The Future is Not Binary – Creating and Developing Intellectual Property

To become digital, publishing has to digitise its internal processes and break free of the book jacket and spine that has long ‘straight jacketed’ it.

Publishing is not just about selling books it’s about the total process from author to reader and beyond. So when we look at development we must not just break away from the paper concept but recognise that rights and contextual information, or what many today know as bibliographic, metadata and marketing material, are mere attributes of the content. In other words, they go hand in hand right across the life-cycle.

Today many manage their rights within Royalty systems not Rights systems and as a result have a one dimensional perspective of the rights they actually acquired. Where rights systems do exist these are often restricted to the exploitation of specific subsidiary rights. Permission rights which should have a greater impact in the digital world are all too often forgotten or managed on an ad hoc basis.
The question we would pose is why rights aren’t tagged to content and managed alongside it on a granular basis? Imagine clicking on a title, an illustration, a paragraph and being able to access the relevant rights information?

Today although context information is developed in parallel to content it is all too often managed and developed separately, stored in separate silos and accessed via different systems. The accuracy, level of detail and availability of contextual information has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. We now have ‘authoritative’ web sites such as Amazon and ABE with rich information, widgets and even Google’s developing Book Search. Yet we still have failed to do the simple tasks such as effectively group related titles and still mange ‘lists of titles and authors’ not content. It’s all too often down to the new entrants to show the industry how to manage our information.

Publishing is diverse and it’s this variety and wealth of material that makes it such an attractive consumer offer. It is hard to imagine a mass sea change in how publishers will develop their assets but it is easy to see that there will be a huge disparity between those who are able to fully exploit the power of rich contextual information and those who still see the AI sheet as the answer. Rights management will continue to grow in importance and some will manage these whilst others will continue to heavily depend on others to do it for them.

Digitisation is impacting the publishing development process and players. Just as desktop publishing first challenged the processes and SGML challenged the journals process, technology is again challenging the total process from manuscript to ‘finished’ or published products. Will everyone migrate on mass to one tool and approach? We can’t say, but we can see major players such as Adobe and Microsoft lining up to offer a one stop approach. If we adopt the logical XML database approach, will this be extended to cover context and rights? Again we can’t say but we would predict that those who make that leap will have greater control of their own destiny in this Brave New World.

Letter From America 1

Richard Charkin's blog used to give us those fasinating insights into his travels as he wrote about publishing change. We don't have his same talent, nor is this hotel room in chicago at some jet lagged hour, the same insights, but were spurred into reviewing the news and writing this piece.

Monday’s piece in PC Pro should be a wake up call for those in charge. It cites author Nick Hornby’s stinging attack on eBook readers. He rightly ridicules the cost of the readers, their functionality, the excessive storage, lack of ebooks and the fact that the current readers are as trendy as those early mobile phones that resembled bricks.

We don’t think that he says anything new and any reader to these pages will be aware that it is what we have been long saying. So why do we still pump up the volume and appear to be walking blindfold into the Kindle versus Sony versus Iliad debate and that every nearing September ebookfest?

We have to understand that digitisation is not about ebooks, audio downloads, online, podcasts, blogs, widgets etc. these are merely the delivery and marketing formats. It is about the creation, development and distribution of content, the development and distribution of the contextual information that supports and helps qualify content and rights that are acquired, developed, produced, marketed, sold and read. It is also about the changing roles and relationships right across the life cycle from Author to Reader.

Unlike music a book is already the content, the format and a reader. Books will be the major format for many years and represent the major sales revenue for all. However there are two issues.

Firstly, the book has joined together a number of different sectors into one. As we digitize then these differences will become more distinct and the various sectors will diverge often in different directions and at different speeds.

Secondly, 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.

So where’s the money and why do authors, publishers, retailers, libraries and consumers need to engage? 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 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.

Our point is that unless we start to look at the digital opportunities as a whole and right across the life cycle, we will continue to restrict yourselves to merely converting finished books to digital renditions and wonder why consumers still want books. Digitisation offers the bold the ability to focus on content and rights and be flexible in order to adapt and maximise the revenues from them. When the rights remain and content is locked in yesterday then the opportunities also remain locked. This is fine as long as someone doesn’t do something different.

We recently spoke with the head of one of the ebook reader developers who said that he wanted to seize the huge opportunities in education and academia. We asked him if his device was capable of annotations, bookmarks, holding applications and data, was wireless and met the needs of the student? Some ebook reader developers will be pleased with those questions but they will have their own challenges. Some would say that most have technology solutions looking for a problem. Nothing new there then! All today have the price challenge.

When we focus on one aspect of the overall picture we often get blindsided, or end up asking what happened when the likes of Microsoft close Live Book Search. This fuelling of the ebook reader as the solution the silver bullet and the ultimate consumer need is naive and leaves the market open to rebuffs from such as Nick Hornby and begs the question on what we learnt from the heady CDRom days?

A Story that should be Heard

'In the world of the blind the one eyed monster is king'. The quote from H G Wells sums up what many believe about today’s digital arena. Understandably, there many confused and blinded by the ‘elights’ today. Every week some new experiment happens and in the confusion of deciphering what is news and what is noise is hard and many find themselves merely caught transfixed in the digital headlights. Some may also recognise the odd potential monster.

It is therefore refreshing to hear the digital experiences from someone who has real experience and results to tell the world of publishing and who importantly views the glass as half full.

At LBF on Wednesday afternoon Mark Majurey, Digital Development Director , Taylor and Francis Group delivered a presentation ‘From Books to Bytes’. Unfortunately the many who attended the morning session on the state of American digitisation will have missed this. It appears the press also missed it, but I urge you to read it. Yes I have a vested interest in that Value Chain works very closely with Taylor and Francis and supports much of their programme but this presentation provides real experience. When many talk about 1% of sales, Mark brings home the reality of their significant achievements which today is 10% of total global revenue.

Interestingly Mark widens the digital debate and talks about the work they are doing in Editorial, Marketing, Production, Distribution and Sales. How it has changed their processes and how they are now able to switch on not a few hundred or thousand widgets but close to twenty thousand. How they are starting take control of their digital assets and use drop ship models to distribute them. The impact in their editorial processes and that their digital programme is clearly from the author to the reader.

Finally, many predict the future but fail to deal with today but when Taylor and Francis talk about the futures and their thinking they are doing so from a position of experience and knowledge that is worth listening too.
http://www.value-chain.biz/Publishiing%20Tand%20Francis%20MM%20LBF%20paper%200408.htm

Not Waving but Drowning...

I read with great interest Fred Newman’s piece on Bookselling in the Digital era which was featured in Publishing News this week. Many of the points made where very valid and much of the logic of his overall premise is correct – bookselling is changing - not because books are changing, or because publishers are changing but because the consumer and what they expect and want is changing. This is an extra challenge in a market that has a many to many supply chain, where titles are often unique in there relationship to the channel and in market which has so much product.

We therefore return to the digital role for Booksellers, or bookselling in the digital era? Are they the same or different? Is there a digital role for booksellers, or do they merely have to adapt how they sell physical titles within a digital environment? The Brave New World report clearly and resolutely stated the case for the inclusion of the existing channel in the digital market. It argued for consumer research and trend analysis and importantly it talked about co-operation and a collaborative approach. So why are we still going over old ground and a case that was made 12 months ago? Maybe it because, like the Supply Chain 10 years earlier, many listened, many agreed, but then went about their own exclusive agendas. The publishers today are far from co-operating let alone collaborating. If anything it’s like the ‘wild west’ with everyone trying to outsmart each other whilst smiling and exchanging platitudes. The retailers know how to retail to the mass market but in the main don’t have direct marketing skills and services let alone digital capabilities.

Publishers face significant challenges as ebooks, audiobook downloads, podcasts and blogs are merely the delivery mechanisms. They need to digitise their processes – how they acquire rights, develop, produce, promote, market and finally sell them. It is about changing processes, relationships and rights. Merely trying to increase margin and disintermediate the retailer and channel will not work.

In a world of confusion, the consumer tends to lead and like water find the route of least resistance, Amazon, Google etc. The music industry faced different challenges, but was equally led astray. Look where it is now – would you invest in EMI? All media sectors are facing digital challenges and none are of the woods yet.

Someone once ask why their business had failed even though they had listened, trained staff and responded? The answer given was – You can teach someone to swim but you can’t stop them from drowning, however, the chance of them drowning without any swimming lessons is far greater. Today the industry has to learn to work together, set out clear ‘quick wins’ and adopt an inclusive approach to digitisation. This will not guarantee survival. There is no silver bullet. It is not just booksellers that are at risk but everyone between the author and the reader.