YouTube versus MySpace, Place your bets

Video wars again but not betamax versus VHS but Google’s YouTube versus Murdoch’s MySpace.

MySpace have taken the gloves off and recognised the huge market and video demand in the social space. YouTube, dominants the online video space and its market share continues to grow. A recent Hitwise report stes that their share has grown 70 percent since January, compared to MySpace Video's 13 percent growth in the same time period. YouTube's current market share is 60% compared to MySpace Videos' 16%.

MySpaceTV will be an upgrade to the video site it launched two years ago, and will showcase premium content like the Sony Minisodes, which debuted on MySpace last week. These feature short clips of classic TV shows, alongside user-generated content and other sophisticated Internet video offerings. MySpace has announced a handful of deals with the usual content partners, including National Geographic, The New York Times, Reuters, Fox's IGN Entertainment, Animation Show and the Daily Reel. It will not only be open to Internet users who do not have an account on the social networking site, but MySpace users will be able to create their own TV pages by uploading videos to the site.

Intrestingly, when YouTube first launched, MySpace was its largest source of traffic, and that it continues to be a large driver. With the advent of TV services such as Joost and iPlayer it is going to be a crowded space with many vying from the same eyes. What is clear is that the video, film and TV worlds are changing.

Taylor and Francis Continue to Grow Digitally

Whilst many edge their bets and make much noise, some take action. Both strategies may be right, but it is interesting to see the continued rise of Taylor & Francis in the digital world. This week it’s parent Informa, announced that its publishing divisions are all continuing to grow from the move to electronic delivery of information and services. Taylor and Francis is an example of a publisher who has fully embraced the digital environment and its opportunities.

In a statement they say, "The increased utility and customer value from digital delivery has provided extra pricing power and market penetration. Digital archives, data services and daily information provision have all contributed to good growth further enhanced by cross leveraging event brands and publishing PI intellectual property."

Taylor and Francis was one of the first to take bold steps into the digital world and now has some 17,000 book titles fully available in all formats, some 150 plus web sites and this is not the only digital programme that they have successfully achieved. Their foresight and ability to read opportunities and move quickly to capture growth is an example of recognising that Digital Publishing is now Publishing.

We know where you all are!

Imagine a birds eye view of traffic across the Uk and not only can you see the congestion areas but you know the speed of all the vehicles. Now add information about the programmed journeys and directional flow of traffic and you can send everyone down the same rat runs and on. Its quite frightening and makes one wonder about privacy and the big brother world we are now entering!

Seriously, being able to see the flow and speed of traffic and plans of drivers is powerful information. TomTom has announced it is to work with Vodafone UK on developing such a new traffic information system. It will collect information from Vodafone on the location of mobile phones to provide real-time information on the speed and direction of cars travelling on all major roads across the UK.

The service is expected to launch in the first half of 2008, when further details will be made available. The system will also be available for road authorities and businesses, who may use it for dynamic traffic control management and improved fleet management.

BBC iPlayer launches into the iWorld

The BBC enters the "iWorld" with a beta version of its on-demand TV service, iPlayer on 27 July. It will be only available to UK licence fee payers and will offer programmes from BBC TV channels to watch on the PC. Users will get access to programmes for up to a week after broadcast and they then have 30 days to watch it. After viewing, the file deletes itself from the computer.

Later this year, iPlayer will become widely accessible with links from YouTube with many others such as AOL, Tiscali, Yahoo!, MySpace, and Bebo planned. It also hopes to expand to handheld devices such as mobile phones.

Again we now see technology convergence between the PC and the TV and home entertainment worlds. Imagine the home of the future with everything supplied on demand music, films, video, audio, TV, news, information and eyes books. All through one infrastructure and fully interoperable and downloadable, to any device. “Some may say I am a dreamer…”

The iPlayer was developed by the BBC's Future Media & Technology division in partnership with Siemens and Red Bee Media.

One Day to go to Lift off!!

Forget Harry Potter there will always be crazes and next year there will be another. Live live the King!
Its now only hours to the biggest awaited and potentially landmark event, the US launch of the iPhone. The New York Times claims that there have been over 11,000 print articles about it in the last 6 months and that it turns up about 69 million hits on Google today. Forget Wimbledon tickets, there are people are camping out in front of Apple US stores today.

Anyone who hasn’t seen it or need to understand what it has click here to visit David Pogue’s NY Times walkthrough of its features.

Let’s not dwell on it limitations, it has many. We know there will be several versions before its perfect and Apple has a good track record with the iPod of constant refinement and improvement. It may appear expensive at $500, limited in battery life, has no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialling, can’t handle Java or Flash, no MSM picture swapping, text entry is a new skill that doesn’t need those trained Blackberry thumbs, and finally in the US, there is a sole AT&T network supplier and its implications.

But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, iconic designed and importantly lifestyle-changing electronic device to come to market in years. It does so many things so well, web graphic, email, voice mail. You can enlarge text, web pages or images, rotate the screen which automatically adjusts the image to the wide views. The iPhone is also an iPod. The iPhone downloads music, videos and photos from your PC. The Google Maps module lets you view street maps or aerial photos for any address. The iPhone isn’t GPS so route directions are interactive today, in the US it gives free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on the map.

Anyone who doubts technology convergence to the mobile and that we still need clunky tablets just to read books please leave the room as you’ve missed the plot.

Espresso Books come to the New York Library

It may appear to be a long way off from setting up shop next to more traditional vending machines,or the local bookstore but those in New York CIty can now get their instant-book from the library. The Espresso Book Machine, which was successfully demonstrated at BEA this month has now been ibstalled in the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library. It contains over 20 titles from the Open Content Alliance database, which visitors to the library can print off as books free of charge.

Do the readers care if its printed on demand? It certainly is hot off the press and importantly the titles are never out od stock.

The Espresso manufacturer On Demand Books appear to be attracting attention and potential takers for the machine, with the New Orleans Public Library, the University of Albe rta, the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, and the Open Content Alliance in San Francisco each already in line to get one this fall.
When will the price drop to that magic figure that wakes up bookstores to installing ing it.

I bet Starbooks are keeping an eye on its development.

Bowker aquire Medialab Solutions

R.R. Bowker, the bibliographic information management company, has announced that it has acquired Medialab Solutions by Amsterdam. Medialab are the creators of AquaBrowser Library search and discovery platform which is used by more than 60 million patrons in public libraries throughout the U.S. and Europe. The acquisition mergers one of the richest collection of bibliographic data sources with what isd repected by many as the most popular and user-friendly visual faceted search technology in the library industry.

AquaBrowser Library seamlessly integrates with major library systems, opening up both the library catalog and any other information sources. Through AquaBrowser Library, libraries can offer the finest user interface available today, without changing the way they work, their existing systems. This gives Bowker a significant opportunity to develop new librarian services and fight what many would regard as an eroding market in this new world of increasingly rich digital context..

Four days to a New World

On Friday it happens! The iPhone launches in the US and is set to be a landmark shift in the convergence of technology, content and design. AT&T-owned stores will close early at 4:30 p.m. and reopen at 6 p.m. to sell the iPhone for the first time. Some Apple stores are not planning a pre-6 p.m. shutdown before the iPhone goes on sale. Still, other Apple stores did say they were going to shut down as they got ready for the onslaught of want-to-be iPhone customers to fill their stores. Proving that its not just Potter that gets the queues.

Before its hits the streets content providers are recognising that we are moving from the often clunky presentations of web offers over the mobile networks to one which mirrors the online world, is slick and potentially one that will define much for the next phase of mobile evolution. Steve Jobs and the Apple team come at it from a different perspective. They have designed their own application so consumers can receive YouTube videos through a Wi-Fi network and this could lead to even more consumers bypassing traditional networks altogether.

This will not be Mr. Jobs’s first experience in redefining an industry. Many hailed Mr. Jobs as a saviour when the iPod was introduced in 2002 because it was an alternative to the illegal online music sharing. Three years later, the music bosses are deriding him over pricing. But let’s get real, he was not to blame for their ‘head in the sand’ attitude to pricing, but merely exposed the price point needed to engage the consumer.

Now the major film studios are cautiously resisting Apple ’s overtures to put movies on the video iWorld. They want guaranteed copyright protection and reduced prices. The reality it will be dictated by the consumer and the likes Jobs. When it happens it is obviously better for the film studios to be inside the tent than outside.
Imagine what Jeff Bezos is thinking as he prepares to launch his Amazon/Mobi reader? Will it end up like that much hyped but doomed from the start Sony ebook reader which failed to capture the consumer’s imagination or find real content. It is hard to see it capturing the same level of hype as Apple’s iPhone.

Many are merely waiting with open mouths for Friday and a ‘New World’ start.

Capture them Young

Scholastic is launching BookFlix, an educational Web site pairing short films based on popular picture books along with nonfiction e-books that allow early readers to follow the text online.
This starts to introduce multimedia content in the jacket and may show an animated film of a storybook, where children are able to turn pages, backward or forward, by clicking on an arrow on the lower right- or left-hand side.

Disney Publishing Group plans a similar project later this year, making favorites such as "The Jungle Book" and "Cinderella" available online and while Scholastic, is sticking to the school and library market, Disney will offer books to general consumers.

Some remain skeptical as to whether the children’s market is ready for ebooks and believe that a laptop device may be a more acceptable delivery device. But it is the content that counts and Scholastic and Disney are not standing still and waiting for the market to make up its mind.

BookFlix begins with 80 pairings, 20 of them also available in Spanish, with categories ranging from "Family and Community" to "Music and Rhyme." They are working with US schools, teachers kids in small groups and have received enthusiastic responses so far.

Imagine no more ‘read with mother ‘ but ‘click with mother’.

Second Life of a Book

The Russian delegation at the IBF conference last week in Cape Town raised a few eyebrows with their latest book buying scheme. It certainly made a change from the fixed price phobias from other delegates.

Their ‘Second Life of a Book’ scheme has recently started and enables bookstore be returned to any bookstore that stocks the title. No receipt required and as long as the book is in mint condition the retailer will hand back 50% of the retail price of the book. They don’t give it refund in cash but in the form of an electronic top up on a book debit card. The book is then returned to the shelf and sold at 10 to 15% discount. The returns can also only be done between the hours of 10 and 10 on a Saturday.

The Russian bookstores are already collecting some interesting statistics from the exercise re the types of books returned, full demographics of the reader and of course volumes.

There are many questions, royalties, rights, store cash flow, discounting, personal information etc. It is also easy to envisage a marked rise in criminal opportunities but it is certainly a very brave step in a new direction. It’s either the maddest or the brightest initiative to happen and we watch with anticipation on how it develops.
What is without doubt is that all books deserve a second life.

The Cape of Hope

The Cape Town Book Fair was certainly different. The aisles were jammed packed with people but not just the trade but ordinary people who had come in their thousands to look, handle books and even buy books. It was truly uplifting to see so many children there and perhaps it is a salient lesson that Bok Fairs are not just about the trade but about reaching the people.

The other marked difference was that the Fair was certainly about books. Not digital ones but physical ones. I could only find one stand that offered digital services and although widely publicised it was empty of representation and visitors.

Africa and South Africa are not immune to the digital issues but it is certainly not top of their agendas. Publishers such as Brian Wafawarowa, MD of New Africa Books, are certainly switched on to all the issues. He gave a enlightening and thought provoking speech at the IBF conference on both Publishing in Africa from both an educational perspective (the sector that dominates the market) and some interesting insights to the potential role of publishers in the future.

We often dismiss the developing world and focus on the two dominant markets of the US and UK. What is clear is that all countries are not born equal in the digital world of publishing and that the consumer and markets will eventually dictate the winners, looses and pace of change and what works in New York and London may well not be adopted in other places for some time.

Internet Penertration and use in the Devloping World

The following is an extract from a speech I gave at the IBF (International Booksellers Conference) in Cape Town last week. It relates to the digital issues in the developing world.

In South America, the Internet is starting to be universally adopted. If we ignore the special case of the Falklands, the two economic powerhouses of Brazil and Argentina clearly are moving ahead in terms of penetration and adoption.

If we look at Asia the picture is somewhat more confusing, comparing highly developed countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, with strong growing economies such as India and China and less developed ones such as Bangladesh is difficult. However, we can’t ignore the percentage of overall users already connected in India and China and can only expect this to rise significantly. This geographic region is significantly advanced in terms of infrastructure and the technology investment and these will fuel further growth.

Africa’s lights are still switch off. Those countries that are potentially moving are those closely aligned to the western economies, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria. Africa doesn’t have the telecommunications infrastructure to fuel growth and in particular South Africa is still heavily reliant on that old sea cable. Things will change with mobile GPS, Wi Fi etc, but growth is restricted today and the resultant environment and initial usage may well be different as a result.

It appears that the Internet needs somewhere around 60% to 80% perpetration to take off, which is a long way to go for many in the developing world.

We must also look at consumer behaviour in the developing world. Consumers may have a PC in the house but if it doesn’t have high speed connection it is very limited it will limits the potential. Many in these countries have connectivity in the office but not in the home.

The Indian government has recently declared its intent to connect all citizens to high speed broadband by 2009. Although the word ‘all’ is a bit loose, the intent and impact is potentially massive.

In many countries, initiatives are coming from the government and specific sectors such as education. Libya is investing in the $50 PC programme and China’s has stated its aim to replace text books with 165 million ebook readers. We may find ourselves no longer talking about the haves and have nots, but the connected and the unconnected.

Browse this Space

This week Steve Jobs announced that Apple would make its Safari Web browser available for Windows based PCs. The gloves are coming off all over the Microsoft empire and potential wars loom.
This is a significant step forward for Safari. Jobs claims it would have twice the performance capability of Microsoft’s browser but importantly Apple has declared a desire to go after the half a billion downloads of Apple’s iTunes software to Windows users and shift the application focus squarely on the Internet.
Microsoft has currently 80 percent market share is a continuing threat to its competitors. Safari’s current market share is currently about 5 percent with Firefox, the open source browser, about 15 percent. Whatever happened to Netscape?
The broader appeal of the browser might have implications for Apple’s new iPhone, its interfaces and compatible applications. Browse this space.

Skype to Go

Skype has unveiled Skype To Go, a new way to call anyone worldwide. As part of the global roll-out of Skype Pro, users can talk to their best friend abroad from their mobile phone for as long as they want without it being expensive. Users can sign up to Skype Pro for e2.00 per month and, as a Skype Pro customer, they will receive a Skype To Go number at no additional cost. To activate the Skype To Go number, users choose the friend or family member they want to call who lives abroad. Then users simply enter their international number and in return, Skype To Go will give them a local number to use instead. Calling one's friend in Australia now costs the same as calling one's friend across the street.

Used Books and Stars for All

Used books have always been here but the Internet is simply make them more available. First came ABE and Alibris, then Amazon and now eBay. Gone are the days when private collections only had one channel to and Albris now suggests that `house clearances' will become a rarity. For collectors, it may be difficult to gauge a seller's ability to accurately describe a book, its condition and its faults with the descriptive terminology used being often a different language to many.

ABE have embarked on a scheme that is based on the seller’s rating. Apparently the scheme is based on 5 Stars and aims to help promote those booksellers who reject the least number of orders and receive the least number of returns. Obviously those sellers with a higher rating will benefit from increased buyer trust as well as greater resulting revenues. Buyers will see a dealer’s six month rating in the search results, and can also view a dealer’s 3, 6, 12 and current monthly ratings. The scheme doesn’t appear to deal with sellers who ‘white label stock’ and have it drop shipped by a 3rd party.

ABE are waiting for reactions and comments from their sellers’ before implementing the scheme.

Are Amazon going to be Riding the Bullet?

Newspapers and magazines have always provided publishers with opportunities to get their titles reviewed or serialised and into the public eye. Serialisation once offered direct and often high supplementary income. However today we read in today’s NY Times that this is now potentially shifting in the US market. There will always be that conflict where the newpaper wants to tell it all versus the publisher who wants to lead you to the book. As revenues change then this issue gets more defined.

At the same time we read in the National Examiner that the next Stephen King thriller "The Gingerbread Girl," a 21,000 word work, will be published in its entirely in the July issue of Esquire. What does Esquire and Stephen King know that others don’t? Mr. King made history with his serialisation of ‘Riding the Bullit’ in the late ‘90s when he released it by instalments as digital downloads. Today it is amazing that others have not followed his lead, or should one say the Dicken’s model and published digitally by instalment. Some have done so with new authors by why not with established ones? Can you imagine the explosions that would have happened if JKR had published the latest Potter this way? Both the digitisation market and potentially pod market would have moved on with a leap and the tills would have been ringing and the hardcopy would have still been in-demand at the end but at a maybe at a better price.

So while the jury is out on the Latest King foray into men’s top shelf magazines there remains the issue of the serialisation and reviews in newsprint.

A well-chosen slice of a book in the appropriate magazine can jump start a publicity campaign. According to the chosen journal, it can add weight and importance, create noise or appeal to a certain demographic. Today’s weekend paper’s are weighed down with pages upon pages of reviews and serials but do they shift units in the market or act as secondary sales opportunities for the papers themselves to drop ship to the consumer who in reality ‘never leaves the page’. Are the self serving the newsprint and in fact stealing the larger market?

The questions raised in the NY Times cover the science of too much versus too little or just right reviews. This is always a subjective issue. The more that is written, the less the need to read the title, but the less that is written or relevant, the less the draw to the title.

It is interesting that Amazon is quoted as expressing an interest in first serialisations. An obvious step for Amazon and one to watch!

Stealing versus Search

An interesting Blog from those great book bloggers Booksquare http://www.booksquare.com

Stealing vs. Search - The Difference

Now don’t get us wrong, we think that Richard Charkin is a bright, savvy man. We would have, at one point, even suggested that he understood the difference between search and anonymity. Sigh. Let us try this one more time. Search is not about Google — search is about making sure your customers find you. Publishers are [...]

My response:
The premise of what you say is absolutely correct, search is fundamental to discovery and our switched on lives. I don't think anyone is in dispute here. What is in question is what Google and MS want to be when they grow up. If they merely want to sell ad space great no problem. If they want to sell books, which one has and the other hasn't decided on, then that is different.
There is also the thorny issue of the Orphan Act and potential associated ‘land grab’. The ownership of the digitised copy – is not really touched in your article.

If rights revert or the book gets 'lost' in the RUC or OP list then 'scan first and ask later' could be a real issue.

The problem is we are looking at the issues in a one dimensional way and anything can work when we argue in this manner. Rights are licensed not owned, there are term times there are constraints. Can authors choose to elect out if rights revert? Will Google use copy to publish albeit through a digital only format? Who will control resolution and will it remain persistent? Many questions are not answered but many assume that they know best and ‘pooh pooh’ any debate.

Potter versus iPhone

Forget Harry Potter’s latest adventure and June 21st there is something potentially far larger happening later in the month. After six months of anticipation, three new television commercials for Apple’s iPhone divulged the product’s release date and it will go on sale in the US on June 29, 2007.
Apple has formed an five-year exclusive US alliance with A.T.&T. and has still to announce its international partners.

The first two iPhone models are priced at $499 and $599 for four- and eight-gigabyte storage options, respectively. The phone does not have a hard disk and is based on a basic version of the Mac OS X operating system, comes with a 3.5-inch screen that can be used either vertically as a phone or turned horizontally to display video or still images and is less than half-inch think.
The iPhone has three radios - cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth - and is advertised as having 5 hours of battery life and 16 hours of audio playback when used as a music player.

Innovation is also provided with a technique called "multi-touch," which is based on a series of gestures with one or two fingers. For example, it is possible to shrink or expand a picture on the screen by simply sliding thumb and finger apart or together.

This will set the standards for all to follow and force the pace of device convergence. It is hard to see ebook readers surviving this onslaught and Mr Bezos will have to pull out all the stops if he has any chance of winning the Mobi Vs Adobe, or Jobs Versus Bezos battles.

Suits You Sir!

Nice threads sir! Marks and Spencer have now created the suit for the man with everything!

A suit made from a fabric that transforms the inside lapel into an iPod control panel. Instead of fumbling around to change volume or channel you simply press a piece of fabric. User can also skip tracks and rewind songs. Sounds straight t out of ‘m’s Bond outfitters!

The only problem is when you are squeezed into a busy London tube and your iPod goes out of your control.

Classic Audio, Read by Class Acts at Great Prices

Silksoundbooks.com have launched a new digital download venture with 60 titles and expects to have 1,000 within three years.

There are several interesting aspects to this. Firstly it is being backed by top tier actors such as Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Richard E Grant, Jane Horrocks who may take shares in the venture in lieu of fees. This certainly gives them an edge and a vested interest in making happen. Secondly the focus is on unabridged English classics an obvious approach and one which aligns known names with known actors. Thirdly the price is a flat rate £7.95, a clear logical price point and one that will be attractive to many. Fourthly the files will be on MP3 and iTunes compatible formats, keeping it simple and aligned to where the players are. Fifthly they don’t need the overheads of the physical channel and have some graet names to advertise the wares to a wide audience.

This is a significant step and is equal to when the likes of Wordsworth classics first put out the £1 classic. This is common land and it will be interesting to see how the high price points currently given to audiobooks will survive this broadside. Well done!

DIY wiki archives

The National Archives has launched a ‘wiki based’ site to help access its huge materials that spans 900 years from the Doomsday Book to today. It has been suitably named ‘Your Archives’ and is aimed at sharing content, submitting articles and uploading transcripts of documents.

The national Archive is aware that there is a huge volume of material to add to the catalogue and this way it will be more productive than them doing it themselves.

http://yourarchives.nationarchives.gov.uk

Beware the Google hover cometh

If you can’t get all the content from the publishers why not get 10 million books from the universities and libraries?

Today we hear that Google is to hover up more university material from Univ. of Chicago, Univ. of Illinois, Indiana Univ., Univ. of Iowa, Univ. of Michigan, Michigan State Univ., Univ. of Minnesota, Northwestern Univ., Ohio State Univ., Pennsylvania State Univ., Purdue Univ., and Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. They already have the Univ. of Michigan and the Univ, of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Harvard and the Univ. of California

Unlike the publisher program Google will give the universities digital copies of the books they provide and state that they will also digitize the books "in a manner consistent with copyright laws." An interesting statement, given the universities don’t know who owns the copyright of books other than those in ancient tomes which are clearly in public domain.

It is hard to knock the initiative and the result should provide them with a significant repository of content which will be public domain and therefore free to render any which way. So we can see lots of old books coming back along with no doubt a number of orphaned works leaving just the current lists to publishers.

Letter from America

The BEA lived up to its reputation for creating lots of news and the digital word was certainly hot on most people’s lips. So what caught the eye?

The Espresso Book Machine Model 1.5 machine sat boldly under the Crystal Palace for all to see. It is currently eight feet long and five feet wide and attracted much attention. It has a smaller brother apparently on the way but has still to drop in price to make those heads really turn. A StarBOOKs or Costabook could certainly be interested in serving books on demand as you wait for that skinny latte but this one is heading off to a library. Although it has 200,000 out-of-copyright books through the Open Content Alliance, 2,200 World Bank titles, and Arabic-language books from the Library of Alexandria, these are hardly titles to die for or to read over a doughnut and it remains to be seen whether the company can collate a sufficiently large base of attractive content.

Ingram Digital is no longer a ‘venture’ but a group. Interestingly the news that it had struck up a deal with VHP (Macmillan US) went largely unrecorded. In the digital world this was a significant story and leads one to speculate exactly what the global strategy is for Bookstore and MPS. However, it is good news for Ingram and VHP in the US.
There is a new digital appointment within the trade environment who enters not from music, newsprint , sales, editorial but from the major digital force that is Elservier and it is going to be interesting to see how Hachette-Livre is going to move now.

Rights reversals continue to bubble along. A close colleague used to say ‘ be careful what you wish for’. Publishers need to be wary of changing established practices that have stood the test of time just because the end format is changing. It is highly unlikely that any but the highest tier of authors would sign away their works for what would be clearly a lifetime plus. What could happen is the emergence of new term and revenue rules which would be easier to reverse and activate. This could lead to some works enjoying a second wind or even a first one.

We now have DADs (Digital Asset Distributors) which is different from Digital Asset Management and so on. The forthcoming Klopotek conferences in New York and London have certainly gathered all the usual suspects plus those industry gurus Shatzkin and Bide and should be a very interesting. I will be speaking as a DAD and hoping to introduce the wider digital family of Mum, son, daughter etc.

Radio Ad Times

eBay has said it would begin selling radio airtime to advertisers this week through a partnership with Bid4Spots. It will offer advertisers a way to buy unsold radio ad slots from 2,300 radio stations in the top 300 media markets in the United States. Advertisers can buy airtime on the eBay Media Marketplace, which was originally a cable television ad forum which began in March.

The eBay ad exchange has been disappointing so far but it is hoped that widening its remit to radio will reverse this. Bid4Spots works as a so-called reverse auction with advertisers who join designating what they are willing to pay for a spot, then radio stations with the available airtime make offers to win their business.

Google, paid $1.24 billion to acquire dMarc Broadcasting, a rival to Bid4Spots and in April, it did a deal with Clwear Channel to sell ads across the company’s 675 stations through its AdSense platform.

The interesting issue is whether the opportunity to effectively auction and buy radio slots will move advertisers to radio away from other sectors. Radio is potentially a great way to promote books!

Sign of the times

“Are you watching I am on the screen over here? Now what is your name ?”
Next the pen writes and signs the book and your favourite author has saved themselves the journey and they haven't even left home!

This week comes the announcement that Dean Koontz is to perform his first ever UK book signing in Waterstones Piccadilly on 23rd June while he remains 6,000 miles away in his home in Los Angeles. Just think you will not only see the man but how he lives and his soft furnishings.
The LongPen technology was first unveiled at last year's LBF and again this year and is too be used by many at this week’s BEA. After all who wants to go to New York for a trade show?

So no more gruelling publicity schedules and environmentally unfriendly air miles or car journeys. But will it really be the same?

Even the rock stars turn up for the street promotions. Should authors alienate themselves from their fans or is this actually increasing their appeal? Will their be a two tier signing schedule – the virtual one for the famous and the physical one for the not so famous? Will the events be restricted to the chains and big stores who desperately need something to pay for the footage and not touch those smaller stores who make signings successful?

Amazon to provide 'lightening' service on POD

Amazon Booksurge subsidiary has announced agreements with major publishers including; HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Springer, Gale, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, SAGE Publications, Kensington, Hal Leonard, LexisNexis, and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA).

Booksurge aims to follow a true print on demand mode and not the current short print run dominated one. It aims to deliver next day and therefore the same service as it offers physical books.

It will therefore be interesting to see how this works out in a world where the rights reversal debate is all about the long tail on demand and being never out of print and the environmentalists have yet to wake up to the facts that although it cuts down on the current ‘print just in case’ over production, POD paper is far from ‘green’ and the process is very environmentally un friendly.

The Cat's out of the Bag

Following on from our blog earlier this week there is now lots of fresh noise around rights reversals.

This classic quote from the Bookseller Bulitten of yesterday ‘S&S Uk could follow parent’s rights grab’ ‘UK publishers, meanwhile, are calling for the whole concept of rights reversion to be heavily revised or even scrapped. "Why should it be that way? If you buy a house and you don't go to it, you don't stop owning the house," said one publishing c.e.o.. "It seems to be based on a weird notion of punishment, where you're punished for not trying hard enough." ‘

Its understandable that the publisher wished to remain unknown, with a arrogant quote like that I would too.

Authors create the wealth and content, others merely add value to its development, marketing and distribution to the consumer, who pays and are the only ones who put money in. Authors will use publishers to get exposure and maximise their revenues and opportunities but once a book is past its attention span they should be able to reclaim their rig, is wrong. It does not maximise the opportunities for the two people that actually count – the author and the consumer. The author gets lost in history and although they may be found via a search engine their creation is out of their control. The book may have been a huge success in its day but the publisher has no intent to promote it again to a new audience. The consumer also can’t enjoy it as they will never find it. The marketing theory that new is good and deserves money and attention and old isn’t is strange at a time when the classics are been rejacketed and produced by everyone standing.

The real threat is that the technology is providing the opportunity for authors to do more themselves. They can promote themselves and sell they content direct through pod models. Maybe the publishers are merely trying to get the cat back in their bag?

We already have the Ophan works Act in the US, or to the cynic, the licence to hoover or google old works or scan first ask later. We all know how hard it can be to establish copyright ownership after time once works go out of print. Given all this, why can't a sensible and fair solution be found and the rectric become positive and less adverseral.

Facebook Leaps Forth

At a time when all marketing eyes are either watching the move by the search engines into traditional advertising space or experimenting with social networks comes the latest figures on the later’s performance. It appears that not just the Labour party’s hopeful Deputy Leaders are using this channel.

According to a Hitwise report, MySpace still accounts for roughly 79% of social networking traffic. However, since the September 2006, Facebook has experienced a traffic increase of 106%! We must however note that they opened up their collegiate service in this time to all Internet users, so the increase may just be a blip.

Year over year growth is signioficant with Facebook 126% traffic increase and Bebo.com 184%. Again these figures look astounding but must be viewed in terms of their positions as relative new startups. The I nteresting insight is that MySpace accounts for roughly 24% of the traffic that hits sites such as Bebo, Facebook and Imeem. So social networkers are not satisfied with using only one platform and users appear to join all the new spaces as a way to meet even more people.

The message to online marketers is that the sector is growing and that there appears to be a clear need for users to maximise their reach to their ‘friends’. It will be interestingtoi see if this is that same with respect to other growing site Second Life.

Amazon Buys Brilliance

Amazon has acquired Michigan audiobook publisher Brilliance who have a catalogue of over 1,000 audio titles and releases 20 to 40 new titles a month.

Amazon's subsidiary CustomFlix will now support both standard CD and mp3-CD audiobook formats in its "disc on demand" service which produces audio titles on CD on demand. The question it raises is when this model will flip into audio downloads. Was Brilliance bought for it content and list? Does this now make Amazon a publisher and fill in the last space in the value chain?

Reality is that it is probably now time that Amazon wants to stop referring audio customer to Audible and the move is one more part of the jigsaw before Bezos takes on Steve Jobs’s iWorld.

DK travel to create 'My Guide'

We all said that travel would be one of the first trade genre to move at speed into the digital era and further evidence of this was seen this week with their announcement that they will provide flight search functionality on their web site and enable consumers to create their own guides.

The personalised guides are clearly a move towards ‘My Book’ and will feature maps, travel tips and guides to local attractions. My Guide will be standard A5 format and printed on perfect bound, glossy paper. The price is unclear and whether the consumer will contribute their pictures, comments and ratings remains in the future.
Visitors can already produce their own PDF versions of the guidebooks and it envisaged that the new glossy versions will be available within days of ordering and will be more user-friendly.

It is easyto question whether retaining the ‘book’ concept is appropriate and whether a glossy bound book is required over a loose leaf compilation. Irrespective bold steps are being taken and it now down to establishing the sales channel and consumer awareness.

Who's Copyright is it?

Today we read from the excellent Booksquare blog http://www.booksquare.com about Simon and Schuster’s approach to changing the rules about rights reversals. It is reported by Booksquare that Simon & Schuster have announced that it is changing its standard contract to retain rights to a book for the entire length of a copyright. Simon & Schuster recognise they will now own the rights to a work and are able to distribute it for 70 years after the death of an author for works created after 1978. This change raises many questions, such as, whether electronic rights are deemed subsidiary rights or remain primary rights and the impact of this change on royalties and permissions in a fragmented world.

Authors, by default and law, own the copyright to their work. Publishers merely acquire the right to publish or distribute the author’s work.

Publishes will argue that the move is good for authors and that the technology now enables this natural change. They are all embracing print on demand technology and this in turn is presenting by the authors and publishers the opportunity to keep their books alive, available and selling in the marketplace in a way that was not previously possible. The new Simon & Schuster language essentially means that as long as a book exists in the publisher’s “catalogue”, the publisher owns the rights.

Let’s get real. Publishers make mistakes, not all books make it first time round and some need a second opportunity. This could be viewed as locking up the art works in the vaults merely for the sake of owning them. The majority of contracts today enable the rights to revert back to the author once the title has gone out of print. There may be a period where the reprint is under consideration but once out of print the option exists but in the world of POD, titles may remain always “in print” and this now makes this a major digital issue. Will the publisher continue to market and actively sell the “long tail” of titles as they move from in-print to POD, or just put it on the pod bookshelf and deprive the author of republishing it with someone who cares about it and is willing to invest in it? Will they literally sit on it and wait for the search engines to find it and collect the money for nothing.

We could work together to protect the interests of the creators of wealth, the authors, or as we fear , just turn a blind eye and hope that fair practice will prevail

So where do you advertse?

An interesting article from Gavin O’Reilly in the Independent last week. He argues that far from the death of newsprint the industry is seeing increased circulation and advertising.”These days it is nearly impossible to find a media analyst who actually reads a newspaper or who can see anything other than doom and gloom for the industry.”

He cites circulation not just in India and China, with paid circulation growing globally by 1.9 per cent in 2006, with sales of 510.4 million copies a day. The number of paid-for titles he reports are at a record 11,142, up 3.1 per cent on the previous year. The there is the rapid growth in free dailies - titles such as thelondonpaper, 20 Minutes, Metro and the rest - which together distribute 40.8 million copies a day.

Finally he states that newspapers and magazines are actually the largest advertising medium with a combined 42.3 per cent share of the market.

Interestingly, UK research company TGI, claim that newspaper readership has grown by 2.1 per cent over the past five years, with readership among 15-24 year olds growing by 6.9 per cent and readers over 65 growing by 3.7 per cent.

The key to media exposure he states is the time that people spend reading, watching, using or listening to that particular medium. US private equity fund Veronis Suhler Stevenson, claim that for every hour of TV viewing, advertisers spend $40.1m (£20.2m). For each hour of radio they outlay $19.3m (£9.7m) and for the internet advertisers only spend $65.4m (£33m).

Interestingly, newspaper advertisers spend $316.3m (£160m) for every hour of reading, eight times more than TV. He claims that this reflects the quality demographic that a newspaper delivers.

What is clear is that there is no silver advertising bullet. No one media that kills all others. What we can see is that advertising is getting supposedly smarter and starting to target consumers based on know likes and dislikes and it is inevitable that the internet has the relationship and technology to do this best. However, cost and audibility are key and no advertiser will choose only one channel to their campaign and therefore as the search engines hover up new players they must also get into all channels.

Place your bets on the next best seller

So its official publishing is a gambling business and spread betting is real. A very well respected consultant James Lichtenberg who I once had the pleasure of working said the publishing was like two frogs mating. They created millions of spawn, which turned into thousands of tadpoles, which turned into hundreds of tiny frogs, of which a handful made it onto the bank where one was kissed by Oprah and became a best seller. The story being you needed the millions of spawn to make the selection process.

So we hear today that the founders of Media Predict (www.MediaPredict.com), and US publisher Simon & Schuster, plan to select a book proposal based on bets placed by traders in the new market.

Media Predict is soliciting book proposals from agents and the public and posting pages of them on the site. Traders, who are given $5,000 in fantasy cash, can buy shares based on their guess about whether a particular book proposal is likely to get a deal, or whether Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will select it as a finalist in a contest called Project Publish. If either happens within a four-month period, the value of the shares go to $100 apiece; if not, the share price falls to zero. Traders are not voting on the book they like best, but rather are placing bets on which they think will do well. The success of the site is dependant on it attracting enough traffic to make the bets meaningful. Similar sites in other sectors such as the Hollywood Stock Exchange, are reported as capturing about 25,000 traders a day.

The Goose has laid its Golden Egg

According to the latest Internet sales statistics from Interactive Media in Retail Group last months sales rose 55% on last year to hit £3.47 billion and they also passed the watershed £100 billion mark. The first retail internet stores are only 12 years old and WHS was one of the first and they now generate more sales a month than all the West End of London stores do in a year!

When the Internet first appeared most retailers shunned it, said it offered little return, was risky and pointed to Amazon and said no thank you. The booktrade was no different and although WHS was followed by the other chains the effort was often half hearted. We must remember that WHS actually bought up The Internet Bookshop, a very successful starter and one that offered a clear brand but then merely merged it into their offer and lost its real potential to take on the likes of Amazon. Many accountant would lok at Amazon and see one goose and not see the golden egg let alone undersand the positive cash flow, global branding and potential marketplace they were building. Today Amazon is everything but a publisher and owns mobibook, booksurge, marketplace etc.

So what about the traditional retailers? IKEA and Topshop have joined the party this last year. Travel now accounts for the largest consumer spend with the likes of BA.com and Ryanair.com. The largest retailers are Amazon, Tesco, Dell and Argos.

What will the next 12 years offer? Who will dominate this landscape then and more interestingly what business models will porevail.

Health Warning as Internet Advertising is Bought-up

In the struggle for advantage in the digital advertising boom the search engines are buying up online advertising companies, sometimes for eye-popping prices. This week Microsoft agreed to buy the online advertising company Aqauantive for $6 billion, which is Microsoft’s largest acquisition ever. This month Google bought DoubleClick, a competitor of Aquantive, for $3.1 billion. , outbidding Microsoft.
Yahoo recently bought the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own for $680 million. The company operates an auction marketplace in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online advertising space in real time. Also this week, AOL bought Third Screen Media, which operates an ad network for mobile phones, and Adtech, an online advertising firm in Germany. AOL was the first Internet portal to buy a major advertising network, Advertising.com, in 2004.

According to eMarketer, online adverts accounted for 5.8 percent of the $285 billion spent on advertising in the United States in 2006 and it estimates that the online share will rise to 10.2 percent by 2010. As dollars move online, the big Internet companies see a chance to capture an ever-larger portion of the advertising dollar.

Google, which leads the online advertising world, is among those trying to make inroads into Microsoft’s traditional software business by offering word processing, spreadsheets and other software free. Quantive, which is based in Seattle, will bring many advertisers to Microsoft.
The technology helps Web publishers earn the most for the ad space available on their sites.

The recent deals are also blurring the lines between the big Internet companies and traditional advertising companies and last week the WPP Group bought 24/7 Real Media, another DoubleClick competitor, for $649 million, to compete better with Internet companies.

As we see business models shifting to advertising based free content these shifts become even more alarming. Imagine if music, videos and even books where available free to download as long as you accepted the advertising feeds. Just like ITV and the other broadcasters it have done for years. What will that do to people who are still trying to sell in the traditional model and what will be the impact on price?

Winalot, Walkies and Maps

Having spent some very interesting time at the Ordnance Survey partner conference it was alarming how little one knew about the world of maps and cartographers. The innovation and usage of mapping information goes far beyond those folded and infamous explorer maps. The organisation supplies geographic information for business supporting through their effective partner programme; emergency services, government, health, insurance, land and property, retail, transport, utilities, wireless and communications.

The map sector is now a classic case of a sector that was joined together by one format, paper, that is now diverging with digitisation. Different market segments need different information, delivered on potentially different devices and in different formats and also different levels of detail. The business is now having to react to diverging segments. What is clear is that the old A1 sheet and grid system is not relevant in the digital world. It begs the question that if they could break out of the old paper and grid paradigm and get the paper sizing down to say A4, the opportunities for print on demand are clear for all to see. Everyone now wants ‘My Map’ and the pricing has to recognise that Google and other are free and that business models, particularly in the consumer world are changing.

When you hear about the increasing level of GPS navigation, the proliferation of devices and their potential uses, one can only sit back and wonder how our bodies are going to cope with this bombardment of electronic waves let alone information on tap. Forget privacy the equipment that is already deployed and planned for cars makes one wonder if driving will ever be fun again and whether your every move will be logged in some huge databank in the sky.

However, the real gem was when a marketing executive eluded to a new partnership opportunity with Winalot. Yes, the dog food manufacturer. Maps for dog walkers aimed at showing them all those exciting walks they may have missed and no doubt where the nearest pooper bin is. At this point I wondered whether I was dreaming or the kids had truly taken over the chocolate factory.

Whether the Guardian ever wins its campaign to privatise the Ordnance Survey is immaterial as this organisation and sector face some huge digital business challenges which by their nature change the shape and potential make-up of the organisation.

Map information is a whole new world.

Slushpile.com

We read today about the The Lulu Blooker Prize is the world's first literary prize devoted to "blooks"-books based on blogs or other websites, including webcomics.

It comes on the back of many news articles on publishers chasing the blogshere for new authors, content and fresh thinking. Can we now expect the blogshere to soon resemble the slushpile? Are we merely moving from one pile to another? We those who fail to get attraction still be able to live on the ‘long tail’? Will Richard Charkin be offered a book deal on travel and architecture?

The question is whether the blogs will be written by bloggers or people wanting to get attention and promote their longer works. Viral marketing can be a minefield to most but to the savvy social communicators raising their profile is not difficult. This begs the question whether the best content gets to the top or whether it’s those with the biggest community or hits.

A few years ago I was invited to a conference with top BBC managers to discuss strategy. The event wasn’t a small event and I found myself alongside other outsiders with considerable and different media input and thinking. I felt like a traditionalists in my open collared shirt and chinos as the others were aged between 16 and twenty-something, wore their street clothes and had little respect for Auntie and the rules by which she played. They told the executives about the internet world in which they lived and what the BBC needed to do. Interestingly, the BBC reacted, listened and many things that were discussed have impacted on their subsequent strategy. It was a brave approach but a wise one. These executives just didn’t understand what was happening around them.

The people at the edge of this space often are multi dimensional in their content and thinking and will use video, voice, and words to get their points across and market themselves. They may not even use the Queen’s English or care about correct grammar. They certainly live outside of the printed book dimension and offer much to our thinking.

Joost in Time TV

We have reported before on the new breed to TV services spearheaded by Joost from that innovative team that first created Kazaa and Skype. Joost and a rival, Babelgum, a site backed by the Italian telecommunications magnate Silvio Scaglia are both currently under beta and the initial experience is amazing.

Both sites require a quick download to get started and a continuous Internet connection.
The main difference between these sites and YouTube is that the content is full-length and professionally edited. YouTube and MySpace only give you short videos with consumers on average only visiting YouTube for 11.5 minutes at a time.
Advertising rules. Joost requires you to register our age, gender and other details, and both Web sites say they will monitor your viewing patterns. Joost has already signed up more than 30 major advertisers and within a few minutes of logging on to Joost, ads will appear.

The service is multi dimensional and enables you to chat online as you watch TV – true multi tasking! Well maybe, if you are by yourself. It is very easy to see it taking off in the US where the TV is never off and the sound bite a way of life.

BT Vision this week starts to promote its new broadband services in the UK. They are backed by Microsoft and Phillips and are focused at pushing broadband boundaries TV, demand services and much more through their free set boxes and integration services.
We are certainly entering a new era of television and what will that mean to how we socialise, communicate, access on demand services? Ultimately will broadband provide all home services and wi-fi all mobile ones? What will that mean re the devices that will prevail?

We are not only witnessing the convergence of delivery technology but also of content itself and this presents one dimensional publishers with some interesting challenges!

Thomson Education Sold

The long awaited and much talked about sale of Thompson’s educational business has been concluded. Apax Partners, a private equity group, and an Ontario-based pension fund, will buy Thomson Learning and textbook provider Nelson Canada.

The sale price of $7.75bn sailed past analysts' forecasts and will give Thomson a large cash boost to help fund its purchase British news agency Reuters, which could cost $17.5bn in cash and shares.

The sale is part of Thomson's strategy to offload its higher education and library reference material division, announced last October. It follows hot on the heels of the sale of Harcourt to Pearson and clearly demonstrates that the publishing giants, Reed Elsevier, Thompson and Pearson are now focusing on their markets and growth. In doing so they will continue in their migration from publisher to content workflow providers and embed themselves deeper into their market’s eco systems.

iPod News with a Difference

MacNewsWorld threw up two interesting articles on that fashion icon this week.

Invasion of the Killer iPods?

First there is the question of health risk. A study from the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University has raised concerns about the possibility that iPods could cause pacemakers to fail.

The study is questioned on several grounds but the headlines were rather scary and reminisant to those that questioned if mobile phones scrabbled ones brains and the more recent reports on the effect.

A presentation made Heart Rhythm Society's annual meeting in Denver this week heard that electrical interference of pacemakers was found about 50 percent of the time when an iPod was held within several inches of a patient's chest for five to ten seconds. Interfere with the implanted devices was even found when they were held 18 inches away and one pacemaker completely stopped functioning.

Many questions were raised about the study not testing other portable music players, or that the research failed to determined which pacemakers were most affected and of course the impact of all the other electromagnetic field disturbances that surround us.

One wonders whether in the near future we may see a health backlash against some of the technology we take for granted and use today or whether given commercial pressures and ownership we may never really know?

Show me the way to Amarillo

Welsh computer researchers at the University of Wales, Swansea have developed a hybrid MP3 player and sat-nav for pedestrians. Instead of urging listeners to "turn left in 100 yards," the device turns the volume down in one ear to prompt walkers in a particular direction until they reach their destination. The destination can either been preset, or be one that the device knows the user might like.

If the user is heading in the right direction, the music is clear and strong through both headphones. But if the user needs to change direction, the balance changes, with clarity and volume shifting to the left or right ear according to the direction to be taken.

Imagine your device knows that you like coffee, it can give a 'nudge' when they're in the vicinity of a coffee shop. If the user decides to follow the cues to see what the device thinks is of interest, the system will then guide them to the destination. If users ignore the hints, the device will stop nudging until it comes across something else of potential interest. Imagine walking down a busy high street, you may be nudged from pillar to post.

Swansea University's three-year project to look at the navigating MP3 player, which uses GPS (global positioning system) satellite technology, begins later this month.Funded with a grant from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the research is being undertaken in collaboration with Glasgow University in Scotland.

Video killed the radio star?

When Mike Batt wrote the words to the hit song he certainly did envisage to success of digital radio. Listening figures for the first quarter of 2007 from Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR), show some significant rises:
• 33.5 million listeners across the UK tune into BBC radio services every week
• BBC Radio One figures were up quarter on quarter 300,000 and almost 850,000 year-on-year. Some 10.55 million listeners now tune in every week, up from 9.73 million a year ago.
• BBC Radio One Breakfast presenter, Chris Moyles now reaches more than 7 million listeners every week. Audience has increased on the last quarter by around 240,000 and year-on-year by 750,000.
• Thanks to Freeview and cable, 20 million people in the UK (41 per cent of the population) have listened to radio via their TV. (22.5 per cent are tuning in at least once a week).
• The Internet has resulted in 24.3 per cent of the UK population now listening to radio via this means, up from 20.8 per cent a year ago. Of those, 13.4 per cent tune in at least once a week.
• DAB Digital Radio set sales are growing with 19.5 per cent of adults in the UK own a set, up from 16 per cent three months previously.
• Podcasting.- 18.4 per cent (or 27.3 per cent of the population) listen to radio podcasts with some 27.3 per cent of the population now owning an mp3 player. 5.3 million listeners tuning in every week.
• The BBC Digital Radio portfolio reaches around 2.7 million listeners every week with BBC World Service generating 1.4 million weekly listeners.
• Commercial stations are also very popular. The biggest stand-alone digital station is EMAP owned, The Hits, with 1.2 million listeners.
• Surprisingly, or perhaps not, just eight per cent of the UK adult population listen to radio via their mobile phones. This figure is pretty static quarter-on-quarter, but up from 6.4 per cent a year previous.

If digital radio is enjoying this rejuvenation then can the booktrade exploit it further. Books have long been reviewed and presented on radio but is there a ‘Richard and Judy’ opportunity? Alternatively can radio offer a real distribution digital download channel? Whatever the answers it is clear that digital radio is the background sound to many lives.

Advertise to your friends on Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder

Facebook, the social networking Web site, which has 22 million active users, has announced that it is adding free classified ad listings, putting it into competition with many others.

More than half of it users are in high school or college and it hopes that the new feature will offer yet another reason for users to return to its site regularly. They claim that more than 60 percent of the site’s active users log in each day.
Facebook is calling the new service Marketplace and it will allow users to create classified listings in four categories: housing; jobs; for sale, where users can list things like concert tickets and used bikes; and “other,” a catch-all. Facebook users who create classifieds can choose to show them only to their designated friends on the service, or to anyone in one of their “networks” — their high school, college, company or geographic region. They can choose to make the listings appear on their profile pages, and send them out on “news feeds,” the automatic updates that appear when users log in to the site.

Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research is quoted, “The advantage of having classifieds linked to a social network is that you know something about the seller. You are less likely to buy a lemon from someone who is a friend of yours.”

Although the Facebook Marketplace is free, it could eventually create some revenue for the company.

Google has three legs

Speaking at the annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive, of Google stated that their business was organized around three ideas, “Search, ads and apps.”

The first two — search and ads — are well known to shareholders, and they account for virtually all of the company’s success. The third — apps — puts under one umbrella Google’s growing business of offering software. All three resided on the Web, rather than on users’ PCs, and were available wherever there is an Internet connection.

The programs include photo storage, social networking, online calendars, e-mail, instant messaging, word processing and spreadsheets. Most are free, and many compete with paid offerings from others. But Google has started charging businesses for some of them. “That is a business that looks like it is going to grow very nicely for us,” Mr. Schmidt said.

So where are books and bookselling?

The World according to Bill

The prophet came down from the mountain at Microsoft's Strategic Account Summit in Seattle. Of course there were tablets (digital) and there was the controversy one would expect at such an event. So what did Bill say:

"Reading is going to go completely online.” However, he appears to be more focused on the obvious; newsprint, reference and advertising related materials and of course the technology, “somewhere in the next five-year period we'll hit that transition point, and things will be even more dramatic than they are today." Nothing earth shattering there then.

Television will change from a simple broadcast to a targeted medium. Again nothing earth shattering and looking at players such as Joop are clearly showing the way. He says, “ads will be targeted, not just targeted to the neighbourhood level, but targeted to the viewer. ... We'll actually not just know the household that that viewing is taking place in, we'll actually know who the viewers of that show are, and so it's a very rich environment." Reminds one of Big Brother.

On printed newspapers: "The media itself will be quite, quite different. Who can create this media, who can distribute it? How do you find what you're interested in?” No answers here just more of the obvious.

On print newspaper advertising: "The Internet is like a lot of things -- the only sure winner, with the breakthroughs, are the consumers themselves." Is he going to say anything exciting and fresh?

On printed Yellow Pages listings: "The Yellow Pages are going to be used less and less.”

Well I wonder what the audience thought to this. It is ironic as one leader announces his retirement from the political stage another technology leader clings on to his mantle and refuses to go quietly…

Life on Earth

An ambitious internet Encyclopedia of Life was announced yesterday which will list information on all the 1.8m known species of animals, plants and other forms of life.

An international consortium, which includes; the US Field Museum, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole), Smithsonian Institution, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Natural History Museum in London and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are behind www.eol.org which aims to give open access to all, in any language, and develop into a focal point for biodiversity and conservation.

The project has already been in the planning for 3 years and could take another 10 to finish and they have already £30 million in grants to complete the project. The consortium of 10 major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have already scanned 1.25 million pages and plan to scan and digitize tens of millions of pages more.

Once complete it could prove a fascinating insight to vanishing species and conservation and will be a must for every educational establishment. It will again raise the issue of open social access versus commercial publishing but should prove a huge source of information to all.

Publishing by Installment

Remember Stephen King’s ‘Riding the Bullit’. The story was released in installments, chapter by chapter for download over the Internet. Some say it was a flop, others that it broke new ground and experimented with new ways to sell and promote the download era. Others will point to Charles Dickens and say ‘nothing new here’.

Today we read that Headline will release Simon Spurrier's first book, Contract, in installments over a six week period from May 24 on the website itsallaboutthemoney.co.uk. The book will be available online for a limited period, and from June 4 readers who can't wait to read the whole thing can buy it from the website.

In this age of experimentation this venture is to be applauded if only Bloomsbury could convince JKR to do a Harry Potter in installments or a major author were to take the bold steps again and follow Dickens and King’s lead we may well find the tipping point of consumer demand.

Reaching out to consumers

We now have books being promoted to consumers! Sounds logical and many will say that has always been the case but the cynic would point to the Bookseller and Publishing News and question the point of spending so much on advertising to the retailer.
We have seen the growth of marketing on underground and press. Then came the podcasts and experiments on MySpace and YouTube and HarperCollins video promotions. We now have news from Simon and Schuster that it is to launch a book video channel called Bookvideos.tv to promote their authors and new releases. The new channel, will launch in early June and will be available online on their website and major video-sharing websites like YouTube.

Simon and Schuster has committed to at least 40 videos, with the possibility of more in the future, that will be two minutes long and focus on the authors and their stories, not so much with the specific books.

It will be interesting to see if these take off through viral marketing and the “community effect” or die in the “so what” world.

Experimentation is essential and reaching out the consumer is obvious and these intiatives should be applauded. The question is making sure that the spend is effective and doesn't tip the balance between profit and loss.

Another Media Format says Farewell

After vinyl came the short lived eight-track but neither could compete with the cassette. Perfected by Philips and effectively given away by them the cassette was first introduced in 1963 and hit its peak in 1989 when 83 million sales of pre recorded tapes were sold.

Was it the compact technology or the Walkman that made this so successful? The answer is not simple as the media was indeed more portable, the walkman was the iPod of its day but probably more important it was the first real opportunity to create your own compilations and share them with your friends. It could store up to 40 songs. Also they were the first way that many could enjoy their own music whilst travelling in a car. 95 million blank cassettes were sold in the UK in 1990.
Now after 15 years of compact discs and latterly digital downloads the time is finally running out on the tape. Currys have now followed Woolworths and HMV in announcing that it will no longer sell tapes.

In the life of media it probably had a good run for its money but its decline in recent years has been marked. In 2000 music tape sales fell to 53 million, by 2005 this was 500,000 last year a mere 100,000.

Interestingly, audiobook tapes still sold 1.5 million units last year in a market that is less impacted by digital downloads today. However, as Currys and others phase out selling hi fi units that can play tapes and cars switch to CDRom and \MP3 docks as standard, it is easy to see the inevitable migration of audiobooks. The question is whether Audible will continue to enjoy their free run at the market and if DRM trends to relax control in music will cross to the book market?

The Introduction of the Book

There is no way we should go forward without looking back at leasons learnt.

I hope this amusing clip gives you both fun and thoughts about the introduction of ebooks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek

Many thanks to David Smith for sharing it with me.

Amazon is becoming a Gorilla

For the last ten years everyone has been putting Amazon down, at first they would be wiped out, then could service their debt, then they weren’t profitable, then were going into areas they didn’t understand.

The reality is that they were the goose that laid the golden egg and many acted as accountants who could not see the golden egg so only saw a goose. Well the goose is starting to lay eggs!

Amazon’s Q1 earnings report from Amazon was better than expected by the market. It raised sales 32% to $3.02 billion, and improved earnings 38% to $145 million, from a year ago. International "media" sales rose 31% to $1 billion and showed a trend that even surpassed their US media sales which rose 21% to $990 million. They are what we have known for ten years – a global brand.

Profits improved and they now envisage fiscal sales of between $13.4 billion and $14 billion.

We must remember that they now straddle the total publishing value chain and the only thing they don’t do today is originate content and publish it.

Karaoke on the move?

Song lyrics will some be available for all for free.

Yahoo has announced a service which will include the lyrics to 400,000 songs by 9,000 artists, ranging from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to ABBA and Kylie. Nearly 100 music publishers, including BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, and Warner/Chappell Music, have signed up to the deal

Music lyric searches are a popular on the internet so the service hopes to cash in on the demand by charging for any advertising accompanying the lyrics. It has been estimated that within 10 years the revenue from licensing lyrics this way would reach $100m a year, boosting the current worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at $4bn annually.

The logical next step is the guitar cords, and music sheets which have also be long sort out by every aspiring musician. What is interesting is that if book publishers were to do the same with poetry there would be an uproar. Where does relaxation of DRM and free advert models such as these go. They certainly change the rigts , royalty relationship. Perhaps we are moving towards a You Tube world where being seen and heard are the more important first base and payment is far more like achieving a home run and these are hard.

Other sites, such as Google and iTunes, Are expected to follow suit.

We are all getting connected

I am sitting in our Value Chain office in Bangalore and I am greeted by today’s headlines in ‘The Economic Times’ of India – ‘Broadband to go free in 2 years’. The Indian government proposes to offer all citizens free, high speed broadband by 2009 through their state owned service providers. It follows a Telecom paper reported by Rightcom yesterday that gives the latest figures on estimated penetration of broadband in the published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on their countries. Subscriptions have increased by 26% to 197m in December 2006 from 157m a year earlier and report also states that broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants grew to 16.9 from 13.5 during the same period a year ago. The report lists Denmark as the most switched on country with 31.9 broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands with 31.8, Iceland with 29.7, Korea with 29.1 and Switzerland with 28.5.

The impact is obvious- lots more people sitting in-front of screens surfing the net. But the real impact is whole communities and populations being empowered and a potential further power shift in the digital world.

However its not just those homes that are getting wired to play. The Heathrow Express that runs between London Paddington and Heathrow airport is now offering wireless internet access to passengers. The city of London has just announced a large WiFi area and the spread of WiFi is only just starting. In the US many cities are now adopting wireless broadband free services to residents. The Heathrow trackside mobile wireless network was installed by UK-based Nomad Digital and delivered by T-Mobile. The will deliver a broadband connection speed of 2Mbps throughout the 30 minute journey and cost 75p for 10 minutes or £5 for an hour's connection. Besides the Heathrow Express, the connection card can be used at more than 400 T-Mobile HotSpot locations within London.

This pervasive spread of high bandwidth connectivity will impact what content can be delivered, how its used and makes one wonder whether you will ever be able to switch off? Importantly the economics of access are shifting and the famous ‘rip off’ Britain tag will have to go if we are to compete on the global stage

Communities and aggregation is the name of the digital game

Since 2005, all NHS staff and students in Greater Manchester have been able to access 30,000 books and reports in 28 NHS libraries and are not just limited to their local library. Irrespective of job and location staff can now see what books, audiovisual resources and ebooks are available. This ensures all these staff and students access the evidence base and information services that they need at a convenient location.

The library is being hosted by OCLC PICA, the European library co-operative.
In January more than 70 higher education institutions backed the Ethosnet project, which aims to digitise past doctorate theses in preparation for the Electronic Theses Online Service (ETHOS) planned for 2009. In two years the rarely visited library stacks of these could be fully online and available to all.

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and (CURL) Consortium of Research Libraries have developed the prototype and the service will be run by The British Library. There are the usual issues around copyright and intellectual property especially third-party rights and commercially sensitive content.

Both these show that the geography restrictions around physical inventory have gone and bodies are starting to look at communities, aggregation and potentially workflow. This digital evolution is significant and will start to reshape our definition of content and it use.

Now you see it, then you don’t

So you want to see the parts that other maps don’t show you? The Ordinance Survey may have omitted 16,000 square kilometres of military warehouses, buildings and other installations which add up to over 1,00o contaminated sites and a further 3,000 sites but they are now available for all to see.

So who broke the secrets? Why and how are they now available?

The answer is straight out of a John Le Carre novel – well almost. Landmark’s MD Richard Pawley, whose company now publish these hidden sites says, “There were 100,000 paper maps in a railway carriage in a siding in Estonia when the communist regime collapsed.”

Were they left behind deliberately, merely forgotten in the haste to disappear or part of some cold war plot? No one knows the answer expect perhaps Smiley’s Russian counterpart.

Amazon to download….

No sooner has Steve Jobs left stage left having announced the deal to sell digital downloads without DRM protection, than Jeff Bezos enters right stage and announces he can do it too.

Amazon has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May. Will they meet their deadlines? Can they break the stranglehold iTunes have on the download market?

Forget Google and Microsoft the issue is between Bezos versus Jobs. These two individuals want the consumer business for both music and books. Will Jobs next announce ebooks on iPhones? Will Bezos announces a ‘secretative’ deal with major publishers and Google to create middleware and a new ebook playing field?

What is clear that Jobs has the style the lateral thinking and the fashion tag, whilst Bezos has the determination, single focus and importantly all the bases covered.

Bring on the giants!

Latte and a Book to Go

When we talk about the demise of the independent bookstore we see many reasons. As we stated yesterday change happens and with every opportunity there is always a threat.

Costa coffee shops has announced that it will now do author tours, why queue in a booksops when you can get a free muffin and coffee in a coffee shop and sit and read the book at lesuire? We see Starbucks now selling books in 450 store and although this is a very limited offer it is a great and obvious way forward for them and publishers.

So where does this take us? Have bookshops welcomed coffee stores into their premises like the Trojan’s welcomed a certain wooden horse?
The reality is that this interest by coffee shops to add an extra offer into their highly competitive mix is good for business. Just as garden stores and other specialist stores sell books there is no difference. What would be different is if a coffee shop and a bookstore were to blur into one where one finishes and the other starts becomes unclear.

The interesting scenario was if Starbucks started to have a local print on demand facility after all it often takes some time to make that cappuccino and wouldn’t it be nice to have a book as well sir – freshly made too. This is not science fiction but just a case of establishing the right proposition and economics. What if they had a book vending machine in the corner, limited offer but service with no labour? What if some bright publisher forgot the tome and started selling in short stories, brand wrapped and ready to go! We also must recognise that these retailers are already wifi-ing their outlets so we can see the digital download offer could be one click away. The point is that to these retailers this is added consumer value and new money and importantly if if takes little overhead it’s a no-brainer.

Independent Bookshops 'must …'

Advice to independent bookstores is offered by everyone.
There is the collective approach offered by Stephen Poulter, owner of Books@Hoddesdon who warned at LBF that independent retail is at risk unless shop owners unite to publicise their stores. Last April, he launched a "Love Your Local Bookshop" campaign and loyalty card scheme, now supported by wholesalers. But is the issue visibility? Does the local bookshop need visibility outside its catchments? How does being seen as part of a larger federation improve local visibility? There is merit here but it is not the silver bullet.

A number publishers are backing independents with various ‘support independents’ campaigns. Some offer better discounts, others semi exclusive stock, others a better interface but the question is whether these are merely fudging the discounts and muddling the available stock.

Others such as Michael Holdsworth offering some thought provoking words in his “High Noon on the High Street” article in the Bookseller’s LBF daily. It was a sobering wake up call and a gloomy picture of the potential impact of digitisation from someone who is well versed in digital matters as many academic and campus bookstore will tell you. Michael makes a very valid point when he states that certain genre will move quicker than others into digital and travel, religion, reference are clear areas where the consumer may want more than the tome.

Then today we read Michael Gove in The Times who believes the supermarkets are to blame. The lack of joined up thinking here makes one worry that the man is an MP. He is a serious used and rare book man and loves both stores and ABE but blames the dismiss of the independent on the supermarket? Clearly he doesn’t speak to the shop owners who did embrace ABE found a big market and although they also are held to ransom on commission and payment often find it cheaper to fulfil books out of the garage than a high maintenance store.

So who is right and who is wrong?

Generalists will continue to be picked off by the efficiencies and economies of scale of the likes of Amazon. Best sellers will always be cheaper at Tesco, Asda etc. Rare book dealers now sell more but their prices are in the open and falling as a result. Continuing to let publishers wallpaper shelves with their ‘best sellers’, ‘celebrity dross’ and the perennial ‘chick lit’ is a clear abdication of buying. Alan Giles has a point in his recent article on remainders but puts it across so badly and condescendingly, it dilutes any real message. Mail order is viable, as is the internet as are remainders, as is selling other stock such as stationary but these require different skills and aren’t just a simple offers.

Retailers need to recognise that the consumer seeks all books not just front list or new. What is clear is that innovative, hard working, open minded retailers such as the Countrybookshop will succeed and adapt. They and others have taken the bold steps to create experience, build loyalty and importantly sell books of all shapes, sizes and sources. Many can learn from what they are doing I building local community and visibility. It will not be right for all but they are certainly approaching the challenge with the same vigour they showed when establishing their successful internet store.

The independent bookstore is not dead but hopefully adapting to a changing and more demanding world.

The BBC plans to show repeats on demand

When you flick the channel hopper and find those hidden shows of yesterday you often realise many were not as good as you fondly remembered.

But there is about to be even more of them made available as the BBC opens up its archive in an on demand trail to some 20,000 homes in the UK. The pilot is part of the BBC's plans to eventually offer more than a million hours of TV and radio from its archive.

The corporation's ambition is to ‘enabling any viewer to access any BBC programme ever broadcast’. Broadcasters around the world are grappling with the shift to on-demand media. Channel 4 has launched its on-demand service via the net and cable services, while networks in the US are shifting content to platforms such as iTunes and the web.

At the recent media event in Cannes the BBC announced an iPlayer service, offering catch-up TV via the web and cable TV, re-engineered to work with Apple Macs and eventually rolled out to digital terrestrial TV (DTT) and set-top boxes. In addition they aim to trail hybrid set-top boxes which are connected to the net and can record TV to access BBC archive material.

The BBC iPlayer is expected to be launched later this year but is still subject to approval from the BBC Trust. If launched, it is designed to offer a seven-day catch-up service for viewers who can download content onto their computers.
This interesting as it comes at a time when it is reported that overtook Sky as the main way of watching TV in the UK homes ad now is in more than 11 homes. It will be very interesting to see the impact of the PC reception as more and more PC s are now sold with integrated TV Freeview reception.

Where were you when the Blackberries Stopped?

There will be conversations all over the US about the nights the lights went. No not the New York black out but the service outage suffered by Blackberry. On Tuesday night, five million BlackBerry users in the United States were logged off their cherished service. It took 10 long hours before the service was fully resumed. What was the implications of this on the service, its users and the rest of civilisation? After all it was outside normal working hours and resolved before the next working day.

The dependence we all have to email and the blackberry users have to their cherished machines is now clearly beyond working hours. BlackBerry services, shed little light yesterday on what went wrong, releasing a statement that said the “root cause is currently under review.” But it is thought that part of the problem, though, could be the service’s rapid growth: R.I.M. says it has added three million subscribers in the last 12 months, for a total of eight million, in part because of the popularity of its superslim BlackBerry Pearl.

We are left to wonder whether there will be a baby boom in 9 months.

Mobiles continue to offer Digital Content

That ubiquitous mobile continues to attract different publishers as they experiment with digital delivery. Hundreds of travel books and maps on European cities are to be preloaded onto Motorola phones. The books from Rough Guides are complimented by maps from ViaMichelin and packed as Rough Guides Mobile by Creative Software Ltd.

Swedish mobile users will now be able to enjoy over 100 HarperCollins English language audiobooks via service provider BOKiLUR. Users will get 2 minutes of free sample and then purchase a title for around 15 euros. The download is streamed to the phone and thereby obviates downloading to a pC. The system if successful will be rolled out to a number of other European Countries in the next 12 months.

The Patent Office Rebrands

The Patent office is about to become the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) and in doing so will harmonise the policing of IP infringement.

Will this change make a difference? Well the name may help some focus on ‘intellectual property’ and not just think of inventions and goods. However the issue of fair use still remains. As the Economist John Kay recently noted “If it is legitimate to copy material in terms of the Copyright Act, it should be legitimate to use a digital rights management system to circumvent that exception.”

The issue of treating copyright protection of physical and digital products differently continues not to go away.

JICS Athens and authentication

The joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that it ceasing it funding of Athens authentication from July 2008. Athens has and continues to allow university users single password access to their institutions resources.
The new access management is based on Shibboleth technology and will extend to schools, the public sector and commercial concerns.

Simplifying the access of thousands of students and institutions will it is hoped free staff to focus less on admin and free to concentrate on the selection and management of resources.

At the same time JISC is looking hard at the world of Web 2.0. Researchers, students, lecturers now also communicate through wikis, blogs, instant messaging, podcasts, RSS and in a world of collaborative working which is changing fast.
Why are these activities important to the rest of us? The answer is that they are dealing with the issues we all will face albeit earlier and with a slight difference in emphasis. These activities are certainly ones to watch.