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April 2008
Britannica Opens Up with Free Subscriptions
Mac Slocum
April 30, 2008
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Bloggers, journalists and other Web content creators can apply for free subscriptions to Britannica Online, the Web arm of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Taking a note from the Wall Street Journal, Britannica.com will also allow direct access ("deep-linking") to specific entries. The move is explained in a Britannica.com press release:
Access to much of the site, including full-text entries from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, normally requires a paid subscription. There’s an exception to that rule, however: When a Web site links to a Britannica article Web surfers who click on that link get the article in its entirety.
The press release also contains a curious quote from Britannica president Jorge Cauz:
The level of professionalism among Web publishers has really improved, and we want to recognize that by giving access to the people who are shaping the conversations about the issues of the day. Britannica belongs in the middle of those conversations. [Emphasis added.]
Britannica's decision is in line with the industry's broader move away from Web subscriptions, so how does Web publisher professionalism factor in?
(Via AppScout)
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Sorting through Layers of Copyright
Peter Brantley
April 30, 2008
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John Mark Ockerbloom writes about the discrepancies between organizational policies toward copyright and database policies:
The AAA [American Anthropological Association] relies on JSTOR for providing its older issues online. JSTOR has the American Anthropologist back-run going to the very first issues in 1888, but it won’t actually give me access to the articles in the public domain issues unless I use my institution’s subscription. (And even then, JSTOR’s standard terms and conditions, which institutions normally agree to when they subscribe, prohibit downloading and redistributing full issues, whether or not they’re copyrighted.) It would be nice if JSTOR’s policies were liberalized for their public domain content, but at least AAA has acknowledged that their articles can be reproduced once obtained by legitimate means.
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Bookstores Confront Fake Author Scam
Mac Slocum
April 30, 2008
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Scammers claiming to be authors are trying to pluck money from California booksellers. From the L.A. Times:
... slowly but surely, stores are being contacted by people claiming to be someone they're not and trying to persuade the bookstore staff to send them money. It's bewildering to a community that operates largely on trust and personal relationships.
The "authors" call retailers with a sob story -- their car was impounded, their computer was stolen, etc. -- and they ask the bookstore owners to wire funds to help them out of their jams.
The onslaught of digital scams from deposed Nigerian princes must have prepared the booksellers for this latest scam; all of the interviewed retailers caught on before sending money.
(Via Publishers Weekly)
Q&A;: Philip Parker, Developer of Automated Authoring Platform
Mac Slocum
April 30, 2008
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Philip Parker, founder of ICON Group International and a management science professor at Insead, has developed a patented approach to publishing that combines databases and programming with editorial management -- sometimes via humans, sometimes via computers. ICON Group produces books in 17 genres, including health care, business, reference and crosswords.
In this Q&A;, Parker discusses ICON Group's computer-driven process.
How do you identify book topics?
Based on personal and research interests, I select a genre. Once a genre is selected, I do all titles in that genre (e.g. all trade categories that are officially recognized).
Are writers, editors, or designers involved at any point?
Depends on the genre, but yes, all are relied on heavily at many stages. Health guides are written by medical professionals and hand edited. The business reports have highly edited sections, but 90 percent is computer based.
What types of sources/databases do you pull information from? Are there data sources you don't currently have access to that you think hold promise for this type of publishing?
Depends on the genre. I use the sources that are used by regular authors. For example, an economist uses well established sources to do econometrics, I use the same sources. Many companies and governments have under-utilized data sources and databases that may yield interesting genres; I have worked on the ones that I found of interest to me. I have a huge store of proprietary data. If I use a government source, this is cited, and will vary by genre (e.g. CDC for infectious disease information).
You were part of a print-on-demand (POD) panel at TOC '08. Are all Icon Group books POD? What POD service(s) do you use?
No, not all are print-on-demand. We use LSI [Lighting Source] and Booksurge for POD. We do some POD ourselves for specialized orders.
Could your company -- or a similar company -- function without POD?
Yes, in fact, most of our titles are not POD, but electronic via subscription for large libraries -- corporate and non-corporate.
Are all books also made available as ebooks? What ebook formats do you use?
Yes. PDF, DOC, Mobipocket (coming soon), Pocket PC.
Do researchers or clients ask you to prepare specific books?
Yes. We are able to do financial and labor studies on demand.
Mike Maznick says there's some fairly negative feedback on some of the titles. Is that a consequence of the automated nature of the content creation? Do you feel confident people buying these books know they're generated? Or does that not matter?
All publishers have negative and positive comments (e.g. O'Reilly). I would find it strange if our titles did not. Of the titles we have on Amazon, some 50/210,000 have real comments. Many are satirical. Of the ones from actual buyers, all publishers will receive negative and positive feedback (both can be not real, as Amazon comments are almost wiki based; posted by various people, including affiliates who are trying to sell titles).
I do not track the feedback on Amazon, but I imagine of the 17 genres (crosswords, classics, trade, outlooks, etc.), the negative ones are probably only on the health care guides, which are sold mostly to libraries and patient associations. Of all the genres, this one [health care] is not "generated by computer" -- all the text is written by professionals. The computer is used for formatting and doing the index, and compiling the glossaries.
I have a feeling that the low ratings are because the person does not like the content, thinks that better content or similar content is available elsewhere (e.g. the Internet) or was hoping for more. The health guides are clearly marked as Internet guides, and they cite Internet sources. All of the guides are vetted (by librarians, etc.). If people are dissatisfied because they think the computer wrote the text in the books, then they are dissatisfied for the wrong reason, which is unfortunate.
Many patient associations have not only reviewed the books, but also recommended them to patients and families. On balance, I think it better to make these available to patients with rare diseases who wish to better know how to navigate the Internet, beyond a Google search. For the other genres, I have never received negative feedback, only positive feedback or questions about methodology.
What is your most popular title? How many copies were sold?
Our trade reports, which are purchased by consulting firms, investment banks, and companies involved in international trade. This series is very popular. We gauge sales by series, not by individual titles. Traditional publishers think in terms of individual titles.
On average, how many copies of a single title do you sell?
There are thousands held by libraries (this is public data at World Cat). Some firms subscribe to all titles. Again, we often sell series. Some [titles] sell hundreds, some sell just a few, as a part of a series sale. The prices seen on Amazon are one-off -- we sell few or none of these.
For a typical title, what percentage of the total retail sale is profit?
We do not have a typical title. ICON Group as a whole makes no "profit" -- all resources are plowed into R&D; for new genres. The margins of the books at retail -- as opposed to profit -- are very low for the POD titles, and higher for the business titles. The margins for the low-priced products follow the industry, though we have lower margins as POD can be expensive compared to short-run printing.
A recent New York Times article says that each book costs you "about 12 cents in electricity." What other costs are involved in the process?
It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, to set up a genre (programming, licensing, editing, research/analysis, etc.). Many [genres] take about 1 year to create, some take 3 to 5 years. I have been doing this for about 8 years now.
How is pricing determined?
Same as in the publishing industry. In some genres we try to equate marginal revenues to marginal costs. On lower-priced POD we make sure we cover the basic costs. On higher end, we try to be substantially below related titles (e.g. trade and outlook, and other business reports). The latter [higher end] are really not sold via Amazon much, but rather through MarketResearch.com, EBSCO (content inclusion), NetLibrary and traditional channels for those markets (direct sales).
How many titles do you plan to develop this year?
Depends on the genre. For Mobipocket (mobile books), we plan on about 68,000 titles. For others, maybe around 50,000. We are working heavily on my dictionary and animations.
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TOC Tutorial DVDs Now Available
Andrew Savikas
April 30, 2008
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DVDs from four of the eight TOC 2008 tutorials are now in-stock. If you attended the conference, check your email for information on how to save 50%. If you missed TOC 2008, you can still save 30% on the DVDs using discount code TOCD3 (and sign up for the conference newsletter to make sure you don't miss TOC 2009).
The available tutorials are:
- Digitizing Your Backlist
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Publishers: Beyond Book Search
- XML for Publishers
- Making Mobile Work
And if you buy two, the third is free. More details here.
Book Reading Down, Book Writing Up
Mac Slocum
April 29, 2008
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In a New York Times Sunday Book Review essay, Rachel Donadio notes the interesting discrepancy between book reading and book writing. Namely, people aren't reading, but they're certainly doing a lot of writing.
In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles ... In short, everyone has a story -- and everyone wants to tell it.
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The Key to Web Success: Pretend Print Doesn't Exist
Peter Brantley
April 29, 2008
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Josh Gordon at Folio explains why pure-play Web businesses are beating established publishers are their own game:
Print people are spoiled. Too often when a magazine launches a web product the editorial focus [is] the same or similar to the positioning as the print product. As for functionality, too often the mission statement is, “To extend the magazine brand onto the Internet.” Big mistake. Your website needs its own editorial focus, and mission. While it should complement your print product it cannot just extend it.
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Newspaper Circulation Falls to WWII Levels
Peter Brantley
April 29, 2008
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Population growth and newspaper circulation are going in opposite directions. From Reflections of a Newsosaur:
Though circulation has fallen back to pre-Baby Boom levels, the population has more than doubled since 1946. If you divide circulation by population, you will find that fewer than 18 out of 100 Americans today buy a daily or Sunday newspaper. Back in 1946, 36% of the population bought a daily paper and 31% took a Sunday edition.
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Kindle's All-Encompassing Future Path
Peter Brantley
April 29, 2008
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Jeff Nolan writes about the path of the Kindle:
It's clear that [Jeff] Bezos sees a day when any and all content can be delivered to a Kindle and not only won't Amazon have to store inventory, they also won't have to ship anything but the Kindle itself to support their book business. In that light, the Kindle totally fits and is an impressive disruptive strategy to boot. Having said that, we have 550 years of mechanical printing to overcome and in terms of simplicity and cost, it's hard to beat a hard copy book.
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Nabokov's Final Novel: The Perfect Mash-Up Source
Mac Slocum
April 29, 2008
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Vladimir Nabokov died before he could finish The Original of Laura, and the long history of the unpublished novel is worthy of its own literary epic. The saga is coming to an end now that Nabokov's son, Dmitri, announced his intention to publish the work.
But here's the rub: The Original of Laura is drafted -- in fragment form -- on 50 index cards, and Dmitri Nabokov has no intention of finishing the novel himself. Nabokov tells the BBC:
I would never presume to finish my father's works for him because there are so many strands and threads and thoughts there that perhaps might have been developed further. And I simply don't have the right.
Will another author accept the daunting task of completing a Nabokov title? Or, will the text from the 50 index cards be edited together as a book?
Here's another idea: publish the fragments on the Web and let Nabokov scholars and fans interpret the material. I know the chances of Nabokov-inspired literary mash-ups are remote, but content with this kind of pedigree would bring significant attention to digital publishing experiments.
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Save the Date! TOC Conference 2009 -- February 9-11 2009 in NYC
Andrew Savikas
April 28, 2008
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The 2009 Tools of Change for Publishing Conference is now officially scheduled for February 9-11 2009, again at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. We haven't yet opened up the Call for Proposals or registration, but if you sign up for the conference newsletter, we'll keep you updated so you can be sure to reserve your spot.
We'll be building on the success of this year's sold out conference with a revised and updated program, more video and audio coverage, and an expanded exhibit hall. As news develops we'll post updates right here on the blog, and at the TOC conference website.
Charting the Pitfalls of DRM
Mac Slocum
April 28, 2008
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In the wake of MSN Music's authorization decision, Steve O'Hear from last100 looks at five DRM-based businesses that left customers high and dry. From the article:
Any digital store that sells or loans you content in a copy-protected format makes you a hostage to that store or format's commercial success.
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Responsibly Assuaging Author Concerns about File Sharing and "Piracy"
Andrew Savikas
April 28, 2008
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Eric Freeman, co-author of O'Reilly's Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML and Head First Design Patterns, recently asked via email about a rise in activity for Head First books on a popular file-sharing site. His query sparked an interesting thread on the Radar back-channel that I thought worth sharing here.
The original question (sent to Tim O'Reilly, who passed it along to the Radar list):
Tim
Any thoughts on the rise of Head First titles (mostly HFDP and HTML) on Pirate Bay? I'm trying to just take it as a sign there is strong interest in the books still ;)
Hope all is well,
Eric
First to respond was Nat Torkington, who nicely summarizes the "Piracy is Progressive Taxation" argument (emphasis added):
Fantastic! There's absolutely nothing you can do about it, and unless you see sales dipping off then I don't think there's anything you *should* do about it. The HF books work really well as books, so at best the torrents act as advertisements for the superior print product (not often you can say that with a straight face). At worst most of your downloads are going to people who wouldn't have bought the book at cover price and who will, if they enjoy it, rave about it to others.
So long as the royalty checks are strong, take BitTorrent as a sign of success rather than a problem. A wise dog doesn't let his fleas bother him.
Nikolaj Nyholm followed up referencing Make Magazine's experience:
I agree with Nat. Tim, this is your own "my problem isn’t piracy, it's obscurity." PT [Phil Torrone] has made the argument that he tracks Make popularity based on number of seeders on Pirate Bay (correct me if i'm wrong, PT). However, I'm starting to see O'Reilly books in Poland, printed in China, but with a different cover. While it's a market that you probably wouldn't reach with their current buying power, it's something I'd look into nonetheless. I'll pick up a couple of books next time I'm there and bring them next time I'm stateside.
... and then Make's own Phil Torrone weighed in (again, emphasis added):
Yup - seeing your books / magazines on Pirate Bay is always a good thing - You're current, you're interesting, if you're lucky your content transforms in to advertising for other things - for Make, the magazines become a campaign for our kits and events.
Authors are rightfully concerned to see their work pop up on peer-to-peer file sharing sites (though on occasion they're the ones who put them there), but the answer should not be to reflexively seek to stop it (you can't anyway).
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A Glimpse into Google's Book Scanning
Mac Slocum
April 25, 2008
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Google doesn't divulge specifics about its proprietary book scanning set-up, but the Associated Press offers a brief look into the manual scanning process used for old/fragile titles:
... the temperature is always in the 60s ... Each technician has a slightly angled table with a flexible middle that cradles books and holds them still while two overhead cameras photograph the pages. ... Once the images reach the computer, the women [featured in the AP story] use the book scanning software Omniscan from Germany's Zeutschel GmbH to clean them up. A final click of the mouse sends each digitized book to Google for optical character recognition processing, which makes the text searchable. Google then returns a copy of the images and data to the library and posts another to the Web.
(Via Publishers Weekly)
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News Roundup: Kindle 2.0 Speculation, Wikipedia: The Book, "Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content, Mobile Audiobook Downloads, Tracking Drafts and Revisions
Mac Slocum
April 25, 2008
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Ars Technica speculates on what the Kindle 2.0 might provide:
... the general hardware configuration appears to be here for a while. The fact that they're still selling the current version also suggests that they have committed to this design in all its white-plastic glory. In the long term, there's still the option of moving some of the awkwardly-placed controls and of improving the E Ink screen (color and improved contrast or faster response times, seem inevitable) ... All of this leaves changes to the software as the most likely candidates for 2.0 improvements. Realistically, we could only infer what Amazon considered to an acceptable interface based on what was released as 1.0. If this doesn't reflect what they "wanted to release in the first place," then all bets on what may change are off.
German Wikipedia Coming in Book Form
Bertelsmann is putting 25,000 German Wikipedia entries into The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia. From the New York Times:
Bertelsmann says the project should not be judged as a re-creation in book form of what appears online, but rather as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia’s users. (Continue reading ...)
"Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content
"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams and his distributor, United Media, are supporting user-generated content through Dilbert.com. Visitors can rewrite captions and redistribute the results, and the full "Dilbert" archive will eventually be available for free. From Webware:
I asked Adams why he and United Media are opening up the Dilbert intellectual property like this, and he sent me a response by email: "We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups."
UK Service Brings Audiobook Downloads to Mobile Phones
UK-based GoSpoken has partnered with Random House to make 50 audiobook titles available for purchase through the GoSpoken mobile download service. GoSpoken is currently aimed at early adopter UK residents who have broadband-capable cellphones (specifically, HSDPA-enabled) and mobile data plans. (Continue reading ...)
Writing and Tracking through Subversion
Programmers use version control systems to track and monitor code revisions. Writers can bring the same functionality to their drafts by following Rachel Greenham's Mac OS X Subversion tutorial. (Continue reading ...)
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The Inertia of Digital Turf Wars
Mac Slocum
April 24, 2008
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Two recent news stories touch upon a core question in the conflict between established businesses and digital creators: what's the point of a turf war when the turf keeps shifting?
First up is a New York Times story that examines the murky relationship between professional sports teams, bloggers and multimedia coverage:
Mike Fannin, the president of the Associated Press Sports Editors and the managing editor for sports and features at the Kansas City Star, said the dispute was the result of traditional news organizations redefining themselves in a changing technological environment.
"Ten years ago newspapers weren't in the world of video and audio," he said. "We were in the world of print. The leagues don’t have a print product. Their view of this is that we entered their world."
That is one point both sides agree on. "I'm all for selling newspapers and magazines," said Bob DuPuy, the president of M.L.B. "What I'm not for is them branching off in to other enterprises."
The second story comes from the publishing world. Author JK Rowling and Warner Bros. sued to block publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon, a book derived from Steven Van Ark's Harry Potter fan site. From the Associated Press:
The author and her lawyers said they were stirred to action by the proposal to move the Potter lexicon from the anything-goes Web, where it was available for free, into book form, where it would compete directly with a Potter encyclopedia that Rowling plans to write herself.
In short, by deciding to sell his material, Vander Ark was stepping across a line. He was no longer just an enthusiastic fan, but a professional and potential competitor -- fair game for the lawyers.
The conflict between digital envelope pushers and traditional businesses will take years to subside (or move on to a new skirmish on a new platform). But isn't there a better way? Rather than throwing huge resources at lawsuits and posturing, especially when you're confronting a gray area, why not allocate some of that time, energy and money toward trial runs and acquisitions? Digital initiatives don't require abandonment of established business models, and the knowledge gleaned from experimentation -- knowledge that could lead to new revenue -- is far more useful than a turf war.
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"Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content
Peter Brantley
April 23, 2008
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"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams and his distributor, United Media, are supporting user-generated content through Dilbert.com. Visitors can rewrite captions and redistribute the results, and the full "Dilbert" archive will eventually be available for free. From Webware:
I asked Adams why he and United Media are opening up the Dilbert intellectual property like this, and he sent me a response by email: "We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups.""
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Writing and Tracking through Subversion
Mac Slocum
April 23, 2008
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Programmers use version control systems to track and monitor code revisions. Writers can bring the same functionality to their drafts by following Rachel Greenham's Mac OS X Subversion tutorial:
What does it [Subversion] do? It manages multiple versions of a project in development. You check your project out of the repository, make changes and you commit those changes back to the repository. At any time you can view older versions of the whole project or of individual files, and revert to them, if the work done since was in error. You can make branches, which allows you to develop your work in two (or more) ways in parallel, and you can tag your project to say, at this point I met a certain milestone (eg: first draft, second draft, version sent to publisher X, version sent to publisher Y, published version, etc.)
(Via TUAW)
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Ease of Use as Anti-Piracy Tool
Mac Slocum
April 23, 2008
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Simon Juden, CEO of the Publishers Association, says uniform ebook standards -- and the resulting ease of use -- can deter piracy. From The Bookseller:
Licensing must be intuitive, simple and straightforward at the user level or the user will look for ways to circumvent them.
On a related note: Itunes, noted in the past for its ease of use, recently claimed the top spot among U.S. music retailers.
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German Wikipedia Coming in Book Form
Mac Slocum
April 23, 2008
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Bertelsmann is putting 25,000 German Wikipedia entries into The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia. From the New York Times:
Bertelsmann says the project should not be judged as a re-creation in book form of what appears online, but rather as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia’s users.
Arne Klempert, executive director of Wikimedia Germany, says the book is a content experiment:
It is a very good example of the power of free knowledge, so anyone is free to use the content and do interesting things with it. It’s a nice experiment to see if the Wikipedia content is good enough to sell books.
Available in September, the book will have a 20,000-copy press run and sell for 19.95 euros. The Times says Wikimedia Germany will receive one euro per copy sold.
(Via Publishers Weekly)
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