Why is eBook Metadata So Hard?

Today many continue to pour the physical book content into the digital container and believe that they have addressed the digital opportunity. However many have also adopted the same approach to contextural data, metadata, bibliographic, burbs etc. It’s as if we think that what works in the physical world is equally applicable in the digital one.

Is this blind faith approach down to a conscious decision to do as little as necessary and incur as little cost as possible, or is it a fundamental misunderstanding of the digital environment? Some would suggest that it’s like continuing to distribute AI sheets like confetti via a fax machine in the email and internet age.

Way back in the eBook dark ages (the late ninties) we were part of the highly acclaimed publishing research series edited by Mark Bide and Mike Shatzkin, ‘Publishing in the 21^st Century’ and one of the reports we produced was simply titled ‘From N to X’ and was about the growing importance of Context (metadata) over Content. What was clear then was that discoverability was as important, if not more important than the content and finding that digital needle in the Internet haystack was going to be a challenge to all.

Interestingly, the industry choose to retain their physical taxonomy of classification and apply restrictions often that only applied to the physical world. It as if all we could see was physical shelves and we had to place the titles thus. ONIX which did much to provide structure for the physical B2B supply chain started to become increasingly irrelevant in the B2C ebook supply chain. The major ebook retailers all adopted their own classification taxonomies some permitting many genre classifications others a few. Keywords became important but the response was varied. The important blurb was often just the physical one again merely poured into the digital description. Some indexed the first chapter, others the whole book, but searching index words often then became highly subjective and often irrelevant to the intended search. As seen with some generic search engines today even your individual profile may present different search results to others.

Some battled with the semantic tagging of the likes of illustrations. Some sectors recognised the importance of citations, references and continued to support those established to manage these in the physical world.

The point is that we have a very rich bank of potential information that can aid discoverability and qualification. The richest source of content metadata being in the book itself. Some 95% of all contextual data is available via the book with the remaining being often available via hyperlinks.

The other source of information comes from our own profiles on our tastes, preferences and habits. Some will say that one of the reasons why social book sites work well is that they aid discoverability, recommendations and thereby add context. Its little surprise therefore that Amazon bought Goodreads and have just launched their Twitter relationship. Book recommending social services have mushroomed but  have they actually increased sales to the same proportion or are they just an extension of today’s ‘me too’ social dating society?

We therefore need to rethink what we give away to promote, aid discoverability and add value to drive sales. Merely to continue to pour the same physical information into the digital boxes is not going to work. Equally waiting for the white knight to provide the solution may well now carry a health warning.

Territorial Entrepreneur Wins

We remember speaking as part of a team on Supply Chain opportunities at the UK BA conference back in Dublin in 1998. We knew the statement that would provoke a response was going to be when the final speaker of our team, Mike Shatzkin, would suggest that UK retailers should buy their books from the likes of Ingram in the US. The outrage from some on the day was expected and somewhat overshadowed all else and although the case was somewhat different to the Kirtsaeng v. Wiley recent case, the issue of territorial restrictions and pricing wasn’t.

Last week, the US Supreme Court’s ruled in the Kirtsaeng v. Wiley case and the landmark ruling, by a 6-3 margin, held that the doctrine of first sale, which allows for legally acquired copyrighted works to be resold by their new owners, applies to works made overseas and that previously were restricted by territorial rights.

The case centres on Kirtsaeng, a Thai-born US student who had been successfully sued by Wiley in a lower US court for importing and reselling foreign editions of Wiley textbooks made for exclusive sale abroad. Kirtsaeng had seen the pricing difference between content available in Asia and the content in the US and had bought the Asia content and sold it in the US. No different to global commodity market operations, but the publishers claimed that the copyright was specific to the territory and could not be resold in another territory. Although they won the case in the lower court they lost it in the Supreme Court.

Now many predict that the only option for publishers is to set uniform pricing across territories and end the practice of different prices in different regions.  This could result is unlikely to lead to lower US prices and is expected to result in consumers and students abroad seeing dramatic price increases or losing access to their US educational content. However this decision impacts not just education publishers but all publishers and also cuts across all media.

If we step back from the barricades that sprung up after the ruling, what we see is a change that some would say is inevitable. The practices that ‘protected’ interests in the old analogue world are being rigorous tested in the digital online global world of today. It isn’t just about foreign editions or territorial rights, it’s about consumer rights be they intuitions, businesses, or consumers and today the law will always err towards them. We have friction between, publishers and libraries over digital, publishers and institutions over fair use, publishers and consumers over territorial restrictions, pricing and the emerging issue of digital resale. These in many ways are no different to the battles between global corporates and the people over tax avoidance. The common thread is that the law is now demanding transparency and consistency and what was often built into a convenient extension of copyright is now falling shy of the rigorous legal test.

Many throw their arms in the air and say that these tectonic shifts will be the death of publishing as we know it and probably they are right. But is that a bad or good thing? Does it mean the industry is dead, or are they merely signalling that it is time to move on to new models, new processes and new relationships?

Consider the potential implications if publishers were to withdraw from markets such as Asia because the old model no longer worked and they deemed the market unprofitable? Do we believe that the gap would be filled by local efforts or by the pirates? Sometimes we have to accept that change is here and adjust and not merely pick up our ball and go off in a sulk.

The case, in some ways is no different to a bookstore finding that they can’t buy titles cheaper than a leading reseller or supermarket is actually selling them for. Should they be stopped from buying these copies and reselling them?

The Organisational Impact of Digital

The changes in the technology market are somewhat frightening and swift and organisations we once expected to last for ever, or were seen as the new role models can soon wane. We remember, the first ‘Publishing in the 21st Century’ research paper , The organisational Impact of New Media’. We helped those stalwarts, Mark Bide and Mike Shatzkin galvanise their thinking. Then we looked at a digital world that was going to happen, some 15 years later, we now face an exploding digital market.

Only this year we have seen Kodak hit the digital wall this year.

We have also seen Nokia struggle to find the right mix as others swallow up their once dominant market share.

It is sobering that this week Facebook, in acquiring Instagram, valued the 15 month old company of 13 staff at a staggering $1 billion.

We have seen the innovative Sony in the doldrums with four years of losses. At the end of March 2011 Sony had some 168,200 employees. Now Sony has announced it is to cut some 10,000 jobs, which equates to some 6% of its workforce. Only last month Sony said that it was selling a chemical products division, shedding some 3,000 people and earlier it merged its Sony Mobile Display business with Toshiba and Hitachi to form Japan Display and in doing so effectively shed a further 2,000 jobs. Job cuts and reorganisations are not new at Sony. In the Global Fincial Crisis at the end of 2008 they shed some 16,000 employees.

We often think of businesses in simple terms of turnover, employees, profit, but today these can be inhibitors, which make the ship heavy and difficult to tack quickly whilst others prove far more nimble and react to changes far quicker.
This week many are debating the perceived justice or injustice of the DOJ decision on the ‘Agency’ pricing model. What may be more interesting is to debate the organisational changes that will have to happen within ‘publishing’. Big is not always best and not all of today’s players will make it to tomorrow. What is the ideal publishing organisation of tomorrow? How will it be structured different from today? What will the difference between the various sectors? Who will be best positioned to seize the new opportunities?

What is clear is that change is not just about content and seize is not about people but how you deploy them.

Should Art Remain Physical?

One of Mike Shatzkin’s insights that he gave in his article on, ‘ Four Years Into The eBook Revolution’ has stirred much debate and is worth exploring. Shatzkin commented, "Today I will add another urgent suggestion to general trade publishers: reconsider your commitments to publish illustrated books in any time frame more extended than a year or two and think about sticking to straight text, unless you have paths to the customers for those books that do not go through bookstores. If we do end up in an 80% ebook world anytime soon, and we very well might, you'll want to own the content you know works (for the consumer) in that format, not what you don't know works any way other than in print."

As we all know there are many forms of illustrated books and it is often hard to generalise. Some heavily illustrated works and genre are making the transition into the digital world whilst others remain in physical one. We see travel and reference as genre that could be enhanced by digital and where much activity is taking place. However, one has to question whether the digital result will be a mere conversion of the physical, a replacement offer, or a complimentary one with additional options.
It would appear wasteful to merely take the physical travel book and merely produce a digital manifestation when the digital could be enhanced so much by technology. A real time map, instant reviews, what on today, video clips etc. But as works migrate from one dimensional flat print to multi dimensional live works then the whole process of creation, editing and production must change too. Some may be ready to make that change but others may be reminded of the heady CDRom days were logic and financial return went out the window in search of the technology dream. Many have learnt and are rightly cautiously optimistic in their approach.

The situation becomes very interesting when one looks at Art books. There are several art book forms from the package prints of the likes of Paragon, Parkstone, the high end niche collection editions of Taschen, Rizzoli and others, to the gallery and exibhition editions. An art book is often a collection piece, a book that is browsed and returned to many times. It readers often seek quality of paper and print and are less interested in the individual works than the collection.

If art lovers wanted the digital then they would even want the exhibition they would be happy to see images rendered digitally onto walls. We watched Degas quality softbacks literally walking off the RSA floor last week. It was probably the closest to buying the tee shirt at the end of a concert.

We don’t believe that everything must go digital, nor that everything is better digital and Shatzkin is correct in his insight that illustrated books are not ideal for digital today. Even before we grapple with the thorny issue of rights within an illustrated book world we have to ask whether we really believe that those sumptuous quality works from the likes of Rizzoli, Taschen, Thames & Hudson, Phaidon, David and Charles, Frances Lincon and National Galleries and Museums will be replaced by and rendered better on a 10” iPad?

eBooks Aren't Binary

Sometimes we prescribe before we understand the diagnosis and then we are surprised when the reaction is not what we expected. As a consultant you often merely move on, as a business you count the cost and put it down to experience. We are all guilty.

The offline channels have been buzzing with new business model talk, how publishing should reposition itself and what digital pricing could look like. Its great fun to participate and great to hear others viewpoints but it’s always dangerous to take yourself too seriously and believe that you have invented the silver bullet.

Mike Shatzkin has tried to distil his thoughts and produced a excellent and recommended read,'This eBook thing is just going to get more complicated'. We may not agree with everything that Mike says but there is a lot of insightful thoughts on the market especially on the current omnivore positioning and potential wars between Apple, Google and Amazon.

The one area that struck us and has nibbling away in our conscious, is that of digital content distribution versus ownership. The players we talk most about today; Google, Amazon, Apple, Fictionwise, Stanza, Adobe, Overdrive, Netlibrary, Questia, Ingram etc. do not create content they merely distribute, sell and licence it. Apart from the potential land grab of US orphan by Google, they don’t have exclusivity on the content yet. This itself posses many questions on just how many digital distributors are needed to change a light bulb and whether the proliferation of digital files and different technologies is wise?

We recently wrote our thoughts on the digital supply chain and have also written about the challenges that can exist when a reseller changes digital supplier or a distributor ceases having encrypted DRM licences. In a digital world there would appear little sense in building monolithic repositories to duplicate content. There again, there are no silver bullets.

Where's the Digital Content?

We have often argued that consumer digital book demand today is a demand operating in a vacuum. Compare just the titles in print or the titles published in print this year to the total number of ebooks available. There is still a clear dearth of digital content today. Waterstones last week asked publishers to stand up and grasp the opportunity and were clearly stating the obvious – you can’t get consumer attention if you could find what you want. Today we read the same from the US in the Christian Monitor. These voices aren’t alone nor are they asking for something that is unreasonable. The ebook, the digital debate, the introduction of Digital directors aren’t new. So what are the issues and why isn’t there a digital edition of every book in print?

The publishers have rights issues to be cleared and investments to make but this isn’t new nor is going to happen without the commitment. Some say that the cost is prohibitive for the likely return but how will that logic ever change? Device manufacturers, digital companies and now channels, libraries and retailers are stepping up but the word ‘cautious’ best describes the market.

Can we remember the early Internet days or the first ebook pre dot com crash digital gold rush? Some we are still today suffering from the burnt fingers and mistakes made then. However today is very different and there are many positive signs that this digital move will survive the recession. Some will say that it has to survive the recession and may be the way forward.

Some would say that the biggest mistake being made today is view digital as an add on, something you do after you have published the physical book, an afterthought, something you do if you have some spare cash to gamble. The reality is that the digital rendition is just that a rendition and should be created as part of the development process. This means changing not just what we produce but how and what is acquired, how its edited and developed, marketed and promoted and sold.

Digital content, rights management and digital context (metadata and bibliographic) are all corporate assets. So wouldn’t make sense to develop them and manage them digitally? Publishing visionary Mike Shatzkin’s research and conference ‘Start with XML’ has raised the agenda, but although it may have touched some, in reality it missed many. If publishers are to participate in the digital world they must look at their total process from manuscript to consumer and manage this with today’s processes and tools.

Filed by Author...

In a clever move, our old friends Peter Clifton and Mike Shatzkin have created http//author.filedby.com.

Today it is a database of information filed by authors and has obviously taken a major aggregation which includes some 1.2 million authors and dusted it down and created a page per author web site. Author’s registrar, claim their page, validate themselves and then populate their details adding, pictures, podcasts, videos etc. As this is merely a database ‘filed by author’ all the book details are already there tagged to the author. Today it deals with the US and Canada tomorrow the world. Today the books are listed tomorrow linked.

So where does this go and where is the money?

In some respect it’s a pity that the Author’s guild or copyright agency hadn’t thought this out and done it first. Another likely candidate would have been the bibliographic agencies who already have the information but can only often see it ‘filed by books’ or even ‘filed by ISBN’.

So the obvious revenue is in linked sales and no doubt author’s will be able to choose where their sales go on a cascading system or at least opt out of suppliers. The list management value grows with adoption and added information so sales of the list will make money as many list opt outs are often missed in the small print.
The big question is where it will sit with the new Google built and funded rights database and whether it will compete with, or feed the beast?

But we take our hats off for them getting first past the post. We imagine we will soon get filed by genre, filed by ebook, filed by whatever.

Future Channels and Markets?

Our good friend Mike Shatzkin has shared with us a speech he gave in LA last month to the PMA Graduate School. The paper ‘Where the Web Is Taking Us: The Inevitable Future and the Publisher's Role In It’ can and should be read in full and as always you will find things one agree with and others you don’t and we guarantee, something that will make you think.

Although we agree with much of what was said, we wonder about the overriding premise of Mike’s argument that generalist and horizontals are dead and niche and verticals will rule. We agree that the economies of scale and scope that existed in the physical world do not prevail the same in the virtual one. However we recognise that the virtual one has its own horizontals. After all Mike’s horizontal argument would apply to Amazon being as dead as Barnes and Noble. WE agree that niche verticals will grow but we also firmly believe that aggregation and one stop shopping will also prevail. After all reading is not about the long tail as much as it is about satisfying eclectic reading taste. It always has been the same and any good bookseller will tell you that consumer’s baskets are often as unpredictable as life. Interestingly how we ingest different material and use it will differ between different genre, niches according to the role we play and what we want from it. What is certain is that the book clubs biggest problem was not providing niche offers but in not understanding eclectic tastes and respecting individuals. This lesson is little understood and often misrepresented and publisher are not booksellers and booksellers are publishers. Again a lesson little accepted let alone understood.

We have long disagreed with the view that digital means perpetual licence and effective copyright ‘land grab’ so again this is an issue that needs to be addressed and not assumed given.

We agree strongly with the thoughts Mike starts to convey near the end of his speech, that he book may not be 256 pages, shape, size and weight, or whatever the optimum physical format economics dictated. The book of the future may be short and not need the font size adjustment to make it fit. It may be serialised or multi media or have different content extensions according to the format.

The last point of Mike’s speech focuses on moving upstream in the publishing process and what he refers to as ‘start with XML’. We again agree that digitisalistion is about the total publishing life cycle from author to the reader. It is not about the end formats, channels and reading devices. It is about developing digital content from the start alongside the digital context material that describe it and support it and the rights that cover its terms of usage and ownership. We don’t see this as totally dependant on ‘Esperanto’ technologies such as XML, but it positive start.

Digital Public Libraries for Free?

Buried within all Mike Shatzkin’s presentations there are always little gems that make you think. His presentation at the recent LBF ‘Crossing the New Frontier: America and the Digital Revolution’ seminar was no different. In it he raised the interesting question of why consumers would buy a digital download when they could rent it for free from their library.

This question is very interesting and raises many potential issues especially at atime when the industry is trying to engage with the libraries in many projects.
As we grapple with pricing and markets in the digital world. Some would argue the digital copy is already paid for and the reduction of inventory warrants higher royalties to authors. Others would argue that the cost reduction should be reflected in lower costs to the consumers. Some may argue that any cost savings are merely offset by the higher cost of digitisation. What is certain is that the consumer will view the digital product as cheaper or even free.

Libraries are unlikely to dramatically increase their book spending be it digital or physical and have to live within heavily controlled budgets where book spending competes with a range of other materials, equipment, staff and buildings. They will also want to offer books in all formats to the community.

So why would you buy an ebook and download it to whatever as opposed to loaning it from a library for free. Why would you pay to even rent it online for a time period when you will be able to rent it for the same period for free?

Public libraries may not pose this problem today but will do in the near future. So how will the industry respond? We don’t know the answers, nor can we offer the solution, but as the industry scrambles for sales and visibility, the issue will surface and we wonder what the response will be?

The Oganizational Impact of New Media II

The question of whether publishers should have digital divisions or be integrated was raised at the recent LBF ‘Crossing the New Frontier: America and the Digital Revolution’ seminar.

It is interesting to note that that the same question was raised over 13 years ago in the heady CD publishing days in the very first ‘Publishingin the 21st Century ‘. The research brought together Mark Bide and Mike Shatzkin and that illustrious team that I was pleased to help manage be part of. The paper was called ‘The Organisational Impact of New Media’

Alas today all I have is the Executive Summary but it is still highly relevant and much could have been written yesterday. It looked right across the organisation and publishing lifecycle and although much more multi media focused than today still offers much.

Its conclusion was read : ‘Long term forecasting is of limited value in an era of such rapid technological development. One thing is for sure: publishers are in the early stages of a period of considerable uncertainty and of accelerating change. The market will placeever greater demands on publishers, and the business will become very much more complex than it has been in the past. In organizing their businesses to face this challenge, publishers need to learn to manage the uncertainty so as to maximise the potential benefit while minimizing the risks.’

It clearly recognised the need to integrate digital divisions and skills within the total organisation and that digital publishing, was is as we keep saying, even then becoming publishing.

Libraries Switch On Visitors

We read from Reuters that according to a survey just published by Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than half of Americans visited a library in the past year and that the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30!


Books were not the draw as much as computers with Internet users being twice as likely to visit libraries as non-Internet users and more than two-thirds of library visitors in all age groups said they used computers while at the library. 65% of them looked up information on the Internet while 62% used computers to check into the library's resources.


Public libraries now offer virtual homework help, special gaming software programs, and some librarians even have created characters in the Second Life virtual world.


Importantly libraries are seen as a community and neighbourhood centre, a gathering place. It is interesting that when we first saw the entrance of the large B&N stores with their cafes and reading areas we felt they were a threat to the libraries and would become the neighbourhood hub.


In an increasingly digital environment it is easy to envisage the role of the library moving as many have predicted into the information centre. However the really interesting areas are remote borrowings and print on demand. If you live in New York and register you can borrow digital books online and never step inside the library. A number of the larger libraries are stating to explore print on demand using technology such as Espresso.


So why pay for an ebook when you can borrow it online? Why use an internet café when the library has one for free? Inter library lending is simple in the digital world so the title is never not available.


In his 2008 predictions, our good friend and publishing commentator, Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company states, ‘Sales of books in electronic form to public libraries will continue to grow’. Interesting times for library funding, strategy and for publishers.