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Read20: November 2008
Random House Expands Ebook Offerings, Embraces EPUB
Peter Brantley
November 25, 2008
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Random House is pursing digital with a vengeance, recognizing a growth market. From the Huffington Post:
The publisher already has more than 8,000 books in the electronic format and will have a digital library of nearly 15,000. The new round of e-books is expected to be completed within months; excerpts can be viewed online through the publisher's Insight browsing service.
Also notable, Random will make all current and future ebooks available in EPUB format.
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Report: Wall Street Journal Grabbing High-End Ads from New York Times
Peter Brantley
November 21, 2008
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Silicon Alley Insider and others are reporting on Bloomberg's notice that the Wall Street Journal is grabbing high-end luxury advertising revenue from the New York Times:
As if the New York Times wasn't having enough trouble keeping up with an ad recession and the Internet crushing its print business. Now the newspaper is facing increasing competition for print ad s... from Murdoch's Wall Street Journal ...
... And then there's the stats: The WSJ has a paid circulation of 1.4 million, up 2.4% y/y. The NYT: 859,000, down 5.5%. With more readers, the WSJ can charge more for ads, $264,426 for full page color vs. $193,800 at the NYT.
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EFF Attorney: Google Book Search Settlement Weakens Innovation
Peter Brantley
November 20, 2008
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In an editorial in The Recorder, Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says Google's settlement with publishers and authors signals an implicit abandonment of Google's legal team working on behalf of innovation across Silicon Valley:
.. By settling rather than taking the case all the way ... Google has solved its own copyright problem -- but not anyone else's. Without a legal precedent about the copyright status of book scanning, future innovators are left to defend their own copyright lawsuits. In essence, Google has left its former copyright adversaries to maul any competitors that want to follow its lead.
Google will doubtless be considering the same endgame for the Viacom lawsuit against YouTube. If Google can strike a settlement with a large slice of the aggrieved copyright owners, then it solves the copyright problem for itself, while leaving it as a barrier to entry for YouTube's competitors.
But when innovators like Google cut individual deals, it weakens the Silicon Valley innovation ecology for everyone, because it leaves the smaller companies to carry on the fight against well-endowed opponents. Those kinds of cases threaten to yield bad legal precedents that tilt the rules against disruptive innovation generally.
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PC Magazine Goes Web Only
Peter Brantley
November 19, 2008
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PC Magazine's January 2009 edition will mark the end of its print run. A reduced staff will focus on the PCMag Digital Network. From paidContent.org:
The magazine, which was started in 1982, has a storied history, but its print base eroded over the years as its core brand of journalism -- news you can use while shopping for computers -- moved online. It cut back from bi-weekly to monthly earlier this year. PCMag, which literally invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews, at one time during the '80s averaged about 400 pages an issue, with some issues breaking the 500- and even the 600-page marks, according to this Wikipedia history.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball says this is likely an ever more frequent transition as the recession deepens. Both U.S. News & World Report and the Christian Science Monitor have announced plans in recent weeks to end/reduce print editions.
Edit - 11/20/08 - John Gruber's name was misspelled in the original post.
Related Stories:
- Washington Post: "U.S. News & World Report To Shift Operations to Web"
- Christian Science Monitor: "Monitor shifts from print to Web-based strategy"
- News.com: "NYT's Sulzberger: 'We can't care' if newspapers die"
- Could a Young Newspaper Company Still Succeed?
- Lessons for Publishers in IDG's Digital Success
Publishers Need to Get In on the Conversation
Peter Brantley
November 19, 2008
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Kassia Krozser has a Cluetrain-like manifesto for publishers. From Booksquare:
It's time to get your hands dirty, to dig into the real-world conversation. It's a weird thing, and sometimes awkward and uncomfortable, especially if you're accustomed to public relations-speak and the cheerleader behavior that accompanies marketing messages. When you talk directly to real people who read and buy books, they tune you out when you try to stay on message. If they wanted to rehash cover copy, they'd read the back of the book.
Related Stories:
- The Cluetrain Manifesto
- Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
- Web Publicity Grows Up, Learns the Value of Conversation
- Why Blogging and Social Media Shouldn't be Ignored
- How Should Authors Promote Themselves Online?
- Target, Serve and Adapt: A Simple Model for Audience Development
APIs, New "Transactions" and the Google Book Search Registry
Peter Brantley
November 13, 2008
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At PersonaNonData, Michael Cairns discusses the Google Book Search registry, and muses whether it might support certain types of transactions through an API:
How the registry may be formed is anyone's guess, but for sake of argument I envision a pyramidal structure. The identifier segment forms the pointy top layer, bibliographic data the second layer, content the third and the 'transaction gateway' the bottom tier. Then again maybe it's a cube and I should be adding subjects, a retail/library segmentation, and transactional details like rights information. Regardless, it seems to me combining each of these segments into a registry might engender significant opportunities to improve the publishing supply chain. But more than that, the combination I suggest works better for the on-line world than the off which is the failing of the current crop of ISBN databases (including Amazon.com) ...
... The most obvious application enabled via the 'transaction gateway' would be purchase but a 'transaction' can be many things: views, queries, checkin-out, use rights, syndication and may more. An open service architecture would enable development of third party API's that could result in all kinds of new applications but existing ones would also benefit as well. Worldcat and Copyright Clearinghouse applications are good examples where users could find the physical content in a library or attain usage rights from CCC.
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Android Barcode App Connects to Google Book Search
Peter Brantley
November 12, 2008
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Google has released a nifty Android app that permits the scanning of a book's barcode, enabling the linkage with the corresponding work in Google Book Search. From E-Reads:
"Google has announced a book-text search tool called the Barcode Scanner that works with an Android-powered cellphone. According to Google Book Search engineer Jeff Breidenbach, when you download the software into your Android and point your phone camera at a book's barcode, "it will automatically zoom, focus and scan the ISBN - without you even needing to click the shutter...You'll then have the option to search the full text of the book on Google Book Search right away"
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Election Interest Signals Print's High-End Future
Peter Brantley
November 10, 2008
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Following the sell-out of post-election newspapers, Ed Nawotka looks at the collectable future of print. From Beyond Hall 8:
One immediate consequence of Obama's victory was the boost in sales for newspapers. So now we have confirmation that print is not dead -- at least as far as collectors are concerned.
This merely reinforces my belief that the long-term future of books lies in bifurcated markets: Half in cheap or reasonably priced e-books and the other half in high cost collectable volumes (be it what it may - art, photography, or even leather bound volumes of fiction).
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Philadelphia Closing 11 Library Branches
Peter Brantley
November 7, 2008
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The financial crisis is having a huge negative impact on many public sector services, including libraries. From Publishers Lunch (subscription required):
As municipalities across the country face large gaps in their budget, Philadelphia is taking "drastic new steps" to face the "economic storm" that include closing 11 of the 54 branch libraries that comprise the Free Library of Philadelphia. Three other branches will have Sunday hours eliminated. Mayor Michael Nutter said the branches were chosen "after careful review of building conditions, utilization and distance to other libraries in the Free Library system." Cutting 220 jobs throughout the city government, approximately one third of those layoffs will come from the library staff.
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Vanishing Paper in Higher Education
Peter Brantley
November 3, 2008
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Christopher Conway has a thoughtful essay at Inside Higher Ed on the seemingly inevitable trend towards digital text consumption:
It is becoming increasingly easier to put together affordable 'readers' or anthologies culled from existing print material without bypassing rights and fees and without overloading students with unnecessary expense. If this wave of the future takes hold and becomes the new standard in textbook publishing, I think it will be good for all parties involved. But what about the paper-and-binding book? Say you are teaching David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and you had a choice between an excellent paper-and-binding edition by a major academic press, with useful footnotes and front matter, and an electronic edition that students could download to their handy e-book readers, along with selected secondary articles you have selected for them to read? What if their e-book readers had a stylus and/or a network that enabled the class to annotate those assigned texts, and share them over the class network? I don't think anyone's nostalgia for paper-and-binding can replace the pedagogical value of my not-so-fanciful or far-fetched e-book scenario."
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Another Sci-Fi Publisher Opts Out of DRM
Peter Brantley
November 3, 2008
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Night Shade Books has joined Baen's WebScription service. It's interesting how sci-fi is one of the genres leading the way into DRM-free ebooks. From a Galley Cat:
"Baen has successfully led the industry into the future with its DRM-free electronic publishing program," said Night Shade editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen in a press release announcing the move. "This canny insight into the e-book market is just one of the many reasons Night Shade has chosen to partner with Baen for the launch of its e-book line."
Related Stories:
- Cory Doctorow: "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet."
- The Analog Hole: Another Argument Against DRM
- "Spore" Backlash: Is DRM Officially Bad for Business?
- First Frontlist O'Reilly Ebook Bundle (Including EPUB) Now Available
- Charting the Pitfalls of DRM
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