Publishing News in The 19th Century

The rich and interesting 19th century of British history can be now read online via the newspapers of the day. Some 49 national and local newspapers have digitised by the British Library with funding by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and technology from Cengage Gale.

Over 2 million pages, from newspapers such as; The Birmingham Daily Post, The Aberdeen Journal, The Daily News, The Examiner, The Northern Echo and many more. They cover the rich tapestry of events such as; The Napoleonic Wars, The Great Exhibition of 1851, The Whitechapel Murders, Urban Growth and Social Reform, the Crimean War, the abolition of slavery, the rise of the British Empire and much more. In 1800 around 40% of males and 60% of females in England and Wales were illiterate, in contrast by 1900 illiteracy for both sexes had dropped to around 3%. This was the age of mass education, reading and the papers fed the new skill.

On 5 January 1900 the Manchester Weekly Times advertised itself: 'All who enjoy breezy, healthy fiction should make a point of reading these deeply-interesting and up-to-date serials.' Serious news was central to the role of the press, but also the wit, gossip, and articles on entertainment and lifestyle were essential to their popular adoption, appeal and commercial success.

Access to everything bar The Graphic and The Penny Illustrated Paper cost £6.99 for a 24-hour pass with up to 100 downloads or £9.99 for a seven-day pass with up to 200. This contrasts with individual titles who have digitised their own back catalogues such as The Times, The Guardian and The Economist and cost in the case of the Economist Historical Archive, some £1,500 a year.

Is the service is purely one of archive, for the researchers that will use it or a public sevice to be enjoyed by all? It would be great if this wealth of public work were opened up free for all to delve into enjoy as a national treasure. Constructed as is we feel it will feed researchers who have specific topics to investigate, but will not encourage the public to merely dip in and enjoy.

US University Presses Face Tough Calls

US University Presses face difficult times with declining readership and tax revenue budgets forcing public and school libraries to buy fewer copies of university press publications.

Utah, Washington, Yale, New York have all claimed difficulties and cuts. Now they are joined by Louisiana State University Press where officials are considering cuts or even closure as they face state budget cuts of $40 million at the Baton Rouge campus alone. Chancellor Michael Martin claims that they allocated $500,000 of university money to the press in the last fiscal year, but that they spent $1.4 million!

If they digitise their program and its archive it will cost money. If they don’t digitise they face a growing market, which is cannibalising their sales and where they don’t compete. Should university presses be forming publishing consortiums which may offer economies of both scale and scope? Should they just cut back and if so what is the appropriate level to support them? Should they look for grants or sponsorships to publishing books in specific fields of research?

Whatever the answer, university press operations are no longer a given. LSU may believe that their value to the university is in its four Pulitzer-winning works, 240 other awards and in the 75 to 85 new titles it publishes each year. However, others may question any organisation that exceeds budget by 180%.

Spainish Pirates Ahoy

Pablo Soto launched Blubster in 2001 and it grew from its humble Spainish routes to be one of the world's most popular peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing programs of recent years. Within days of its launch nearly 1 million people worldwide had downloaded it. Although Soto collects advertising revenues he still operates out of his grandmothers apartment and lives in a rented flat.

Now Soto finds himself in the latest major piracy battle against the music industry. Promusicae, the Spanish record label association that includes Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI, is suing Soto for 13 million euros. Promusicae hope the case will mirror court rulings against operations such as The Pirate Bay and also force Spain to draw up new legislation and enforce it.

According to the U.S. copyright industry group International Intellectual Property Alliance, some 2 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded in Spain in 2008, compared to 2.2 million purchased legally. This represented a loss of $1.6 billion in revenue in 2007 and 2008.

Soto, 29 claims that Blubster is a fully legal Internet tool and that he is not responsible for what people do with it. He claims legitimate uses include downloading historic speeches, uncopyrighted music and public domain intellectual property such as music and books. Soto argued that if he is guilty, so too are companies such as Google and Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica that permit the process. Downloading copyrighted material is illegal in Spain but is not a criminal offense, and courts rule it an infringement if used for commercial profit.

Social Space

Social networks can be like fashion they come and they go. How many social networks can one belong to?

We have seen Friends Reunited, BeBo, LinkedIn and many more come stutter and wane. Now it’s the turn of that one time leader of the pack MySpace to experience downturn. It no longer is in the prime slot which is now held by Facebook. It has announced it will cut staff by 30% to better compete.

So is cost cutting going to change the service, alter the consumer and market perception or is it just damage limitation?

They may appear more attractive to purchase now and get bought. They may reinvent themselves, or remain in downspin and become just another site with the hundreds of what2bes. Social sites come and go as fashion, people put enormous amounts of effort to climb there slipper poles and socialise but when crowds move they often leave empty spaces behind.

News Magazines

As news magazines such as Time and Newsweek struggle this is an interesting interview with Michael Hirschorn by The Atlantic. It discusses how The Economist in a global world has succeeded where others have struggled with a parochial world and offers some interesting thoughts.

Textbook Viewpoints

On one hand we have Seth Godin’s view on textbooks.

‘They are; expensive, don't take you from a place of ignorance to a place of insight, are out of date and don't match the course,are far from engaging or inspirational and are incredibly impractical.’

‘Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online... Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness.’

‘This industry deserves to die. It has extracted too much time and too much money and wasted too much potential. We can do better. A lot better’.



California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has launched a program widely reported and that is intended to get public schools to use fewer textbooks and more online learning materials. However are his motives on the same lines as Godin’s? Maybe Arnie is trying to turn the planet green and sees the paper and process of textbooks wasteful? Maybe its all down to money and voters?

The aim is to get the state's 6 million public school students to use more online learning materials and saving millions of dollars a year in textbooks. The question is how much will the program cost and will the savings be greater than the cost. It’s interesting to note, that in the state that spawned Google, Apple and Facebook, the biggest beneficiaries may be the Silicon Valley companies that drive much of the state and will have to provide the infrastructure.

"We expect the first science and math books to be digital by this fall," Schwarzenegger said. "If we expand this to more textbooks, schools could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and that's hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to hire more teachers and to reduce class sizes."

Will Schwarzenegger's proposal merely increase disparities between students in poor schools and those in middle-class or wealthier districts or provide a level playing field for all?

Schwarzenegger has already billions of dollars from school budgets over the past two years and has proposed another $5.3 billion in education cuts next year cutting the textbooks and instructional materials from $419 million to $350 million last year.

One factor that could undermine the initiative is the extent of technology in California classrooms. Education Week gave the state a D-minus this year for having on average, just one computer for every four children. The online material is likely to be supplemental to the textbooks and will result initially in California still buying traditional books.

California's plans to drop traditional textbooks in favour of online material will no doubt get many plaudits but will it succeed in improving education, the budget or merely keep the Valley folk happy?

Samsung Jets In But Is IT Enough?

Samsung has launched the Jet S8000 smartphone in the UK. Its 3.1 inch touchscreen display has an impressive 800x480 pixels, sharper than any others. It also has a new version of the Touchwiz Navigation system, a fast 800MHz processor and universally accepted connectors such as a 3.5mm headphone socket and a microUSB port. In addition, the phone comes with a 5-megapixel camera with a flash, built-in GPS, DNS and SRS Sound effect, DiVX and XVid video support as well as Samsung's own Dolfin Webkit-based web browser plus support for Microsoft Exchange Active Sync. Other goodies include WiFi and 3G connectivity, a FM Radio with RDS, 2GB built in memory and support for a further 16GB worth of storage through microSD card reader.

On the plus side it certainly has the power to deal with Flash and video on the minus side it comes with Samsung's own operating system and although thousands of Apps are promised its this aspect that is deciding the winners from the rest today in what is becoming a crowded space.

How Global Is The Google Settlement?

We received the following comment to a blog we posted last week and felt that it was appropriate to raise it in its own right for all to read.

You wrote: "We must note that although the Google Book Settlement is a US only issue..."

That's right only in the limited sense that the settlement can only impacts U.S. copyrights. A U.S. federal district court can't alter how the copyright laws of other countries are applied within their borders.

But the "U.S. copyrights" impacted by this settlement are not just formal copyrights given U.S. citizens or foreigners living here by our copyright office. They include U.S. copyrights automatically granted by treaty to the citizens of the some 160 countries with which we have treaty agreements. Publish a book in India and you automatically acquire a U.S. copyright. You need not file any document or pay any fee. That's a marvelous aspect of those treaties.

But keep in mind a perverse result of those treaties. They don't permit a country to treat treaty-granted copyrights any different from those it grants its own citizens. The assumption was that countries would treat their own citizens more favorably. But that treaty obligation works in reverse. The settlement can't screw the U.S. authors without screwing all such authors om the world. That is the chief sticking point of the settlement, not the muddled anti-trust implications.

This means that virtually everyone who has written a book published any where in the world will have their U.S. copyright castrated by this settlement. Because of the perverse 'opt-in if you don't formally opt-out' provisions, far-distant authors have never heard of the settlement will be hurt. All Google need do is find a copy of that book, and with a willing library, it doesn't even need to buy that copy.

You are right that this settlement could "unravel" international agreements and the good will on which they depend. Google's scheme depended on other countries not knowing of what the settlement meant until after it was approved. The four-month delay I and six other authors got the court to approve ended any chance of that. European politicians now know what the settlement means and have begun to act.

Google's lawyers also made a major mistake. They assumed those they want to manipulate are stupid. Google had hoped they would counter this settlement with something similar, something to screw obscure U.S. authors, allowing Google to reap most of the benefits. But Europeans aren't interested in reading obscure American books. They are interested in reducing the impact Hollywood has on their cultures.

That's why they're will hit us elsewhere. There's not much money to be made in displaying out-of-print works. Google knows it can only profit from them by being ruthlessly efficient and cheap.

But if this settlement is approved, Europeans will almost certainly hit us where it hurts most. They'll weaken copyright protection where we make the most money: in movies and music. For that they'll be loudly applauded by virtually every member of the creative classes in their countries.

Because of the issues of orphaned works and display on the Internet are so closely linked to existing treaty obligations, there is only one way those issues can be settled. A mere federal court can't do it. Lawyers in the Justice Department certainly can't do it. Even Congress can't legislate an answer for all the world's writers. These issues have to be dealt with by amending those treaties, taking care to be fair to all involved.

--Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien

Twitter Captures The News

We all remember Flight 1549 crashing on take off from New York and almost hit George Washington Bridge, captured on a mobile and downloaded on YouTube. News no longer waits for the next edition or even the news broadcast slot, it’s instantaneous and captured by everyone with a mobile with a camera.

Techdirt today offers a useful and insightful way in which how and what we communicate is still evolving. Twitter may not seem the right vehicle to capture events in a few words but it constant stream of twitter can provide views and thoughts uncensored, unedited and raw as they happen.

Today it has given us insights into the troubled post election Iran which have been posted on the Iran Twazzup page . This view into Iran was made possible by Twitter and the ability of thousands of people to easily communicate on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. It's really quite impressive, and I'm hard pressed to see how anyone could look at what's coming out of Iran via Twitter, and then claiming that Twitter isn't a useful or different communication tool. It doesn’t mean every comment is genuine, nor that each is worth the read, but together they capture a movement and within them there are those gems which truly capture news.

We can think back to disasters that happened in the last half of the 20th century and what would have been different if we had Twitter and You Tube and of course the mobile phone. Would the fog that surrounded Hillsbough or Bloody Sunday still be with us today. Would we have sorted out what happened on that grassy knoll in Dallas.
Techdirt also reported that Twitter’s data center partner, NTT, have actually chosen to delay some critical updates, knowing that cutting off communications from Iran just as so many people are relying on it would be a disaster.

News tomorrow will be broken by the person on the street with a smartphone.

Africa Banking Bypasses Bankers

Over one billion people in the developing world have access to a mobile phone, but do not have a bank account. It is estimated by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) that the number will to rise to 1.7 billion by 2012.

This creates an enormous opportunity for mobile banking as bank face enough problems back home let alone make the investment to set up a banking infrastructure.

One of Africa's first mobile banking system, M-Pesa, was launched in Kenya in March 2007 and has now expanded to include countries such as Tanzania and Afghanistan and is planning to launch in India, Egypt and South Africa. Through a network of more than 7,000 agents, the people can make deposits and get cash from a network made up mostly of mostly shopkeepers, with users authorising payments on their mobile phone using a Pin code.

The service has also expanded to include Safaricom, East Africa's biggest mobile operator and others such as South Africa's MTN and Kuwait's Zain are piloting similar services.

The lesson this teaches is that not everyone follows the same technology evolution. Sometimes those that appear to be far behind can leapfrog over a step change and in some cases even overtake others purely because they have less baggage, restrictions and maybe have to do it differently.

The Day The News Was Different

For one day, 10th June, Haaretz, the Hebrew language Israeli daily and Isreal’s oldest newspaper changed how the news was written. The paper’s editor-in-chief Dov Alfon exchanged 31 reporters for 31 of Israel’s finest authors and poets. The objective was to honour Israel’s annual Hebrew Book Week and give authors the opportunity to witness and report on the events of the day. Apart from the sports section and a few other articles, The authors’ articles filled the pages, from the leading headline to the weather report.

Writers used the first person and showed up in nearly every photograph alongside their interview subjects, including the likes of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres.

Author Avri Herling summarised the stock market, “Everything’s okay. Everything’s like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything’s okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place… Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points…. The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again….”

Eshkol Nevo’s TV review started. “I didn’t watch TV yesterday.”

Roni Somek wrote a poem, titled “Summer Sonnet.” For the weather report.

David Grossman spent a night at a children’s drug rehabilitation centre in Jerusalem and wrote a cover page story about the patients and ended it, “I lay in bed and thought wondrously how, amid the alienation and indifference of the harsh Israeli reality, such islands — stubborn little bubbles of care, tenderness and humanity — still exist.”

Yoram Kaniuk wrote about couples in the hospital cancer ward, “A woman walking with a cane brings her partner a cup of coffee with a trembling hand. The looks they exchange are sexier than any performance by Madonna and cost a good deal less,” Kaniuk a cancer suffer too, wrote. “I think about what would happen if I were to get better…how I would live without the human delicacy to which I am witness?”

June 11th the paper resume normal service. What a wonderful way to celebrate the diversity of writing.

Pirates: One Step Forward , Two steps Back

France's top legal body, the Constitutional Council, which examines whether bills that have been passed by the French parliament are in accordance with the French constitution, has rejected a key provision of the new legislation aimed at punishing internet pirates. The law, approved last month, gives officials the power to remove web access for those caught repeatedly downloading protected material. However the Council ruled that only a judge could bar people from the web, describing access to online services as a human right.

Some consumer groups had warned that the wrong people might be punished, should hackers hijack their computers' identity, and that the scheme amounted to state surveillance.

We then have the case of the RIAA versus Jammie Thomas-Rasset in her retrial in Minnesota. The defence lawyers Kiwi Camara and Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson aimed to question the very substance of the RIAA case to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer.

However they have already had one set back as their attempt to bar Media Sentry’s evidence on the grounds that they were not licensed as a private investigator in Minnesota has been thrown out. They still aim to challenge the RIAA to prove it owns the certified copies of the copyrights in question. If it can't establish that fact, the case could be dismissed.

eMartketing Thoughts: 5. Store Once, Render Many

Context is the metadata, bibliographic information, marketing materials that helps everyone find content and of course value it. A significant amount of the Context can be derived direct from the content itself and what we once thought of as content can now be used to promote, sample and validate before you buy.

Today publishers should be storing everything once and render many times. The rendering should be as much as possible dynamic and avoid holding multiple versions and formats in many digital folders and even databases. We should be creating context directly from content avoiding further duplication and effort. Publishers should ask themselves how many times they hold the same context information, which is the authoritative source and who and how it can be changed? We all saw the rise of the ‘book in hand systems’ in wholesalers who couldn’t trust the data feeds. We can now surely do it better.

Delivering emarketing marketing becomes so much simpler when the widget, the digital review copy, the digital catalogue, the online rendition are basically the same file or files seen through different viewers. Mass marketing and direct marketing materials are the same but again viewed through a different viewer by different people. Bibliographic feeds are no longer dry bits and bytes, but now are whatever is appropriate and in many cases can be cut from the content itself. Finally, we now see the emergence of the digital emarketing container which not only reshapes what we distribute but who distributes it and when.

eMarketing today is not just about creating many experiments, social sites, direct campaigns, viral marketing but all these and above all serving the existing channel and enriching their opportunity to sell more physical and of course digital works.

Spotify Android Move

It has been widely reported that Spotify, has demonstrated an offline version of the service running on a Google Android mobile phone at Google's I/O developer event and it appears that just like the desktop client it’s a potential winner. It even has "offline mode" that uses cache to store a playlist and turns the phone into an offline MP3 player with Spotify as its client.



Spotify is working on several mobile versions but the big question is wheter Apple will allow or block what is a clear threat to iTunes. Here is an earlier TechDigest video 'showing' Spotify on a iPhone.

Craigslist to Top $100 Million?

As newspapers struggle with declining ad revenues online classified ad site Craigslist is forecast to exceed $100 million revenues this year. That’s a whopping 23% increase of last year and its bottom-line is likely to be even healthier. First launched in ’95 as a email list the company was quick to undercut newspapers and appeal to a wider audience. Newsprint still dominates but over the last decade has seen its revenues drop 50% from $20 billion in 2000 to $10 billion last year.

Employment advertising, once the a mainstay of the newpapers is expected to account for some 85% of Craigslists revenues which leaves significant potential for future growth in other areas. It is also worth noting that 40% of their revenues comes listing in just three major cities; New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Again this leaves significant opportunities for further growth.

Craigslist employs just 30 people!

eMartketing Thoughts: 4. How Green is Your Catalogue?

We have ebooks, we have environmental friendly books, but we still have huge amounts of book miles and waste. However we often ignore that many still promote their books with ‘unfriendly’ catalogues that are scattered like seeds, far and wide. These often eye-catching glossies contain some books form whom the catalogue is often their only real chance to be seen over the parapet and to attract attention. The question is whether digital technology can help; spread the word better, reduce the waste and increase sales?

Last month Ingram Marketing Group performed a survey which attracted some 2,000 responses from buyers in; public libraries, independent stores, chains, school libraries and higher education. It found that over 49% of respondents were open to using an ecatalogue instead of print one and some 60% had already reviewed books via an ecatalogue. Interestingly 81% of chains said it was a good experience and the majority all said that an ecatalogue was a useful supplement to the physical one. Again the two greatest benefits respondents felt ecatalogues gave were in; improving the environment 28% and reducing clutter 23%.

So it appears that the market is responsive to making catalogues digital.

Do we merely replicate the physical catalogue and send it as a ‘flat’ PDF via email, or do we open it up with embedded widgets, weblinks and extra information that space doesn’t permit within the printed version? The question is about whether we maintain the constraints of the physical page, or break out of them and the structure it imposes?

There is the obvious timing issue. There are catalogues of forthcoming titles whose materials may still be in flux and there are catalogues which reflect the full list on offer and often have both depth of material and are accurate. Unlike the physical world, the digital world can offer real time accuracy and authority. The digital catalogue should always be current and if you changed the jacket today, it will be instantly rendered to all.

A digital catalogue is virtual and can be dynamically rendered many ways from the same source. It’s like looking into a house through different windows, same house different views.

Finally, the digital catalogue offers that one extra it can automatically capture, feedback, queries and of course the order of the physical books which can even reflect individual terms and be posted directly into the publisher's back office system, cutting out even more waste.

Connecting You Sir

Have you ever wanted to ring someone but didn’t have the phone number? Yesterday that was easy you merely looked them up in a directory and hoped that they weren’t ex directory. Then came the phone directory services and for a small charge the number was available. However when mobile usage exploded and it became the primary phone for many people getting unknown numbers was very hard and losing them was a nightmare!

Now a new UK service, run by 118800, plans to change all that. It claims to have some 15 million numbers and will cost £1 and use databases of numbers. It will even act as a switchboard between parties to ensure calls are acceptable to the receiver and of course will offer an opt out service to remove numbers that people want to remain private.

Watch the BBC video to find out more.



The interesting think it shows once more is how easy it is to effectively buy and acquire lists of numbers and address details. The potential use of those little tick boxes at the bottom of agreements now become even more visible.

US Justice Department Asks: Have We Been Googled?

News that the US Justice Department has issued formal requests for information to several of the parties involved in the Google Book Settlement would indicate that everyone is now looking hard at all aspects of the proposal. It doesn’t mean that the US government will oppose it, nor that the several Attorneys general in several states who are looking at the antitrust aspect will oppose it but it does mean that it will be fully scrutinized. It also means that Judge Denny Chin’s September Federal District Court date may also be further postponed.

Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times report that the Justice Department has sent the requests, called civil investigative demands, to involved parties, including Google, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and individual publishers.

We must note that although the Google Book Settlement is a US only issue the deal will have a global impact on the digital world, copyright and will be difficult to unravel if we get it wrong. We welcome the investigation, the debates that are ongoing and some may say that we have seen with some of the recent announcements, the GoogleWorld is not always what it appears at first sight. Google’s intent to be the information indexer, the search source, the repository, the library, the bookseller and the advertising revenue manager does beg the question what’s left.

Is It The Same Old Song?

Below is a story we published on the back of a Mirror article and other coverage. Today the story is reported as being unfounded and that no agreement has been reached. It interesting to see the twist and turns of the club and wonder what next?

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan’s book club is to return to TV.

The Mirror reports that the show that died a million deaths on that obscure digital channel ‘Watch’, has been snapped up by Channel 4, or should that be More4!

Can the phoenix rise from the ashes and be the savior of all? Well it appears that the Richard and Judy Book Club return is without Richard and Judy. A bit like Jonathan Ross Show being hosted by Michael Parkinson perhaps? Apparently there are some great names in the frame to host it but they aren’t called Richard or Judy!

Television offers so much but has never really succeeded in getting past the couch. It tried with the book quizzes but they often made university challenge questions look simple and didn’t sell books and some would say reading. Programs such as IQ , Have I Got News For You have made highbrow fun, but there again they don’t sell product. So it’s a return to the couch, the celebrity reading group and the stickering of the books in the shop window. We can’t knock it but just wonder if there is a better way to do it and whether the Richard and Judy format is past its sell by date?

Personal Computer World to Close

Many in the UK have used its pages of reviews to guide us through the often confusing array of options available when we buy a new PC, laptop, notebook etc. Now after 30 years of service Personal Computer World, one of the UK's oldest consumer technology magazine titles, is closing. We remember it well for being among those geeky magazines that were often heavier that the weekly shop and crammed with adverts, comparisons and reviews.

A combination of factors including the economic downturn and the decline of the computer magazine market have forced the closure and once again demonstrate that it’s not just the economic climate that is changing but our reading and research habits. Yesterday magazines that helped us select cars, PCs, household goods etc where in demand, today we can click and compare online.

Incisive Media, which owns Personal Computer World and more than 100 other business magazines have said that it’s looking to cut up to 50 staff from its 800-strong workforce.

eMarketing Thoughts: 3. Books for free?

Publishers in all sectors have always given away physical books to promote their sale. In some cases we hope to get it reviewed, in others it’s treated as a sample and in others such as education and it’s given with the aim of achieving the book’s adoption. In some the cases, the percentage of inspection copies that are ‘given away’ could be between 10 and 15% of the initial print run and that’s without the associated costs of dispatch and follow-up. In some cases the inspection copy is even invoiced and a return is requested if it is not adopted – more waste. The extra copies can be well worth the cost if they lead to greater sales, but in today’s difficult economic climate and digital world there are now potentially smarter ways to achieve the same and more, for less cost and waste.

People often say that the review practice of giving away physical copies is now better managed and that far fewer books are given away today. Others will point to the basement floor in The Strand bookstore in New York and the shelves of gratis review copies that have been cashed in and some with Editors letters still inside! A trade journal told us that the practice was dramatically reduced. We merely asked them to turn around in their office and describe what they say on their shelves – books. How many had they actually bought let alone read?

Whether its review, sample, or inspection copies, there are now better ways to achieve the same result at far less cost.

Digitally galley and un-proofed copies have been around for some time and continue to grow as they become easier to generate. The challenge here is to ensure that they are created at the appropriate time, that they are secured as assets and that follow up is achieved. Digital inspection copies are now also starting to appear and offer more cultural challenges but significant opportunities for both efficiency and sales across the adoption cycle.

It is not a case of merely scattering digital copies where once we scattered physical ones.

Digital inspection copies should created the opportunity to understand what is read, annotated, bookmarked by whom and when and even if the books was ever opened. They offer the opportunity to better manage distribution lists, offer shared copies, understand what is and isn’t important, capture feedback and follow through the process to adoption. Joining the dots from inspection review to purchase in today’s physical world is often difficult and wasteful. However, irrespective of whether the resultant sales are for a physical or digital rendition, the digital world offers everyone involved in the process reward and benefit. Some may see the digital inspection copy as the vehicle to cut out the campus store and go direct, others as the vehicle to engage the store and strengthen its role in the process and join the dots.

Some may say that reviewers will only accept physical copies and that may be true for some, but not all.

Digital marketing is not exclusive to digital books and removes physical waste.

Interactive Advertising Displays

UK based digital creative agency Clusta have partnered with CBS Outdoor to develop an iPhone-enabled advertising platform for digital LCD screens at London’ largest shopping mall at Westfield. The platform, will enable consumers to control the advertising display on the 57” HD KLCD screen via their iPhone.

The iPhone can make the object represented on the display spin to the left or right and also, by using the ‘pinch’ and ‘stretch’ finger gestures, zoom in or out of the object displayed on the screen and change the colour of the item. The technology is planned to be developed for other smart phones and also include SMS interactivity to receive more information about the product.

Want the latest movie download, blockbuster or just more details on a product? Who needs a kiosk when you can see, select and potentially download in front of a advertising display. Today advertising displays don’t engage they merely broadcast, tomorrow they may capture interest or make a sale.

eMarketing Thoughts: 2 What is a widget?

Is it a book sampler, a look inside the jacket, a look before you buy? We have seen many widgets of all shapes and sizes. Some were very impressive giving you the real book experience with turning pages in duplex views and full colour, others crude scanned pages that in some cases weren’t even scanned straight! Some merely followed instructions and on displaying the first 10 pages even showed us the blank ones! Amazon gave us a ‘surprise me’ option which was often a poor surprise as it displayed a totally meaningless page and was not even a smart move. Others could only be managed by the publisher so were limited in their application to resellers. Although the reseller could with dexterity change certain fields like the buy now button resolution, each publisher did it differently!

We would suggest that the widget is just a container - nothing more and nothing less. When one starts to look at it this way one avoids the trap of it being a one-dimensional vehicle to merely sample a few pages. It is a marketing box which can offer as little or as much as appropriate, it can become the new tip sheet or advance information sheet, a door to more information, a collector of comments, requests the reps suitcase and much more.

We must remember that eMarketing isn’t about selling digital content but about selling all content; digital, physical, audio, rights and combinations of.
We must also remember that the material never leaves the repository - it is merely viewed and when viewed the information is current and real time.

The widget offers competitive advantage today which is sustainable.

We would suggest that the widget is the base entry point into the world of eMarketing. By itself it is not the answer, but part of the answer in this exciting new engagement with the market.

eMarketing Thoughts: 1. Show Me the Results

We aim to write four more articles this week to expand our views on eMarketing; the use of widgets, digital inspection copies, catalogues and the creation and management of context and content.

Marketing holds the biggest digital prize for the book industry in these changing times. Some have long argued that Context is more valuable than Content. In the late 90’s we were responsible for the highly acclaimed publishing research programme ‘Publishing in the 21st Century’ and some would suggest that our most significant report that we published was ‘N to X : From Content to Context’.

Today’s task is not finding digital content but finding good or the right digital content. Its about finding the digital needle in the digital haystack. We have many sources of information, many degrees of detail, many different ways to look for and value content and content itself is no longer a single format.

We are moving away from the advertising budget being spent on full page spreads in the trade press to viral and direct marketing, from scattering seeds in the wind to running campaigns where every hit, click and resolution can be tracked and the marketing department held accountable for spend! We know can find out not only what we know but potentially what we don’t know.

In yesterday’s world we produced glossy printed catalogues and posted them to anyone standing. Yet we had no idea who read what page or even opened them. Did they themselves provide all the information needed to make a decision or merely opened the door? We distributed advance information sheets which fell somewhere between a flysheet and a genuine information sheet and often ended up being filed with the waste paper. We spent money advertising to the channel to get the book on the shelf and had little left to promote the book to the public. The trade magazines were happy to take the money for the full page colour advert but did it deliver, give demonstrable results, or merely spend the money?

As we move it the digital eMarketing world we are not obviating traditional spend but supplementing it with more auditable and accountable campaigns that can even be integrated into the whole process and help join the dots from Author to Reader.

Spotify Continue to Make Smart Moves

We continue to be impressed by the clear thinking of the people who run what is fast becoming the music model streaming site. Spotify continues to learn from others and navigate what are challenging waters where many have floundered before them.

They now allow unsigned musicians to upload their music onto the service. So are they now going to get flooded with pirate tracks and illegal music and wash their hands and claim a safe harbour like many today across the media market or take proactive action to control what is uploaded? Spotify has signed a deal with Ditto Music, where acts can upload their music and are now be able to type their band's name into Spotify and see their tracks. Ditto Music charges a £2 per month and has made a name for itself bringing unsigned acts into the charts through digital distribution. Like regular acts, unsigned bands will be entitled to royalties when their tracks are played . US band Finch, will be one of the first available on Spotify through the new deal with Ditto Music. By introducing a filter and charged service they have taken a wise step to avoid pirate uploads.

Spotify has also gained official approval by the UK’s Performing Rights Society (PRS) which clearly places them on the right side of the industry and avoids the disputes that others have found others such as YouTube embroiled in.

As We Await Apple

So as the world awaits Apple’s next announcements on Monday and the undoubted media blitz that will follow we have taken a quick look at some of the others vying for space in this crowded market.

Palm Pre
The Pre has made its long awaited entrance and now its down to the consumers to decide whether it lives up to the hype or becomes just another also ran. The webOS, Palm's new operating system enables concurrent applications open at once. You simply organized the apps like a row of cards and you flick the screen to switch between them. WebOS will also notify you of events that need your attention, no matter which application you're in. Again, making the iPhone look cumbersome and others just clumsy and slow. The Pre’s webOS aggregates contacts and calendar items from multiple sources, like Google, corporate Exchange servers, and can even insert your friends' Facebook photos into your contacts list. This obviously wins over the iPhone’s in many ways but is it enough to make consumers buy or even switch allegiance? Will we get iphone app overload and will the Pre give us the apps that are clearly driving this market?

Whether you get a Pre or not, its has clearly raised the bar on the software will leave its mark on the phones you buy in the future.

LG
We have long awaited LG GD910 mobile watch will be hitting the UK in July but unfortunately only being available via Orange and with a £1000 price tag. The price will almost certainly put off many from being James Bond but will it become a designer status symbol for chavs or merely a nice product at the wrong price? As previously reported it has a 1.4 inch touchscreen, looks good being only 14mm thick, has 7.2Mbps HSDPA, voice recognition, text to speech capability, Bluetooth, MP3 player and tells the time too.

HTC
HTC are about to unveil its third Andriod mobile and rumours suggest the announcement will be on June 24th . The HTC Hero is expected to launch in two models, one with touchscreen only and one packing a QWERTY keyboard and so offering appeal to all. With Google’s arsenal of potential opportunities and its cross platform design, the Andriod phones are certainly ones to watch.

ACER
Acer’s new Tempo F900 smartphone arrival to the UK appears imminent. First shown in Barcelona in February the device looks set to have a £429 price tag. It features a 3.8 inch VGA screen, Internet Explorer 6, with JavaScript and Adobe Flash Lite, and high-speed HSDPA. Acer has clearly stated it wants to be a smartphone player and have adopted Acer 2.0 user interface to aid navigation and ‘desktop’ customisation, in addition to Google Search, Google Maps and YouTube. Acer is not alone in the move from netbook to mobile and could bring some interesting user friendly aspects to the table.

INQ
UK based INQ is to launch a Twitter phone which it claims will be the first mass-market phone to have a client for the social networking phenomenon built-in. It will use the internet to send and receive tweets, rather than text messages. The question is what is so special and surely everyone else can easily follow. Like Skype you don’t buy a device just make it easy to twitter or do you?

Fighting the Flood of Digital Piracy

The UK Publishers' Association is reported last week in the Bookseller as having recorded around 800 illegally uploaded texts and successfully helped to remove almost 90% of them from the web in February. The PA’s infringement software adopts the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) approach of issuing take down notices and tracking the files removal and offenders.

The one thing that is certain is that relying on take down notices is akin to Hans Brinker sticking his finger in the dyke at Haarlem to plug the hole, but this time it doesn’t work, is too much effort and we only have so many fingers.

The problem we have written about is that this is based on a safe habour approach for the services hosting the files and is reactive and not proactive, so acts after the cat is often out the bag. Service suppliers can only go so far in vetting files being loaded before their safe harbour status can be brought into question.

Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, that potentially offer so much, are caught between a safe harbour and a hard place. However they are only the tip of what is and remains a big iceberg. We have been shown a pirate copy of a highly expensive and prized work which the publisher had not digitised for fear of being pirated. Some may say an open invention to the pirates and one which they have taken. The quality of the pirated work was impressive and amazingly it was being given away by the pirate for free.

So we now have the altruistic pirate who is not even after the money and will spend considerable time to create a near perfect digital rendition of a complex work. This is a digital cover made from the physical book being scanned, OCRed, and then text over image and links being applied to match any digital rendition. This cat is certainly out the bag and having kittens.

So like rabbits you shoot at one and ten more appear all over the place all in different sizes and shapes!

The UK government look set not to follow the French ‘3 strikes law’ and move instead to a half way house where ISP have to slow the pirates down by reducing their access speed. It’s akin to condemning a driver to the slow lane because they broke the speed limit. We can’t see the music industry liking it, nor the ISPs, so it’s a perfect compromise and will leave all unhappy. Importantly it fails to address the cause and merely sticks yet more plasters on the patient.

There doesn’t appear to be an answer or a route that at least mitigates some of the risk? Some would argue that the problem is small, on a similar level to store shrinkage and maybe not worth any extra effort. We would disagree.

Today the book industry is ill prepared for the potential risk. On one hand everyone is jumping up and down heralding the digital dawn and ebooks and ereaders and getting more publicity than previously dreamt of. On the other hand the digital content is for many reasons only slowly materialising, which fuels the appetite of the pirates. We have exclusive device deals which restrict and marginalise the market. We have a lack of clarity on pricing which confuses the consumer and again is a green light to pirates who can make their offer simple and uniform. We have DRM.

Digital Views From News Corp's CDO

Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s new chief digital officer, is reported in Daily Finance.com saying that he envisions a future where at least some of the TV shows and movies on Hulu, the premium video site co-owned by News Corp. (NWS), NBC Universal and Disney (DIS), are available only to subscribers.

Miller is in charge of coordinating News Corp.'s efforts to find new ways to get consumers to pay for digital content generated by News Corp.'s properties , which not only includes Fox but The Wall Street Journal, HarpeCollins and much more. He also said that newspapers will have to do to convince readers to pay for articles that they're used to getting free on the web.

He has expressed the novel idea of bundles not only of content but also against locations such that you could have a Washington bundle, a New York bundle and offer these at a single price.

Interestingly prior to joining he flipped his Wall Street Journal subscription to a cheaper one from Amazon. He now sees the other side of the table where the Post loose him asa subscriber and Amazon gain him as Amazon subscriber. Not good for the Wall Street Journal won loss both the customer management and the money.

WIPO to Consider Radical Changes To Support the Visually Impaired

A committee of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has agreed on "facilitating the access of blind, visually-impaired and other reading-disabled persons to copyright-protected works." A proposed t would effectively change copyright laws to allow the supply of books across borders for the benefit of blind people.

According to the World Blind Union (WBU) around 95% of books are estimated to be never published in any format other than standard print. So rendering many 'print disabled'. The new draft treaty would effectively relax copyright restrictions and allow the creation and supply of accessible books without the need for prior permission from the copyright owner on a non-profit basis. Since 2002 the UK Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons) Act, has made this legal in the UK. However the law is limited to visually-impaired persons and does not allow the supply of a digital book to a customer overseas.

The treaty, if signed and ratified would protect all 'reading disabled' persons and it allows the supply across borders of accessible works, as a Braille hard copy or as an e-book. This would enable an accessible version of a book in the UK available to send that to another English-speaking country where they don't have the resources to make books accessible.

Provided copies are supplied exclusively for disabled customers the proposed treaty would also allow for the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM). The WIPO copyright committee has agreed to discuss the treaty at its next meeting in November and its supporters are confident it will make progress

Going From Free to Pay

John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corp. which owns cable channels, satellite-television operator DirecTV and baseball’s Atlanta Braves, among other properties—and Liberty Global Inc., an international cable operator was recently was interviewed by Walt Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal.

When asked - how did you get people to pay for what was free TV? Malone responded, ‘ This was a huge fight that we had going back 30 years, 35 years. Everybody said television’s free, television’s free. We were blocked by federal regulation and law from offering television for a fee. That was a law change that allowed us to actually offer it.

The way it was successful was blending together the transport service with the charge for the content. When you were a cable subscriber, you weren’t sure whether you were paying for connectivity or whether you were paying for the content that was embodied in the connectivity.

You had broadcast television initially. Then you started out with distant broadcast. That’s where Ted Turner comes in. Distant broadcast television is brought into a market and added and a charge is increased. You want to get the superstation; it’s another dollar, right? Were people paying for connectivity or were they paying for content? Then, as that blurred environment continued to grow, along comes HBO and says you can watch non-commercially-interrupted movies, but now it’s optional. You don’t have to take it, but it’s another X dollars a month.

At that point, the concept of paying for some television was well enough established in the public’s mind that paying a little more for some premium television started to sell. Of course, that created the opportunity to add the CNNs and the Black Entertainment Televisions and the Discoveries and all of that. Every time we added a channel, we charged a little more. Some of the money went back to the producer of the content.
When the Internet came along, I was terribly concerned that here’s something that’s “for free.” People will pay for connectivity. The industry’s never made successfully the transition to higher-quality content or unique content delivered by the Internet you should pay for. That’s a big intellectual jump.

When asked - How having not charged for something, do you then all of a sudden turn around and charge them for it?

Malone responded, ‘ That’s really the challenge. You should be asking a psychologist. We did it by tying together something that people are perfectly used to paying for—connectivity, communication—with content. If you can introduce incrementally—now you’re getting this 4G wireless data service and, by the way, part of that are these three very interesting things that only work if you’ve got enough speed to enjoy them. Perhaps that’s a way that it can be introduced, just the intellectual concept of paying incrementally for content.

I suspect that it will evolve over time. People will pay on a per-view or on some kind of subscription basis for content on the Internet if the quality is there and there’s convenience. The question you have to ask yourself is, is there going to be an aggregator doing that? This is the role that HBO traditionally did in movies. They aggregated movies and they sold you in bulk. You got 30 movies a month for seven bucks when they started.

The cable industry would love to be the aggregator. Hulu would love to be the aggregator. There’ll be a real competition for that role in the future.

To read the full article 'Show Me The Money'

A Year is a Long Time in Today’s Technology World

We now see the inevitable division of content delivery focus, with Google going for the online reading route, others sticking to the offline reading route and Amazon probably trying to cover every conceivable option.

We are already in the device battles with eInk versus the rest. Mobiles versus ereaders and ereaders versus netbooks, laptops etc. We are just starting to see the app battles with Apple versus Andriod, versus Blackberry, versus Symbian versus Microsoft. What is certain is that whatever device you use today it will not be the device you will use, or want to use, in a couple of years.

So where would we place our bets today?

Will the ereaders survive as a one dimensional product, or will we look back fondly at them in a few years time as some quaint Delorean car, a great looking prototype that had to evolve. We hear lots about colour eInk but the demand is today not necessarily tomorrow. What is clear, is that we will see many more eink ‘lookie likies’ some merely rebadged, some exclusive, some heavily financed and some not. The price today is too high, the technology to restrictive and the concept of carrying a library around with you at all time ludicrous in the extreme. Only when we view this technology as throwaway and transient commodity will it change its appeal. This can happen as a result of adoption by a WalMart, Tesco etc or like MP3 it just becomes cheap commodity.

We also still have formats to sort out. Many may man the barricades and demand an epub world as others before them demanded an SGML or an OEB world. The truth is today the best format for most will remain the PDF in the Adobe eBook form, which contrary to popular urban myth works perfectly well on devices such as the Sony Reader. Many feared that reflow was essential and that epub gave us the answer, that the reality is now different. Don’t get us wrong we welcome epub, but it no longer is this issue as times move on.

Will DRM (Digital Rights Management) still be with us in say three years time and if so how will it work is another interesting challenge? We have seen only one aggregator switch to-date, but it gave us an insight to a potential risk. Technology may be replicable moving forward but the encrypted licences needed may be dependant on the original server or service being in place or under contract. Adobe have started to minimise this exposure but it still exists for many who have not opted for a neutral licence service. Watermarking has still to make its mark, but will it coexist with DRM, replace it, or be a nice to have?

We believe the biggest technology choice remains online versus offline. Google have clearly placed their bets online while may others scramble around trying to develop to perfect offline experience. There is no reason why eink should work with online. The issue is the mindset that says we have to own a library and we need to carry it around with us just in case we want to read another book! Is the book market the only one facing this question? We only need to look at Spotify and music, TV and the iPlayer and Hulu, games and even news and magazines. What and how we consume on the move is different to what and how we consume when not on the move. We access and use media and information differently according to the role we are playing at the time and what we want from it and yet we appear to be wanting to shoehorn a one size fits all technology approach into the market.

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that it will be different to today.

HP Have eSkin?

HP has announced a new display technology called “eSkin”.

“HP eSkins is in fact a dynamic digital surface (and not just a static display) that can be controlled to address up to 80 segments to give the perception of movement and eye-catching motion. The segmented display can be turned off and on to create visual effects.”

Well that’s as clear as mud and sounds somewhere between eInk and LCD. Is it just a bespoke designer logo or device labelling product to personalise your device or does it hold other display features? No doubt it all will become clearer soon, or maybe not...but we like the name.

Indigo To Launch a EBook Reader?

CTV Canada broke an exclusive that Indigo Books & Music Inc. are currently planning to go with an exclusive E-Book Reader manufacturer deal in Canada by the end of this year. Reporter Kris Abel gotthe news direct from a chat with CEO Heather Reisman who was appearing on Canada AM. The Sony reader is already in Canada and enjoying some success and the Kindle remains constrained by its network below the 49Th line. So some would suggest that the move to support a ebook reader is a logical route. After all, Indigo is enjoying some success with its ShortCovers mobile app, which is currently available for the iPhone 3G, iPod Touch, BlackBerry and Android-powered devices.

Why do retailers enjoy exclusive deals and this obsession with beating the easy to beat competition? Indigo is a great store with a dominant position in Canada but who is their greatest threat today and tomorrow? If they go down an exclusive route with a reader then others in Canada will have to either fold under their competitors or go it alone? We saw Waterstones make an exclusive deal with Sony which on the face of it some would say alienated them and marginalised the opportunity. If every major UK retailer had launched with Sony last year we would be looking at a healthier market today in the UK.

Picking the winners from the losers is a hard bet in the ereader market today. Some would say – leave it to the consumer and market to decide the device, reading experience and even the terms (purchase versus rental) and make sure that the service and offer is the best. Exclusive means binary decisions which are black or white and pushing consumers into these is often a foolish route.

Google's Wave

Only yesterday we wrote about peeling back the layers of GoogleWorld and now we read about another. Wave, is a new communications platform that combines the likes of instant messaging, email, wikis, photo-sharing and document-sharing within a single browser. A collaborative, communications, open source navigation tool that can potentially bring under one roof and onto one platform all office applications: email, instant messaging, document-sharing and the like.

"A 'wave' is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more," Lars Rasmussen wrote on the official Google blog. "In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content -- it allows for both collaboration and communication."

Wave could redefine applications and the role of the server giving users more control in how they communicate and where they communicate the key will be the ease of use and navigation.

Pinning the Tail on the Donkey

Today book pricing can be often regarded on a par with pinning a tail on a donkey. It’s not an exact science, its often a stab in the dark and as long as its in the general vicinity who cares. We would challenge any book buyer to go to any bookstore and accurately price the majority of books on the shelves. These can come in different shapes, sizes, pagination, with or without graphics, pictures, whatever, the diversity is very visible both of works and prices.

The issue of pricing for digital works is often complex. Do publishers base the price on the overall cost and effectively cross subsidise the various renditions and manifestations, or let each stand on its own with just the core acquisition costs being spread across all? As the revenue and cost mix changes, then the cost of producing and servicing the physical could rise, whilst the cost of the digital content should fall. However, we are a long way from that making a significant impact to many today.

So we have a digital investment cycle where publishers have the cost of establishing the infrastructure and support of digital workflow, content, metadata and marketing materials, rights management, distribution etc. with relatively little return. On the other hand they still have the cost of the physical world. To make matters worse, many still only create the digital content as an after thought and maintain the physical editorial and production process as the primary development process. Its perfectly understandable, but this ‘digital afterthought’ can also perpetuate the duplication of effort in creating and managing bibliographic and marketing materials, which in a digital workflow should be fully integrated.

So we come back to the thorny issue of pricing digital content. Yesterday the Rand Corporation announced that the suggested retail pricing on all RAND e-books was to be $9.95 each. RAND is a nonprofit research organization with some 900 titles which are available for the Kindle, iPhone, Sony and other platforms such as Overdrive, Books 24x7, ebrary, Ingram Digital/ MyiLibrary, netLibrary, Questia etc.

"In the past, we based our e-book price on the retail price of the print edition," said John Warren, marketing director for RAND Publications. "It's clear, however, that the economics of e-book distribution are different than print, where the cost of printing, distribution and returns factor into the price paid by consumers. Colour charts and a greater number of pages, for example, drive up the cost of print-on-demand, but are not a factor in electronic books."

So we have the infamous Amazon $9.99 price point and now a $9.95 one from Rand. Rand may not be a significant publisher to many, but the move again raises the issue on how to price digital content. Some will choose to base it on a discount off the latest edition. We can all see the issue when the paperback replaces the hardback and the price drops. We can all see the discount wars and a physical 3 for 2, which today is hard to replicate in the digital world. There is also the question of why the digital copy should be aligned to a physical one given that some may say it has, in some cases, been falsely inflated to accommodate deep discounts.

Often, when the situation becomes muddled, the market dictates. Look at music and the somewhat naïve moves by the trade to maintain artificially high regional and CD pricing against clear consumer backlash. They won the battle with the monopoly board, but lost the war on the street. The problem in publishing is that there are thousands of publishers and a growing number of digital resellers and it may only take a few to brake the ranks and set the price perception for all.

eInk and PVI Crearte One Vertical eInk Company

E Ink, the company that invented the e-paper displays on all the lookey likie ereaders such as the Kindle, Bebook, Hanlin, IRex and Sony and many more, has been acquired by Tiawanese Prime View International, which makes e-paper displays for the majority of the ereaders. The price is claimed to be some $215 million.

PVI acquired the e-paper business of Philips Electronics in 2005 and partnered with E Ink to provide ereader displays for the likes of the Kindle and Sony Reader. PVI also invested in flexible displays and has acquired a majority stakeholding in Hydis Technologies in Korea, who supply the transistor backplanes used in e-paper. The new combination creates a single company dedicated to electronic paper that will potentially speed up development.

E Ink and Prime View (PVI) were already partners and the goal is now to combine forces and expand capacity and e-paper improvements and push developments such as the long overdue colour and flexible displays.

The Show Must Go On?

Things change. Sounds glib, but reality is that nothing remains as it is forever. So why are we taken aback when many start to question the very social fabric of publishing – the book fair?

We didn’t go to BEA this year, not because we didn’t think it worthwhile, but simply because we felt a holiday break may prove more rewarding. We didn’t miss the frantic scurrying from stand to stand, the eating on the floor, the missed or late appointment and the sore feet? We missed the people one only sees at these events and of course Fred Bass’s Strand party. But life moves on and so should BEA, Frankfurt and London. We remember sitting in Frankfurt as the economic crunch was happening and thinking we were on some weird Titanic that refused to stop partying despite the reality of the world outside.

Just as the UK Booksellers Association has realised with their annual conference that the agenda moves on and there is always a need to question, revisit and improve. The BA conference may not work moving forward, or in its new form, but it has no god given right to do so just for the sake of it. It will be a pity if it now failed, but it has been doing so for some years, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.

It would be interesting to add the newsprint column inches devoted to Hay on Wye compared to the London Book Fair? Some may say that you can’t mix business events and consumer ones, but anyone who opens their eyes will tell you different. It’s a Book Event and should be managed, run and presented as one and remember there are only two people that matter, the creator who pours the effort in and the consumer who pays for it.

GoogleWorld Is One Big Onion

So Google is now officially going to be the biggest digital bookseller on the planet. The New York Times reports on the latest layer to be peeled back on the Google onion as it plans for media and content domination.

They certainly know the buttons to press and the words to say. Imagine you could paint a picture of a big bad wolf, blame them squarely for screwing up digital pricing, blame them for the audacity of dictating terms, point at them and deride them for creating a digital silo ereading offer that only worked in their world, with their content and on their devices. Then calmly turn around and claim that you (and only you) can save the world from this single state monopoly, give pricing back to the publishers, make digital content available anywhere, anytime and secure and delivered from a single digital warehouse. Not difficult to see the appeal of such a white knight.

The NYT claim that the Google white knight appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market. Some would be more sceptical and suggest that they are merely herding sheep. Some would suggest that many can only see Grandma in bed and are unable to see the big bad wolf in Grandma’s clothing.

Mr. Turvey, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Google, is reported saying that Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go.” He also said that Google would reserve the right to adjust prices that it deemed “exorbitant.”

If we step back and look at the potential scenarios that could evolve:

1. Google’s Book Settlement goes backwards but Google is seen to be ‘nice’ and a settlement is sweetened by their books position with publishers and ‘free’ subscription deals with libraries.
2. Google’s Book Settlement goes through and you now have the biggest retailer, custodian, whatever, single source of new, old, and everything ever written. Who will dictate terms then? What alternatives are there to it?
3. As Google shift the model online they effectively kill off the lame ereaders and exposing their greatest weakness – the old ownership/ download model. The move creates a single source repository for all - Google Book World.
4. Google enters the print on demand world and render these through affiliated printers.
5. Google roll Audio into You Tube, or ‘You Play’ or ‘You whatever’ but do so on a streamed ad model (a la Spotify)
6. Google becomes the bibliographic source of reference and holder of all secondary material.
7. Google Book Search becomes the physical book search and discovery source using physical sources as affiliates for supply.

Forget the discounting battles of today what Google can even afford to do is shift the price up and maintain or even grow margin. This sounds like the answer to everyone’s prayers, or those still left standing after the digital Tsunami.

3 Screens In One could Kill Single Screen eReaders

Imagine a screen that operates in different modes; full colour, bright and conventional LCD; a very low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a low-power, basic colour transflective mode. If successful, the displays could effectively bridge the high-speed, full-color benefits of traditional LCDs and the low-power, reader-friendly qualities of electronic ink displays. They could drive netbook sales and deliver new readers free from the current eink reader straightjacket.

Having designed the One Laptop Per Child’s (OLPC) reflective screen, Pixel Qi founder and CTO, Mary Lou Jepsen has good credentials and has posted the first pictures of the new 10.1” 3Qi display on her blog and plans to show engineering samples at Computex Taipei 2009.

The screens are initially expected to be available in 10.5-inch and 7.5-inch screen sizes and Jepson predicts will be available in the second half of the year in netbooks and e-book readers. A lot depends on the price of the 3Qi and if Jepsen can deliver close to regular LCD netbook panels, standalone LCD and e-ink panels might have a hard time justifying their existence.

E-reader makers have reason to fear such innovation because people will be able to buy devices with more functions for about the same price.

picture gizmodo

Connections From Ibiza

The last few days we spent time with a good friend David Currey in his and his partner Gary Hodge’s wonderful villa on the lively island of Ibiza. Hence the lack of recent posts!

What stuck us was how a villa half way up an island in the middle of the Mediterranean was better connected than we are in London and how global telecommunications are.

For instance we spoke about the success of the BBC iPlayer and then watched last week’s Apprentice that we missed. How can you connect to iPlayer outside the UK? The mobile reception was patchy but we then made a call back to the UK to a friend over his land line at UK rates using a UK number. All day Dave was receiving UK calls ordering Gary’s paintings and the other parties thought they were ringing a UK number. We could watch TV from around the world and Hulu from the US, even though its restricted to the US today! Of course he now is converted to Spotify. For business and personal reasons they also have multi currency accounts so can even pay many ways and the list goes on.

So before people tell you that territorial restrictions can be enforced we can reliably tell you how easy it is to break them.

Thanks for a great break Dave and if you want to see Gary’s wildlife and award winning art

Brave New World's 1,000th Article!

When we started this blog at the end of 2006 we had just finished the Brave New World report and set out to continue to inform the publishing community of digital media events, trends, opinion, insights and whatever we thought may be of interest. We never expected to write 1,000 articles and never anticipated to be still enjoying it today as much as the very first day.

It’s interesting that much of what we wrote in the report has happened, is happening, or is still likely to happen. Many of the threats risks and issues we envisaged have materialised. The omnivores we described have lived up to their billing and today we are faced with Google, Adobe, Sony, Amazon, Apple. These new entrants clearly talk about the legacy, the book, but do not share the same business drivers and models. Will they reshape the book as we know it today, almost certainly, but will it be once again driven and shaped by the format, or become format neutral and no long jacket bound?

It isn’t a surprise that Google followed by Apple and Amazon dominate the Brave New World index, with the Google Book Settlement being the most blogged about subject and the iPhone the most indexed device.

The report was written in the spirit of collaboration and promoted a vision of players working together to make it happen and support each other. However we have seen the increasing use of ‘exclusive’ digital deals. These can often have a marginalising effect and be counter productive in growing the market. Collaboration is a word much used and like interoperability is often little practiced. Many follow the new entrants and look to go direct to the consumer and in doing so adopt an ‘I am alright jack’ approach. The resultant duplication of effort may sort the real opportunities from the also rans, but it can also lead to much consumer confusion, duplication of industry effort and of course, waste. It is hardly surprising but understandable that today, as an industry, we still lack a point of digital reference, terms, table of comparisons and somewhere independent of ‘agendas’ for all to share and use. It is not surprising that many have exploited the lack of consensus, built their digital fortresses and land-grabbed orphan works.

There is still a lack of real digital leadership from within publishing and the big issues remain; DRM and its restrictive nature, territorial rights within a global economy, pricing and the $9.99 price point, the royalty model and author reward and the fact that digital is often an afterthought and produced on the back of analogue and linear production processes.

However, we see the digital shift starting to gain momentum and many opportunities ahead for authors and consumers. The big question is who will remain between these two in years to come? Who will be seen by both parties to add value and who will be disintermediated in the digital Brave New World?

Nokia launch Ovi App Store

Nokia the number one mobile player has finally launched its Ovi Store. The service will rival BlackBerry, Android and of course Apple’s app stores and will be available to 50 million Nokia users worldwide, allowing them to install software and games directly on to their handsets. Nokia intend to follow others by retaining 30% of apps sales revenues onsite.

Apple’s iTunes App Store has lead the field, with customers downloading more than a billion apps in the nine months since the service launched. It is expected that Microsoft will also launch its own mobile app store with the release of its new Windows Phone operating system later this year.

The list of Ovi compatible handsets is limited to 50 although Nokia's supports 125 mobiles . Interestingly operator billing is supported in the, which may result in micropayment, try before you buy apps and free minimum model opportunities.

Google Attempts to Placate Its Library Community

Sometimes you read news and can go straight to the core point and understand it other its like treading through treacle and you have top think hard what they are trying to say. So when the University of Michigan announced an amended deal with Google over its scanning programme we were perplexed on many fronts.

Some would say that Google is now bringing the libaries into the agreement albeit once more by their favoured back door. Others that its Google’s attempts to placate criticism, potential justice department eyes and win over the confused masses still trying to understand the settlement deal. Whichever the driver is we then have the agreement.

Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder and its president of technology is widely reported claiming opposition to the settlement is “pretty short- sighted and contradictory…There was no option prior to this to get these sorts of books online.”

The new agreement, which Google hopes other libraries will endorse, lets the University of Michigan and any of the other 21 US institutions that lend books to Google for scanning object if it thinks the prices Google charges libraries are too high. Any pricing dispute would be resolved through arbitration.

The new agreement also gives the university, and any library that signs a similar agreement, a discount on its subscription proportional to the number of books it contributes to Google’s mass digitization project. To rub the point home, Michigan will receive Google’s service free for 25 years and is hardly ever going to complain about anything. Some may see it as saying ‘I scan your books you get them cheap I don’t you pay my rates and can’t object.’

The new agreement does not cover the issue of orphan works and privacy of readers of Google’s digital library. Importantly it starts to raise the question of whose the library are we
http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/Amendment-to-Cooperative-Agreement.pdf

iPhone Appworld

Gartner report that the apps are clearly driving the smartphone market which has grow by some 3% and is now 13.53% of the total number of phones sold. Apple has seen a rise of 128% and with nearly 4 million units in the first quarter of 2009, they have doubled their share of the smartphone market to close on 11%.

So what is happening in the app world re ereaders?

Last week Apple censored the Eucalyptus ereader iPhone app because it carried ‘offensive content’ in the form of a download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg. There were no pictures just text, but they say that reading is about imagination. The dispute is now over and Eucalyptus has received its publicity and the app is live on the app store at $5.99 with 20,000 public domain works from Project Gutenberg.

Is Eucalyptus any better or worse than the other ereader apps? It has some pluses and some minuses but despite the 20,000 titles you can’t help think where does it want to be when it grows up? Does it want to be an iPhone front end to project Gutenberg - a laudable mission but hardly one that is going to go places. Does it want to fill the possible space that may be now left by Stanza – again understandable, but is it as good or just placing itself on the shelf to be bought? We see a nice reader but little else today.

A few weeks after its purchase of Stanza Amazon just announced an upgrade to its Kindle for iPhone app. Is this following and mimicking the features developed by Stanza? The new release allows consumers to read in the landscape mode, pinch-zoom and scale-up images, use a tap or a flick to turn pages and you can now change backgrounds from black on white to white on black or even a sepia background for easier reading.

The big difference between Amazon and Eucalyptus is content. Eucalyptus has 20,000 public domain works, the Kindle’s has 275,000 titles. Amazon’s may be for sale but they are more relevant and its no good having the best reader if you can’t read the books you want to read on it.

Borders Enter A Brave New World

Borders Uk in going live with its new e-book service in the UK has taken a significant step into the Brave New World we reported on some two and half years ago. Some would say it is merely just another ebookstore and after all Waterstones has been selling ebooks for some 8 months and US retailers a lot longer. However, there is a difference and a significant one, for all the UK retailers who wish to sell digital books - it is powered by Gardners Books Digital Warehouse.

Gardners Books were the first to adopt an ‘inclusive’ technology that enables them to distribute not only the titles in its warehouse but titles in others digital warehouses and the resellers aren’t Gardners but any retailer with a connection. The same technology also underpins major digital publishers such as Taylor and Francis and the Danish library system eBog.dk.

No more does the publisher have to give even reseller, or even an aggregator their digital files. Everyone just agrees the messages to be exchanged and the files are held once, wherever and are only supplied direct to consumer when sold. Importantly it enables resellers to sell digital alongside physical books and have the books drop shipped direct to the consumer. No more is the customer handed over to another when they want an ebook. The retailer retains the transaction and the customer. This enables any retailer to sell ebooks on the internet, over the phone even in store and importantly continue to own the consumer relationship and their transaction.

Well done Borders for adopting an ‘inclusive’ not the ‘exclusive’ digital model of others.

Pirate Bay Judges Walk the Plank

The founders of The Pirate Bay were recently found guilty of breaking copyright laws and sentenced to one year in prison. The men were ordered to pay £2.5 million in damages to entertainment companies including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures. That ruling was appealed because the judge who sent them down - Tomas Norström - was a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association.

The possibility of personal bias raised its head and Norström was replaced by Ulrika Ihrfelt, who has now been stood down because she's a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association. A final decision on whether the case will return to court could still be many weeks away, but the chances of an appeal must certainly be increasing and unfortunately the law is once again is making an ass of itself.

So is $9.99 the eBook Price Point?

BooksOnBoard, the online eBook and Audio Book shop, has announced a massive discount on current New York Times Bestsellers, slashing prices from around $20-$30 to the price point of $9.99 and below. The price reduction is scheduled to last until Wednesday, May 27. So we see short term promotional price discounting similar to that done by Fictionwise, who some may say had one every weekend to celebrate everything and nothing. So what is the big deal?

Firstly $9.99 happens to be the price point chosen by Amazon for its ebooks and irrespective of whether they held it or not the perception sticks. So just like Apple did with the iTunes price point we now see others following with the $9.99 ebook price point.

Digital pricing may now no longer be established by the publisher or even the retailer but by the market. Once you have a recognised price point it is hard to drive consumers away from it. Look at the recent reaction when many raised concerns that they perceived Amazon was trying to raise the price from $9.99.

The question is not whether $9.99 is right or wrong but what is that impact on both the value chain and the author, publisher, aggregator, reseller etc? What is the knock on impact on the physical book model? Is the price point sustainable or merely a promotional price and how is that managed?

We have seen many readjustments in the ebook model such as the initial author rewards split being pegged back, with some advocating that they should now only receive a flat fee on digital.

Whenever we look at pricing there is that classic cause and effect implications that have to be thought through but in a market which has tens of thousands of authors, thousands of publishers, thousands of titles the point of aggregation often makes the decision and often based on their needs and their margins.

Readers Only Need One Place?

ReadersPlace aims to be the social networking site for book clubs, offering global interaction, debate and thoughts about their favourite books. They can web chat with authors live, get reading guides to more than 200 titles including author details and interviews, plot summaries, starting points for discussions and suggested further reading. Of course their will be promotional and discount deal offered at www.rbooks.co.uk.

West Midlands Library Authorities have been part of the pilot helping to develop the site and comes on the back of many innovative new services from Random House.

We welcome this more social engagement with readers and linking authors to their readers in every way possible. Our only comment is that its Random House and what a difference it would be if it embraced more publishers both large and small and all books. At a time when Richard and Judy are being put to rest and a simple twitter from Jonathan Ross can generate a twitter storm and best seller, one questions why its so hard for publishers and retailers to collaborative and embrace an inclusive model and approach? Some would say that its every man for himself and publishers are all after the same sale, but some would suggest the bigger prize is being lost and there are now some big gorillas sitting in the back yard who also don’t understand collaboration.

We believe that if say the major six UK distributors, all of which are owned by the major publishers, actually collaborated to create a joint social network it would probably cover 75% of the UK market and more importantly provide a real incentive for everyone to participate from the authors to th readers and that sales would flow to the deserving but the buzz would be significant. There again we are only dreamers.