Having already made seven predictions for 2010 and into the next decade, we continue and offer our final three.
8.Publishers
We have talked about bookstore chains being venerable, but some would suggest that the same logic equally applies to big publishers. We have seen huge inter-publisher consolidation over the noughties, but this will change in this next decade with the potential of new entrants buying up publishers. The diversity and range of publishers was its greatest strength and protection, but as new players enter will this remain so? Some would suggest that the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple don’t need the hassle of publishing just the control of the margin and channel, others would suggest that separating the copyright asset from the process and operation of publishing could be an interesting and profitable exercise. Isn’t publishing after all primarily a rights business?
The potential for small publishers to thrive has never been greater. No longer locked out from the physical or digital channel, their agility and economics are becoming increasingly attractive and it is easy to see their numbers growing. Many may be writing their exit plans before they have published their first book! Acquisition growth will continue to be strong, but the question is at what level does size become an inhibitor?
Some would suggest that authors would only want to be processed by the big house with a reputation, but these need the mega sellers to survive and that means they need to remain attractive to big authors. We have already commented that this may be changing.
This next decade may prove that publisher operational size doesn’t matter in a digital age!
9. Breaking the Spine
We have written many times about the opportunity that digital provides to offer more than just the same 250 pages, print layout and even content. Today we have seen a few experiments, but little real movement to create something different. As a result, we have ebook pricing being questioned by all and digital value being diluted.
How long will it take before we see the shift towards true short stories and serialised works written specifically for the digital market. Japan’s Keitai novels may appeal to a different culture, but the principle is one that could be adapted to western taste. We forget too quickly the Charles Dickens approach to writing, at a time when it could be most appropriate.
Many will continue to experiment with digital forms and material but we don’t see a major change until the market is more mature and predictable. The current transitional ebook forms and ‘lookie likie’ eInk devices are clearly inhibiting digital writing and maybe when we start to move online then we all will seen the huge potential to do things differently.
10. Rights
Rights are probably the greatest challenge as we embrace the digital age. Many of the principles that supported the physical world, start to be questioned in the digital age; territorial rights, rights reversal clauses, out of print, audio rights etc. It is essential that we mere don’t end up picking those we want to retain at all costs and turn a blind eye to those that need to be properly debated and accommodated.
Google, Rosetta, Blio and the Kindle audio feature, have all shown us that tomorrow is going to be very different from to today. This next decade will determine rights in the digital age. Governments have once again started to show interest, but often on a bi partisan basis and the sprit of the Berne convention appears to be struggling.
The one certainty about rights in the next decade is that it will make some lawyers very rich.
Showing posts with label new year predictions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new year predictions. Show all posts
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Friday, January 01, 2010
2020 Vision: Digital Predictions for 2010 Part 2
Yesterday we looked at the first four predictions for publishing in 2010 and into the next decade. Today we continue and offer a further three. Again we can’t predict the next decade but we are confident of what we see in the year ahead.
5. Digital Platforms, Channels and Consumers
This year will start to redefine ownership and see the entry of the streamed ‘read on demand’ model similar to what we have been raving about with the likes of Spotify. It will take the music model to open up consumers its potential and the challenge will be the publishers and their obsession in supporting existing models that they understand and their reluctance to think outside the box on rights and royalties.
Bookstores need to be included into the digital channel. It is over 3 years since we wrote the watershed white paper ‘Brave New World’ and yet publishers still want to bypass digitally retail and retail are is still not being enabled at the speed needed. Without this movement we are liable to see increasing friction and channel wars. Some will write off the physical channel but for many this will continue to dominate sales and be important. If we want to avoid the commoditisation of books like music we need to engage booksellers and Libraries and enable not disable them. This year will offer a significant opportunity and risk.
The Mobile technology will free the ereader from its tethered PC. ebook readers as we know them are highly unlikely survive past 2012 and the download model is highly suspect in a world where unlike games, music and films, a book is often only read once.
Price will continue to be a major issue. In a price war there is only one winner – the consumer. There is a need to separate digital from physical pricing and until some sanity is achieved the market will be unstable.
6. Authors In Control
Big name authors are already starting to realise the opportunities that digital offers. Some say that they must have a publisher in order to achieve reach and promotion, others realise that maybe this model is not as strong as it was in the physical world. On one hand publishers will demand comprehensive rights on the other authors will want to hold back and retain digital rights or separate them. Some will say it is impossible to work under a split model others will simple act and say nothing is impossible. Meanwhile others will slowly pick up digital publishing as the print on demand services picked up the long tail in the noughties.
The aspiring authors will increasingly look to digital and see potential that even print on demand didn’t offer. The Scribd, Amazon and Wattpad services will grow and we still have others such as Google to enter the market.
Back list and out of print has only one way to go – digital. The question is who will take them there; authors, agents, publishers, retailers or the consumer?
7.Booksellers
The Chains once had and enjoyed the economics of scale and size and the noughties has seen the erosion of this and them competing not with independents but bigger new entrants who have deeper pockets and models. This last year has seen chains go and the remaining ones are the most venerable players in the market today. They find themselves torn between being too inefficient and small to compete at one end and inefficient and too big to compete at the other. Digital will not save them but will increase the pressure on them
Amazon is no longer a bookseller. It is becoming a publisher, channel and bookseller and has learnt from history and other sectors. It is hard to see others offering the same empathy with the two people who count in the book market – authors and consumers. This position will strengthen in this next decade and will be little understood by those craving the status quo.
Independents have great opportunities but must learn that sale or return and merchandising their shelves with front list is not the answer. Bookselling is about selection, promotion, knowing customers and this can apply equally to physical and digital. Independents must specialise to survive.
Next we will finish our review and look at the final three areas of publishers, content and rights
5. Digital Platforms, Channels and Consumers
This year will start to redefine ownership and see the entry of the streamed ‘read on demand’ model similar to what we have been raving about with the likes of Spotify. It will take the music model to open up consumers its potential and the challenge will be the publishers and their obsession in supporting existing models that they understand and their reluctance to think outside the box on rights and royalties.
Bookstores need to be included into the digital channel. It is over 3 years since we wrote the watershed white paper ‘Brave New World’ and yet publishers still want to bypass digitally retail and retail are is still not being enabled at the speed needed. Without this movement we are liable to see increasing friction and channel wars. Some will write off the physical channel but for many this will continue to dominate sales and be important. If we want to avoid the commoditisation of books like music we need to engage booksellers and Libraries and enable not disable them. This year will offer a significant opportunity and risk.
The Mobile technology will free the ereader from its tethered PC. ebook readers as we know them are highly unlikely survive past 2012 and the download model is highly suspect in a world where unlike games, music and films, a book is often only read once.
Price will continue to be a major issue. In a price war there is only one winner – the consumer. There is a need to separate digital from physical pricing and until some sanity is achieved the market will be unstable.
6. Authors In Control
Big name authors are already starting to realise the opportunities that digital offers. Some say that they must have a publisher in order to achieve reach and promotion, others realise that maybe this model is not as strong as it was in the physical world. On one hand publishers will demand comprehensive rights on the other authors will want to hold back and retain digital rights or separate them. Some will say it is impossible to work under a split model others will simple act and say nothing is impossible. Meanwhile others will slowly pick up digital publishing as the print on demand services picked up the long tail in the noughties.
The aspiring authors will increasingly look to digital and see potential that even print on demand didn’t offer. The Scribd, Amazon and Wattpad services will grow and we still have others such as Google to enter the market.
Back list and out of print has only one way to go – digital. The question is who will take them there; authors, agents, publishers, retailers or the consumer?
7.Booksellers
The Chains once had and enjoyed the economics of scale and size and the noughties has seen the erosion of this and them competing not with independents but bigger new entrants who have deeper pockets and models. This last year has seen chains go and the remaining ones are the most venerable players in the market today. They find themselves torn between being too inefficient and small to compete at one end and inefficient and too big to compete at the other. Digital will not save them but will increase the pressure on them
Amazon is no longer a bookseller. It is becoming a publisher, channel and bookseller and has learnt from history and other sectors. It is hard to see others offering the same empathy with the two people who count in the book market – authors and consumers. This position will strengthen in this next decade and will be little understood by those craving the status quo.
Independents have great opportunities but must learn that sale or return and merchandising their shelves with front list is not the answer. Bookselling is about selection, promotion, knowing customers and this can apply equally to physical and digital. Independents must specialise to survive.
Next we will finish our review and look at the final three areas of publishers, content and rights
Thursday, December 31, 2009
2020 Vision: Digital Predictions for 2010 Part 1
So Christmas and another year are over and the New Year beckons. We are now at the end of a decade that has given us the iPhone, Facebook, MySpace, Celebrity everything, instant ‘x factor’ stars, Harry Potter, Dan Brown and Twitter. Will we be equally moved in the next ten years and will we recognise the booktrade in ten years time?
We can’t predict the next decade but we are confident of what we see in the year ahead.
1. Google Will Change All
Whichever way the court decides, the final outcome will influence publishing for many years.
If the settlement is pushed through, overnight we will see the emergence of the biggest digital bookseller, library and aggregator. The covers will certainly come off the scanners and anything that moves will become fair game. Others will follow and it will be interesting to see the reaction of the BRR (Books Rights Registry), APA and Authors Guild and whether they turn to litigation or just switch on the meter? What is certain is that there will be much litigation. If the BRR have attempted due diligence to trace the rights owner then some will say it safe for others to also adopt orphans. Will publishers assume rights or do their own diligence and check those old contracts?
If the settlement is rejected many will see it as a huge digital step backwards. We would see the rejection as a step forward and a call for all to engage in the process of redefining copyright in the 21st century as opposed to sleepwalking backwards to afraid to stand up to the behemoth. Maybe the rejection will allow those such as the; UK, Canada, Australia, who were dragged naively into supporting it, the opportunity to walk away from the pressure from their bigger brothers.
2. Libraryworld
The library is under threat from all quarters as it faces the digital age and tries to seek its own mission within it. We have written much about the real conflict between the High Street and the Library on the conflicting business models, culture and management but in the Uk now face the greatest threat of all in the naive ramblings and ideology of a Minister who is clearly ill advised and not fit for office. Margaret Hodge has thrown down her vision of the library like a drunk spewing up excess liquor after a night on the tiles. She wants 24 x 7 library services and sees them competing with Amazon. We think she has paid too much to get ill advice and hope that she gets her comeuppance at the forthcoming election.
However, the libraries do need to be given some clarity of digital direction that aligns to the resources they have. You can no longer make a librarian into a bookseller than a publisher into one. You may hit the odd success but will fail in the main as the skill set is different and there application very incomparable.
We see lots of soul searching in UK libraryworld in 2010 and many standing on the side ready to dump digital content and services into the mix.
3. Promoting, Marketing and Book Information
The use of the digital content to support, market and sell all books is going to grown significantly.
Direct marketing of review and inspection copies will gain ground not only in those sectors who have adoption processes but across all. Sharing annotations and reviews offers significant value and adds a digital opportunity to the process.
Catalogues today are often inefficient but a necessary evil. The carry a high cost and little intelligent feedback but these can now be addressed by ecalaogues. The question is whether the ecatalogue is a mere replication of the physical glossy or a dynamic piece of direct marketing whose usage can be fully monitored and analysed. As a result Marketing spends will increasingly become more focus and direct.
Finally we are approaching a step change in bibliographic data similar to that we experienced in the late 90s when jackets first exploded onto the market. The change is not so much about defining the information but about how it is communicated between trading entities and packaged.
4. Sales Information
We have as an industry focused our standards efforts on ONIX to the front end and in describing bibliographic and metadata, but have spent little effort looking at the rear end and sales information and reconciliation in a digital environment.
We see the standards bodies finally waking up to this omission and recognising the efforts needed to reconcile digital sales in this new digital age.
Tomorrow we will conclude our 2020 predictions.
We can’t predict the next decade but we are confident of what we see in the year ahead.
1. Google Will Change All
Whichever way the court decides, the final outcome will influence publishing for many years.
If the settlement is pushed through, overnight we will see the emergence of the biggest digital bookseller, library and aggregator. The covers will certainly come off the scanners and anything that moves will become fair game. Others will follow and it will be interesting to see the reaction of the BRR (Books Rights Registry), APA and Authors Guild and whether they turn to litigation or just switch on the meter? What is certain is that there will be much litigation. If the BRR have attempted due diligence to trace the rights owner then some will say it safe for others to also adopt orphans. Will publishers assume rights or do their own diligence and check those old contracts?
If the settlement is rejected many will see it as a huge digital step backwards. We would see the rejection as a step forward and a call for all to engage in the process of redefining copyright in the 21st century as opposed to sleepwalking backwards to afraid to stand up to the behemoth. Maybe the rejection will allow those such as the; UK, Canada, Australia, who were dragged naively into supporting it, the opportunity to walk away from the pressure from their bigger brothers.
2. Libraryworld
The library is under threat from all quarters as it faces the digital age and tries to seek its own mission within it. We have written much about the real conflict between the High Street and the Library on the conflicting business models, culture and management but in the Uk now face the greatest threat of all in the naive ramblings and ideology of a Minister who is clearly ill advised and not fit for office. Margaret Hodge has thrown down her vision of the library like a drunk spewing up excess liquor after a night on the tiles. She wants 24 x 7 library services and sees them competing with Amazon. We think she has paid too much to get ill advice and hope that she gets her comeuppance at the forthcoming election.
However, the libraries do need to be given some clarity of digital direction that aligns to the resources they have. You can no longer make a librarian into a bookseller than a publisher into one. You may hit the odd success but will fail in the main as the skill set is different and there application very incomparable.
We see lots of soul searching in UK libraryworld in 2010 and many standing on the side ready to dump digital content and services into the mix.
3. Promoting, Marketing and Book Information
The use of the digital content to support, market and sell all books is going to grown significantly.
Direct marketing of review and inspection copies will gain ground not only in those sectors who have adoption processes but across all. Sharing annotations and reviews offers significant value and adds a digital opportunity to the process.
Catalogues today are often inefficient but a necessary evil. The carry a high cost and little intelligent feedback but these can now be addressed by ecalaogues. The question is whether the ecatalogue is a mere replication of the physical glossy or a dynamic piece of direct marketing whose usage can be fully monitored and analysed. As a result Marketing spends will increasingly become more focus and direct.
Finally we are approaching a step change in bibliographic data similar to that we experienced in the late 90s when jackets first exploded onto the market. The change is not so much about defining the information but about how it is communicated between trading entities and packaged.
4. Sales Information
We have as an industry focused our standards efforts on ONIX to the front end and in describing bibliographic and metadata, but have spent little effort looking at the rear end and sales information and reconciliation in a digital environment.
We see the standards bodies finally waking up to this omission and recognising the efforts needed to reconcile digital sales in this new digital age.
Tomorrow we will conclude our 2020 predictions.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Happy New Year!!
We welcome 2008 and believe following 2007 it will be the year that makes significant strides forward on digitisation. We will definitely not all be reading ebooks by the end of the year but publishing will certainly be further impacted by digitisation and closer to that elusive tipping point.
The consumer needs the availability and ability to buy digital content and secondly the elusive reading device and ‘must buy’ pull. Until sufficient content is available we are trying to create an ereader market in a vacuum and although the device is less of an issue consumers want a ‘safe buy’ that has legs or a price that makes the purchase a ‘no brainer’. What they have today is format confusion, DRM madness and over engineering and a price ticket that says ‘special’ not ‘commodity’.
So what are our ten 2008 predictions?
1. Content – a significant rise in volume as more publishers realise that this is not a ‘wait and see’ game. PDF will be dominant over XML and we may well see the epub standard start to become a real consumer format standard and be fully adopted by ereaders. The publishers with established digital programmes will start to digitise their development process based on XML.
2. Context – widgets , widgets everywhere. The effect will be similar to when book jackets were first developed in mid 90s and the impact will be as great. Rich metadata will be the order of the day. Bowker and Nielson will have to respond but may find the world has moved on again.
3. Rights – permissions and licensing will grow in importance and will someone step up to provide that elusive clearing house once promised prematurely by the likes of Rightscenter.com. Yankee Book Pedler and Subrights.com?
4. Retailers – will come out of the background and start to take control of the channel again. The chains will expand their digital metadata repositories and do much scanning and collection of rich material. Following Amazon and Dymocks others are likely to endorse their own eroutes.
5. Publishers – more digital directors, more conversions and much activity. Some true small innovators are likely to rise to the occasion.
6. Audio – the death of DRM is inevitable and closely linked to music and in its wake what will happen to Audible and its monopoly? Consumers will vote with their clicks and the book club model is unlikely to succeed. The use of Watermarking technology will grow.
7. Standards – the only standards that matter now are the consumer ones. Adoption of simplified DRM, user interfaces and maybe a continued migration towards ‘508 compliance’. Digital drop ship communications standards are the exception and need to be developed and adopted.
8. Readers – an upgraded Sony, Kindle and the introduction of the Apple offer. The key is not the reader but the content but what is becoming crystal clear is that platform convergence onto the mobile and its network is certain.
9. Gorillas – Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Amazon, Nokia etc. take your pick as they will all dictate how they see the world.
10. Waste – we envisage new opportunities from the digitisation process that will not only increase productivity and depth of by-product but will also start to change inefficiency within the supply chain that only is possible with digital content and context.
4. Retailers – will come out of the background and start to take control of the channel again. The chains will expand their digital metadata repositories and do much scanning and collection of rich material. Following Amazon and Dymocks others are likely to endorse their own eroutes.
5. Publishers – more digital directors, more conversions and much activity. Some true small innovators are likely to rise to the occasion.
6. Audio – the death of DRM is inevitable and closely linked to music and in its wake what will happen to Audible and its monopoly? Consumers will vote with their clicks and the book club model is unlikely to succeed. The use of Watermarking technology will grow.
7. Standards – the only standards that matter now are the consumer ones. Adoption of simplified DRM, user interfaces and maybe a continued migration towards ‘508 compliance’. Digital drop ship communications standards are the exception and need to be developed and adopted.
8. Readers – an upgraded Sony, Kindle and the introduction of the Apple offer. The key is not the reader but the content but what is becoming crystal clear is that platform convergence onto the mobile and its network is certain.
9. Gorillas – Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Amazon, Nokia etc. take your pick as they will all dictate how they see the world.
10. Waste – we envisage new opportunities from the digitisation process that will not only increase productivity and depth of by-product but will also start to change inefficiency within the supply chain that only is possible with digital content and context.
We may well get some things wrong and it’s often impossible to gauge the pace of change, but there are also bound to be some left field entries. What could happen that we don’t expect today? We always assume the opportunity or the threat is from within but these more often than not are from outside. For example; we have seen the power of Google to hover up content from publishers and libraries but as we migrate into a digital world other media groups may see more synergy with their content and some new acquisitions start to happen.
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