Retaining Author Relationships In A Transparent World

Technology and communications are changing not only our culture but also our relationships with others. It is not just about how and what we communicate but also about the transparency and openness of the communication. Where once we could not see, we now can and this can start to question and even undermine the trust and inter-dependency in relationships we once took for granted.  

We can all now see our financial transactions and business is now viewable in real time 24x7. Even our location, what we are doing, what we like and dislike can be tracked and visible to many. There is often no hiding place unless you are switched off. As recently witnesses in the news, even governments are exposed and they need to maintain their trusted relationships within an increasingly hostile environment.

When we look at the book business and it value and supply chains, this increased openness and transparency is opening up both new opportunities and also starting to question relationships and process we once took as given.  Increasingly, we are all questioning the value that others add and are now looking to technology and information to support these. These changes are changing relationships and what we expect from them and potentially exposing that thorny issue of trust.

We can no longer deny the rise in self-publishing. What was once seen as the slush pie and vanity publishing is fast becoming respectable and a vibrant publishing market in its own right. As this door widens it could impact on the traditional publishing chain and question what rights are traded, the terms and even the commercial relationships themselves. The process between rights and royalties may have been to many authors something that just happened, but as the likes of Amazon’s KDP and Kobo’s publishing and other services start to show live sales being accrued along with earnings, what once was a mystery to many authors is starting to become transparent. This shift is significant as it starts to force new rules on all and merely sticking to the old ways may in fact end up driving more to the new ones.

We have long argued that physical and digital rights should be separated. We accept that the two go hand in hand and that they are different to other rights such as Film and subsidiary rights. However, the terms under which they are licenced should be separated. Right reversals have a defined physical trigger in most contracts and this works today. However in a digital content world this can easily become perpetual licence as the inventory never goes out of print. If the two are joined under the same revert clause then the physical work can be locked in perpetuity irrespective of its performance. Term time licencing of digital would make sense, but these leads us to consider the information needed by the author on which to base their relationship and trust. We now have to accept a greater transparency, openness, availability of detailed information and timeliness of payments.

Of course some may say the wheel isn’t broken so it doesn’t need fixing, others may say they have a contract and that is that, but it is not about today but tomorrow and maybe it’s time for a change and one that reinforces the relationships and trust and negates the need to go for a more transparent and open deal.

What we can’t deny is that the world around us is changing and with it our approach to what we expect out of those we do business with and there is no reason to believe that should be any different for authors. 

Is The BBC Losing Its Way?

The BBC now appears to be losing its way in a sea of redefinition and a constant stream of new Director Generals. This week they announced a significant restructuring and rebranding within their organisation. Gone is the name ‘vision’ to be replaced by ‘television’ and also gone is ‘audio and music’ and in steps ‘radio.’ Yes the BBC is planning for the future by defining itself in the past!

Children’s TV has its own channel with associated brands, merchandise and trading rights. There is an argument that it would make sense to do the same with sport, drama, news but irrespective people are watching it increasingly on demand, on tablet, laptops, mobiles as well as television. Today, we have content which is developed and delivered in media agnostic verticals. It is no longer governed by the deliver device but more down to what matters- the content itself.

The same devices you listen to stuff on are often the same devises you watch stuff on. YouTube music video have taken off as one of the most popular ways kids listen and watch music today. This itself is only the tip of an iceberg that is constantly adapting and adopting content to technology and we have all seen that the television itself is to be changed and some would suggest become the home entertainment server.

The we have the success of the BBC’s iPlayer which should be giving the new brooms the idea that their business fundamentally is about content and rights not about broadcasting be it on television or radio which to many is like having a telecommunications company and dividing it between telephones and mobiles and forgetting all the other stuff and the fact that its just about communications.

eBooks Free With Ads

The Victorians gave us the Penny Press, Short form and episodic fiction, serialisation and book and pamphlet advertising. Some will suggest that today’s developing digital market can learn much from yesterday’s initial era of mass reading.

Today we read of another ‘new’ Victorian‘ idea – the ebook with adverts.

We see adverts on many digital services today. You have to suffer the pop-up 20 seconds, before they let you into where you want to go. Now www.eBookPlus.com , is introducing ebooks with adverts on a ‘with advertising it’s free’ model.  A service offer based on the premise that you will accept adverts at the front of the book and each chapter to get the content for free.

Adverts in ebooks is going to happen, it is now a question of how it will happen and the implications of the change. We believe that no single platform will prevail and it is somewhat hard to see how it is a sustainable unique selling point.

But what about the questions we need to ask ourselves?

Is advertising supplemental or replacement income?

As ebook price fall off the edge of the deep discount clif, is the total advert replacement the answer? If revenues flip from a purchase or subscription model to an advertising one, how will net receipts be audited? After all today we have an ‘honesty box’ approach to much of the ebook market and so will this become clearer with advertising model or even more ‘net receipts?’

When will the ad space be sold?

It is hard to see pre production advertising sales in all but the bestsellers, but do we like some other media segments, now get involved with increasing ad sponsorship and sales at the concept stage?

If we apply adverts to digital why not also apply them to print?

Who sells the slot?

Is it outsourced the ad agents, done in-house by the publisher, or left to the distributor and retailer? What happens in the case of the self publisher? Should the advert be tied into the individual title and its content, or as the Victorians did it, completely independent of the subject content? The tied-in advert may well work at the bestseller level, but can it work on the rest? Does advertising actually get sold on block at a genre level and in doing so have greater appeal to advertisers who will enjoy a wider audience? If we talk about genre wide adverts, then we must we also consider adverts across all publishers within that genre? Can we have sponsors of all a publisher’s works? Imagine Nike could be sponsoring all Random House works this year. We also could envisage sponsoring deals on fixed time slots where Cadburys become the proud sponsors of Penguin literature. Advertising can be envisaged at many levels but which will raise the revenue return and be acceptable to both authors and readers?

We could envisage some interesting and maybe lucrative adverting or sponsorship auctions which could bring in significant money but who are best positioned to manage, control and exploit these?

Will moral rights be applied or are surrendered?

Can an author say no to a Macdonald’s advert in their work? Can they insist on the type of advertising permitted? Can certain localised adverting standards be applied to what is a global work? Does the control sit with the publisher, the author or the distributor as we enter an era of moral rights which was never encompassed or envisaged in many rights contracts?  

What is the licence sold and duration of the rights?

Does an advert have a defined shelf life, after which it disappears, or is it a perpetual sale that may be out of date, incorrect or even selling obsolete product within a short period of time? If an advertised product breaks advertising code, or the product is withdrawn from market, do the ebooks get recalled too? Imagine some of the recent processed food UK products that were found to not contain what they said and contained horse meat instead now being advertised in an ebook. Do the ebooks get recalled too?

Can the adverts be refreshed, or are they embedded for life?

Can an advert dynamically change according to territory sold into to and therefore can multiple ad slots be sold against the same space on a time and geographical or even on a demographical basis? Are adverts sold to an individual demographic profile or to a mass market?

Auditing the revenues?

If we assume the right to advertise is not  exclusive we could have multiple channels each having their own slots and net revenues but will a standard model prevail or will it be many different net based models?

We are all in favour of creating supplemental income and increasing the earnings of the authors, but ask that we take a step back to consider some of the implications before we take a giant leap forward to buy into the ‘emperor’s new cloths.’

http://www.eBookPlus.com

It's All About Content and Rights

Publishers rightly tend to stick to what they good at when it comes to genre and content. The public may not always recognise the Publishing brand and only recognise the author, but focusing on the genre and building authoritative collections is critical to publishing today. Some mistook this focus as being what book sellers should also do, but forgot that book consumers were eclectic in their buying habits and wanted both value and ‘one stop’ shops.

Earlier this year, Wiley sold its Fromer’s travel guide to Google and had declared its intent to dispose of its remaining trade and reference division. Today they concluded that sale to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). The sale includes Wiley’s cookbooks, dictionaries and study guides. This continues the new approach within HMH to trade and consolidates material under their Betty Crocker, Better Homes and Gardens and How to Cook Everything brands. We are all aware of the cookbook celebrity brands and success of the likes of Jamie Oliver in the UK and Betty Croker in the US. Cookbooks appear to be holding their own in print and despite the significant growth in cookery applications and websites, account for some 2% of book sales in the US market. HMH now also add Webster’s New World Dictionary to it’s CliffsNotes and educational publishing, test preparation and assessment services.

Growing vertical publishing operations is not new and is publishing. As further publisher consolidation takes place, what we once saw a one industry joined together by a single format - the book is starting to diverge and consolidate into stronger vertical operations. The digital marketplace now allows these focused content repositories to be exploited in ways that were somewhat restricted by the book and the economics of the physical market. Consolidation of ‘book’ content will continue for those wanting a one stop shop and book buying value, but new markets will now evolve for the digital content and context which will be outside of the book market as we know it today. Packaging and licencing rights into new offers will become increasingly important as the content itself starts to become more fluid. We must always remember that Steve Jobs in creating iTunes sold tracks not albums, George Martin said the album was the menu and the concert the meal and that individual recipe could be proportionately more valuable than the collection.

Should publishers become the genre point of focus? Can author brands co-operate to form compelling points of consumer focus, or will they always be reliant of third parties to aggregate them? Who are the genre consolidators that the consumer recognises and how can they cash in on their ‘first point of contact’ opportunity?

Yesterday, books were not stocked by retailers whose primary goal was to sell other stuff,  but as retail itself migrates increasingly online, then adding associated digital content that enhances the proposition and authority of the sale, becomes a potentially no risk, small cost added consumer value and lock-in. Being able to licence that digital content in chunks, collections and many renditions may be the key to many publishers moving forward.

It’s all about content and rights.   

Everyone Wants To Join The Digital Rights Pieces

The one thing that is certain is that the current way in which we manage copyright is going to have to change. Will it this be for the better or worse is hard to say as many vested interests lobby and covert those who they think will make the difference and the levels of media noise in some quarters grows and some may say may be more about the money than the amicable resolution of the issues. Copyright is getting more complex in the global, online digital world and all parties are finding it difficult to find solutions to the issues that meet with everyone’s approval. In fact who decides what and has the power to make change is a challenge in itself.

It seems an internet age since Google started its audacious bid to ‘land grab’ orphan works and although the story is still ongoing the focus has been somewhat realigned yet again. One would have thought the exercise would have sharpened the industry focus into some of what was needed , but maybe the same interests that threatened to rip it apart under the GBS (Google Book Settlement) have merely moved on to a different perspective. 

Five recent and separate stories show that we may be all wanting change but in joining the dots we may all see a different picture.

First, there is the current petition to restore US copyright to 28 years. This petition to the White House may appear doomed to fail, but is not without wider support for a reduction in the current copyright period. The US acting unilaterally on such a move would be illogical given the global market and this would itself have impact on others outside the US just as much the GBS would have done. We treat the petition as noise but indicative of the calls for change.

Second, we recently spoke on the same platform as the British Library and listened with great interest as they described their new digital legal deposit process which comes into practice early next year. Several offline questions later we could envisage many cracks which appear to have been papered over and there appeared to be some fundamental oversights or business processes one would have expected to have been sorted by now. However,  when asked why not use it to create a digital copyright repository for UK works, it was clear that this was out of scope, out of cash and out of imagination. We thought what an opportunity lost. There also appeared to be assumptions voiced on the adoption of the standard works identifier which are far from reality.

Third is the recent Hargreaves report in the UK which covers a wide remit, recommends much but some may suggest appears to be playing more to the lobbyist that the needs of the market. We certainly applaud the digital exchange registry, but question whether this should be before or after the establishment of a rights registry framework and if the purpose is to exchange and sell rights, does it really address establishing rights ownership? Permission, moral and secondary rights are as important in the digital world where the work may be fragmented into many rights elements merely held together under one work.

This interesting piece was covered by our friend and rights guru, Laurence Kaye, who commented on orphan works,  ‘The committee recommended an evaluation of a potential orphan works registry should include consideration of the need for author's rights of identification to persist over and against any waiver that has previously been made contractually. The report suggested that this might take the form of a presumed right of identification on the registry (notwithstanding any previous waiver) unless other factors apply such as the scope of the waiver itself.’

Forth we have the nationalisation or mass digitisation of orphan works which has been recently been made statute in France and enables the National Library to digitise such works within their collection which can then me made available for free access and potentially commercial use. Some would suggest that the French government has a tendency, as with their recent VAT on ebooks, to move first and maybe think of others later. We see more governments following their own nationalisation programmes, driven again by libraries who may have their own vested self interest in mind.

Fifth is a recent article by the highly respected legal and copyright academic, Pamela Samuelson. In this wide raging article she describes the significant momentum in the US to change copyright and the growing influence and potential of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).  The article supports the move toward mass digitisation of orphans, stating that the DPLA aims to be a ‘portal through which the public can access vast stores of knowledge online, free, forever.’ Samuelson also intimates that the ‘fair use’ facility may allow the University libraries to proceed without government backing and that the current Google snippets and other cases involving the University of Michigan, and HathiTrust, may be ‘opening the door for them.’

Samuelson also want to see Copyright ‘ shorter in duration, more balanced, more comprehensible, and normatively closer to what members of the public think that it means or should mean.’ This says much, but again is open to interpretation, especially the ‘what member of the public think’ , or ‘silent majority’ claim implied.

So are we moving forward with common goals and direction? It would appear that the issue is becoming localised with strong lobbying from the vested parties. It may be interesting to reflect that the different sectors that were once joined together by a common format – the book, are different in their relationship to material, its creators and usage and maybe creating a silver bullet for all is not a wise move. Should the growing calls for open access to scholarly and scientific work dictate how all work is copyrighted, its term time and how its accessed? Should the need top determine the role of public libraries in the digital world impact all sectors? Should new and orphans be treated the same? As we increasingly create new forms of works which will include other media and maybe in a different type of short form, should these all be subject to the same rules and expression of rights?

Joining up the pieces is one thing seeing the same picture may be another.

Links:

• ‘Reforming Copyright Is Possible: And it's the only way to create a national digital library’ Pamela Samuelson – The Chronicle
• ‘BIS Committee’s report on Hargreaves Review. Where next?’ Laurence Kaye
• Support the Restoration of Copyrights to their Original Duration of 28 Years
• US Government Paper on Mass digitisation Issues
• European Parliament and Council agreement on Orphans
• French Act  Legislative dossiers - ACT No. 2012-287 of 1 March 2012 on the exploitation of digital books unavailable in the twentieth century

Digital Files Aren't Just For Christmas, But For Life

We talk about DRM as if it is the only issue to be addressed in the digital market. However some would suggest the most onerous digital issue that persists today is the fact that digital downloads can’t be resold. Like it or not you have it for life. With music you may be tired of the song, or even the artist, with software you may have moved onto other software, with books you may have simply read the book. In all cases if the product was physical it’s yours to resell, if digital there are no options it’s yours for life – or is it?

The first piece of news is from the European Court of Justice this week where they ruled that individuals or companies may resell used software licenses. The case was between  UsedSoft a German and US software giant Oracle ruled it permissible to resell of software bought over the internet and downloaded. By allowing the resale used packages with often legally obtained license keys a new owner is able to download the latest version of a given program directly from a company's Internet site and obtain all new updates and patches in the process. The European court ruled that the so-called principle of exhaustion applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited time span and effectively prevented the producer of the software the right to prevent the resale of that software.

The court did state that whoever resold pieces of original software and their accompanying licenses must also erase every copy on their own computers in advance and that they are not allowed to keep a copy after resale.

The second and more interesting piece comes from ReDigi.com, which is a US start-up launched last year aimed at facilitating the resale of digital music. ReDigi lets users load old, unwanted tracks into an online music locker, where others can purchase them for around 70 cents. To ensure it is not flooded with pirate copies, ReDigi's special software forensically analyses the tracks to verify that the files were purchased legally, deletes the songs off the seller's hard-drive, as well as any other devices that sync with it and holds them in a cloud based locker.  As  Apple’s contract with its users  doesn't prohibit customers from reselling iTunes bought files,ReDigi  only allows customers to trade tracks bought off iTunes.

 Despite the logical and moral process adopted by ReDigi to protect copyright, Capitol Records is suing ReDigi  and accuses them of infringement, arguing that the transferring tracks amounts to illegally duplicating files and running a business “built on widespread, unauthorized copying of sound recordings.”

As if they had not learnt from the Naspter days and the RIAA’s pursuit of individuals the music business appears to be making yet another public relations blunder. You can understand them worrying about declining revenues, the emergence of the Spotify model. But restricting resale only on digital is just going to fuel piracy and drive more ridicule on an industry that is weighed down with bad decisions and PR.

If the case rules in favour of ReDigi it will have a significant impact on all digital media download sales and it will be interesting to see if the door is left wide open or caveats are stipulated on the measures that must be in place to permit it.  The whole thing could blow open if Apple where to change their contracts. 

However what is most interesting would be the impact of a used sales market on the migration to subscription and on demand streaming service rentals such as Spotify. The digital remains 100% pristine and never gets worn out and there is no packaging to get lost and the digital file will retain a high residual value that they don’t today. This may even raise the original cost of files and give the owner value in their ownership that they don’t have today. If addressed properly there could be secondary revenues on resale to the creator in the form of royalty.

Merely allowing resales without some changes would open up a flood gate of secondary sales with little benefit to the industry.  

The Long Walk to DRM Freedom

The big debate today is still about DRM and whether it is necessary to prevent piracy . Some would argue that it is more of a sledgehammer to crack a virtual nut and mechanism that is actually failing to connect with its intended target? It is now becoming more widely accepted that it doesn’t deter professional piracy and anyone who wishes to crack it can do so with scripts which are available today on the internet. So the only people who DRM actually restricts and works against are the everyday consumers. The debate is taking a similar path as it did in the music industry, before they had that cathartic moment and went MP3. Some would suggest that it’s somewhat interesting that one of the major agents of change in the MP3 music e move at the end was Amazon and one of those that stood firm was Apple.  

DRM is about restricting, enforcing or controlling rights. In the physical book world it is basically about informing the person with the book, who owns the intellectual property and that it can’t be reproduced with permission. Obviously, the book owner can do anything they wish with the book and it was impossible for the rights owner do anything more than exert one’s rights. In the digital world nothing has changed but it is now easier to copy, reproduce, change a digital file and commercially reproduce or exploit it and therefore DRM is seen as a necessary a deterrent.

It is worth noting that without DRM we may have experienced widespread abuse as people started to use digital files. Therefore one could say it has worked and that it has given us time to adapt, understand and make the community aware of the issues. However, there comes a point when restrictions once thought as productive become counter productive. Some suggest that we have reached that point and it now time to switch off DRM, but have we considered the associated issues, or are we merely lurching into a move?

Is the removal of DRM a simple issue of switching it off, or are there associated issues that need to be considered at the same time? Will the change be a bottom up movement or will it be driven from the top down? Who will make that final move that will break the DRM shackles? Will it be the retailers , the publishers. The authors, the consumers, technology or a combination of events? The one thing that is becoming apparent is that the genie is out or coming out of the lamp. Getting it back in may be a public relations act too far.

At the heart of the issue remains the fear of the unknown, which often makes getting consensus across the industry more difficult and some would say impossible. The fear is about loss of revenues to all concerned. That lost revenue opportunity to make more money or reward for effort and creation. However, the fact is that no matter what figures are calculated, it is impossible to determine what is lost or effect would be and whether , those who take a different approach could have had the same result if they had remained within the confides of the rules. Some would suggest the It all guess work and often massaging figures to fit the argument.

As we move towards more online and towards on-demand services, then the need to download and ‘own’ actual files decreases and the protection, auditing and management required also change.  Some who are advocating a DRM free world are doing so knowing that in an online service will render DRM as we know it today irrelevant. Content truly can become agnostic when read through browser based readers. The file should actually never leave the server and when it does it is only cached locally. We have to seriously ask ourselves if we really want our library on a device or local server when we can get it 24x7 online on demand and read it literally on any device at any time and anywhere. Some would suggest  that those who say this is not the real world today may be the same people who never thought the internet would make it passed the dirt track and become the super highway we have today.

What is certain is that we will not all move and switch off DRM at the same hour on the same day and some will take time to see the light and act with great caution. So what do we need to think about as we move away from DRM?

Ownership – do we own, rent individually or subscribe to a service? This change itself demands the control of access rights and windows. Today we do not allow the first sale doctrine to digital, but in a rental world this becomes irrelevant it only remains if we sell the file to the consumer. Some would suggest that the way we have distributed digital files to all, is itself questionable and if we can’t work on a cloud based distribution ourselves how would we expect consumers to do it?

The library lending model  is perfectly suited to the online on-demand model. The commercial rental model still requires to be addressed but DRM becomes a none issue as demonstrated by services such as Bloomsbury Online and many institutional academic services.

Permission and usage rights still need to be documented and available to be viewed. A rights registry which covers permissions and sub rights would make sense but unfortunately is unlikely to happen.

Removing DRM is not about finding ways to reduce the market clout of some. This is naïve as the benefits would apply equally to them and iTunes still dominates music in an MP3 world.

So rather than debating the removal of DRM should we be now discussing how we will operate in a DRM free world and what we need to consider today to de-risk the fear that is holding us back from moving forward.   

BIC 2012: Rethinking The Future

This is a presentation i gave to the BIC New Trends Seminar 2012 on 20th June in London.

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that it will be different to today and anyone who says that they have a clear and defined long term digital strategy is someone to be avoided and treated with healthy scepticism. We can all spend too long looking backwards to spot trends, But the future is not a linear journey. Trends merely tell us where we have been, not our destination. However, history teaches us that much is cyclic and what comes around goes around albeit differently. Change as we have all witnessed, can and will be, very disruptive and there will be many digital ‘black swans’ moving forward.

Richard Charkin recently said that publishers need to now think and act as start-ups, which is a hairy prospect for many and will not suit all.

I believe that the future is often born out of understanding the past, recognising what is different and identifying the enablers that make change happen and for us to do things smarter.

Today, I want to share 3 stories that help present just one perspective of the future. These are merely three stories which weave together to present just one argument. Just one piece in tomorrow’s digital jigsaw.

The first story is about finding needles in haystacks

A couple of years ago I found myself in Ludlow market looking at a pile of old books. I bought three, two by the same author and one featuring an artist I admired. The first two were cloth bound and published in the late 1930s by Country Life and the author went on to be; an author, artist, environmentalist, TV personality and wildlife campaigner. I wanted to share with others; the art, the wildlife, the environmental perspectives, and their insight into life in a bygone age and of course the man himself. 

I started to think about reprinting them. I established the direct market potential, the audience and was confident it was viable as a quality two volume collector’s slipcase edition and so I started to research the rights to the works. However, tracking the rights to 80 year old works quickly became a challenge. Eventually with the help of friend, who is somewhat of an expert in orphan and public rights, we tracked down the estate’s owner and there the issue sits today. The exercise proved that even with a well know author and clear publication history, tracking down rights, be they orphans or just old works, can be a testing exercise.

Imagine tracking down a less notorious author’s work from even 50, 40, or even 30 years ago? 

I was one of the first to stand up against the audious Google Book Settlement. My opposition was and remains primarily over the proposed ‘land grab’ or adoption of orphan works. Does my quest to adopt an orphan damper my opposition, or push me towards the ‘nationalisation’ of orphans or mass digitisation some propose today? The answer remains no.

Thinking about a rights business reminds me that some ten years ago I was invited by the BBC to attend a special conference on their future. It was to be attended by all senior figures from the Director General down.

On the day I found myself joined by a group of what appeared to be students and teenagers complete with street clothing and undaunted by their surroundings. I felt somewhat out of place and wondering what on earth was happening. We were ushered into a room and ask to sit on tables with senior BBC executives. After a couple of speeches the most illuminating dialogue started around each table. It was all about technology, software, games, gadgets, viral events and the latest things, some of which I had never heard of. It was about how the BBC should engage and what they should do next. The BBC learnt a lot from that exercise. Interestingly the BBC was starting to recognise that they weren’t so much in the broadcasting business as in the content and rights business.

That fundamental realisation has helped them shape their BBC Worldwide commercial arm and changed much of what and how they work today.  

Publishing, be it; music, film, games, books, is about content and rights. It is a rights business from acquisition, development to trading. Yet it is somewhat ironic that we remain wedded to rights terms which would appear to be inappropriate to the digital world, stuck in the print world. We find ourselves now moving in that digital environment without a rights registry.

It’s like going into combat today with First World War technology – it’s plain just dumb.

The one thing Google would have at least given us was a registry and without one some would suggest that we are flying blind in the eye of a digital storm.

The second story is about that extraordinary man Charles Dickens

A couple of months ago I visited the Dickens exhibition at the London Museum. What is interesting is that Dickens lived through the great literacy revolution where the masses were able to read and his penny fiction was a way of feeding their new habit in a digestible form. Dickens was many things not just a writer of great novels. Dickens was a performer, a journalist, a letter writer, a pamphleteer, a theatre producer and a self publicist extraordinaire.

He not only wrote many works by the chapter, he also delivered them as ongoing works. He used the ‘penny press’ to presale the stories by instalment. In 1837 he was selling some 50,000 copies of his Pickwick periodicals at a shilling a time. These contained one chapter sandwiched between pages of adverts. Many of these adverts had little to do with books or even the subject matter of the story. In fact the adverts demonstrate the diversity of the audience. The journals appeared either weekly or monthly and given the number of chapters and volume of sales, plus the advertising revenues, should have earned him a good return. It is claimed that when Great Expectations was published in weekly instalment in 1861 it had weekly sales of some 100,000 units a week. Interestingly they didn’t diminish his book appeal but fuelled interest in the finally work.

The Victorian engineering, transport and communications revolution of Dickens’ time was, on reflection, as great as that we have today with our technology and communications revolution. The new railways, telegraph and postal services enabled him to travel extensively and communicate to a wide audience and between 1858 and 1870 he gave some 472 readings of his works in the UK and US.

In Victorian times the novel was often also enhanced by illustrations. Dicken’s ‘Sketches by Boz’ was illustrated by George Cruikshank and as with many Dickens tales the reader was able to picture both in words and in imagery the story as it unfolded. Today, we have often lost the imagery of yesterday, but does the new ebook now enable us to once again enhance and illustrate the book?

It is not hard to see the relevance of Dickens to today and why it is somewhat ironic that 2012 is the 200th celebration of his birth.

Some have adopted the short story and instalment model and Keita digital novels continue to be a huge success in Japan. In the West Stephen King and others have also ventured down the digital short story and instalment route. But why hasn’t a publisher grabbed this digital opportunity by the throat? Are we stuck in the economic 75,000 words, 256 page format of the print rendition?

When we have done digital short stories, we have even bound them into digital collections. It’s as if we missed the iTunes moment when singles were reborn. We continue to ignore the shortening attention span and channel hopping culture in which we live.

Has the publishing and editorial process got in the way of the instalment and short story? 

Short stories and instalments may also unlock further the democratisation of writing. Some would suggest that they may have greater potential for consumer engagement than the enhancing today’s somewhat stretched physical content model with digital media for media’s sake.

If we want more people to read then give them something exciting that they can quickly appreciate and value.

The third story is about the creation and development itself - the publishing front office.

In the late 90s as part of the research programme ‘publishing in the 21^st Century’ , Mark Bide, Mike Shatzkin , John  Wicker and myself went to HarperCollins in Manhattan. We were doing research into the digitisation of the publishing front office and the objective was to look at an Editorial system that they were using.  The system looked impressive and acted as we would expect but I felt there was something not right about it. A few questions later and what appeared to be a good system was turning into a dog.

To cut a long story short it was built like a transactional system and not as a content one. It lacked that intuitive feel needed by creative people. What workflow that did exist was ridged. Editors were being asked to enter other people’s information for little perceived benefit to them. The final blow was that a number of Editors had refused to use the system.

I remember saying, ‘if the customer service clerk refused to use the system you sack them, if the editor refuses to use the system you sack the system.’

Have we moved on in the last decade?

Well the answer is yes and no. Systems have been adopted but the divide between content and context and transactional information still exists. People still see production systems as often financial and transactional and somewhat divorced from the content. Marketing, promotional and bibliographic information is still often in parallel silos and not drawn directly from the content itself. There is still a gulf between content and transactional information.

This is not true in some sectors, such as education, where the complexity of the works and digital has demanded better tools. However when you look at others such as the development of some academic monographs, you can see huge opportunities for radical improvement which are not being taken today.

I would ask you to consider that the argument that these three stories give us is that tomorrow will be heavily influenced and shaped just as much by the changes that will happen upstream in we acquire, develop, repurpose, store, curate, and market content and rights as it will be downstream in how the promote, sell, distribute and trade them.  It is about understanding and getting back to the basics, what has worked in the past, what could work tomorrow, adapting and understanding the total environment.

Digital is not just about pouring physical books into digital containers. If we think that is what it is about we have missed the plot.

There are many pieces to the digital jigsaw and there is no one piece that fits all.

To date we have been digitally obsessed with devices, DRM and formats. Thankfully these are now relatively irrelevant and yesterday’s issues

·         Devices are evolving into platforms, content is becoming agnostic, and finally moving to being cloud based on demand

·         DRM is at last past its sell by date. But before we all run out and drop DRM it it is worth thinking about rights and permission, collective commons registration, and the ‘first sale doctrine’ . Some would suggest that not to do so may be as short sighted as when we got rid of the NBA without thinking about returns

We do have some exciting challenges downstream, such as:

·         working out what the difference between ebooks and apps and associated usage rights

·         moving from outright sales models to new models, which most probably will be subscription and rental based

·         redefining and creating tomorrow’s libraries

·         exploiting the rapidly evolving social networking environment and helping readers find a digital needle in a digital haystack, or as it is now called ‘discoverability’

·         working out how we audit the sales ‘honesty box’ environment we have created

Returning to basics.

There are only two people that count in the value chain – the author, creator who puts in the IP and the consumer who puts in the cash. Everyone in between adds cost, but more than ever has to add value. Digital publishing isn’t just about the downstream activity and the consumer it is about the life cycle of content, context and rights from Author to reader.

I believe that the argument I have presented today can present one piece to tomorrow’s jigsaw and new opportunities which themselves could be significant and impact the downstream market, provide long overdue development productivity and rights governance and, may even offer a opportunity that doesn’t just cannibalise existing print but can compliment it.

So who Owns the eBook and App Rights?

We think that we know everything about the rights that we own, or licence. We attempt to control their usage and licensing and yet find ourselves constantly looking over our shoulders and wary of increased infringement and outright piracy. Has the emergence of the multi platform app and maturing ebook market now made this even more complex?

An app and an ebook are not themselves content, but mere digital content containers into which we can now pour and mix digital stuff. These mixes can contain text, audio, moving image, still image and interactive content and present the subject in brave new ways. They not only start to reshape the content itself, but also how we interact and access it.

Until these new containers arrived the various forms of content usually stood by themselves within their own containers and ecosystems:

• Text lived within books, journal, magazines, newsprint etc.
• Audio lived within CDs, vinyl, MP3 files etc.
• Moving image lived within DVDs, Video, TV, film etc.
• Still image lived within galleries, books, etc
• Interactive lived in application software, education solutions, games, assessments etc.

The second opportunity that these new containers gave us was to democratise creation in a way not previously possible. Not only can anyone now create a new work and distribute it by several different digital channels to literally anybody, but anyone can also remix, sample and produce new content in ways not previously possible. We now have a level playing field which may nbot be apparent to many but is very real to the new entrants both large and small.

We have seen the explosion of blogs and social networks, full of snippets of content and that some would suggest can stretch the usage of ‘fair use’ to its limits. We are all now familiar with the music sampling culture that is ingrained into some music genres and culture. We have seen the emergence of multi media works which extend sampling and mix it with original content to create a new work. We have started to see living works which redefine the term ‘finished’ and even ‘edition’. Content is changing and is exploding.

These new digital containers are not just a vehicle for the established ‘publisher’ content but now can become a vehicle for all and start to redefine distribution, sharing and the digital content itself. So what happens to the rights associated with the source content and how does it relate to the new work within the container?

Rights are about usage, licence, geography, commerce and permissions. Does the usage of snippets fall under permissions or fair use? How do you find out what is fair and what is infringement? How do you establish ownership and licence? How do you reward creativity when it is part of the new digital work which may well be sold at a price lower that the digital content itself? When these containers are global how do you establish restrictions let alone enforce them?

Today we have various DRM positions being adopted in the various sectors with some being DRM free, whilst others are becoming DRM restricted. Will this mixed approach now inhibit the use of some materials, or promote some to further question DRM and to break it?

What is clear is that rights are getting a whole lot more complex..

So How Do You Reward The Author?

At one end of the value chain we have ebook pricing, which today is in need of a sustainable model that is in the consumer interest. After all, they are the final arbitrator and the only one who actually puts real revenue into the chain. At the other end, we also find a similar need for a sustainable reward model, which is in the long term interest of the author. After all they are the ones who actually create the work and its value.

We have long stated our views on agency and its flawed position. Some have claimed that without agency, the future is bleak, prices will fall and the rewards for authors will be impacted. Whatever position you think is right, the future of agency will be addressed by the Department of Justice and EU investigations and filed class actions. Irrespective of the outcome, the question of author reward should be debated and is not just tied to any one model.

We have seen the drop in advances and the pressure on established authors to grant ebook on their back list. We have also seen the ebook self publishing model change, with the likes of Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others offering large incentives to authors to publish, both backlist and new titles with their services. The percentage of reward offered by publishers on ebooks has also gone up and down like a YoYo.

So what should an author earn on ebooks? Does an ebook have to be tied to its pbook or abook renditions? Where are the added value steps between the author and the consumer on ebooks?

Last week we also listened to a good friend, who is an published author and who told us about an aspiring author‘s manuscript that they had been given to read. They said the work was very good and a well constructed 'page turner', but that they were lost as to what to say to the writer. Five years ago they would have lined them up with an agent introduction and pushed them towards the traditional publishing route. Today, they feel that the rewards have changed dramatically and although the model still works for many, the odds on new authors making it are increasing and they believe, ‘its growing impossible for authors to make a living out of writing alone.’

The ebook itself is potentially changing the relationship between the author and the others who sit between them and the consumer. Yesterday the rights were often traded on a ‘performance related’ model. If the work wasn’t shifting, the rights could revert. Yesterday, there were often separate rewards for unit sales, special ‘book club’ deals, and the royalty statement could be tied to production, inventory and sales. Today, we increasingly see ‘net receipts’ and in the digital world, ‘honesty box’ sales and receipts. We do not doubt the sales reported but it would be interesting to see who has fully audited their digital sales and established that the money paid relates to the sales achieved?

We also have the question of rights being reverted. Contracts may still tie the pbook break clause to performance, but does this extend to ebooks whose inventory is now virtual and now exists within a ‘long tail’ marketplace? Are ebook rights becoming perpetual deals? Why aren’t ebook’s rights term based and fixed and renewable on say a five year basis? This would not only remove perpetual deals for the life of the copyright but it would make sense in a marketplace which is rapidly evolving and where it is often difficult to predict next year, let alone twenty or thirty years out. Today, an author can not only be tied to an agent’s deal for life but increasingly, the publisher too. Let’s hope that they don’t ever fall out!

Permission rights will become increasingly important in the digital market, but how are these rewarded and itemised on that royalty statement, let alone calculated and recorded?

We also have the question of payment schedules. It was understandable that royalty payments on pbooks took time. But in today’s real time payment transaction world where all ebook sales should be firm, does to same ‘banking’ delays and reconciliation make sense? It is interesting that the agency model agreed the commission split upfront, but irrespective of that simplification of the division of revenue, the money flow remained slow to the author.

Marketing and promotion can be one of the greatest value added services provided by a publisher. In the physical mass market world this was relatively easy to define and could even be written into the contract, but does this still work in today’s mixed market and how will it work in tomorrow’s digital direct market? As publishers move to a more direct marketing position will the exposure and spending gap between the ‘celebrity author’ and the rest widen? Does the publisher see the author, the work, or themselves as the brand tomorrow and how is that reflected in the marketing spend?

We now have the emergence of the rental model, which as in music and other media, often has a consumer appeal. Not only can this be at title level, but also incur a subscription across collections. How will this be reconciled moving forward?

Advertising revenue driven models are now starting to take hold within other sectors but how will they be reconciled to reward authors?

There are beacons of light for authors and we applaud the Simon and Schuster new author service and believe that transparency of marketing, sales, and reward is the only way forward.

Finally, we have the question of what should the author be paid on their digital sales. Some suggest a bit more than the physical sales, some stick around the 25% mark, some go higher and then we have the self publishing levels where the majority of revenues flows to the author. These are mere numbers and meaningless unless tied to performance as it is better to earn on a lower percentage and sell volume than earn on higher percentage and sell few.

So how do you relate performance and reward in digital rights contracts moving forward?

Well, here's another Rights mess you've gotten me into!"

A number of announcements, press articles and incidents have recently occurred, which individually may mean little, but collectively bring us to question whether we are finally addressing some of the copyright challenges we now face, or slipping further into litigation and life in the Wild West.

We read with great interest the Google submission to dismiss the Author Guild’s Class Classification. The submission is a must read for anyone who believes establishing and managing rights is simple. Interestingly, this action was just dealing with primary rights. Having unsuccessfully argued one case, which was found wanting, Google have now apparently had a cathartic moment, and decided to turn everything on its head. They now set out to describe the complexity and ‘grey’ environment in which we actually trade and do so to undermine the Author Guild’s class status. Some would suggest that they were finding it difficult to convince the court on their approach to ‘opt out’ versus ‘opt in’ and on the crucial issue of orphan works and appear to be picking up their bat and ball in a huff and are now arguing that the Author Guild do not represent authors sufficiently to mount a class action. It is somewhat amazing it took Google so long to come to this conclusion and it is hoped that they do not succeed without fundamentally changing their conditions.

Today we read in Techdirt about how the Canadian collection society, Access Copyright, is trying to claim that "posting a link" to a work is the same as making a copy! You would think that this lunacy would be seriously questioned and challenged but some such as the universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have apparently accepted that e-mailing hyperlinks are equivalent to photocopying a document. The result is an annual fee of $27 for every full-time equivalent student and surveillance of academic staff email. Here in the UK we have the PPL music licensing body which issues licenses to any business, such as a shop, bar, office, restaurant, gym, community building, not-for-profit organisation that plays recorded music. This sounds reasonable but PPLs method of establishing and chasing licences may leave a lot to be desired. Some may say its more about harassment, and cold call tactics an acting as ‘wheel clampers’ than education and reasoning. Are these agencies less about protecting and educating on copyright and more about collecting money to support them?

Then we have the ongoing debate and lawsuits over digital rights and what may turn out to be a landmark case between HarperCollins and Open Road. Some suggest it will never be concluded inside the court and an out of court settlement is almost certain. If this were to happen then this would leaving many questions unanswered for others facing the same uncertainty.

On February 17th, Paramount Pictures studio filed a lawsuit accusing the estate of Mario Puzo, who wrote 1969 bestseller "The Godfather," of approving sequels without their permission and in violation of copyright agreements. The studio claim that the 2002 agreement allowed for the publication of only one sequel novel to the movies and that "The Godfather Returns" by Mark Winegardner, was published in 2004. The Puzo estate has opted to publish a second novel "The Godfather's Revenge," and is planning a third book "The Family Corleone." An attorney for the Puzo family, claims Paramount does not have control of book publishing rights. This may prove a straight forward contract breach, but shows that in some cases the rights acquired may go further than a single work and may involve the characters within it, or the theme itself.

However, it is not just the agencies and publishers that are grappling with copyright in today’s changing world, governments are increasingly being involved. On February 22, the French senate will vote on a bill allowing the digitization of works unavailable 20th century. The bill proposed by Senator UMP, Jacques Legendre was adopted in its first reading on 19 January by the National Assembly. The bill covers French orphan works which have fallen into the infamous ‘grey area’ and the Minister of Culture and Communication, Frederic Mitterrand, claims that this amounts to between 500,000 and 700,000 titles. The bill will also establish a public database and management under the BNF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) listing of all the 20th century works. The bill is aimed at protecting authors and also providing universal access to books. Some would suggest a kind of French Book Settlement.

The UK Publishers Association (PA) has in its submission to the UK Digital Copyright Exchange (DCE) feasibility study, called for the development of a new online "one stop shop" for the exchange of license copyright works. . The PA makes the case for a DCE as a fully voluntary, interoperable platform, for use by businesses and the public, which could allow rights to be licensed more efficiently and openly. DCE study follows from recommendations in the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property, published in May of last year.

So are we seeing a number of countries acting unilaterally and with different degrees of response or will the acts be rolled up under initiatives such as the EU’s Arrow project?

Publishing at its heart is a rights business and as we embrace the digital age it is illogical that no one can find a rights needle in a haystack. We have been waiting for an eternity for a rights repository which would enable both the searching of ownership and the trading of permissions. But as Google have concluded in their latest court submission rights is a complex business and establishing them is far from simple. The legal wrangling of today may look to be moving forward but as ever the only ones who are gaining from it are the lawyers.

So who is an ePublisher?

Although they varied with the market sectors they served, being able to defining a book publisher used to be fairly easy. The same could be said of film, broadcasting, music, games publishers. However digital has the capability to change these well defined and understood divisions and not only explode the physical media container and constraints, but also the content itself and the roles of those who produce it.

Last week’s over hyped Apple event did one crucial thing – it brought home the reality that an ebook is just a mere digital container that can accommodate many different forms of digital content. Yes, we all knew this, but now everyone, everywhere can clearly see it. This not only has the potential to change what we see as an ebook but also creates a new awareness and potential market demand for something different.

The ‘digital container’ changes roles. Will the author be able to mix and mix digital content into a digital package or will they need help in identifying, validating and clearing rights to extra material. Will the role of the publisher as a collator, packager and administrator become more important in some sectors? Will others outside of the traditional book market step in to be publishers?

We now read that NBC News plans to launch NBC Publishing, aimed at publishing 30 interactive new e-book titles in the first year. The ebooks will be based on current events, documentaries, trends, biographies, and profiles and they are looking to leverage their existing content assets from shows such as NBC Nightly News, Today, Dateline, Peacock Productions, their archives, NBC Sports, and Universal Pictures.

The venture will enable NBC to use video, audio, and current programming in creative new ways and may prove pivotal as TVs become smarter and connected. They have brought in two publishing executives to help on the venture and plan to use a network of freelance professionals as needed. NBC claims over one million hours of archival video content going back to the ’20s can repurpose NBC news coverage and also plan to work with independent authors who use NBC’s resources.

It is possible to now see a greater polarisation of publishers with at one end the specialist and smaller publisher and self publisher and at the other large or divisions of large media entities. We already have the players such as News Corp, Bertlesmann, Pearson but are now likely to see others enter not necessarily with text content as their main asset. It will be interesting to see if the BBC soon rues the day it lost its publishing control.

Whatever, happens mixed digital media is here. The challenge is not burning your fingers in lavish digital utopias that don’t earn out and grappling with the issues of rights, acquisitions, licences, permissions and sales.