology looking for a home or a business need applying technology to resolve it? Rhomberg says, ‘We put so much emphasis on it being a pre-publication tool, precisely, because we think it has the most value and can lead to actionable results at this stage. In today’s industry the demand after publication is much, much more limited.’

We remember when we provided a major academic publisher with a potentially huge data bank on every click made by every student and academic. This was across a significant digital library at both work and chapter level, as well as the same information against digital inspection copies. Needless to say they were interested in who didn’t open an inspection copy, but where less interested in discovering the digital needle in the haystack. Perhaps times have changed and one would expect and hope so within that market and some others too, but we feel trade fiction is different. 

We wish Jellybooks well with their new service and it will be interesting to see how it develops and is adopted. 

Here are more detail on the Jellybooks tool for authors, publishers and how to sign up.

Signed Copy of The Bible

Somehow we think this may be a mistake!

Bookshop Beacons Across The UK?

Forrester Research claim consumers are using tablets in their living rooms (67%), bedrooms (60%) and even their kitchens (42%), but smartphones are used more on the go, including in the car (68%) and of course, in retail stores (68%). This presents smartphones with a real opportunities to use new beacon technology to give consumers access to a mass of information, such as prices and locations whilst they are in the street, store and on the move.

Imagine walking down your High Street and you receive a message telling you the butcher you are about to pass has a special 3 for 2 joint offer today. Next you pass a clothes shop that immediately informs you that you could get a personal offer today on a similar shirt to that you bought last month. Then you pass a bookstore that informs you that your favourite author’s latest title is just in and is on special offer to you!  Then you’re in a department store and approach a display which recognises you and tells you about what is on offer and send you a special voucher. Maybe you are at a bus stops, or looking at street adverts, or in a tube station and are directed towards a specific shop before you even go anywhere near it.

Already some supermarkets and department stores are trailing this new beacon technology. UK Department store House of Fraser is trailing beacon-equipped mannequins in its Aberdeen store. Aloft Hotels are testing beacon technology, which will allow customers to unlock hotel doors after they check in and potentially remove the whole check-in process. The Crown Estate, which owns Regent Street, which includes retailers such as Hamleys, Longchamp, Burberry, Banana Republic, Hugo Boss and Anthropologie, will introduce the new smartphone application that takes advantage of the technology to deliver discounts, new-product promotions and other alerts to the smartphones of shoppers as they walk past stores and restaurants. Over 100 stores in Regent Street have already been fitted with the technology. UK retailer Waitrose is trailing the technology in their Swindon store. Finally, under pressure supermarket Tesco is aiming to use the technology improve customer service and personalization offering alerts on click-and-collect orders and enabling consumers to pinpoint the location of products on their shopping lists.

Beacons are a low-cost, micro location based technology, which utilises Bluetooth technology to communicate between smartphone apps and beacons. The technology can also provide retailers with invaluable data about their customers’ shopping habits as well as the activity of their staff. This information can improve store layouts, flow as well as promote products and offers. The Beacon technology appears now poised to surpass and deliver what many thought would be achieved via near field communication (NFC) technology.

However, before we all run out to install beacons, retailers need customers who want to use them and trust that their personal information is secure. The customers have to first download and install a smartphone app and there is the issue of how many apps a consumer needs. While customers may be happy to download an app for a couple of retailers, they might not want to download an app for every shop they visit. This may be overcome by retailers integrating their technology with common popular third-party shopping apps such as PayPal or PriceChecker.

So will we see a UK Bookseller Association app and beacons switched on for business in independent and BA member shops across the UK? This would be a novel way to promote the local book store and its titles and offers. Not as independents but as part of a national book group and even offer opportunities to further integrate other customer services. They could even sell ad space to publishers and authors to contribute towards it. However it is more likely that we shall see large stores such as WHS, Waterstones, The Works adopt the technology whilst the independents sit on their hands or look around for a technology partner to do it for them. 

Zuckerberg (Facebook) Declares A Year of Books

Celebrities have always influenced what people read, listened to and watched and we have many book examples such as Oprah in the US and to a lesser extent Richard and Judy in the UK. Now Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has stated his intent to not only read a book every two weeks, but to invite everyone to share the experience with him on Facebook. He has already launched a dedicated Facebook page called ‘A year of books’ and within the first 24 hours it has been liked by over 62,000 people.

The billionaire is known for his New Year's Resolutions and determination to accomplish his goals, which was conveyed in him not only learning Mandarin, but going to China to give a speech in it and promote Facebook in China.

Zuckerberg says, ‘Please only participate in the discussions if you've actually read the books and have relevant points to add. The group will be moderated to keep it focused.’ This itself could result in some 26 best sellers this coming year and ironically create more of a reading stir than any World Book Day. His first read ‘The End of Power’ by Moisés Naím, was published in 2013 and is a 300 page work on the changing nature of leadership today. Already the paperback appears temporarily out of stock in Amazon.com.

The big question is whether this is a whim or a strategic business move. It could catapult Facebook into the leading social reading position, but will they want a cut from their ‘halo’ effect? Will they want to sell direct and create their own retail proposition? Is it about creating an active reading community that they can mine in many ways to make money? Will the community expand past Zuckerberg’s reading list or be solely focused on it? Will Zuckerberg’s taste be restricted and prove unappealing, or be widened, or even bought by the highest bidder?

Perhaps it is just a new Year’s resolution, that if it works will continue past 2015 and if it doesn’t, will be like many other resolutions and be lost to history. 

Simply Producing More Books Isn't The Answer

What happens when the amount of books available to read exceeds the market’s ability to read them! We have always struggled with more books than buyers. The economics of market forces has always prevailed, choking back on production, shrinking shelf space and reducing the rewards to those who aspire to make fame and fortune from their writing.

It was simple when we only had the physical book. The market was controlled by the shelf space available, the cost of the inventory and the rate of purchases. We still produced more titles and units than could be purchased, but for those who back the right works the rewards were significant and for those with excess inventory there was always the ability to trade this through. Importantly the sales were steady and although unpredictable at title level, they were more predictable at market level. The supply chain was inefficient, but worked and publishers wallpapered stores with their sale or return approach to merchandising. Some aspects still remain, but those heydays are long gone. Many blame the demise of the Net Book Agreement in the UK and the resultant discount wars. The truth is far more complex and one element alone drove the result.

The arrival of the Internet resulted in the virtual shelf and inventory. No longer was shelf space an issue, as warehouse space, distance shopping and customer service prevailed. The back list vied on equal terms with front list and the mid list often found itself squeezed. Those mail order players who were in the market should have won this battle, but were wedded to yesterday, did not understand the new parameters and importantly did not understand virtual inventory and changing consumer demands. The retailers struggled to get the right people and often treated the internet as an adjunct and not an integral part of their business. Amazon won and became a category killer and although some shoots of new business have appeared, the ecommerce game is firmly controlled from Seattle.

The digital book should have been the opportunity to address the ground given away to Amazon, but the market lacked the commitment and ability to work together. It stumbled from one white knight to another, as if it was punch drunk and desperate to hold on to anything that offered anything. We had Sony who promised much but understood little, Google who came to ingest all and were courted, fought and allowed to offer not one but two poor settlements and finally by Apple, who only wanted business on their terms. Some such as Nook and Kobo were spawned from existing players, but these and others lacked the technology clout, investment and global presence to succeed.

However, the biggest change that digital introduced was to lower the barriers to publishing, not only allowing anybody to publish anything, but also giving them channels and virtual shells on which to display their works next to more traditional published works. Suddenly we were awash with books, physical and digital. Self publishing was no longer to be dismissed and looked down on. We were no longer just over producing new books, but effectively bringing back every book ever published, but the consumers were still only buying the same number of books. They may buy more to fill their physical shelves, but why should they buy more to fill a virtual shelf?

The purchase model then came under a new threat – subscription and on demand reading. It was working in music and film so why not in books?

We have to look at music more closely to understand the other changes that had taken place over the same period; the switch from album to single, the migration from physical form to full digital, the high bandwidth and availability of the internet, streaming technology, and the desire to listen on the move. Film is no different and has had many different pressures which make subscription viable.

We now even have the new EU regulations which have resulted in Apple introducing, a no quibble, 14 day return policy. Some will suggest a ‘read for free’ policy. The new EU and Japanese consumption tax changes may result in ebooks costing more, but the extra money goes not to the creators, but to the governments. Both these initiatives will hurt creators’ pockets and may drive more to publish themselves.

So the facts are that we have a glut of content and in the physical world even greater disparity between the successful and the others. In the digital world we have a dominant channel which has understood the overall business, its value chain and targeted elements overlooked by others and integrated them into their offer. The market is no longer controlled by a handful of publishers but by Seattle and yet we continue to stumble forward with more of the same. If we have too many books we can no longer rely on natural selection. The market isn’t suddenly going to grow and will continue to flatline.

There will be increasing pressure to try something new such as subscription.

However, what we are failing to address is the difference between physical and digital. We are failing to create digital content for consumers on the move. We are failing to look inside and see what’s in the locker already and instead we continue to publish the same and expect that a miracle will happen all by itself.

Time is the clue to the market opportunity.

Apple Gives Free 14 Right to Cancel in EU

We could never understand why Amazon allowed ebooks to be returned and found it very frustrating when every month one always appeared in the Kindle reports. Was it a lost sale? Did they not read what the work was about and returned it as rejected? Did they just not like it and returned it unwanted? Did they read it and then returned it for their money back on a free read? We will never know as Amazon doesn’t say.

Now just to raise the questions further Apple has just started to allow European users of their iTunes stores to “return” goods without giving a reason.

This may bring Apple in line with EU regulations passed in June which mandate online sellers to offer a “right of withdrawal” from distance sales. It is not in the interest of authors, publishers and even Apple. The regulations stipulate that customers may withdraw from an off-premises contract with 14 days of purchase without giving any reason. 

Apple’s iTunes terms and conditions have now been updated to include a “Right of cancellation” and states, “if you choose to cancel your order, you may do so within 14 days from when you received your receipt without giving any reason, except iTunes Gifts which cannot be refunded once you have redeemed the code.” 

The previous position was on a case by case basis and geared towards issues where the file had failed to download. This sensible approach still prevails outside the EU, but inside we appear to be in the grip and influence of some misguided mandarins in Brussels who understand little and take bold and misguided leaps into the dark.

Nothing new there then!