Digital Demand Games

The news today that was widely covered and reported in the Wall Street Journal is that Amazon has announced that it will only sell print-on-demand books printed by its own print-on-demand service BookSurge.

Next it will only be selling ebooks on its Kindle and in its own Mobibook format. This will be followed by its decision to only sell audiobooks either published by its producer Brilliance or that are formatted and protected by its new acquisition Audible.

The Gorrilla is starting to flex its muscle.

Over the last few years the print on demand business has boomed and at its head is Lighting Source who are owned by Ingram. This short cycle print and distribute model has appealed to many where the sales are volatile, vanity or pure ‘long tail’. Services such as Lulu and otherss have catered to publishers looking to reduce overhead on inventory. So what will this aggressive and exclusive stance mean to the trade?

To many publishers who use the pod services merely to do short print runs and not true on demand prints this will not matter. But for the vanity and on demand sellers it will as their benefit is in the sales channel as much as it is in the no inventory overhead.

The real important issue is that Amazon need all their various publishing companies to fully compliment each other. Booksurge has grown but in comparison to others it’s still small so they have beefed it up. Some however may take amore Machiavellian view and recognise that he who holds the pod file also holds the metadata to create widgets and ultimately digital ebooks. Perhaps the Kindle also requires a boost and why not keep it in the family?

Hear Hear!

We read in today’s Bookseller ‘Mobile Deal for Random’ of the new audiobook download service from www.gospoken.com for Random House titles. What is different and refreshing is that they have bypassed any PC or intermediary device and gone straight to where it will win – the mobile phone.

We as expected had to try it out and there are a couple of titles to demonstrate the service and a sample chapter to download for free. Within no time we were listening to The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen. The sound was clear and the information was embedded within the file such that once stored it was instantly displayed.

The best was the fact that Random House true to its earlier statements have gone with a MP3 service and dumped the doomed DRM formats.

Will it take off? We have long held the view that audiobooks must go digital and download. Afterall it the same user experience and less hassle. It has the best chance to do so in our opinion and if others follow will set a trend that will cut the new Amazon Audible honeymoon short. Well done Random House in continuing to show the way forward to what could be a significant market.The sound on the tube and bus will be very different and we may hear an alternative to the thud and hiss of music on mobiles.

Many questions still remain. Will the existing channel be able to sell the service and files or is it a direct only channel? How will it plug into the library channel? Will the pricing change to reflect what people expect to pay or will it still remain linked to the CD and its high costs?

We can now see even more clearly the end of the CD dominance and death of DRM on these files. Lets hope the trade gets behind this bold step; authors, agents, publishers, wholesalers and retailers and others come to open up competition in the market.

Write to Earn

We must always remember that there are only two players that count, the author who creates the work and the reader who pays for it. All the rest are intermediaries who should add value and invariably also cost. If value is not seen then just like in other sectors no one’s position is safe, agents, publishers, printers, distributors, retailers etc.

Yesterday, The Bookseller reported under its title ‘Radical Change Required’ about last week’s author payment model discussion at the British Library’s Intellectual Property round table debate, "Authors and Publishers in the Digital Age". The debate questioned how authors would secure a living within the emerging digital market.
It is fair to say that all media creators face similar challenges. In some cases the form is changing, in others it’s the audience,or the channel and all too often it’s the existing business model, but in publishing many would argue,that its the above.
Of course it’s a threat if you look at the glass as half empty, but we would argue that it’s a far greater opportunity for all.

The real challenge is separating the myriad of different works that we are guilty of seeing collectively as books. The reality is that they have been merely joined together by a single format – the book, which has merely provided a straightjacket between two pieces of card.

Children’s book writers will have different opportunities to poets, to novelists, to text book authors, to travel writers, to reference contributors, to biographers etc. This means that they all could have potential different business models and rewards. The problem is that we all too often generalise. We see publishing as one industry and not as different ones, once joined by merely a common format – the book. The problem in generalising is that you loose the specifics and often dilute the argument to the lowest common denominator.

Authors are the creative heart of publishing, but again we all ten to generalise here too. The average author publishes less that two books and there is a vast gulf between the successful ones who publish many titles and earn a living doing so and those that are less successful, maybe have one title published and for whom it is a secondary means of living. How do you create a standard way of sustaining creativity across the varies different forms and levels of need? The reality is that market forces will always prevail, but here the trick is to at least give the creators a fair return on digital sales and in doing so, encourage a ‘win win’ publishing environment for all.

Double Agents?

This last couple of weeks has shown us how easy it is to forget or pay token gestures to authors. Nobody would be as bold as to stand and say a bad word about them in public but often actions speak louder than words.

We wrote last week about the ‘landgrab’ by a literary agency to revert rights and secure them in ‘safe keeping’ in the long tail print on demand channel. No marketing fees or promotion incurred here, just a one off conversion cost and every sale results in an additional bonus. Will authors and their estates get 90% of any revenues earned, or will they end up with a lot smaller percentage and the usual babble about investment and risk and the cost of redesigning the jacket! Will they get a second publication opportunity - highly unlikely - as to many, this is in fact their last publishing opportunity! They may well have done it themselves and in doing so also colected all the revenues raised. Mind you the agent may still have wanted their cut!

The question of who offers authors what advice, is interesting. Some may agrue that an agent who offers backlist print on demand under their label, a clear conflict of interest. They may say that it is may be praying on the vulnerability of some in this new uncertain world and obviously betraying their position of trust. You would not expect your account or tax advisor to recommend you to invest in their own company or schemes, so why accept this ‘bad’ advice.

We must always remember that there are only two players that count, the author who creates the work and the reader who pays for it. All the rest are intermediaries who should add value and invariably also cost. If value is not seen then just like in other sectors no one’s position is safe, agents, publishers, printers, distributors, retailers etc.

Authors deserve guidance and good advice and they afer all are the ones that create the content that is publibishing.

200,000 Read Mieko's Blog

Mieko Kawakami, has just been heralded as Japan’s biggest literary star. Her fame has not been created between the jackets but on the Internet were her poetic, street-wise writing has not only stood out among the many Internet diaries but has achieved the 31-year-old, former bar hostess and bookstore clerk, this year's Akutagawa Award. Theaward is named after "Rashomon" author Ryunosuke Akutagawa and is Japan's most prestigious honor for a new writer in Japan.

According to the blog trackers Technorati Inc, there are more blog posted in Japanese than any other language, some 37% or 1.5 million a day. Postings in English only account for 36% of all blogs are, according to., which tracks nearly 113 million blogs globally. Last year, Technorati found 37 percent of all postings were in Japanese - about 1.5 million per day and greater than all the postings in English, 36%. It is said that more content in Japan is personal in it nature whilst in the US and UK it is media orientated and news based.

Kawakami's readership has skyrocketed from its early days in 2003 to around 10,000 a day and a staggering 200,000 on the day she won the Akutagawa. She started the blog to draw attention to her music, but the early entries became her first book. Her third book won the Akutagawa.

Kawakami's award-winning novella, "The Breast and the Egg," covers new territory in Japanese literature; divorce, the question of beauty and solitary womanhood and have huge appeal to Japanese women.

Will blogs become books or authors become blogers? The book is starting to cut itself free from the book straightjacket and creative writing will continue to flourish irrespective. Japanese culture is significantly different from western culture but the remarkable acceptance of the blog and Keitai novels will have an influence on all in this global market.

So if the World Goes Broadband What Does it Mean?

Broadband subscriptions in eight European countries are now above the levels in the United States and Japan. The EU stated this week that the EU has added 19 mill broadband lines in 2007, the equivalent of more than 50,000 households per day.

According to the commission 4 countries lead the world; Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland, and another 8 have higher penetration rates than the U.S. and Japan. Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg and France also surpassed the US in 2007 and this year Germany joined them. The European telecommunications market is now worth 300 billion euros.

As the bandwidth increases so does the opportunities. The mobile broadband market is also exploding and now driving new services and offers.

As we experience this shift in connectivity we have to question whether the current download paradigm is going to continue to be the dominant one in the near future. If we can access broadband bandwidth from anywhere at anytime why do we need ‘fat clients’ or devices that are expensive to buy are complex to run and consume storage and power? It make more sense to harness the power across the network and from ‘fat servers’. In a bookworld this could mean that the whole format and reader debate becomes a non issue and everything simply goes online. After all if the Kindle can download a book wirelessly anywhere why not just stream it anywhere and forget all the download hassle and the storage of up to 200 titles?

We all too often design solution based on yesterday and what we know and that is alas why they don’t last long.

News or Noise?

We were once amazed how many Bollywood films were produced each year. You can watch two different films every day and still would not see them all! Yet India has a thriving film industry.

We now hear from The Bookseller feed today that Nielsen BookScan report that the number of titles with both an ISBN and a 2007 publication date sold last year hit 118,602, up 36% from 2006 (86,984). The amount of backlist titles a pre-2007 publication date sold last year also increased, up to 758,125 from 590,464 in 2006, a jump of 28%.There are some explanations of new products having ISBNs, an expansion of the data collected and more print on demand titles.

Let’s face it publishing is becoming cheaper. Print on demand doesn’t also necessitate the inventory and Internet, Amazon, and wholesalers can remove the cost of a saleforce and the battle of trying to catch the High Street attention. Chris Anderson’s longtail economics are certainly look to arrived!

Two points to ponder. First one would hope that every title published sold at least one copy in its first year. Even the self published book must sell one copy so does this tell us anything?

The more interesting issue is with respect to backlist as print on demand titles adopt the previous ISBN and obviously publication date. If we say that there are some 2 to 3 million books in print then are we saying that only 30% make a sale in any year?

As we move on we ponder whether a little knowledge can be dangerous and must be treated as noise not news.

A New Role for Agents?

The Bookseller reports today on the role of the agent. In a serious twist today they report that the agency PFD is entering a print on demand relationship with Lightning Source which will enable it to bring back out of print works from its authors and estates and makes these available through Amazon and the two wholesaler channels of Gardners and Bertrams.
This clearly throws the gauntlet down on rights reversals and opens up all sorts of potential opportunities for both authors and agents.

By bringing these works back they effectively block publishers wakening up and doing it themselves and also are one step away from securing the full digital control of these works. It is unknown what the deal is with the authors and their estates but it is obviously better than no sales and is with little if no risk. By selecting the free to play channels they also are well place to pick up ‘long tail’ sales.

Interestingly we were only thinking what the role of the Agent may be in the new World. They could hardly remain as they are today and yet unless they step back into the publishing model it is hard to see how many will not be marginalised in the future.

Discovering New eBook Players

Sometimes its fun to unearth news and sometimes its hard work. Today those smart industry watches at Publishers Lunch made what could have been a throwaway paragraph about a new ebook reader patent from Discovery Communications, who we all know through their Discovery Channel. The news was at best brief and said nothing other than they had got US patent clearance.

Finding more information was very difficult but appears that have been awarded a patent is for an ‘‘electronic book secure communication system” for the home and library by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on March 6. The patent is ‘‘a new way to distribute books and other textual information to bookstores, libraries and consumers.”

Apparently from a report lodged in Gazzette.net the e-book home system is essentially an electronic library that is accessible usable through a portable book shaped electronic reader.

The concept of the system is apparently based on utilising video signal format to also deliver text and a subsystem that allows it to be received and readers to select books and periodicals. This communications distribution is the obvious key ‘‘a novel combination of new technology involving the television, cable, telephone and computer industries.” and similar in concept to the wireless approach that Amazon took in removing the need for the intermediary PC.

The patent is reported to say ‘‘Using the entire video signal, thousands of books may be transmitted within just one hour of air time.” The e-book reader would ‘‘both read books and to interact with the home library software.”

We are left to wonder whether it will ever happen or whether it was just another patent filed. What is clear is that the Sony and the Kindle are transient technology solutions and like others that compete in different user space will be forced into the convergence route. The Blackberry is a classic example of a one dimensional tool thaty is now chasing the convergence ticket to survive. Steve Jobs knows that the iPhone will be a point of convergence so there is little point in developing short life product.

Interestingly there will be the library battles between the Adobe Digital Editions and other media libraries and Discovery may be angling to position themselves here as trusted gatekeepers. What is clear is that the tipping point will not be the ebookreader as we know it today.

Music is Heading South by Southwest

The music business is a weird world and the question of who makes the money going forward has long featured in this blog. As George Martin put it way back in the 60’s referring to a Beatle album, ‘ the album is the menu the concert is the meal.’
The highly successful South by Southwest US music festival has once again raised the questions of what make success and how musicians get paid. The veteran Lou Reed was also blunt about musicians getting a label contract. “You have the Internet — what do you need it for?”

Many big stars now want to control their own world and money. Radiohead, the Eagles, Nine Inch Nails, McCartney, Joni Mitchell are deserting those companies, choosing to be free agents and new models. They are being joined by the likes of Madonna who recently bought herself out of her deal. Even moderately well-known musicians such as Daniel Lanois, noted during his set that he now sells his music directly online. “We can record something at night, put it on the site for breakfast and have the money in the PayPal account by 5.”

Reed also rasied the interesting issue of sound quality, ‘you hear they've got a newer version (of MP3) that sounds better, and you suddenly hear the other instruments that are on the song. They've got to bring up the standard. You have the world open to you now; you can get almost any song in the world as an MP3, and I suppose if you like it you can go out and try to find a version you can actually listen to -- if you like good sound. If you don't like good sound, none of this matters for a second.’

So its not just a case of DRM free it could also be one of quality of sound. Does music dumb down like YouTube videos and leave space for those who want the full quality experience to pay or does it match quality with free DRM quality? This is an interest issue for all media and brings home the point that although anyone can create the quality may matter to many. The book industry has its ever growing slush pile, self publishing services and social network offers but quality is always sought by the majority.

Finally, the Internet looks to have brought musicians some unlikely corporate allies with this year’s festival having brand-name sponsors such as Citigroup and Dell.

A Lesson in Social Skills

AOL is buying BeBo the number three social networking site as they start to reposition their offer and see obvious need for a social network community.
Do all social sites need to be huge to offer potential? What drives a social network site? We know Facebook started as a college site and then morphed into a post graduate reunion site before young executives found it the hip place to be seen. We are aware that MySpace and Facebook have enjoyed a meteoritic rise and now have been bought for huge sums but what about the smaller want-to-bes?

An interesting site is www.sellstudentbooks.com . It does what it says on the can ‘sell student books’ enabling students sell their used books and importantly as they do so engage in a community site that offers shared communication not just on the books. It has all the right ingredients; a need (giving students extra cash for unwanted books), an audience (students) and value added as the students act as a validator of what books matter and which texts count. Just like the lecturers did before than they help qualify and rate the content.

We love the rouges gallery of ‘sexy sellers’ and it clearly appeals to many.
The really interesting thing is that they are continuing to push the site boundaries and stickiness and are now adding accommodation and laptops to their trading offer. This is one savvy set up and deserves to be a success.

London Word Festival Opens Digital Doors

Yesterday we spoke at the London Word Festival at the Bishopsgate Institute. The event was titled The Creative Word: Book Futures: Reading, Writing and Publishing in the Digital Age. It was great to have a room full of consumers all partisipanting in the ensuing debate. Well done London Word!

For those who enjoyed the speeches and healthy debate here are our words:
Today the future of the book is being changed by the digitization of content, network access and globalization. It is a complex issue and is not unlike climate change in that it has doom mongers, prophets, experts and many who want to ignore it and hope it goes away or seek leadership. We all know that it’s happening. We all know the impact is going to be significant. However, no one knows when, by how much and what the result will be.

Today, we focus much debate on the ebook, ebookreaders and the consumer demand. The reality is that we are predicting and discussing consumer demand in a vacuum and what many of us believe is transient technology. The vacuum I refer to is a lack of digital content and consumer offer. The issue today is not the ebook or readers or formats: it’s that there is little if no digital content and publishing is still in the main an analogue process that produces bound books. What is the use of an ebookreader if there is little content and few places to buy it.

I come for the firm belief that Digital Publishing is Publishing.

It is not about ebooks, audio book downloads, online, podcasts, blogs, widgets etc. these are merely the delivery formats. It is about haw and what we create, the rights that are acquired and traded, developed, produced, marketed, sold and read. It is about the changing roles and relationships rights across the life cycle from Author to Reader. It is about rights across its life cycle from creation to public domain. It is also about understanding consumer behavior.

The big problem is that we all love and are comfortable with books. Authors love to write them, editors love to edit them and readers love to read them. We have been educated with them and have grown up with them.

If asked to describe a book many would describe its size, even the number of pages and authors the number of words. All books consist of front matter, content and end matter.

I would suggest that the form has always dictated the content format and its creation. Some would argue that the bound book has been a straightjacket to creativity in that it has dictated what many write even how they write. Have creators adapted to it? Yes. Have some great works been created in it? Yes.

However, digitization now creates the opportunity to explode the spine of what we have known for the last few centuries and present content differently. Will it replace the book? No. Will it replace the book – No? Will it help redefine it and how we develop and sell it – most definitely?

Will the digital book be the same as the physical one. I hope not otherwise we will have fallen into the same trap as we did between the hardback and the paperback and to a lesser degree the audiobook.

In removing the straightjacket we also start to potentially express ourselves differently. Look at some online reference works, at what travel publishers are now starting to do with their content and what authors such as Kate Pullinger are doing with her ‘ Alice’ novel. There are many examples we could quote as reference and some will work and others will not. But the common thread and enabler is digitization.

Is that wrong or right? Who cares? Creativity and expression is not a book nor is it a blog or anything between. Dickens wrote in installments as did Stephen King when he wrote ‘Riding the Bullet’ and some Japanese authors are doing similar today in their writing for mobiles. You can’t squeeze multi media in between the jacket nor do it as an afterthought.

Unlike climate change, it is not time to defend ourselves against the threat but it is time to engage with it and as Gail Rebuck eloquently said in her speech this week, see it as a glass half full and offering all new and exciting opportunities for all.

UK Trade's Ditital First Steps

The Bookseller in its feed today has let the secret out. They report on the news that the ebook programme has now unofficially landed and being powered not by the publishers but as we predicted at the New Year, by the retailers on both sides of the pond.

Waterstone's and Borders are now poised to put their muscle into the market and although sales will be small the acts themselves will kick start the publishers into action. With Gartdners Books now well under way and offering all the ability to participate we can start to see the Brave New World that we wrote about some 18 months ago.

Rights will be and should be an issue and will take time to resolve. Authors need to be rewarded and the debate over investment is understandable but investment is in the main a one off exercise and brings with addition opportunities and this should not be at the cost of the author. The likes of Gardners and others have stepped up to the challenge and have grappled with the issues. We must recognise that digital content is part of the landscape if you want to be in the market moving forward.

The question of Kindle versus Sony versus online versus iPhone is not for today. But what is an issue for today is building consumer confidence and awareness and matching their expectations. It would be stupid to make a huge fanfare and only have a small fraction of people want available and at a price that is unacceptable.

Audiobooks are also at a watershed and finally have the ability to break out of the DRM straightjacket but again we must address pricing issues and availability now.The industry has a long time to debate the issues and prepare itself now its time to move forward with caution but with purpose.



So 2008 looks as predicted as being the first giant step forward for digital content but is only one step in a long journey and is not yet a leap into the digital world.

Digitising Classics

It’s strange to see the classics now being rebranded with new livery and even re written into today’s prose in the physical book world. A few years ago some publishers were reducing their profile as they were increasingly available for free online and all public domain works. The big question was whether traditional publishers could migrate these works online and make money. Merely replicating the text or even giving them a brush up would be the same as the current hardback paperback repetition and show little value add.

It is therefore refreshing to hear that Penguin US, one of he recognised ‘classic’ publishers have announced the launch of "expanded ebook classics". These will start in May with a version of Jane Austen's ‘Pride and Prejudice’, followed by nine more titles and are all priced the same as their paperback editions, $8.

These will offer added value with features as a reviews from the time of the original publication, a Austen chronology, guides on period dancing and social etiquette, a filmographgy, fashion illustration and guides to Austen sites and information on the decor and architecture of the time. It will be like seeing those outtakes and extras at the end of the DVD. It wioll be interesting to see how much of the extras are public domain and how much is original and whether the publication of a public work demands DRM.

We salute Penguin in this bold and sensible route which should provide readers with a greater insight to the times and background of the times in which the book was written. After all the book content itself is free so actually providing the extras could justify charging any money. Also if you published all Austen’s works the majority of the extra material can be reused. We now hope that the research and it presentation is of the quality associated with a classic work and extended to others.

Finally, one would hope that Penguin will make these available in the UK at the same time. After all they are public domain and there is no reason why not and it would certain help to address the imbalance of digital content available in the UK compared to the US.

Digital Climate Change

We applaud the speech that Random House chair and c.e.o. Gail Rebuck gave this week. The speech itself was fully reported in today’s Bookseller briefing and is well rounded and gives a thorough viewpoint of why the digital glass is definitely half full and not half empty. Digitisation is impacting everything to do with publishing and even the content itself.

It was interesting to read the speech on the back of having watched two BBC programmes last night. The first was on the history of the typewriter and the second on the emergence of the tabloid press. What these programmes clearly showed was that technology and social change are cyclic and the changes that happened at the end of the 19th century were very similar in their impact to those we are experiencing today.

In the case of newsprint the broadsheets had existed and presented their reports the same way for many years. The tabloid came in the form of The Daily Mail and shook their very foundations, presenting different news, not for the elite but for the masses. It was possible due to the literacy boom created by education, social urbanisation and the emergence of efficient distribution. We could not help drawing a parallel with the Internet and technology boom of today. The tabloid and its journalism has survived and the broadsheets have followed its path.

In the case of the typewriter it was providing automation and replacing the pen in the early explosion of the office. The demand for automation was a given. The sheer number of different typewriter machines and type layouts reminded us of the many format wars that litter the technology battlefields. It was interesting how ‘qwerty’ won the final battle and the fact that the best doesn’t always prevail. The typewriter may have gone by the qwerty keyboard remains long after its layout justification has gone.

The digital publishing evolution is not about ebooks, online, audio downloads, blogs, these are merely the delivery mechanisms. It is about the book and the divergence of publishing sectors that were once joined together merely by a common format, jacket and spine.

Gail ‘s speech is encapsulated in her line, ‘Digitisation is here and books will never be the same again,’ and in her belief that this is grounds for optimism. Digital publishing is publishing and is changing and challenging the rights acquired their developed, how it is produced, what is produced, how it is sold and marketed, what is read and how it is read and finally, the roles and relationships right across the total publishing life cycle.

Mobile News

Many believe as we do that the mobile platform will dominate the digital world along with the ‘heavier’ Laptop and that everything else, including the clunky Kindle and Sony readers are just transient noise.

We bring you some more interesting news this week from the world of mobile.
The one thing any technology aspires to is universal mass adoption. Can you imagine one country adding 2.05 million new mobile subscribers in January and in doing so taking the total number of users to 36.4 million? The country is one of the world's fastest growing mobile markets, but is one often viewed as impoverished country of over 140 million people. They also predict that the number of mobile phone users will be around 50 million at the end of 2009. The country is Bangladesh.

Convergence continues at a pace with devices and functionality morphing to offer the user everything in a single device. Sony has just announced that it would add a Skype Web phone function to its PlayStation Portable later this month in Japan. This move is not only an attempt to gain back market share in the games market, but a recognition that technology convergence is inevitable. Many believed that the game market would be one of the last to cede to the mobile phone platform, but Sony’s plans to start selling the microphone to enable Skype over their Playstation clearly shows that convergence is key. How long before the single dimension and transient ebook readers get the message?

The next key battleground is the mobile browser. We now see an explosion of wireless mobile broadband modems which start to question the broadband landline and importantly open up the full potential of ‘always connected’. Yahoo have now have unveiled ‘ OnePlace’, a mobile phone tool to bookmark links, news feeds or search results on the move. This gives them access to the latest information and feeds on travel, sports and even social network postings. Users will be able to mark their favourite websites on their PC and then synchronize these with their cell phone, or directly on the mobile phone itself. What this tells us is that we are at the start of a battle for mobile search, advertising and the browser world. Apple are actively encouraging developers to create applications for the iPhone and Google are hovering in the wings. Adobe obviously recognise the weakness of imaged based text on the small screen and the need for reflowable text and are actively shifting ground.
Email has long been available via mobiles but it took the Blackberry to bring this home and create a tool that is now used by millions of business people today. Now Apple have regonised that they need to present an alternative to the Blackberry keyboard and eyestrain and have taken the step of announcing that the next update to its iPhone software will support Microsoft’s Exchange email software. Will this fatally wound Blackberry? Probably not but as RIM scramble to wider the use of the Blackberry the vultures are starting to circle.

Finally, we have long argued that Content is content and is not locked into one format. The book trade publishers ‘books’ that are sold by booksellers as ‘books’ and loved by bookreaders as ‘books’. But are book publishers restricted to books or are the content publishers and owners or as an old friend once said ‘rights managers’? If we think of books then its hard to see the content lending itself to the mobile platform. But if we see content then it may do so tomorrow. The Japanese are already seeing significant changes in this direction through their Keitai novels and although these may not work today in other markets, it is certain that they will in some form in the future.

A Lesson in Digital Creative Writing

We are now speaking to a number of authors and content creators about the digital opportunities and challenges that they now face. We are looking at how it is affecting them, their relationships, and the processes and activities right across the publishing value chain and life cycle from creation to public domain.

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing an author with a difference perspective, Kate Pullinger. We were drawn to Kate by the article she wrote in the Guardian last month, ‘Writers can learn a lot from the Hollywood strike. We deserve a better deal from digital publishing’. The article raised many valid points and clearly touched a spot, as it generated high number of comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/bookscomment.digitalmedia
We were interested in her digital experiences not so much from the commercial side but the writing itself. She has authored several novels, writes for radio, film and for digital media and currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester. She was also the Research Fellow for TRACE online writing centre from 2002-3.

So Kate not only writes, but teaches writers and has importantly worked with new media. Kate clearly sees the glass half full and the opportunities for all in the New World, but she also recognises that the format often dictates the form. To put it another way, books are books and their size and structure are often fixed to fit the package not necessarily the content itself. Creating multi media works needs to support multi media at the beginning, during the development and at the end. It is not a case of writing the text and adding the ‘effects’ at the end.

We visited Kate’s impressive web site http://www.katepullinger.com and her latest digital work http://www.inanimatealice.com , a multi media graphic novel in episodes. We will all have our own views on whether it works or doesn’t but the one thing it certainly provides is evidence that creativity is not confined to a live in a jacket. Just as MTV enhanced music and YouTube changed video, then digitisation has the potential to change the book.

Its Official Audiobook DRM is Dead

Following hot on the heels of Random House’s announcement that they were to sell audiobook downloads DRM free now comes the news that Penguin are to follow the same route. We predicted in the Brave New World report that audio would be a natural format for digital downloading and its heartening to finally see they opportunity coming to fruition.

It still remains a mystery why Penguin pulled out of the 3music experiment but that is now history. It is almost certain that the audiobook download market is sprinting towards DRM free and following the music market trend. This is great news for the existing channel and as we said last week is an interesting dilemma for the new Amazon Audible Brilliance audio partnership.

Two other issues now need to be grappled with; pricing and rights. However the market will ultimately sort the price points and this should be viewed by authors as a great opportunity to promote and sell more works.

We now believe that 2008 will be a tipping point for digital audiobooks and although it will take time for the market to get up to speed the DRM shackles have finally been lifted. Let’s face it the CDs were DRM free anyway!

Predicting the Online Change

‘Driven by growing popularity of online shopping, lure of discounts offered by retailers, faster delivery, free shipments, and the convenience offered by home shopping, the market for online books is projected to reach US$9.5 billion by 2010.’

So predicts the new "Online Books: A Global Strategic Business Report" published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. The report which costs a cool $3950, reviews online trends and directions in markets such as the US, UK, Italy, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and interestingly refers to all books sold over the internet be they physical or digital. However, it says of the ebook that the ‘emerging ebook concept is a lucrative offshoot of the online book industry. The market segment is expected to catch consumer fancy, and exhibit strong growth patterns in the future.’
Online sales of consumer books are estimated at over US$4.2 billion in 2007 and academic and professional are forecast to generate sales worth about $3 billion in 2008.

Whether we believe the predictions or not it is clear that the purchasing of physical books over the Internet is increasing. The interesting question is at what point it will peak and plateau? Will it peak or continue to erode High Street sales? It is clear that all genre will plot their own path but that the lure of the virtual bookstore coupled with convenience and an increase in ‘search and look inside’ features make it harder to predict. There are now a small number of clear camps selling online; the clicks and mortar chains and bookstores who came late and are still suffering and the online only players who often don’t have the same inventory and cost overheads and are focused and include such as Amazon, Abebooks, Alibris, Books24X7 etc. Finally there are those who are merely acting as ‘white label’ stores and selling others stock on a drop ship basis such as the supermarkets.

Finally, ebooks remain in search of the Grail. Predicting their take up is like predicting climate change, we all know its happening but when, what and how are difficult to predict. What is certain is that publishers must generate the digital content if a market it to exist, merely talking about it and looking at ereaders in a content vacuum is not the answer.

Blogsquare

In response to a Blog on Booksquare re Blogs http://www.booksquare.com/blogging-in-the-21st-century/ ,we wrote

The format has always dictated the form of writing or content. The book has for a long time been seen by many as being of a fixed size, containing x number of words and x pages. It has front matter, content and end matter. It has in fact been a straightjacket to creativity in that it has dictated what many write even how they write. Have creators adapted to it? Yes. Have some great works been created in it? Yes.

Today we are starting to explode the spine and in doing so express ourselves outside of the jacket. Is that wrong or right? Who cares? Creativity and expression is not a book nor is it a blog or anything between. Dickens wrote in instalments and some Japanese authors are doing similar today in their writing for mobiles.

Is blog software constricting? Does it pass the 'fit for use' test? Who cares? Just like all content the slush will sink and the worthy will rise to the top

Audiobook DRM RIP

The story of the month must go to the news that Random House are to allow audiobook downloads to be sold online as downloads free of DRM. We have written about their watermark experiment with eMusic and the mystery as to why Penguin pulled out.
This at last brings some sanity to the market and we hope will not only kick-start the long overdue audio push but importantly allow all online players and the channel to compete. It is great news for the industry and hopefully just as with music the gates will open and many will follow. It is certainly a great day for retailers and consumers.

It puts Audible in funny position as it effectively sounds a death knell for their unique selling point their proprietary DRM. The question of whether Amazon would have bought them today is now debatable, as is the price they would have to paid toady. The other interesting position to watch is Amazon DRM free versus Amazon Audible.

But the day must go to Random, hats off and sanity returns. The next issue is that of pricing, but that’s for another day.

Video Killed the .....

As video increases to draw attention, then so does the means of its delivery on the net. Bluray may have won a war over HD DVD, but another battle is looming with respect to digital video downloads and streaming. As more and more clips are generated and quality film on demand looms ever closer video becomes more important. Video is even becoming more important in the book industry is it is now increasingly being used to sell books.

The BBC was reported as considering ditching Adobe’s Flash for the better quality of its iPlayer streams and although they have retracted this they apparently still have quality issues. The quality acceptable for a quick You Tube video is clearly inappropriate to others.

So we have Adobe with Flash and are Microsoft coming along with their high definition ‘Silverlight’ project (Windows Media Video V9 based on VC-1as used by Bluray). Then we have the iPhone and mobile platforms and if players such as the BBC are going to make the iPlayer available on Apples ‘I’ family then there are also bandwidth issues, as O2's EDGE data network is apparently too slow. Then there is the underlying standard MPEG4 and H.264. Enough technology!

When we look at the iPlayer we see a success story. Since its launch service has attracted 2.2 million viewers who have watched a total of 17 million programmes. Currently the audience is about 10% of the live broadcast audience with streaming outnumbering downloads by 8 to 1. However, given you don’t need a licence to watch iPlayer shows, it begs the question whether the BBC has in fact created something that may come back to bite them very hard.

Product Placement or Product Search?

We have all seen the subtle but sometimes obvious product placements on TV and in films. These can earn significant exposure for a brand and literally touch millions. Car manufacturers have been know to fight hard and pay big to get their latest model on screen and it always interesting what brands you can spot on the soaps. It’s in your face but outside of the commercial break.

We now read an old story that was released in 2006 but got visibility today and prompted us to revisit it. It refers to a book ‘Cathy’s Book’ by Stewart and Weisman and which was first released in the US in 2006 by Running Press and published in the UK last year by Bloomsbury.

Product placement has come to books and the original article refers to the changing of a reference to specific lipstick and shade in the manuscript to a generic brand from Proctor and Gamble in the finished book. The manufacturers haven’t paid cash for the placement but are instead are promoting the novel on their Beinggirl.com, a site dedicated to young girls make up, and tips on life, and through their cosmetic brand Cover Girl. Go to the site and see and hear a funky piece of marketing http://www.beinggirl.com/en_US/funzone_watchthis_cathys.jsp?ContentId=GTWT_cathy&page=2&

Unfortunately the Bloomsbury site doesn’t have the same buzz and the search inside on the page took us to David Dimbley’s ‘How Britain was Built’ – hardly relevant unless you count lip gloss as foundation!

A novel will obviously make references to all sorts of common goods but do so to add relevance and gain empathy with what they are trying to describe. In reality the opportunity is very real but unless the book is a bestseller the eyeballs could be limited and not the sort of speculative investment advertisers like.

There are exceptions and apparently Bulgari went one step further and commissioned Fay Weldon five years ago to write ‘The Bulgari Connection.’ Not bad work if you can get it!

Irrespective of the success of individual titles to secure ad placement funding or support it looks an exercise doomed to be undermined by technology. Why should manufacturers pay anything to a publisher or author when they can potentially search their product on a book search and then place their ads accordingly. It may not happen that way but as content becomes searchable on line so does the opportunities to exploit it in ways that were never possible before. Go to Google search on Books and type in ‘Nescafe’, ‘Perrier Water’, ‘Walkman’, etc and you soon get past the brand marketing books to novels that refer to the brands. Unfortunately sometimes the reference isn’t always what you expect! But interesting how content search and advertising aren’t far apart.

My Space, My Music, My Book?

Could MySpace with its captive audience extend to capture the music download market?

The online social networking site owned by News Corp, is reported in sources including Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and CNET.com as being in talks with the major music companies to launch an ad – paid free music service.

This could effectively open up the free music to a huge market, obviously generate significant ad revenues and blur still further social sites and media. It would certainly capture the attention of the widest audience and turn MySpace into an even greater phenomenon. It would also act as a launch pad to catapult News Corp potentially into many new acquisitions.


We read last month that HarperCollins plans to team up with its sister company MySpace, to build and launch a new "create and share" space, http://www.myspace.com/harperteen where kids on the site can write prose and share it with friends on MySpace. Given the ownership of HarperCollins and their digital drive, will we next hear about My Space giving ebooks away on an advertising paid model?

Reed Reshapes

It is always good to watch the major publishers such as Thomson, Reed Elsevier, etc. They focus on markets and move decisively in them and disinvest ruthlessly when they feel they need to realign their focus. They may seem big and cumbersome to some but financially agile to others and importantly have to keep the City happy.

Reed Elservier, who employ around 37,000 people, own a large share of the legal publishing market, with the likes LexisNexis and are majors in other sectors such as business publishing, the medical publishing market, with journals such as The Lancet, and exhibitions are embarking on a significant cost saving programme. It is reported that Analysts believe that the centralising functions such as procurement, human resources and IT across the group will shed as much as £100m a year.

Reed operate in publishing sectors that have done very well out of digitisation and that have enabled it to develop value added service onto their content. It will be therefore interesting how they reign in these centralised functions as a model for others to potentially follow.

Large OLED screens coming

We have written previously about the development of the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen technology to make medium to large panels. OLED uses organic, or carbon-containing, compounds that emit light when electricity is applied. Unlike the current crystal display technology it doesn’t need backlighting, making OLED screens slimmer and more energy-efficient.

Sony launched the world's first OLED TV last year which is 3 mm thick and consumes 40% percent less power than a comparable LCD, has faster response time, bright colours and a wide viewing angle, but is restricted to a 11” screen. Sony have now committed $200 million to the develop medium to large OLED screens.

Screen technology will be pivotal to providing a standard experience as technology continues to converge and today OLED looks to be the favourite to cover all the bases.

'DreamSpark' Captures Them Young

Bill Gates will launch Microsoft’s new "DreamSpark" initiative during his tour of U.S. and Canadian colleges that starts next week at Stanford University.

'DreamSpark' is about giving college and high school students around the world students free use of Microsoft’s tools such as Visual Studio, Microsoft's main development tools used by professional developers, and Expression Studio, design software over the Internet. The initiative will be available immediately to college students in the United States, Western Europe and China and enable them to write software applications, design elaborate Web pages or create new video games to run on the Xbox 360 console. The plan is to extend this to other countries and high school students and potentially reach 1 billion students.

Microsoft’s driver according to Gates is to give students broad access to software tools that can be expensive and difficult to get. Others may see it as a ploy to get them hooked on these tools and off rivals such as Adobe’s design software. The attractive element may be the XNA Game Studio software development tools for writing video games and a free one-year membership to the "XNA Creators Club" that would enable the students to bring the games to the Xbox 360 platform.

Microsoft today already makes development and design software available to students, but through a universities registration program, but this takes that one stage further and will be an attractive offer to many students. The imitative can be viewed in many ways but the initiative even if matched by others will lead to more technical savvy and multi media competent graduates.

Marrying Content to Platform

We read this week of Dorling Kindersley’s agreement with media content company Mobifusion to globally deliver branded mobile content to consumers. Earlier this year a similar deal was struck with Encyclopaedia Britannica for their Concise 2008 encyclopaedia and in Decemeber another deal with Oxford University Press was sealed to create and deliver mobile editions of Oxford's dictionaries to mobile phones and devices through key wireless operators and other sales channels.

If we forget the service what this indicates is that the reference publishers are starting to see the potential of porting their materials on to the mobile platform. Many believed that this was the domain that the ebok reader woulds secure but it makes just as much sense for this world of quick search and retrieval to go straight to the mobile. After all you need look no further than the market acceptance of the Blackberry and mobile emails and graphical capabilities of the iPhone to see that an ereader would just be a clunky device.

As we said before all we need is a iPhone and an Airbook all the rest are mere pretenders.

iPhones go Talkies

Imagine you sold 3.7 million units but could only had 2.3 million registered to use the closed service you had created. How do you loose 1.4 million or 38% of the customers? Where are they going with the units they bought?

The problem is one facing Apple and the iPhone in the US. The problem is that many are being bought in the US and then going to other markets such as China. The other issue is that Apple tied their phone to a service so to maximise its additional revenues but consumers wanted the phone but not the AT&T service and contract.

Today you can easily find a service to ‘unlock’ the iPhone for local markets. Today you can do the same in the UK and effectively bypass the O2 service.

What Apple have failed to grasp is that if 38% effectively walk away then there is a significant demand that is being restrained by a service tie in that is clearly not wanted and by unshackling it they could reach its true potential and also position themselves for the pending software wars.

Google have now declared themselves phone free and that they are going after the software market with their Android offer. Nokia, Sony, Motorola and the other phone manufacturers will always be capable of catch up so why inhibit what is clearly a design icon and a major step change in mobile technology?

HD DVD RIP

Todate, about one million Blu-ray players have been sold with another three million integrated into Sony’s PlayStation 3 consoles. Interestingly, about one million HD DVD players have also been sold with Microsoft having backed the HD DVD standard and sold a compatible player to accompany its Xbox 360 video game console.

Although downloading of high definition movies face challenges the DVD is seen by some as a transient technology so the Bluray DVD victory may be as short lived as others before.

However, the defining moment of market capitulation once again shows us how sudden format wars can be finished. Today the ebook war is plagued with format wars, Mobibook, MS Reader, Adobe, epub and more. We already see the signs that Sony could be repositioniong itself away from its proprietary format. What is clear is that these wars will be decided like those before them by the adoption of those that count and in book terms that must be the retailers and the channel and not ereader technology or even publishers. Unless Amazon open up the Kindle its had its day of glory and Sony and Adobe are poised but who will make the difference?

Who Pays the NewsPiper?

We read today of the demise of the Nielson booktrade web site The Book Standard. There are certainly many wishing to compete within this crowded space and with limited financial reward many face uncertain futures.

The web is redefining journalism. It is changing the content, how it is delivered and the business model that has long underpinned it.

Newspapers now have to develop better ways to sell their ad space online and have to compete with new gorillas such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo has over 264 US newspapers distributing their content on their portal. Google's PrintAds program enables its customers place ads in 600 daily and weekly U.S. newspapers. These programmes are among others that are redefining the landscape.

Now four major U.S. newspaper groups have launched an online ad network that enables customers to book national campaigns to over 50 million readers a month in the US through a single point of contact. This group includes flagship newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. This move is clearly aimed at protecting the business model and control over both web and print property.

This collaborative approach may negate the need for them to share revenue with the likes of Yahoo and Google. Both corporate and classified advertising is changing and being redefined online.

Women and Money, Makes Sense

Last week we wrote about the Oprah touch and her 48 hour offer to download Suze Orman’s book ‘Women and Money’ for free.
According to reports, more than 1.1 million copies of Orman's book were downloaded in English, and another 19,000 in Spanish. The demand has been compared in the US press to other online sensations as "The 9-11 Commission Report," and Stephen King's e-novella, "Riding the Bullet.".

The offer for "Women & Money," originally released a year ago by Spiegel & Grau, has not impacted physical sales with the book ranked No. 6 on Amazon.com and with the paper edition of "The 9-11 Commission Report," published in 2004 by W.W. Norton and Co., was a best seller for months.

This month we have also reported on the HarperCollins full book promotion and other experiments by the likes of Random House. Perhaps the market is finally wakening up to the reality that you can’t have a market without content and you certainly can’t have a one without first stimulating it. Merely making another ebook reader is a waste of time. Consumers want to have content and have some offers that compel them to try. Forget the back list and new authors the market need some oomph and as Oprah has proven people will respond to the right promotion. Will Richard and Judy now follow? Will an ‘A’ list author now take the plunge and fordge their name in history as the tipping point?

Well done Suze Orman and Oprah Winfrey for boldly showing the way.

Oprah kicks starts Digital

We raise our hats to Nicholas Clee in the Guardian for spelling out succinctly what we have been trying to say here. It’s a pity he isn’t still at The Bookseller. Meanwhile we read in the Times of the usual doom re the death of the book in the Times yesterday. Did the article say anything new or exciting or even positive? Unfortunately just another space filling article by another business analyst.

We then read the biggest non article to get air yesterday on the Atiz Booksnap book ripper. They may as well have used an off the shelf scanner and OCR package. The reviewer thought as little of it as we they colunmn inches it was given.The conclusion that the publishing industry could be Napstered by students and consumers making ‘illigal’ or dubious scans was interesting given the current activities of one certain omnivore at work in libraries around the globe!

It must be the digital silly season or is it a certain pay to speak, exhibit and attend event in New York that is stimulating digital mania in the press?

But then comes a breath of fresh air from that book star and number one bookseller – no not jef bezos but Oprah Winfrey. She has announced that a free downloadable PDF version of Suze Orman's bestselling book WOMEN & MONEY (published a year ago by Spiegel & Grau) is to be available at Oprah.com today and tomorrow. It is to be offered in both English and Spanish and will include a clear copyright notice that reads, ‘This book is copyrighted. You may view and download the file, but you may not copy the file or share or forward it to any other person.’


No doubt we will here much more from the paid speaking slots but its Oprah who knows how to stir an audience and market!

Open Access opt out at Harvard

The Journal model has defied all that have striven to destroy it. It creates value by creating authority and reference and its that refrence that is required by its contributors and readers alike. Ok, the authors give it away, its reviewed for free, the subcriptions are paid for in advance of publication, there is no garenteed publications schedule and the very institutions who employ the authors pay to get the copy back.

Harvard are now planning to change things albeit quietly by voting to enable its arts and sciences faculty to distribute their scholarship freely online. If passed an open access repository run by the library would instantly make maretial available on the Internet. Authors would still retain copyright and the ability to publish anywhere. In fact the system would be an opt out one which would automatically include works unless the author opted out. An interesting position for authors who could be said to be dammed iof they do and dammed if they don’t.

It will be interesting to see what happens, how many will opt out, whether the impact will release greater funds for the libraries and the reaction of others including publishers.

Read by Digital Chapters

We read today of a move we long expected to make a return – digital chapters.
Remember ‘Riding the bullet’ by Stephen King which he released in chapters digitally in mode of the most famous chapters man Charles Dickens. Today few realise that that Dickens wrote and released his works this way and many have forgotten the famous Stephen King ‘experiment’. So today its good to see Random House taking on a chapterised experiment. They have long been at the forefront of the digital experiment and this certainly is one to watch.

Random will sell the six chapters and epilogue of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" for $2.99 each. That makes the total price around $21 for a hardback listed at $24.95. However we can buy the ebook today for $16.47 , the audio CD for $19.77 and the downloadable audio Mp3 file for $15.73. The question this begs is why its is priced so for what is clearly a promotion to sell the book and also the concept. It is in danger of starting life with its hands tied behind its back!

We can only wait until someone is brave enough to write and publish a blockbuster in chapters. If the last Harry Potter had been published in chapters not only would the premium be paid on the digital copy but the publisher would not have given away the margin and the physical copy would have probably sold as many copies. The channel would have responded in a heartbeat and everyone would have experienced the ebook. Importantly we would not be sitting hear debating if and when the tipping point on digital will happen.

Come on someone ride the bullet.

Re-Jacketing Content

We read today that HarperCollins is yet again at the digital front and pushing back the boundaries. It is now extending some of its ‘browse inside’ digital samples to whole books. The premise is that as they make more available then they will entice more to buy. The offer is not extended to downloads, printing and orders will be fulfilled by Amazon.

The offer could not be resisted and makes a stark difference from the often miserly few pages offered by many or the ‘surprise me’ offered by Amazon.

Unfortunately the offer doesn’t do digital ebooks a great service as it merely rendered the physical 268 pages of Paulo Coelho’ s ‘The witch of Portabello’ on the screen as images within a flash player. What’s wrong with that you may ask? Well it includes blank pages, you would think someone would have thought that one out. It is an image within a flash player so is restricted by the player in the size of the screen and functionality; basically you can make it fit the screen or make it smaller and see the table of contents. The real issue it highlights is the use of roman fonts to read digital text. Roman fonts look great on paper and add a certain style but on a screen are very difficult to read and when in italics are very difficult to read.


"Warriors: Into the Wild" from the children's series by Erin Hunter was easier to read as the font colour was darker but only the first 60 pages were available. Robert Irvine’s cookbook ‘Mission Cook’ was a huge disappointment. We expected photographs of his dishes but found none. It also showed that placing coloured text in coloured sidebars, may well work in the printer copy, but look bad on screen.

Flash drives and widgets are samplers to show off physical and digital books.

Nobody is going to read a whole book in a flash drive. There is therefore little point in highlighting the digital restrictions of flash by showing the whole book. More importantly the exercise is good if it starts to teach us that what worked in print may not work digitally. Font is an obvious issues but it stretches to layout and design. We have long taken content and merely re-jacketed it, hardback to paperback etc. Perhaps now we have to start to think differently about the digital representation.

There is little point to showing the whole book if by doing so it could potentially turns off the consumer to digital books.

Beware of Gorillas

When faced with a Gorilla you have a limited number of choices. You can turnaround and walk away and pretend he wasn’t there. You can smile and concede the next move is his and that he now owns the garden. You can take him on ‘David and Goliath’ style. You can call your friends, the local zoo and hope that they turn up in time.

Audiobook publishers have now entered the garden and are faced with a new Gorilla Amazon / Audible sitting smiling at them. They understand Amazom and its audiobook position and they understand Audible and it position but what nobody but Amazon understands, is what their position is going forward. So just like all Gorillas they are unpredictable.

Audible has established an audio dominance based on largely on their DRM technology and ability to deploy it onto multiple platforms where there is no competitive offer and also their exclusive deal with iTunes, which is licensed till 2010. Amazon has its audio publishing publisher Brilliance, a subsidiary CustomFlix which supports both standard CD and mp3-CD audiobook formats in its "disc on demand" service which produces audio titles on CD on demand.

We have questioned what role Amazon will play; publisher, aggregator, retailer, technologist or all?

We have asked how the relationship will evolve when Amazon wants to go DRM free and MP3 on music and Audible, proprietary DRM phobic on audiobooks. Where does it leave iTunes with Amazon sitting now in their back garden?

Publisher’s have long stressed the need for greater competition but have understandably supported the DRM position and thereby restricted the market. Retailers have had little download options to date and even the few that have managed to do a ‘white label’ deal with Audible, now could find the tables shifting. Direct Sales will always exist but consumers want aggregation and choice.

The irony in much of this is the fact that it is so simple to take an audio CD and rip it to create a digital file. Its not rocket science and anyone can do it! So why the download DRM fixation and why do we assume that audiobooks will be treated any different to music, which has clearly woken up to the DRM myths. It would be very interesting to understand why Penguin withdrew for the recent MP3 audio trials whilst Random House didn’t. It will be also interesting to understand the potential implications of audio watermarking technology as a more passive and acceptable alternative to DRM.

The audiobook CD has still got a life, albeit a short one and one. Perhaps its time to think differently about the content and package and not merely replicate the CD as a download. After all, the format is identical.

It is essential the current retail channel is also able to participate in the audiobook download offer. Cutting out this channel will be far more dangerous than with ebooks where the physical book will always have a role and ebooks may only be a small slice of the market. If the audiobook market flips to downloads and an on demand model there will only be one Gorrilla sitting in the back garden and guess who will be dictating the terms?

Digital Climate Change is Coming

We warmly welcome the BML market research 'Books and bookshops at the dawning of the digital age'. We strongly advocated such research in the Brave New World report and were dismayed when some in the industry felt that it wasn’t needed or that they knew best.

What the report gives us all is a stake in the ground and something from which we can measure the future. Does it tell us about consumer demand? Does it tell us what consumers want?

The reality is that we are all grappling with predicting and discussing consumer demand in a vacuum and the vacuum is a lack of digital content and consumer offer. The issue today is not ebook readers or formats, it’s that there is little if no digital content and publishing is still in the main an analogue process that produces bound books. What is the use of an ereader if there is little content and few places to buy it. The format has always dictated the content. Digitisation now creates the opportunity to explode the spine of what we have know for the last few centuries and present content differently. Will it replace the book – no. Will it help redefine it and how we develop and sell it – most definitely.

Today we looked at a super widget for real estate agents and had to ask the question – so what? If merely packaging the content in a new wrapper or spine is what we think is the answer we will fail to create new sales and merely create substitution sales. What has to change is the value proposition and benefit to the consumer. There are a few exciting publishing experiments taking place today and we support them all.

Today the digitisation of books is like climate change. We all know its happening. We all know the impact is going to be significant. However, no one knows when, by how much and what the result will be.

BML has asked the questions that needed to be asked and in doing so started the process of understanding. We are just amazed why it took so long to do something so obvious.

The Consolidation of Intellectual Property

Content is clearly becoming media neutral and king of many converging sectors. This broadens the opportunity to exploit the intellectual property into many more and potentially new ways. This then obviously creates more value. The key is who owns the license to the rights and how are the rights acquired can be maximized?

An old publishing rule was to acquire rights broadly and use narrowly. In other words get as many rights as possible such that you have them if needed but that you start focused. Does this approach still hold today? Is it part of the digital dilemma, where publishers want to secure digital rights and not necessarily fully exploit them all, but authors and agents are reluctant to give them away?

The one thing that ties all media sectors together is rights. As media sectors converge then the rights lines also start to blurr but more importantly the players can become interchangeable. Fascinating times!

Last year we saw BBC Worldwide acquire Lonely Planet. Irrespective such acquisitions may, as we predicted at the New Year, become more common.

Today we read that the BBC Worldwide are considering entering other partnerships with private equity groups and other financiers in order to invest in other media production, publishing and intellectual property opportunities.

It is sobering to consider how small and fragmented the publishing industry is in relation to others. This makes even the large companies relatively easy targets. This has always been the case but what is now changing is that one rights company could potential buy into another rights company from outside their sector. What they buying is another rights business with content.

Money Matters

The naive among us presume when you go to a conference and you pay an entrance ticket you will get independent viewpoints and insights and although there may be some vendor stands that’s all that is paid for. When you read a press release and statement of endorsement from a industry body we assume it was given freely and openly. After all when you go to trade fairs you expect to pay little, if anything, to enter and know that you will be sold to at every opportunity. We all know that when you contribute to a feature article in the press that the advertising editor will place a call asking you to buy ad space. You may say no, but often its not easy.

Perhaps we are of an age that expects or respects independence and are cynical when we don’t receive it. Conferences, fairs, press are never free and are businesses that need to be paid for. Visibility and a voice to project yourself and your services is afterall is what you pay marketing monies to achieve. Tying the two together is logical to any vendor.

All the organisations we have worked for have never paid to buy a speaker slot at a conference. In fact we often feel it is to be valued then it should be the other way round. We remember fondly the ‘Publishing in the 21st Century’ research and conference programme which was effectively free, independent but clearly paid for by the vendor, Vista. It sad to see an industry digital conference today that is getting the 'must go' treatment and offers so much in what it has to say, but where the entrant pays to go, the vendors pay to exhibit and according to their contribution are ‘given’ speaker slots with little if no editorial input and where others vendors merely can buy speaker slots. These conferences are often focused on the very issues that are topical but sadly are often not worth the effort nor the support they are given. The keys to watch for are graded levels of vendor sponsorships, wall to wall vendor stands and speakers and slots clearly managed by the vendors and worst of all an entrance fee.

Personally we will not be spending thousands of pounds to secure a speaking slot, tied or not to a stand, nor paying an industry body to get a supportive quote on a press release. We believe that there are many who seek genuine help through these digital times and we should not be ‘cashing in’ on them or the vendor’s eagerness to sell in the name of clarity.

Microsoft Wants to Buy Yahoo

The omnivore wars have taken a different twist with Microsoft tabling a $44.6 billion cash and share bid to buy Yahoo. The bid if successful would represent one of the biggest takeovers in American corporate history and the largest technology takeover. This latest move apparently follows an earlier friendly deal that was rejected.

Yahoo shares unsurprisingly jumped 56% some $10.71 in response.

Earlier this week Yahoo! announced 1,000 job cuts and the battles for the online search and advertising market share mean that companies need to merge to compete for market share with the dominant Google.

eRomance Fiction

A century of publishing should be cerebrated and whatever anyone thinks about the content of Mills & Boon’s books they have had a very successful 100 years. Staring as a general fiction publisher in 1908 it wasn’t until 1930 that they began to focus on romances. The figures speak for themselves 13.5m books a year, with regular readers getting through an average of four books a month with Harlequin Mills & Boon selling in more than 100 markets, in 26 languages, at a rate of one book every two seconds. They currently publish around 70 books a month in US and UK editions.

So why are they on this blog? They have taken bold steps to make their titles available as ebooks and have some 2000 titles digitally available in North America and each new tile is digitised as part of the programme. The UK programme is to launch soon.

Congratulation Mills and Boon

Amazon Acquire the Audio-book Market?

Today we read about the biggest digital news to hit the news for many months. Surprisingly it wasn’t top to the industry news but its implications will be huge for many. Amazon has bought Audible for $300 million. We must also remember that Amazon last May acquired Michigan audiobook publisher Brilliance who had a catalogue of over 1,000 audio titles and releases 20 to 40 new titles a month.

Amazon's subsidiary CustomFlix supports 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. We questioned last May whether Brilliance bought for it content and list? Does this now make Amazon a publisher and fill in the last space in the value chain?

We also questioned whether Amazon wanted to continue referring audio customers to Audible.

The fact that Audible invested so heavily in developing its DRM technology and getting it accepted in so many platforms and that it has an exclusive agreement with iTunes until 2010 must have been a ‘no brainer’ for Amazon. The fact is digital audiobooks are Audible. Some may say that they have restricted the growth of audio, that there business model based on the old book club approach is wrong, but come what may, they are the digital audio download market today.

So were does this marriage leave the market? It certainly now belongs to Amazon. The relationship with iTunes is very interesting for Mr Jobs and Mr Bezos. What will happen next – the Kindle be an audio player too? Where does Amazon’s stand on MP3 and DRM music sit alongside Audible’s propietory DRM strength?

Only time will tell but Amazon are unlikely to walk away from the DRM strength of Audible and their marketing and buying audiobook clout has just increased ten fold.

The audio industry has to either fold under the Amazon umbrella, or adopt a different approach to DRM. It could be bold and follow music, it could adopt watermarks or it could face the realities of the marriage and hand over audiobooks to Amazon to run on their terms. We hope bold is the answer.

Prepare for the Future Today

We read today about the potential future of mobiles from two different and diverse sources our good friend and futurist Ray Hammond and the NY Times.



Imagine a hands free phone where you talk through speech recognition , see images through special contact lenses and project images from the phone onto screens. Is this fantasy or reality, available today or technology that has to be adapted for use?

A voice recognition service from Vlingo in the US now people talk naturally, rather than making them use a limited number of set phrases. The system is being tested at AT&T and Sprint and consumers with certain mobiles from those companies can now download the application.

A rival application is being tested from , Yap Inc and Nuance started its Nuance Voice Control system last year and is in use at Sprint and Rodgers and can be downloaded today to 66 mobile models. Thanks to its acquisition of TellMe Networks last year Microsoft is also in the voice recognition service space. With obvious applications such as GPS and in car ‘hands free’ the voice recognition world can only grow.



We then look to the future and read about engineers at the University of Washington who manufactured microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

Imagine reading a book through your lenses? Now there is the ultimate ebook reader a virtual display screen that only you would be able to see.


Imagine your mobile phone having a built in projector that could throw an image up to 50 inches wide.

The PicoP projector is here today and uses tiny lasers to project low definition images in a sharp 800x 600 SVGA at a 60 HZ refresh rate. The PicoP is ‘green’ and conserves energy by only turning on the lasers when it needs them and will turn off the Red and Blue lasers. Microvision said consumers could see PicoP-enabled phones as early as 2008.

OK so you take your phone to bed and project your ebook onto the wall.
All the above demonstrate that technology is being developed and adapted that will change how we work, communicated and do things. The key to all publishers in all media is having the digital content and context to be able to respond to the future.