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May 2008
Amazon: Kindle Owners Buy More Books
Mac Slocum
May 30, 2008
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In press releases and in Book Expo sessions, Amazon is touting an interesting figure: consumers who purchase a Kindle increase their overall book purchases through Amazon by an average of 2.6 times.
That "2.6 times" figure doesn't mean Kindle customers are boosting their print purchases, but it does go a short ways toward quelling ebook cannibalization concerns.
At a session earlier this morning, an Amazon rep said the Kindle purchase uptick could be associated with the device's light weight and wireless downloads. Rather than reaching for their Blackberries, the rep said, customers kill downtime with their Kindles.
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News Roundup: Kindle Price Drop and Rough Title Figures, Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site, Long-Term Google Questions
Mac Slocum
May 30, 2008
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Kindle Bits: Price Drop and Rough Title Sales Figures
Speaking at the D6 Conference, Jeff Bezos offered a glimpse into the Kindle's sales impact. From D6 Highlights:
On a title-by-title basis, [Bezos] says, Kindle unit sales now account for more than 6% of Amazon book sales for the 120,000 titles that are available on Kindle.
Amazon has also dropped the Kindle's price by $40 to $359. (Continue reading.)
Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site
Borders has separated its e-commerce offerings from Amazon and opened its own Web site. From the New York Times:
The new Borders site offers plenty to like, such as the Flash video-based "magic shelf" on the main page that recreates the experience of browsing the tables of new books at the entrance to stores. The site also ties in with the Borders reward card program and the physical book search kiosks in most Borders outlets, and offers video of author book signings and book discussion groups. (Continue Reading.)
Long-Term Questions Around Google and Content
Martyn Daniels offers long-view questions around Google's copying of content from publisher books:
Publishers have in many cases argued it is healthy to give them [Google] content as they drive up sales, others that they are stealing it. Whatever your viewpoint the question that must be answered is what do they intend to do with it tomorrow? Will they always us it as they do today? Can they re assign it to others, either in part or whole? Can the copyright owner revert rights, given or taken, if the copyright ownership of the original work changes? Can the originator object? History is littered with cases where the result was not what people expected to happen at the beginning and where market dominance created a new venture not previously envisaged.
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What OpenID Can Do for Academic Publishers
Liza Daly
May 29, 2008
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OpenID is a free, decentralized system for managing your identity online. What does that mean? It's easy to explain by example.
Right now you probably have dozens of accounts on different Web sites. It's likely that you use the same (or similar) user names and passwords on all of them. OpenID solves the problem of creating nearly-identical accounts on different services, and also allows you to control how much personal information you provide to each service that asks for your OpenID.
What makes OpenID interesting in the publishing community is that it distinguishes between two concepts that are often conflated:
- Identity: Who am I?
- Authentication: What do I have access to?
Traditional user name and password schemes are used for both purposes, but they are actually quite different.
Identity only -- When I shop at Amazon.com (assuming I'm not boycotting it), I only need to provide my identity. I don't need any special permission to access Amazon's search and browse features. What I do want to protect are my account information and shopping cart, but arguably those belong to me, not Amazon.
Identity and authentication -- When I want to post to the TOC blog, I need to provide both types of credentials: identity, so the blog software can put my name under my post, but also authentication to prove that I'm a registered contributor. If you write a comment to this post, you'll only be asked to provide identity.
Authentication only -- The third case -- authentication without identity -- is common in subscription-based journals and research material. I can go to the Boston Public Library, sit at a terminal, and get access to hundreds of online resources in the deep web that aren't available to the general public. The library has paid for the right to access the resources, but those sites only need to know that I'm authenticated through an institutional subscription, not who I am as an individual. This is the correct default behavior, and it's admirable that librarians fight hard on behalf of patrons to explicitly protect users' identities.
This leaves academic and journal publishers without an obvious way to offer their users some of the benefits of identity-based systems: bookmarking, tagging, annotating, and sharing. One solution is to build another layer of access control: first I authenticate, either by using a library terminal or entering my library card number, and then I identify myself with yet another user name and password. Only then do I get the ability to save searches, bookmark documents and possibly share those with other authenticated users of the resource.
Publishers could instead use OpenID to handle identity management in these products. Compared with building such a system from scratch, OpenID is inexpensive and is already fully-implemented in many programming languages.
Users benefit in several ways: they don't have to create a new account and remember another set of credentials, and now they have new options for personalizing their research experience. It also opens up the possibility of tying together saved resources across multiple products owned by different publishers, similar to some types of citation management software.
Currently, signing up and using OpenID can be a bit confusing for novices, but the user experience is expected to improve. In the near future it's likely to be largely opaque to end-users, who will only need to know that their identity is managed by a source they already trust.
One last point that's relevant to library users: an OpenID account can still provide anonymity. There's no requirement or guarantee that my OpenID account name has anything to do with my legal name. It's likely that many users will have multiple OpenIDs in the same way that people use throwaway email accounts when registering on Web sites. However, the onus is still on the end-user to be careful where and how they distribute their personal information.
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Long-Term Questions Around Google and Content
Peter Brantley
May 28, 2008
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Martyn Daniels offers long-view questions around Google's copying of content from publisher books:
Publishers have in many cases argued it is healthy to give them [Google] content as they drive up sales, others that they are stealing it. Whatever your viewpoint the question that must be answered is what do they intend to do with it tomorrow? Will they always us it as they do today? Can they re assign it to others, either in part or whole? Can the copyright owner revert rights, given or taken, if the copyright ownership of the original work changes? Can the originator object? History is littered with cases where the result was not what people expected to happen at the beginning and where market dominance created a new venture not previously envisaged.
Publishing is a rights business yet we often seem to struggle managing them and the older the content the murkier rights become. Today is the right time to revisit the question of Google's Book programme and not continue to go blindly forward as if nothing has changed.
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Kindle Bits: Price Drop and Rough Title Sales Figures
Mac Slocum
May 28, 2008
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Speaking at the in-progress D6 Conference, Jeff Bezos offers a glimpse into the Kindle's sales impact. From D6 Highlights:
On a title-by-title basis, [Bezos] says, Kindle unit sales now account for more than 6% of Amazon book sales for the
120,000125,000 titles that are available on Kindle.
Note: That's not six percent of Amazon's total book sales. It's six percent of the pool of 120,000 125,000 multi-format Kindle/print titles.
Amazon has also dropped the Kindle's price by $40 to $359.
(Via PaidContent.org).
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Digital Change: "Disruptive and Imminent"
Peter Brantley
May 28, 2008
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Adam Hodgkin lists five reasons why books might go digital, among them: Moore's Law, energy needs, and positive perception of digital content. Hodkin then concludes:
At the moment CEO's and captains of publishing houses feel the need to be cautious and to reassure their markets and their audience that change will be gradual and not disruptive. But if the change is disruptive and imminent the publishing houses who have already geared up for digital distribution and marketing will be at an advantage. I think most CEO's in the business know that, and they also know that they are not too well prepared for it.
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Content Owners and Consumers Need Digital Quid Pro Quo
Mac Slocum
May 28, 2008
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Recent comments from Jeff Gaspin, president and chief operating officer of NBC Universal Television Group, illustrate the one-step-forward / one-step-back mindset plaguing mainstream media organizations.
First, the step forward:
On-demand viewing is a key component of the increase in viewers, Gaspin asserted. "I believe the ability for consumers to sample content elsewhere, whether it's VOD [video on demand], DVD or [online] streaming, helps build a new fan base. So when hit shows come back, I believe more people come back than in prior seasons. That has all contributed to growth in cable."
Using VOD and other technologies to increase awareness and woo viewers to an established platform -- such as a TV show -- is a progressive perspective. Incorporation of VOD and online access also builds good will with consumers because it works with their usage patterns, rather them forcing them into specific programming at specific times.
But then there's the step back:
"I think it's [VOD] a smart offering for the [cable] operators and for us," Gaspin said. "But a couple of things have to happen: Fast-forward has to be disabled, we have to have dynamic ad insertion, and we have to have legitimate measurement of the viewership."
Flexible advertising and reliable measurement tools are reasonable requests, but disabling the fast-forward button contradicts the consumer-friendly perspective in the first quote (hence, "step back"). Granted, the same article containing the Gaspin quotes also notes a VOD pilot program that disabled fast-forward and was still well received among consumers, but the overall inconsistency in these messages is what's troubling. Gaspin seems to understand the value of consumer empowerment to an extent, but the old command-and-control mindset creeps back in when it comes to the details.
That said, the success of digital efforts -- whether it's video-on-demand, online access, or distribution of free ebooks -- does require concessions from content owners and consumers. But these concessions need to be marked by consistency. If a content owner, such as NBC, wants to use VOD to drive viewers back to its primary platform, then the VOD material should have all the functionality consumers have grown to expect (i.e. keep your paws off my remote ... and my computer ... and my e-reader). But in exchange for easy access and availability, consumers shouldn't be offended by in-episode advertising, visible sponsorship branding, or requests for demographic data (with opt-out options, of course). Ultimately, a reasonable amount of quid pro quo -- defined by consistency -- allows both sides to take advantage of digital platforms.
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Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site
Mac Slocum
May 27, 2008
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Borders has separated its e-commerce offerings from Amazon and opened its own Web site. From the New York Times:
The new Borders site offers plenty to like, such as the Flash video-based "magic shelf" on the main page that recreates the experience of browsing the tables of new books at the entrance to stores. The site also ties in with the Borders reward card program and the physical book search kiosks in most Borders outlets, and offers video of author book signings and book discussion groups.
The launch of Borders.com comes as the retailer tries to navigate through unsettled conditions. In March, the company hired outside firms to explore business alternatives, including a sale. More recently, Barnes & Noble said it is studying a possible Borders acquisition.
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Open Question: When Will Digital Books Overtake Print Books?
Mac Slocum
May 27, 2008
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We often discuss publishing's digital transition as though it's manifest destiny, but rarely do we see firm forecasts as to when (or if) this transition will occur.
Mike Shatzkin touched on this topic during a recent discussion on the Read 20 list:
We are going to have a bifurcated market for a while. The heavy users of 2.0 tools, including social networks, will tend to skew to "younger" and "techier." They will both go for the modern products and be marketed to by the modern means. The legacy market, of people reading plain old books in paper and then the same plain old books on Kindles and other screens, will remain where the money is for published content for some years, certainly at least one decade, to come. (Posted here with Mike's permission)
I'm interested in hearing what TOC readers think of the following:
- Do you believe digital books will supplant printed books?
- If no, why? If yes, when will it happen?
Please share your answers and thoughts in the comments area.
Microsoft Closing Live Search Books
Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008
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Microsoft is shutting down Live Search Books, which includes its book scanning initiative. From the Live Search official blog:
Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries. With our investments, the technology to create these repositories is now available at lower costs for those with the commercial interest or public mandate to digitize book content. We will continue to track the evolution of the industry and evaluate future opportunities.
Project equipment, resources and scanned books will be distributed to various stakeholders:
... we intend to provide publishers with digital copies of their scanned books. We are also removing our contractual restrictions placed on the digitized library content and making the scanning equipment available to our digitization partners and libraries to continue digitization programs.
(Update: 5/23/08, 2 p.m.): Brewster Kahle from the Internet Archive credits Microsoft for removing content restrictions and allowing organizations to keep the scanning equipment:
This is extremely important because it can allow those of us in the public sphere to leverage what they helped build. Keeping the public domain materials public domain is where we all wanted to be. Getting a books scanning process in place is also a major accomplishment. Thank you Microsoft.
Live Search Books, a competitor to Google Book Search, was launched in Dec. 2006.
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Amazon "Buy New" Option Removed from Publisher's Titles
Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008
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The "buy new" option has been removed from a variety of Hachette Group's Amazon UK listings, reports The BookSeller:
Amazon conducts yearly negotiations with publishers over the discounts it receives. The Hachette tussle comes in the wake of a similar dispute in January, when a number of Bloomsbury titles were temporarily removed from sale through Amazon's main channel.
The Hachette-Amazon negotiation comes in the wake of recent moves by UK publishers to attract customers to their own sites through price cuts.
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News Roundup: Apple vs. Kindle?, OLPC 2.0 as an E-Reader, B&N; Studying Borders Acquisition
Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008
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Will Apple Challenge the Kindle?
Rex Hammock re-launches consideration of why Apple would give Amazon a run for ebook readers and content distribution:
... a slightly larger iPod Touch [view concept image] linked to eBooks distributed via the iTunes store would match and raise the game with Amazon. (Continue reading.)
Next Generation OLPC: E-Reader in Waiting?
[Nicholas] Negroponte didn't share many details about the XO-2's hardware, but the new system has two touch-sensitive displays. As you can see from the video and the pictures, the XO-2 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said. (Continue reading.)
B&N; Considering Borders Acquisition
When Borders announced its exploration of "strategic alternatives" in March, speculation marked Barnes & Noble as a possible suitor. The Wall Street Journal says B&N; is taking that speculation seriously -- it's assembled an advisory team to study an acquisition of its brick-and-mortar competitor. (Continue reading.)
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Author Notes Risks and Opportunities in Free Ebooks
Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008
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O'Reilly author and New York Times columnist David Pogue points the way to an April post from author Steven Poole that offers an interesting look at the arguments and counter-arguments surrounding free digital books.
Last year, Poole ran his own experiment with free PDFs of his book Trigger Happy. The result: it was a "pretty good publicity stunt," but it didn't yield any notable revenue.
Although I didn't do it for the money, I was also, of course, interested in testing the idea of giving stuff away and allowing people freely to express their appreciation. So I put a PayPal button below the download. Is this, as some people say, an exciting new internet-age business model for writers and other creative types? Er, not really. The proportion of people who left a tip after downloading Trigger Happy was 1 in 1,750, or 0.057%.
Despite meager returns, Poole says the current separation between electronic and print books makes the free digital avenue wortwhile:
... the happy truth is that right now, electronic downloads don't cannibalize printed sales; if anything, they encourage them. In fact, I would gladly give away my newer book, Unspeak, in the same format right now, except that I am contractually obliged to wait until next year to do so.
But -- and this is a big but -- Poole says if/when digital delivery overtakes print as the dominant delivery mechanism, the upside of free drops precipitously:
Giving away your work in the same format in which you hope to sell it is a dangerous game, if that's how you hope to make a living.
Poole's points on both sides of the debate are well put. This is a daunting and exciting time for content creators. It's an odd period that's marked by legitmate revenue concerns as well as new opportunities to build a following. Poole's post does a nice job capturing these dueling perspectives; the entire piece is worth a read.
UPDATE: Mike Masnick at TechDirt has posted a detailed rebuttal to Pogue (and Poole) on the subject:
Just because "give it away and pray" isn't a workable business model, that doesn't mean that there aren't business models that do work. Hopefully, Poole and Pogue will eventually recognize that they're dismissing the wrong thing. They shouldn't be complaining about free (or making misleading accusations about those who simply recognize the economic forces at work) -- they should be complaining about a failure to put in place a real business model to take advantage of what will be free.
Related Stories:
- TechDirt: "'Give It Away And Pray' Isn't A Business Model... But It Doesn't Mean That 'Free' Doesn't Work"
- Responsibly Assuaging Author Concerns about File Sharing and "Piracy"
- BitTorrent as a Book Publicity Tool
- Piracy is Progressive Taxation ...
- How Do Publishers and Authors Get Paid in a "Free" World?
"Ask a Ninja" Creators Use Web for Shot at Hollywood
Mac Slocum
May 22, 2008
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While we all wait for the digital domain to grow up and replace established revenue streams, there are lessons to be learned from the digital pioneers who have already cracked the sustainability issue.
Silicon Alley Insider breaks down the per-episode and annual revenue of the popular "Ask a Ninja" Web video series. According to the Alley Insider, "Ninja" founders Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine net $3,900 per spot. They produce 40 episodes a year, so their annual take-home is around $156,000.
"Ask a Ninja's" Web success is unusual. It consistently draws 2-3 million views per month (a huge audience in Web terms), and its ad inventory is managed by Federated Media, an outside firm that works with high-traffic Web sites [disclosure: Tim O'Reilly is an investor in FM]. The increased attention from the "Ninja" series has also led to burgeoning movie careers: Nichols and Sarine are working on an update of the B-movie classic, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." Nichols discussed the "Tomatoes" deal on his blog:
By going to straight to features, the entire showbiz world is still open to us. We'll be able to move freely up and down the aspirational chain without being pigeonholed as the web guys. And actually we'll be even more valuable since we have a deep understanding of the new media landscape.
We want to have careers that stretch into decades. That means diversifying and trying [to] succeed in larger, more established businesses.
The real lesson here lies in the two-pronged revenue approach Nichols and Sarine have employed: they've achieved a degree of short-term stability by monetizing their Web success, but they've also used the increased notoriety to create new opportunities in the old-school film industry. Similar motivations catalyze many of the innovations and experiments in the "free" meme we've discussed in recent months.
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Next Generation OLPC: E-Reader in Waiting?
Mac Slocum
May 21, 2008
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Laptop Mag has an early look at the next-generation One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO-2, and the concept's book-like form factor is sure to turn a few heads in the e-reader world:
[Nicholas] Negroponte didn't share many details about the XO-2's hardware, but the new system has two touch-sensitive displays. As you can see from the video and the pictures, the XO-2 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.
The $75 XO-2 is scheduled to go into production in 2010, but that date and the product itself are both being questioned.
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B&N; Considering Borders Acquisition
Mac Slocum
May 21, 2008
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When Borders announced its exploration of "strategic alternatives" in March, speculation marked Barnes & Noble as a possible suitor. The Wall Street Journal says B&N; is taking that speculation seriously -- it's assembled an advisory team to study an acquisition of its brick-and-mortar competitor. From the WSJ:
That Barnes & Noble is contemplating a bid illustrates how competitive book retailing has become ... Not only have Amazon and other Web retailers taken a significant portion of the $15 billion consumer book business, but also book sales have shown little real growth in recent years.
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Blogger Begins Amazon Boycott
Andrew Savikas
May 21, 2008
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Over on O'Reilly Radar, blogger and author Allison Randal announces that in light of recent events, she's decided to abandon Amazon:
In light of Amazon's attempts to lock print-on-demand publishers into their own printing services, I've made a personal decision not to buy from Amazon any more. Since the site first launched over a decade ago, I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on Amazon feeding my addiction to tech books and fiction, on music, DVDs, electronics, and gifts for friends and family. I realize my spending is a tiny drop in the bucket of Amazon's total revenue, but it's a decision I feel good about, the same way I feel good about using low-energy lightbulbs, reusing plastic bags, and buying a car with environmentally friendly fuel economy and emissions ratings. One of the fundamental principles of capitalism is that when one source of goods and services isn't meeting your needs, you switch to another. The power to decide which businesses succeed and which fail lies in the collective hands of millions of individual consumers.
If anyone else decides to join her, let us know.
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Storytelling 2.0: Alternate Reality Games
Liza Daly
May 21, 2008
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Publishers are experimenting with an emerging form of interactive entertainment known as Alternate Reality Games (ARG). ARGs are mediated by the Web but they also extend into the real world, with players traveling to physical places and interacting with game characters via email, text messaging, Twitter, and even "old-fashioned" telephones.
I spoke to the founders of ARG design firm Fourth Wall Studios, the company that created the first publishing ARG, Cathy's Book. I wanted to know if ARGs are a viable form of commercial storytelling, if they can be packaged up after the experience has ended, and if they can engage with a wider audience beyond hard-core gamers.
Q: Do you think the high level of engagement required of an ARG limits the audience? Is there such a thing as a "casual" ARG, that can be enjoyed in the spare moments between soccer practice and dinner time?
A: Elan Lee, Fourth Wall Studios Founder/Chief Designer: ARGs up until now have been like rock concerts. Thousands (if not millions) of people come together at one point in time to collectively experience something incredible. They have a good time, sing along, maybe buy a t-shirt, but when they go home to tell their friends about it, there's no action their friends can take other than to hope they don't miss the next one. The traditional ARG is an experience that exists between the start and end date of the campaign, and if you weren't there at the right time, you simply miss out.
To continue the metaphor, think of our games [at Fourth Wall] as ARG "albums" instead of concerts: something you can play when, where, and how you want. Ultimately, it is only through this "album" approach that this new form of entertainment is going to evolve into a mainstream genre of storytelling.
Q: Many ARGs have been developed as promotional tools for other media: music releases, films, TV series, video games, and now books. Is there a perception that ARGs have to be in support of something else, rather than entertainment themselves?
A: Elan Lee: ARGs have had their roots in marketing because frankly, at this early stage, that's a great place to find money. Marketers have a tougher job every day of finding ways to get their message heard above the noise, and they have a lot of money to throw at the problem. It's a great situation for both sides: marketers get to engage their audience in a way that attracts, involves, and maintains an audience around a product. ARGs benefit in that we get to run wild and ground-breaking experiments as we birth this new art form.
Also, at least in the case of Nine Inch Nail's Year Zero and Cathy's Book, the ARG elements were not conceived as marketing, but as an inextricable part of the content. An album or a book was the spine of the experience, but the work of art itself was conceived as an interactive multimedia whole.
Q: Cathy's Book was targeted at a young adult (YA) audience. Do you think YA is a strong market for this kind of interactive entertainment? Would it be possible to engage even younger children?
A: Sean Stewart, Fourth Wall Studios Founder/Chief Creative: Cathy's Book and the new hardcover, Cathy's Key, are designed to be first and foremost a fun (and funny) adventure story. We've added a lot of "fourth wall" elements -- you can call Cathy's phone number and leave her a message, investigate clues she doesn't have time to investigate or write to email addresses you find in the book and see what responses come back to you. Cathy even hosts a gallery where readers can submit their own artwork -- the best of which will be published in the paperback of Cathy's Key. The basic impulse behind this series is to make books -- a traditionally passive, solitary activity -- something with an active, social component as well.
"Fourth Wall" fiction -- experiences that play out at least partly over your browser, your phone, your life -- feels somehow very right for this new age; it's a kind of storytelling that arises naturally from the world of three-way calls, instant messenger, text messaging, and shooting a friend an email with a link to something cool you saw on the Web. To that extent, it's going to feel the most natural to the people most comfortable with that kind of wired world.
When I was in New York last year, meeting with the publisher of Cathy's Book, my 12-year-old daughter emailed me a PowerPoint slide deck, complete with music and animations, explaining why I should get her a Mac laptop for Christmas. Yeah, I think her generation finds interactive entertainment more natural than mine. And yes, I think it would be not only possible, but really effective to build interactive, exploratory stories for even younger kids -- but to do that, we need to get away from the traditional ARGs willingness to be confusing. Most people like to have some clue what the heck they are supposed to do next. It won't surprise you to learn that this is another crucial design issue Fourth Wall Studios has set out to solve.
Q: Reading is usually a solitary pursuit, but there's an almost universal desire to "live" in some genres, whether it's idealized period romances, spy novels, or detective stories (murder mystery parties, especially popular in the 1980s, illustrate this). How important are traditional fiction genres in ARG? Can there be an element of role-playing involved? Are there genres that haven't been explored yet that have potential?
A: Sean Stewart: The first paid writing I ever did, actually, was for live action role playing games and murder mystery dinner parties in the '80s. I never would have guessed that writing for those things would turn out to be extremely important training for me, but in fact the intersection of writing and theater, where you try to find ways for the audience to participate in the story, lies at the heart, I think, of the next evolution in storytelling.
We believe that immersing yourself in a world is a fundamental part of what makes fiction fun. Any time I follow a character -- whether in a Jane Austen novel or a "Matrix" movie -- I am imagining what that must be like. One of the biggest pay-offs in an ARG is that you don't just imagine a fictional world, as in a book, or see it, as in a movie: you actually inhabit it. When I read a Harry Potter novel, I get to go to Hogwarts vicariously; when I play an ARG, I get to go myself. I am finding Web sites on my browser, I am talking to characters on my phone: the world of the fiction has reached out to me.
That proposition, by the way, shouldn't be limited by genre. ARGs have often had a thriller/science fiction slant to them, but even inside our games we've done romantic comedies, spy plots, documentary-style slice-of-life experiences, tragedies, and even Westerns. Fourth-wall fiction isn't about a given genre: it's a set of tools and approaches for letting the audience participate in any kind of story.
Q: What happens when the game is over? Is it possible to package up an ARG as a complete work (whether online or in print) to be experienced linearly? Or is the experience meaningless without real-time participation?
A: Elan Lee: Here's where I'm going to try to get as much mileage out of the "rock concert" metaphor as I can. There is no denying the electric energy present at a concert and there is absolutely no substitute for "being there." However, there are only so many available seats per venue, and only so many venues you can play before exhaustion sets in (both for the artist and the audience). For ARGs to evolve into a mainstream form of entertainment, they must create their own version of "albums" to complement the "concert." Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we have to find a way to put a package around these things and call it a day; I only suggest that both pieces of the experience must exist for the real potential of the form to be realized.
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IDPF: Boundaries of Participation
Peter Brantley
May 20, 2008
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I wanted to add a few of my own thoughts to Andrew's last post on the AAP and the IDPF. I agree that there is too much emphasis on a replication of the print page, and too little engagement in re-envisioning the product so that it supports a diversity of distribution channels and ultimately, product conceptualizations. For that matter, many of us will still opt for some form of print manifestation, for some classes of this content. But regardless, publishers are aware at least cognitively of these transformations, as Sara Lloyd of Pan Macmillan witnesses in her recent manifesto. Indeed, DAISY is not the only actor that is encouraging IDPF to adopt a more profound engagement with newer presentation technologies and a greater diversity in the expectations for interaction, collaboration, and sharing.
One of the harder equations to solve is where the support for some of the features Andrew mentions should actually be located -- are they format bound? What is the value in specifying an explicit framework that supports (e.g.) OpenID and OpenSocial for collaborative reading of texts (viz. texts broadly defined)? How much of that should be a normative consideration of the application environment, vs. how much in a schema? Perhaps we rather need to participate more outbound such that libraries and publishers more actively engage in efforts like OpenSocial and DataPortability, to bring the changing needs of our served communities into those dialogues.
Organizationally, how do publishers and libraries become the type of enterprises where that kind of open technical and policy engagement is not only tolerated but endorsed as a normal run of business, instead of being perceived as a perfidious seduction?
I don't have either cleverness or answers, but I do wonder what goes into the IDPF's court as a work product, and what goes into the court of our community as a responsibility to redefine and rescale the boundaries of the world of participation.
Responses and Additional Coverage:
The Rise of "Found" Media
Peter Brantley
May 20, 2008
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Alissa Quart's editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review compares "Lost Media" (magazines, newspapers) with "Found Media" (blogs, Web efforts, etc.), and how different generations interpret journalism's current standing:
Right now, journalism is more or less divided into two camps, which I will call Lost Media and Found Media. I went to the Nieman conference partially because I wanted to see how the forces creating this new division are affecting and afflicting the Lost Media world that I love best, not on the institutional level, but for reporters and writers themselves.
To be a Found Media journalist or pundit, one need not be elite, expert, or trained; one must simply produce punchy intellectual property that is in conversation with groups of other citizens. Found Media-ites don't tend to go to editors for approval, but rather to their readers and to their blog community. In many cases, they disdain the old models, particularly newspapers, which they see as having calcified over the decades, and, according to generally youthful Found Media logic, in deep need of a re-think, using all of youth's advantages: time and the ability to instantly summon a crowd. For Found Media's young journalists and bloggers, the attitude toward our craft tends not to be one of mourning for the ashram gone. Rather, it is of not needing a guru at all.
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