All Change At Tools of Change

Often knowing when to stop and move on is harder than continuing to plough the same old furrow.

Last week Tim O’Reilly decide to call it a day on his well respected ‘Tools of Change’ adventure. 

Many applauded him for the work he had done in moving the digital agenda forward, whilst others said he should continue and owed it to his follows to keep up the work. We are not able to say what tipped his thinking to flip his attention elsewhere, but will say that we should never expect any party to go on forever.

Tools of Change arrived at the right time. It fed the appetite of many to understand the emerging digital landscape and listen to those breaking new ground. It certainly pulled together the brightest and reshaped the Book Fair World. We attended one of the conferences and found ourselves wondering what all these folk attending would be doing, or adopting, if they didn’t have this focal point?

Does the shutting up of the Tools of Change mean we are fully conversant with digital and change? We would suggest not and change is all around us. But it does signal the end of the beginning and the question now is as what follows and how will that help shape our thinking. Perhaps it signals the end to the mega conference, which in our opinion is probably well overdue, but again we have thought that for a long time. Perhaps it signals an end to the ‘payola’ conference where money can buy the platinum sponsor a speaking slot, a booth, literature in the delegate pack and even if they have little to say. We refused to be drawn into this sham circuit with its often predictable group of speakers and luvvies.

Perhaps it draws an end to the constant barrage of conferences and pulls them together around major Book Fairs.

Others will step into the void and some are already doing so, but are they merely replicating the formula or adding new ingredients?

We remember Richard Charkin shutting up his blog, which was insightful but often more a mixture of social insights and executive travels than a commendatory on digital advancement. Then Evan Schnittman took off those Black Plastic Glasses and said we are now digital time to put this pen down. Now Tools of Change is moving on.

It’s ironic that this last month we have written nothing. Were we missed? Did the digital world stop spinning? Probably we were the ones most frustrated and itching to write about so many things, but we found ourselves not with writer’s block as much as a desire to get on with something different.

We have just announced our Read Petite venture with ex Chief Editor of the Bookseller, Neill Denny, Agent and broadcaster, Peter Cox and founder of Waterstone’s Tim Waterstone. We found ourselves wanting to write about Read Petite at the expense of all else. That would clearly be wrong but how do we balance the industry commentary with what we feel so passionately about?

After some 2,200 blogs, we have decided it’s not time to move on but it is time to start to rethink what we write and how we communicate it. It’s a bit like when Bibliophile started t do video reviews to supplement the text ones. We saw the power of the visual the passion of the reviewer and realised that text reviews are good but are only they because that was the only way we could effectively express them. Today music is about YouTube more than it’s about iTunes. Conferences are more about TED than packing a room full of delegates and collecting money of the speaker’s companies. Commenting on change is about effecting it and helping it happen than writing about it.

Its a Rights Business With No Rights Management

Yesterday our good friend Mike Shatzkin wrote and interesting and insightful blog on rights, ‘A serious issue for big publishers’. The debate stirred much discussion as Mike stated what we all know – that publishes , ‘are largely in the dark about what rights they own.’

In the old physical world this wasn’t a massive problem but in today’s digital one it is.

The Google Book Settlement, whether it gets approved or stuck out, has raised the issue not just of orphans and reverted rights, but also the thousands of books covered by legacy contracts. One leading publisher, Evan Schnittman commented that , ‘we must find a way to open up those creepy, spider-filled vaults, filing rooms, and warehouses and dig through each and every contract to determine if we have reverted the rights to any title listed in the Google Settlement.’

Then there is the wording in the contract and if it can be applied to a digital rendition. It’s also about the other rights associated with the work; illustrations, photos, graphics and paid for works such as translations and even permissions granted within the work. Irrespective of the main work itself, can these other rights automatically move into a digital rendition under existing contracts?

It is not difficult to envisage that some may assert their ownership of titles without the due diligence and the scrutiny needed. Unless someone objects, some may believe we could find cases of further land grabbing. Over the last 80 years, many lists and publishers have changed hands and its fair to assume that a small minority of contracts may no longer exist. The settlement, implicitly, asks the Registry to reasonably police against spurious claims. Obviously the settlement will generate a number of counter claims, disputes and the new proposed Book Rights Registry will now try to sort these disputes out. Some will say that some disputes will be almost impossible to resolve.

Today the Bookseller, in it coverage of the UK PA’s Google meetings, ‘ Press for Google compensation, says PA’, reported that , Jessica Kingsley, from Jessica Kingsley Publishers, questioned why publishers were being asked to pay for the Book Rights Registry to police only one other company Google.

As we have said before publishing is a rights business and if you accept that, then surely we must manage and control all the associated rights including legacy contracts. The Rights Registry is a good move, but we would suggest only if it is independent of the Google settlement. However without the Google money, who will pay for it, manage it and if the settlement doesn’t happen, how we can stop future land grabs?

We hope that the judge throws out the settlement and even if this means some hard decisions, other threats and it takes a number of years before we get a solution, it is better than starting with a bad settlement and wondering how we get out of it, or trying to amend and adapt it after the event and deal with an omnivore.

Can't we Count?

We read an interesting article yesterday in the Sunday Times which amounted to a nice advert for Amazon and the Kindle. Today we read a blog Oxford's Evan Schnittman that claims that Kindle and Sony sales could be higher than we think? ‘Looks Like a Million To Me: How I Realized that Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s E-Reader Were Exceeding Sales Estimates’

Ok all news is good news and we are now starting to witness what happens when the market starts to talk itself up and the momentum becomes to be self prophesying. This can only be good for the ebook readers and the market take up but these type of statistics are at best questionable. If these figures are fact and as claimed there is a direct correlation between the eink screens shipped and sales achieved by Kindle and Sony then they are current selling 60,000 to 80,000 units a month and this will increase to 120,000 month later in 2008. Also he notes that there is 60/40 split between Amazon and Sony, which some may say is very generous to Sony.

What ever the reality we are guessing on the units sold and to whom they have been sold – the stuff of urban myths. The truth in the UK is neither device is here today and when they land, in the early Autumn, this urban hype will only grow.

Publishing is not about selling ebook devices, but about selling books. The author gets paid by the numbers of books sold not the number of devices sold and the compilations given away as part of their launch. If publishers can’t say today what files have been sold in what format and through what channel, including promotional titles, then what message does that give to both the consumer and the author?