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 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

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.

Related Stories:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

News Roundup: Apple vs. Kindle?, OLPC 2.0 as an E-Reader, B&N; Studying Borders Acquisition

Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

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?

Blogger Begins Amazon Boycott

Andrew Savikas
May 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

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.

Related Stories:

• POD Publisher Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Amazon
• Publishers Beware: Amazon has you in their sights
• Amazon Ups the Ante on Platform Lock-In

POD Publisher Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Amazon

Andrew Savikas
May 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

On his blog Morris Rosenthal reports on a class-action lawsuit filed today against Amazon by POD publisher BookLocker.com:

Today a class action lawsuit was filed in response to Amazon’s threat to remove the "Buy" buttons of publishers who refuse to sign up with their on-demand printing subsidiary, Booksurge. If certified, the class action will most likely include all publishers who use on demand printing to print their books for distribution. If it functions like the class action lawsuits involving credit card or telephone billing that we all find ourselves party to on a regular basis, publishers will automatically be included unless they opt out. The primary plaintiff in the suit is BookLocker.com, Inc., the company that first broke the silence about the heavy-handed tactics Booksurge was using against Lightning Source's larger publisher customers.

The full complaint is available as a PDF, but I've taken the liberty of posting it here via SlideShare as well (click here if you don't see the embedded doc below):

| View | Upload your own

Essentially, the complaint alleges Amazon is in violation of the Sherman Act by engaging in "tying":

An arrangement whereby the seller of some product or service requires, as a condition to the sale of that product (the tying product), that the buyer purchase some additional product (the tied product). The tying arrangement is unlawful when the seller has some power over the market for the tying product. Tying arrangements are generally per se illegal, assuming that the selling firm has the market power to force the arrangement upon its customers.

The meat of the complaint is in paragraphs 38 and 39:

Amazon forces POD publishers to use BookSurge for printing services when they might otherwise prefer to purchase such printing services elsewhere.

Amazon’s practice of tying printing services to sales in the Online Book Market unreasonably restrains trade and is unlawful per se under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

In light of recent moves by Amazon (including reports of bullying in the UK), litigation was an inevitability. And this isn't the only pending lawsuit Amazon's involved in (it's not even the only anti-trust lawsuit Amazon is involved in -- Gerlinger v. Amazon.com is still under appeal). Amazon lists seven items in the "Legal Proceedings" section of its 2007 annual report, among them patent infringement and breach of contract, fairly standard for a public company of their size (and they're on the plaintiff side of the aisle against New York State on sales taxes). It will be interesting to see whether other POD publishers join the fray.

Related Links:

• Publishers Beware: Amazon has you in their sights
• Amazon POD: Friend of Foe to Indie Publishers?
• Amazon Ups the Ante on Platform Lock-In

Profile of Hay House: "An Attitude is Not a Business Plan"

Andrew Savikas
May 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

A recent New York Times article on self-help publisher Hay House is a glimpse into the fascinating life of founder Louise Hay. Whether you believe she really cured her own cancer is up to you, but beyond the human interest part of the profile are some great insights about publishing, including the importance of keeping practical business concerns in mind:

But an attitude is not a business plan. Hay House was not, in the beginning, very well run. The employees were mainly “people I knew,” Hay says, “a friend, or somebody who turned up, or somebody who wanted to work for Louise Hay. ... Meanwhile, large trade publishers, like HarperSanFrancisco and Tarcher/Putnam, were seeing the potential in New Age and investing heavily. Hay House would have failed quickly, or been bought out, but for the vision of Reid Tracy, who joined the company as an accountant in 1988 and became president in 1998. He invested his own money, too, and now owns 35 percent of the company; he is the sole shareholder besides Louise Hay herself, and everybody at Hay House, including its founder, considers Tracy the true leader.

That itself isn't terribly novel. But Reid Tracy's recognition that for authors (and savvy publishers) books are often just a means of enhancing their reputation in order to sell speaking engagements and ancillary products presaged the current buzz around using free content as a promotional tool:

[Tracy] realized more than 10 years ago that much of the money in New Age was to be made in items other than books: in card decks, audio tapes and page-a-day calendars. Major authors like Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson, who first came to Hay House just for ancillary products, later abandoned big trade houses to also do their books with Hay House.

And while the content Hay House published arguably couldn't be farther from what we publish, O'Reilly editor Andy Oram (who shared the original article link) pointed out some notable parallels to our eponymous brand:

• They realized that their authors had many channels for making sales besides conventional books, and they use all these channels to bolster one other.
• They recognize that their authors' work complements each other, and bring their authors together in group seminars.
• They play up the celebrity of their founder, who tends to choose trusted people based on intuition.
• They have a brand that goes far beyond the significance of any single offering, and fans accept what they think up next while staying true to the brand.
• They tend to follow their star authors wherever they take their ideas, and trust them.
• They're very self-consciously branching out into specialized products that also hold interest for children.

Related Stories:

• Why TOC is an Idea Much Bigger than O'Reilly
• A Q&A; on O'Reilly’s "Up-to-Date" Publishing Experiment

News Roundup: Google Mobile App Taps Amazon for Data, Orphan Works and Copyright Confusion, Arguing Against "Freemium," Digital Marketing Examples for Publishers, DRM on Comeback Trail?

Mac Slocum
May 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

A Google-Amazon Mobile Application

Android Scan, one of the winners from the Google Android Developer Challenge, uses cell phone cameras and barcode recognition to tap into Amazon's review database. (Continue reading)

Orphan Works Legislation and Copyright Conundrums

Kenny Crews at Collectanea says the orphan works bills in the House and Senate impose hurdles for scholarly/research/casual uses. Crews offers a real but slightly absurd example to illustrate the point. (Continue reading)

The "pay to remove ads" model -- also known as "freemium" -- is inherently flawed, argues Andrew Parker:

Why? Because the people in your audience with disposable income who are willing to pay for web services are the same ones that will self-select out of your audience for your ads. So, all that remains in your audience are people that are too cheap to opt out. That doesn’t sound like the audience that Disney (DIS), Coca Cola (CKE), or even your average direct response advertiser wants to reach.

A Comeback for DRM?

Digital rights management (DRM) discussions abated in recent months as some companies gravitated toward DRM-free formats, but the calm came to an abrupt end recently when David Hughes from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) predicted a comeback for DRM. From News.com:

"I think there is going to be a shift," Hughes said during the Digital Hollywood conference. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services, and (that) will eventually mean the return of DRM." (Continue reading)

A Look at Book Publishing's Opportunities in Digital Marketing

Richard Bawden and Mark Harding from KPMG discuss future scenarios for book marketing and product enhancement:

With virtual worlds like Second Life and social networking destined to splinter into hubs focused on shared interests, publishers and retailers are in a strong position to leverage people's love of books ... Publishers must also consider how books on screen can enhance the reading experience, with sound and vision adding extra dimensions. Think of the crunch that the snow could make as Lucy walks through the wardrobe and enters Narnia for the first time, offering extra sensory pleasure to younger readers. (Continue reading)

Related Stories:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

A Manifesto on Publishing in the 21st Century

Andrew Savikas
May 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Sara Lloyd, head of digital publishing at Pan Macmillan, is in the middle of an impressive book publishers' manifesto over on the digitalist:

The locked-in perception of the book as a unit or a product has also led to digital ‘strategies’ which largely consist of the digitisation of existing print texts in order to create eBooks. This in turn has led to an obsessive focus on the reading device and a perception that the emergence of a ‘killer device’ will be a key driver in unlocking a digital future for books in the way that the iPod was, say, for music. This is a flawed perspective in a number of ways, not least because it fails to recognise the enormous amount of online or digital ‘reading’ that already takes place on non-book-specific devices such as desktop PCs, laptops, PDAs and mobiles, but also because it fails to recognise that the very nature of books and reading is changing and will continue to change substantially. What is absolutely clear is that publishers need to become enablers for reading and its associated processes (discussion; research; note-taking; writing; reference following) to take place across a multitude of platforms and throughout all the varying modes of a readers’ activities and lifestyle.

Today's installment continues the discussion:

Publishers need to provide the tools of interaction and communication around book content and to be active within the digital spaces in which readers can discuss and interact with their content. It will no doubt become standard for digital texts to provide messaging and commenting functions alongside the core text, to enable readers to connect with other readers of the same text and to open up a dialogue with them.

Definitely required reading.

News Roundup: Web Focus Yields Revenue for Tech Publisher, Out-of-Print Books Return Via POD, UK's First E-Reader, TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Judgment

Mac Slocum
May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Tech Publisher Finds Path to Web Revenue

Tech/trade publisher International Data Group (I.D.G.) rolled one of its largest magazines, InfoWorld, into a Web-only publication in April 2007. A profile of the company in the New York Times reveals encouraging first-year results from InfoWorld's digital transition:

There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.

Lessons for Publishers in IDG's Digital Success

PersonaNonData talks about the recent story in the New York Times on IDG's transition to digital publishing:

Since their [IDG's] market is technology they have some advantage over other types of magazines; however, their navigation of this transition is instructive and predictive of the manner in which publishers will ultimately become successful.

... In IDG's case they have remained faithful to the mission of providing content their core market wants, aggressively managing the performance of their titles and shutting down those that don't perform and they have combined staff into cohesive and focused groups. Companies that make this transition early and successfully will establish difficult to surmount positions relative to their competitors ...

Faber Brings Out-of-Print Titles Back Through POD

Faber & Faber is launching Faber Finds, a print-on-demand (POD) imprint specializing in out-of-print titles. From The Guardian:

The new titles, which will retail at about £9, and be printed with automatically generated cover designs, will not be stocked in large quantities by booksellers, but will be available to order through most major booksellers and the majority of internet-based book retailers ... The publisher aims to publish up to 20 new titles every month, after the launch list of 100 books to be made available this June. Faber is the first mainstream non-academic publisher to invest heavily in the POD model, and actively to source material previously published elsewhere for a POD imprint.

Iliad Book Edition E-Reader Coming to UK

Just in time for our discussion on the ideal e-book reader comes a new product that will be the first e-reader sold in the United Kingdom.

Trading Wi-Fi for increased storage and an overall price drop, the iLiad Book Edition is a successor to the iLiad 2. Both use the same iRex e-ink technology and feature a tablet-based touch screen. There is no bundled online service or book store, but both iLiads have support for open formats such as PDF. 50 public domain books are preloaded. (Continue reading)

TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Copyright Judgment

Defunct BitTorrent index TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay more than $110 million in damages for copyright infringement. From News.com:

The judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per copyright infringement -- for 3,699 films and shows. That works out to be worth $110,970,000.

TorrentSpy shut down its site in March. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney in the copyright suit, tells News.com the company declared bankruptcy last week, a fact he says will be lost amidst the judgment's large dollar figure. (Continue reading)

Related:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

Some Quotables from OnCopyright 2008

Andrew Savikas
May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

I spent last Thursday at Copyright Clearance Center's OnCopyright 2008, and came away with some great lines from the panelists well worth sharing here.

On a meta-level, one of the recurring themes on the panels was the value of using the work of others as a starting point for creative experimentation, as in a pastiche. So it was fitting to learn from the organizers that they found inspiration at the February TOC Conference, both in terms of speakers and in staging. (The panel title "Technology: Confronting the Tools of Disruption" was another nice nod.)

I've enclosed direct quotes in quotation marks -- the remainder is generally faithful paraphrasing, but may suffer from some transcription abbreviation.

Chris Sprigman:

• "Copyright law is not in place to protect business models, it's in place to protect creativity."
• Who controls copyright law? According to a 5th-grade civics class: Congress. According to a cynic: People who care enough to spend money to get Congress to do what they want.
• Intellectual property has nothing to do with what craigslist does, and craigslist has significantly diminished newspapers' ability to create a return on what they do.

News Roundup: Google's Book Scanning, Kindle's Future Path, Authorship Increases Exponentially, Amazon Takes on "Amazon Tax," 5 DRM Messes

Mac Slocum
May 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

A Glimpse into Google's Book Scanning

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. (Continue reading)

Kindle's All-Encompassing Future Path

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.

Book Reading Down, Book Writing Up

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. (Continue reading)

Amazon Challenges New York's "Amazon Tax"

As expected, Amazon is challenging New York's recently passed sales tax statute. From Amazon's filed complaint (pdf):

Because some independently operated, New York-based websites post advertisements with links to Amazon and are compensated for these advertisements, Amazon is now presumed to have engaged in "solicitation" under this statue ... despite the fact that Amazon lacks any physical presence in New York and that no solicitation by Amazon actually exists. This presumption is effectively irrebuttable. Accordingly, Amazon seeks a declaratory judgment that the Statute is invalid ...

Charting the Pitfalls of DRM

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. (Continue reading)

Related:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

Why TOC is an Idea Much Bigger than O'Reilly

Andrew Savikas
May 1, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

One of the reasons we at O'Reilly believe so strongly in what we're doing with TOC is that we see it as something much bigger than ourselves. While we of course value the opportunity to create a context for conversation (whether that's in person, online, or in print), the real payoff is seeing what others do after spending time thinking in that context.

This great note just came over the transom from Richard E. Miller, English Department Chair at Rutgers, who wanted to share what he'd worked on following February's TOC Conference:

The conference that my collaborator, Paul Hammond, and I attended in New York this winter was transformative for us. We returned to the university with a very clear sense of what we needed to be doing to bring the humanities to the table for discussions about the future of higher education.

That led to a Web publishing venture, which had a near immediate impact on our efforts to bring attention to the New Humanities project. We are continuing to work with and off the presentations we attended, matching our best efforts with the efforts that were on display at the conference. We've got a three minute account of this up now:

Mostly, though, we wanted to thank you for putting together such a compelling and thought-producing event.

Richard E. Miller
Chair, Department of English
Executive Director, Plangere Writing Center

Save the date and plan to join the conversation at TOC 2009, Feb. 9-11, again at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. Sign up for the conference newsletter to catch updates about registration, speakers, the program and more.